Talk:Operation Wigwam

Dosage in Operation Wigwam
The author of the article states that "Only three personnel received doses of over 0.5 rems". However, at least one Wigwam test witness's widow (my mother) is getting VA compensation for the cancers my father died of 21 years ago.

We filed a claim in 1997 that was denied. In about 2001 VA suggested my mother resubmit her claim. She did and the claim was approved.

I believe the final sentence of the article should be removed. Whether true or not, it is besides the point if vets are able to win claims based on radiaton exposure.

If you have questions, please contact me at micksouder@yahoo.com.

Thanks 69.39.6.249 17:23, 17 October 2007 (UTC) Mick Souder 10/17/07
 * There's never any need to remove true information. The problem is situations like this, where we can obviously source the gov't claim, but it's also probably a pretty bold-faced lie. The best thing to do is present both sides, but obviously it's harder to source the other one. Sorry about your grandfather. — Llywelyn II   00:34, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

The table on this page is generated by database
The table on this page and the contents of any nuclear tests infobox are generated from a database of nuclear testing which I have maintained and researched for a number of years. The table is automatically generated from that database by a Visual Basic script, and then has, periodically, been inserted into the page manually. I began doing this in October of 2013.

Recently a user complained (politely) to me about the practice. It seems to him that it removes control from all editors besides myself over the content. He believes it is tantamount to WP:OWNED of the pages affected. He also points out that there is no public mention of the fact anywhere on wikipedia, and that is true, through my own oversight, until now.

There was no intent that the pages affected should be owned by myself; in fact, one of my reasons for building these pages was to solicit (in the wikipedia way) criticism and corrections to the data, perhaps additional references that I had been unable to locate. I have regenerated the tables twice in the days since they were originally placed. Each time I did so, I performed a diff between the current version and the version that I put up in the previous cycle; all corrections were then either entered into the database or corrected in the programming, as appropriate. As may be guessed, the programming corrections were frequent to start out as suggestions about the table formatting were raised, and most incorporated. I have not made judgements on the "usefulness" of corrections; all have been incorporated, or I have communicated directly with the editor to settle the matter. In fact it was in pursuing such a correction that this matter came up.

I am posting this comment on the Talk page of every page containing content which is so generated. If you would like to comment on this matter, please go to the copy on Talk:List of nuclear tests so the discussion can be kept together. I will also be placing a maintained template on each Talk page (if anyone would like also to be named as a maintainer on one or all pages, you are welcome). I solicit all comments and suggestions.

SkoreKeep (talk) 02:26, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

External links modified (January 2018)
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 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20130218012550/http://www.dtra.mil/documents/ntpr/factsheets/Wigwam.pdf to http://www.dtra.mil/documents/ntpr/factsheets/Wigwam.pdf

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Inappropriate sanitizing of terminology
A recent change to eliminate "Squaw" from the article is unacceptable. Unfortunate or not that was the official term for the towed devices and widely used in references as a designation for a key element of the test. That terminology may exist for this test without clear definition and a reader needs the definition. The Commander's report (p. 17) gives the definition: "Therefore It was decided to design and construct three special submarine targets (SQUAWS) for this test." They were not "incidental" to the test. They were the test targets, "which are essentially 4/5 scale of the SS-563 class structure prototype" with which to assess the effects on an actual submarine. The term does not need to permeate the article here as it does in reports, but without definition once here other references will be perhaps mystifying as in decoding this: "SQUAWS 12 and 13 were submerged and positioned at ranges of 5200 and 7300 ft, respectively, from the  YC, and SQUAW-29 remained on the surface at 10,100 ft." (p. 24 of previous)

