GSoW Rocks the Internet with Major Updates

Before I begin... we have breaking news.  Amanda Berry has been found! This is the same Amanda Berry that Sylvia Browne said was dead and "in water" back in 2004 when Berry's mother appeared on the Montel Williams Show.  We have updated the Browne, and Berry Wikipedia pages to reflect this info.  Things are happening fast and possible that the references to Browne may not stick.
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Get ready - there are a lot this month -  in no special order... here they are.

Skeptical Inquirer Magazine - now has a new page in Portuguese.  Nix Dorf, Filipe Russo & Luis Pratas have been working on getting the licencing for this image for over a month.  Portuguese Wikipedia has some very strict rules and getting the magazine cover correctly added took far longer than the page translation. 

10:23 Campaign - Newly created for Portuguese readers - (Luis Pratas editor)

Mark Boslough - Nova interviewed Boslough for its program on meteors at the end of March 2013.  We were waiting for those viewers.  Look at what happened to the page view hits his Wikipedia page received during this time.

Ruth Hurmence Green - This is a rewrite (before) that editor Fredrick Green (no relation whats so ever besides how we are all related to each other) created.

Skeptic's Guide to the Universe - brand new page in Portuguese - (editor Luis Pratas)

JREF One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge - It was suggested by editor Rick Duffy that the challenge would probably receive more traffic if it were its own Wikipedia page. While there is still a mention on the JREF page, having its own page allows us to add a lot more content.  Rick also discovered when he was re-writing it, that many of the links were broken or missing.

Long Island Medium - Now in Portuguese.  Editor -  Luis Pratas

Stan Romanek - Rick Duffy created the Wikipedia page for this person several months ago.  We not only create pages for our skeptical spokespeople, but feel it is important to have well-written pages for our opposites.  Remember we are not writing Wikipedia pages for the skeptical choir, but for the general public. When people like Romanek are in the media, it is important that the public has a place (beside that person's personal website) in order to get information.

In this case, you can see from this stat tool, that Romanek has been in the media's eye.  People are going to his page to find out more about him, we are waiting for those people.

Sharon Hill - A brand new creation by Nathan Miller and team - this page will be featured on the front page of Wikipedia, May 8th from 4:00am - noon EST.  Please support the GSoW team during that 8 hour window by visiting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page and look for the Did You Know section.  This is a lot of fun (please share on your social networks)..  DYK is terrific outreach for our community as the majority of people who will be viewing this page are not skeptics.  Nathan is leaving a great little tease (called a hook) about Bigfoot so that should draw some extra attention.

Desiree Schell - rewritten by editor Chris Pederson.  Make sure you check out the before page.

And Psychic Fans your going to love this next one.  Check out the BEFORE page first.  Brand new editor Daniel Skitt decided to take on psychic Desert Tavares's Wikipedia page.  Personally it looks like Tavares (or one of her fans) wrote it.  Whoever it was did not know what they were doing and listed all the media appearances she has had.  Problem is they did not list the appearances, just the name of the show.

We loved the lede where they write that she is a "broadcast celebrity" and is the "daughter of internationally recognized artist, Luis Magin Florez".  A "celebrity" really?  "Internationally recognized artist"?  With no Wikipedia page?  That just seems odd.  Anyway, Daniel went through each citation and non-citation and found that just about everything went back to her own personal website.  He learned how to mark each claim with "citation needed" to keep himself organized, and we liked how that looked so much that we decided to keep that on the page when we re-published it.  It was either that or just deleting everything.

Nathan Miller carefully reworded the part about her making the predictions.  I hope that people reading the page understand what we were trying to say, that Tavares predicted it after the fact.  We left the page in much better shape than we found it.  It is now tagged with a notability flag, and we will move on to other pages.  Editors now have the choices to

1. Leave it alone
2. Delete it
3. Find all the citations

Skeptic Magazine - in Portuguese.  Just like with the Skeptical Inquirer Magazine release, the team had a mess trying to get the licensing correct for an image.  But now because of Nix Dorf, Rita and Luis Pratas, Skeptic Magazine is now live.  

CHILD - This is the first page rewrite of brand new editor Bill Grieb.  I had never heard of this organization before he started working on the rewrite, now after spending time with this page, I'm so glad we have this in great shape.  Facebook and Twitter were alive a couple weeks ago when the news broke that for the second time, parents had allowed their child to die while they prayed over them instead of seeking medical care.  CHILD works to change laws that prevent parents from being allowed to use loop-holes and claim religious exemptions.  Here is the before page.

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This has been a busy month for our team.  We have added several new editors and as we do so, grow the amount of updates.  We are continually recruiting, and customize our training to whatever is needed to get you started.

Here are a few recent interviews and blogs about this project.  Please become involved and join us.

