Talk:Joseph F. Ware Jr.

Recent edits

I have removed a portion of the recent addition with the edit sumary

rm promotional language. Views on "America as a family" irrelevant. His goodness or otherwise would need discussion in independent third party sources, not your personal blog (see also: WP:ELPOINTS). Your book is a WP:SPS unfortunately, and this very arguably comes under the remit of WP:BLP, and per WP:SELFSOURCE, criterion #1 does not apply. Since the very premis is that these are extraordinary events, then clearly WP:EXTRAORDINARY applies.

Pinging @Hathalm, Winged Blades of Godric, Bonadea, and Marnivartu: as the editors—excepting myself—who have most recently expressed an opinion on the inclusion (or otherwise) of this material. ——SerialNumber54129 12:31, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

To clarify, Hathalm, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with the material you wish to include, but it is a matter of the strength of your sources for doing so. You are making what I think you recognise to be an "extraordinary claim"—defined as a surprising or apparently important claims not covered by multiple mainstream sources. Per our guide, though, Any exceptional claim requires multiple high-quality sources; emphasis in original. Unfortunately the only source is you own self-published book,and again, per policy, these are largely not acceptable as sources. Self-published expert sources may be considered reliable when produced by an established expert on the subject matter, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable, independent publications.[8] Exercise caution when using such sources: if the information in question is suitable for inclusion, someone else will probably have published it in independent reliable sources.

Please stop leaving messages on my talk page and join this discussion. ——SerialNumber54129 13:08, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

• @Rathalm: this edit ds not, unfortunately, help: all removing the self-published source does is leave unsourced material. Per policy, All content must be verifiable. The burden to demonstrate verifiability lies with the editor who adds or restores material (emphasis in original). ——SerialNumber54129 13:19, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

To be honest, I don't think there is anything extraordinary in the claims - people being transsexual isn't actually unusual much less odd - but there are a couple of other issues here. The claim is not about the subject of the article but about another person (his wife) and so there is no clear relevance to the Wikipedia article about Ware. As SN54129 says, there needs to be secondary sources; if reliable independent sources (plural) have written about Ware's wife and her being transsexual, it would be a notable fact worth including. Secondly, Wikipedia does not accept original research (such as "the person doing this shows that he was a good person"), and saying that he was good, kind and generous is not acceptable in an encyclopedia article, which has to be written in a neutral tone. No doubt he was an excellent person, and given how much prejudice my transsexual friends encounter, reading about positive examples of people who see different sexualities and gender identities as just different kinds of normal is uplifting. But again, that is not what Wikipedia is for. Finally, Hathalm, it is always recommended that people do not write about themselves on Wikipedia; please use this talk page to suggest edits, but please don't edit the article directly. That's a general guideline, which is there in order to preserve neutrality in the encyclopedia. Regards, --bonadea contributions talk 13:17, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

@Bonadea: claiming to be a transexual is certainly not extraordinary; claiming that one marries a conservative Christian Republican probably is rather more so (without doubting that it happened, of course). ——SerialNumber54129 13:26, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

Huh. That's true, I guess - it never occurred to me (which in a way strengthens the point that it is not obviously notable. I suppose there might be an obvious conclusion to an American, who is used to that weird fringe of Christianity, but to the rest of us not so much...) --bonadea contributions talk 13:52, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

• Resolution effort continued

I was unaware that I had "talked" in the wrong place. Will talk here.

This is not edit warring. I'm trying to do two things, here:

1. correct misinformation and a sentence fragment, and 2. Insert that Joe's third wife is/was transsexual.

1. I do not understand why it is important to include a sentence fragment. I believe it should be fixed, and I do, but people keep changing it back to a fragment, note Retirement section, Para 2, sentence 2 beginning "Though." It was turned into a sentence fragment when someone chopped off the 2nd half of the sentence. I've fixed it several times, but people keep unfixing it. As well, the Co-founding of the Ware Lab is wrong. It was co-founded by 3 people: Joseph Ware, me his third wife Jenna Ware, and Hayden Griffin, Ph.D. then of Virginia Tech. It's being reverted to just Joe, and as much as I love Joe, that's incorrect. It's a 3-person effort as noted.