Removal is as unacceptable as removing some now inappropriate vessel names in articles about those vessels or involving them. Palmeira (talk) 12:43, 1 December 2021 (UTC)
 * I was the editor that made the change. Thank you for the additional technical details you added afterwards. The term was unacceptable then, as it is now. It's not as if they were ships commissioned under that name. The term itself is not a definition, while "special submarine targets" does so perfectly without the slur against Indigenous women. The term can remain in the 1955 report, and should not infiltrate this article at all. I was careful not to remove anything but the racist name: I left all the technical details of the structures as they were in the article at the time. Please explain how Wikipedia is made better by keeping an entirely unrelated word with only unacceptable usage, especially an article with your name attached to the edit history. I've requested a Third opinion scruss (talk) 02:15, 15 December 2021 (UTC):
 * I left the deletions in another case where the term was not integral to the description of the subject. The justification here is that any person reading declassified contemporary descriptions will without doubt run across the term and it is integral as those were the subjects of the whole nuclear explosion and operation. There is no need to repeatedly use the term, but it is required in any encyclopedic description of the operation. That must be there to answer the question a reader might have from another reference or coming across the term in much later reports of "What was a "SQUAW?" (they were numbered) and were the assigned "names" of the "vessels" from construction throughout the operation and in all reports. The term is cited and a complete removal would be removal of a necessary and fully sourced and cited description of a key component of the operation. Requesting a third opinion does not counter fact. Deleting a key term is encyclopedic vandalism. It is as if fifty-five years from now and article on Antisubmarine warfare sensors deleted "sonobuoy" because it had somehow become an unacceptable word. I will object to any such attempt to "sanitize" the article. Palmeira (talk) 02:47, 15 December 2021 (UTC)
 * WP:NOTCENSORED means we do not remove objectionable terms when they are relevant to the subject matter. (t &#183; c)  buidhe  04:22, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

Ditto. WP:NOTCENSORED means we do not remove objectionable terms when they are relevant to the subject matter - though we might minimise such usage to an extent that it is reasonable and practical. Cinderella157 (talk) 10:09, 15 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Agreed. Wikipedia and historical revisionism do not go together. We report facts. We do not sanitise them for modern audiences. -- Necrothesp (talk) 12:34, 15 December 2021 (UTC)
 * I fully support the approach of User:Palmeira. It is worth pointing out that there is an article titled Squaw. In the context of that, it would be ridiculous to censor this article. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 22:52, 15 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Also agreed. "We report facts. We do not sanitise them for modern audiences." is quite true. Worrying over offensive words is also small potatoes compared to the whole entirety of offensive stuff/events we cover e.g. Wilmington insurrection of 1898, Nazi Party. Not to mention, I wrote Battle of Hayes Pond which uses a very offensive American term twice, and removing it actually makes it harder to fully understand things. We are not honoring the term by saying that's what the US Navy decided to use, even if it was (based off what they gave the name of operation) a pun done in exceptionally poor taste. -Indy beetle (talk) 06:01, 16 December 2021 (UTC)
 * A note on "what they gave the name of operation" and "pun": If I recall projects using code names did not "make up" the name. To avoid clever puns where such a name might be so "clever" — a pun being just such a thing — as to be too revealing of what the thing was about that was not allowed. New classified effort? Program/project management had to pick the next unused word from an authorized list of random nouns. Non sensitive, unclassified, program/project names could be "clever" and were/are often rather contorted full names selected to give a clever "word" from initials, not unlike so many bill names in the U.S. Congress. Most of those were purely unclassified. From some of the declassified documents one can also see such a "name" being itself classified, particularly when created from a longer classified name, designation or description. Some of those are now common names for things. If I recall RADAR at one time was itself a classified term as "radio detection and ranging" gave away far too much. It appears some projects did try to make sub-elements fit within some concept of the assigned name (probably not a particularly good security practice) with this being a case. As for "offensive" here, though I know all too well the Cold War drivers, nuclear detonations in the ocean with a very sizable marine life kill zone is the offensive thing to me now. Then, at the time, the conventional view was that oceans were so vast little humanity could do would damage them. Now we know better — or should. Palmeira (talk) 18:21, 16 December 2021 (UTC)