May 4, 2013 - JREF Swift - http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/2108-skepticism-a-the-new-encyclopedia-or-wiki-skepticism-you-can-do.html

 

May 2, 2013 - American Freethought Podcast - (28:50) http://americanfreethought.libsyn.com/podcast-176-guerrilla-skepticism-on-wikipedia

 

April 28, 2013 - The Skeptical Libertarian Blog - Eric Hall - (this is a re-post of his March 16th blog for Skeptoid) -Snopes, "Liberal Bias," and Trusting the Internet - http://blog.skepticallibertarian.com/2013/04/27/snopes-liberal-bias-and-trusting-the-internet/

 

 

April 23, 2013 - Skepticality - http://www.skepticality.com/superlaw/#axzz2RK8pDXJw

 

April 20, 2013 - Amateur Skeptics podcast - http://amateurskeptics.com/AmateurSkeptics-083

 

April 10, 2013 - Skepticality - http://www.skepticality.com/#axzz2Q4t3tPC5

 

April 7, 2013 - Life the Universe & Everything Else podcast - http://lueepodcast.wordpress.com/2013/04/07/episode-53-hivaids-denial/

 

April 5, 2013 - JREF Swift - http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/jref-news/2082-join-us-for-qguerrilla-skepticism-on-wikipediaq-a-live-jref-workshop.html

 

April 5, 2013 - Skeptics on the Net blog - http://skepticsonthe.net/an-introduction-to-guerrilla-skepticism-on-wikipedia/#more-6852

 

April 3, 2013 - The Virtual Skeptics (about 22 minutes in) - http://virtualskeptics.com/2013/04/03/virtual-skeptics-33-432013/

 

April 2, 2013 - Skeptic's Dictionary Newsletter - (Bob Carroll) - http://www.skepdic.com/news/newsletter1204.html

 

April 2, 2013 - 360 Degree Skeptic Blog - (Andrew Bernardin) - http://360skeptic.com/2013/04/skepticism-and-wikipedia-a-call-for-volunteers/

 

April 2, 2013 - Florida Skeptics Blog - (Andrew Bernardin) http://floridaskeptics.com/2013/04/skepticism-and-wikipedia-a-call-for-volunteers/

 

March 27, 2013 - The Daily Grail - http://www.dailygrail.com/Skepticism/2013/3/Guerilla-Skepticism-Wikipedia

 

March 26, 2013 - The Morning Heresy - CFI - http://www.centerforinquiry.net/blogs/entry/3_26_13/

 

March 26, 2013 - Skepticality podcast - http://www.skepticality.com/spot-the-bull/#axzz2Oi3HNgma

 

March 26, 2013 - SWIFT blog - DJ Grothe - http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/2066-susan-gerbic-and-wikiskepticism.html

 

How to Work with Disambiguation Pages and Redirects

Greetings all! My name is Nathan, and I have the good fortune to be guest-posting today about Disambiguation and Redirect pages on Wikipedia.

Disambiguation Pages, Redirects, and Keeping it Simple

Wikipedia has a lot of articles. I mean a WHOLE lot. And when I say a WHOLE LOT, I really mean that it ha- ...okay, I get it, you get it. There are even algorithms to describe how many there are.

But did you know that each of those articles is supposed to have its own, unique one-of-a-kind identifier? As you might imagine, this leads to some potential overlap. Remember back in 4th grade math class, when you had three Johns? Our intrepid teacher, Ms. Hypatia, came up with a disambiguation solution. We suddenly had Jon B., John J. and John P.

If you were to ask Ms. Hypatia about "John," she would likely prompt you for further input. Did you want B (who also spells his first name differently), J, or P? This is exactly how Wikipedia handles overlapping identifiers, with a Disambiguation page.

I created this guide out of an example article the GSoW team recently worked on:

• Sharon Hill is a geologist in Pennsylvania, as well as a science writer and speaker, who has constructively contributed to the advancement of scientific skepticism.
• Sharon Hill is a borough in Pennsylvania, United States with a population around 5,500.

We had a problem. When we went to publish a new biographical article for Hill, the page for “Sharon Hill” already existed, and would auto-redirect users to the “Sharon Hill, Pennsylvania” article. We could (and did) publish under "Sharon A. Hill," but that auto-redirect page had the potential to frustrate a lot of potential seekers.

We needed to change that Redirect into a Disambiguation page.

Step One: Edit the Redirect

If you go to a Redirect page (e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PAGETITLE) without disabling the “redirect” function, you would see something similar to the figure below:

The "redirect" function has auto-forwarded us to another page. Altering the URL by adding "?redirect=no" prevents this from occurring (e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PAGETITLE?redirect=no):

Disabling the “redirect” function allows us the option to edit the Redirect page.

Step Two: Create the Disambiguation Page

We create a Disambiguation page with something similar to the following code:

'''Sharon Hill''' may refer to:

* [[Sharon Hill, Pennsylvania]], a borough in [[Delaware County, Pennsylvania|Delaware County]], [[Pennsylvania]], [[United States]].