2. I hear that it's okay to mention such a thing as a conservative man as Joe marrying a transsexual (me), but am I hearing that both (1) if extreme it requires extreme citations, or (2) if it's not extreme tben it's not noteworthy.......either way the fact of this shouldn't be mentioned. ??

Joe and I got together in 1989. We married in 1995. I am transsexual, SRS 1981. I must note that that was akin to such a thing as a white person marrying a black person in the 1950s, note Guess Who's Coming to Dinner movie Wikipedia Article as a rather softened description for then movie-going audiences. We took quite a bit of difficulty for our years together (22 in total, rounded off). The climate was and largely still is a problem of Prejudice that many people suffer.

I think it is very descriptive of how good a man he was, non-judgmental, non-prejudiced that he married and stayed with me.

Joe is not a living person. I am, but I'm the one asserting the truth of it. Have done so many times. That was the reason for a cite of my book, as the story's in there.

I've left my book cite off by request, but I'm still trying to fix

1. the sentence fragment, 2. Note that his third wife is transsexual, and 3. the co-founding of the Ware Lab.

So....I don't understand: I can' say on there, as I did, that He was a commander in the Coast Guard Auxiliary, that he was a life-long pilot, that he helped the Coastguard with Counter Terrorist activities...but I can't say that he married a transsexual (me)? I hadn't provided third party discussion of any of those things, yet they are believed and left in.

This rings to me as of suppression of the fact that a conservative man such as he married a transsexual, me, which I think is notable. I've had that literally pounded into me that I, as transsexual, have been unwelcome.

Jenna Ware Co-founder Ware Lab, Virginia Tech Wife/widow of Joseph Ware Jr. Hathalm (talk) 14:31, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

I've been copied in on this discussion on my talk page, and here are my thoughts:

1) The principle behind the biographies of living persons is "do no harm". If Jenna Ware was not comfortable with self-identifying as transsexual, we would definitely be in our rights not to include this. But she is comfortable in self-identifying with it, and wants to document the information. So it's not a problem to include it in the article.

2) There are sources confirming Mrs Ware's sexuality, including this video from the Virginia Tech College of Engineering (a secondary source) which interviews her and where she clearly self-identifies. This interview is a secondary source because the VTCE could have edited any interview footage they liked into a three minute segment but made a conscious choice to include this piece of information.

3) It would be helpful if an independent publication such as the New York Times, or even a significant local paper in Virginia, reviewed the book Aerospace, Love, and Secrets and summarised the blurb, as this would convince editors generally that this is important encyclopedic information.

As an aside, it might be worth pinging somebody like Megalibrarygirl who has a greater access to news and book publications in the US, and who may be able to pull out contemporary news reports that would help us provide additional sourcing. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 15:19, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

If Jenna Ware was not comfortable with self-identifying as transsexual, we would definitely be in our rights not to include this. But she is comfortable in self-identifying with it, and wants to document the information. So it's not a problem to include it in the article. But again, this is not about somebody being comfortable adding a fact about themselves (which to me appears exactly as controversial as disclosing their hair colour) but it is about adding a fact a) about a person who is not the subject of the article and b) that is not discussed in secondary sources as far as we know (as an interview is a primary source). In an article about Jenna Ware it would be obviously relevant, in an article about her husband, not unless several independent sources have discussed it. --bonadea contributions talk 16:20, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

The sentence fragment issue has been fixed, and some details that don't belong in a neutral encyclopedia have been removed in the process. Thanks for the heads-up. --bonadea contributions talk 16:20, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

• This is an encyclopedic article; not a hagiography. Have you ever seen stuff like ... he embraced America's conflicts in history as part of the past, like a family that fights sometimes but is still family .... An exceedingly good man, he did not judge others, had no personal concept of prejudice. Respect with difference was his creed, which he embodied in his personal life. An indication of how accepting he was ... over any decent biography?

  Nothing over Newspapers.com. ~ Winged Blades^Godric 16:12, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

I say we add the information about their personal life. It's profiled very well here and there's no reason not to expand. It's interesting that he was an open-minded person and that should be part of his biography. Megalibrarygirl (talk) 19:48, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

That reference does seem to cover it. As long as no verbiage like "open-minded" or other evaluative language makes its way into the article. --bonadea contributions talk 19:52, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

@Bonadea: I can add the information and phrase it in a neutral way. :) Megalibrarygirl (talk) 22:40, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

Making Progress

This is my third attempt to add the following to the Talk page for the Ware Article, as my attempt is not showing. I think I'm supposed to talk here to find resolution, and I kindly am, and I'm not aware of being banned.

Thank you Ritchie333 for your helpful comments. Yes, I am supportive of the issue of my transsexuality on Joe Ware's Article. I believe it is noteworthy that in a climate of transphobia, of hate, where I had been threatened, assaulted, our home intruded...that he would stand up and openly declare his love for me, marry me, and that we stayed together until his death in 2012. Joe Ware, a conservative man, defense department engineer, married me, a transsexual.

As to publication, Virginia Tech did include that video of me. I don't think I look that good on the video, but I approved of it.

I also published this exact matter TWICE in the Virginia Tech campus newspaper, about Joe's wonderful family, the Ware Lab, my transsexuality, Virginia Tech's Commission on Equal Opportunity and Diversity stating unanimously that transsexualism exists, and my hope for further campus integration in time—all published on August 28, 2018 and again on September 11, 2018—but I don't know if it matters here as, yet again, those two full-page ads were advertorials, as they called them. I paid for them.

I must be doing something wrong, here, though, because the fact that this great man stood up in a climate of hate and openly married me, transsexual, is not something that can find a way onto his Article. My book was self-published https://www.amazon.com/Shadow-Life-Aerospace-Love-Secrets-ebook/dp/B01MQX0THD/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=Jenna+Ware&qid=1564068631&s=gateway&sr=8-2 , the two times it was in the Collegiate Times I paid for, I'm not allowed to include information about myself in his Article, and another person can't speak authoritatively about my transsexualism...

On the POSITIVE SIDE, Yes, VT did do that video of me, in my airplane hangar at Camarillo, CA, and I've well established that I am truly transsexual and that we were married.

RESOLUTION ?? 1. Would it be acceptable if someone else, other than me, included a line in Joe's Article something to the effect that his third wife was/is transsexual? Because this is not only true, it's the kind of thing that is important for our society.

2. I see the sentence fragment got fixed, but

3. I still need to fix the incorrect statement in Retirement that says Joe founded the Ware Lab. There were 3 of us who co-founded the Lab: Joe, me, and Hayden Griffin, Ph.D., a then engineering professor at Virginia Tech. This is all described in detail in my book, but that citation isn't liked because it was self-published. But Virginia Tech has stated this as well: https://eng.vt.edu/warelab/about-the-ware-lab/friends-of-the-ware-lab.html

4. No third party sources that talk about Joe marrying a transsexual? In the 1st paragraph of Retirement, note that he served in the Coast Guard Auxiliary, helped them with counter-terrorism, owned a Beachcraft and a T-28...all without citations, but they're there. I'm the one who supplied that information. It says citation needed, but it's still there.

All this ruckus is over this word: "Transsexual." Why is that? Why is that one thing, that he married someone like me, the thing that's so disallowed, that has no way in? I'm asking that this great mean, demonstrated by his open marriage to me, be allowed.

Self-published work is disliked because it can contain falsities. I understand. But mine is conservative in that area, and I believe the information in it is important to describe this great man who showed remarkable courage and strength of character in openly marrying me.

I hope we find a way to include.

Jenna Ware Hathalm (talk) 16:48, 25 July 2019 (UTC)