* [[Sharon A. Hill]], a geologist, science writer and speaker.

{{disambig}}

Obviously, you'd want to replace the above wiki-code with your own example. Saving this page in place of the old Redirect article will present users with a choice, as can be seen on the current Sharon Hill Disambiguation page.

Step Three: Clarify the Article(s)

In order to make it easier for users to identify which “Sharon Hill” they are reading about, and to make it easier for them to

{{about|TOPIC|TOPIC 2|ARTICLE (2)}}

In our case, using the following text...

{{about|Sharon A. Hill, the science writer and geologist|the city in the State of Pennsylvania|Sharon Hill, Pennsylvania}}

...results in:

This page is about Sharon A. Hill, science writer and geologist. For the borough in Pennsylvania, United States, see Sharon Hill, Pennsylvania.

being added to the header of the page. This makes it more obvious to the user which article they're viewing, and gives them the option to select the correct one if they've ended up in the wrong place.

In Conclusion

I hope this example has been helpful. Please keep in mind that not every situation is going to require the same handling. Sometimes Redirect pages will need to be replaced with Disambiguation pages. Sometimes not. You will need to adapt the steps in the above tutorial to meet your own requirements. If you are stuck, don't hesitate to ask another editor for help.

Igwe - Prothero - Maher - MMAF - McCollum

So what do all these have in common?  They have a new face on Wikipedia. 

Vashti McCollum 

Not sure how this slipped off my radar but somehow this page re-write by Lei Pinter from last year never got the attention it deserves.  This was a lot of work, records on Vashti McCollum (the person) from notable sources were difficult to come by.   She tried to get a photo released by the family but couldn't make that happen. Possibly one of the GSoW readers might be able to help us out? 

Anyway, Lei tells a terrific story of a woman who faces off with the government over religious instruction in her son's school in the mid-1940's in Illinois.  We skeptics should be ashamed at the condition Lei found the page in before she started working on it.  Is this how we treat our representatives?  If we don't show them respect, why should we expect people outside our community to show them respect?  Thanks to Lei and the GSoW team, we now have McCollum's Wiki Back.

 

Leo Igwe

This page was in very sorry shape when Vera de Kok first took it on as you can see here. Brian Engler uploaded an image he took at TAM 2012.  Then Nathan Miller finished it up with a total re-write.  Much improved, great teamwork all.  Current Page

The Igwe release hit the front page of Wikipedia as a Did You Know in Feburary.  For regular followers of this blog you know that getting the front page for 8 hours is a big deal.  An extra effort is required to make it happen, and only brand new pages (no more than 5 days) or newly expanded pages within 5 days of its re-release are given that honor.  When I say expanded, I mean really expanded.  When you look at the before and after of Igwe's page you will see what I mean.  Only well-written and scrutinized articles are allowed.

The Igwe page received 3,607 views on that day.   That is about 3,550% above what is normal for page views.

That number is only a part of the story.  Igwe's article discusses other human rights groups doing similar work.  During the DYK for Igwe's article, the pages for Stepping Stones Nigeria received a 1,652%  daily increase.  That's a measurable effect to show how well we are raising awareness. The article on Witch Children in Africa, which receives virtually no traffic, received 4,339 visitors during that day.

Skeptical organizations receive extra attention from these Did You Know?  features as well. The Center For Inquiry article's daily traffic spiked by 33%, and daily visits to the James Randi Educational Foundation article grew by 20%.

Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers

Frederick Green along with some help from the team took on the rewrite of the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers page.  Here is the before  and now the after.

Because we expanded the article enough we were able to ask for a DYK, which appeared on the front page of Wikipedia on March 10, 2013.  Stats show a spike of 2,565 views.

The hook we used was this one... DYK ... that the Military Association of Atheists & Freethinkers provides "atheists in foxholes" with advocacy, community and education?

The atheists in foxhole page received 1709 views when normally it receives about 250 each day.

Donald Prothero

Everyone seemed surprised that Don Prothero did not already have a Wikipedia page, and once I started reading through Lei Pinter's drafts I can see why.  This man was long ago deserving a page.

We secured a Did You Know for Prothero also.  In the wee hours of the morning for America this appeared on the front page of Wikipedia.  DYK... that Stephen Jay Gould once called Donald Prothero "the best punctuated equilibrium researcher on the West Coast"?"

Prothero's page received only 1,120 views (probably because of the timing of the DYK).  Gould's page received a 50% increase in views, and the punctuated equilibrium page spiked with a 300% increase.

Bill Maher 

No, I didn't rewrite Bill Maher's Wikipedia page.  This is a example of working backwards, and guerrilla skepticism on Wikipedia.  I finally got around to watching Jamy Ian Swiss's lecture from TAM 2012.  In this video he talks about what scientific skepticism is.  I thought it was a good definition and would improve readers understanding of the term.  So I went to the scientific skepticism Wikipedia page and left a quote and citation to the video.  That one edit will expose the Swiss video (and the Swiss WP page) to 100K readers each year.  (note: the Swiss video on the JREF channel currently has 7,687 views.  If someone wanted to check back periodically, they could tell if there is a noticeable increase in views from today)

But this does not explain why I'm talking about Bill Maher.   In his video, Swiss goes on a awesome rant and calls Maher (an)  "anti-science, anti-vaxer, dangerous ignoramus, promoting toxic anti-scientific nonsense that kills people!"  That quote is just too good to waste.  So I ventured over to Maher's WP page and saw that the majority of the page is positive.  A man this popular and controversial needs a criticism section.  But this isn't a simple edit that just any editor of WP is going to be able to place without some problems.  So I made my intentions known on the Maher talk page, then went to my GSoW team and asked for more critical (and scholarly) citations from notable people. 

I got several suggestions and started to compile a list.  One of these citations wouldn't be enough alone, but several all together shows that there is a concurrence within the scientific skepticism community that Maher's anti-vax propaganda is dangerous.  So I added a criticism section to the Maher page.  Here is the page as I left it that night.

It took a few hours before other editors (not on the GSoW team) toned down my edit.  Swiss is quite aggressively verbal, as are others like Gardner who said, he (Gardner) was happy that Maher did not have children of his own that he could kill.  The rules dealing with living persons on Wikipedia are written so someone can't quote mine and attack.  The editors were quite right that the page is improved as it exists today.  They also changed my edit from anti-vax to anti-vaccination (which one of the GSoW editors also suggested) to make it clearer to readers.  

Also in the lede, before I got a hold of the page, the part in the second paragraph said... "He is also a critic of religion and is an advisory board member of Project Reason, a foundation to promote scientific knowledge and secular values within society."  I thought that was too wordy, and that the editor who wrote this was trying to infer that Maher was very sciency.  So I took off everything after the words "Project Reason."

The reason why I say this was working backwards, is because I was starting with a good citation from a notable person/place and then I took a look around WP and found a place to leave it.  Just the opposite of what most editors do.  Trust me this is much simpler to do this way.

This is guerrilla skepticism,  it is getting our skeptical message into areas that it wasn't before.  In ways that are non-traditional and mole-like.   

So to review, Maher's page now has citations for the SGU podcast, the JREF Swiss video and David Gorski's blog on ScienceBlog.  There are hyperlinks to many of our resources that were not there before, Steven Novella, Jamy Ian Swiss, Paul Offit, David Gorski, ScienceBlogs and Martin Gardner.   In the footnotes, beside each citation I have hyperlinked to the SGU, CSICOP and JREF.  

Time will tell if these edits I left will have any influence on changing minds.  It is too early to tell if people will click on the hyperlinks and discover our spokespeople and organizations.  I'm sure most people don't read through an entire Wikipedia page, they look for what they need and move on.  

But we have to try.  If I had just shared the Swiss video on my Facebook or Twitter timeline, it would have only reached about 2K people, and maybe only 20 people would click on the link and watch the video.  Then my "update" would move on and no one would notice it again. 

Leaving these edits, will expose people who are not necessarily in the skeptic community to the video/podcast/blog.  And not just for some arbitrary moment on a Facebook feed.  But every day, every month, every year (as long as they aren't removed).  And how many potential views are we talking about?  I'll leave you to play with this graph, but at the time of this writing the Maher page is receiving about 100K views each month.  Over a million views each year.  Quite a sizable difference from the 20 +/- views it would have received on my Facebook feed.

I wonder if Maher had been following the changes to his Wikipedia page?  He came out with this while I was writing this blog.  Religion, it's like Wikipedia. 

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Now, I hope I've whet your appetite.  This is powerful stuff.  We need your help, there are thousands of edits just waiting to be added into Wikipedia, maybe even hundreds of thousands of edits.  And hundreds of pages that need to be created or rewritten.  We need people who are good at proof-reading, and people who can improve the basic edits we leave.  Researchers, current editors, people willing to caption videos and so much more.  And it needs to happen in English and other languages.  We aren't looking for a handout, we don't want your money.  We want your time, we want your attention.  We train, we mentor,  please join this most powerful and important project.  

Write to me at susangerbic@yahoo.com if you have questions.  Or friend me on Facebook or twitter.  We are all busy people, my work-load would make your head spin, but this is important, what are you waiting for? Join us.  

How to categorize people on Wikimedia Commons

Hi, I'm Vera and I've been helping Susan and the rest of the group out in getting around on Wikimedia Commons, the media database the Wikipedia projects relies upon. I've written here before about how to transfer files from Flickr, and how the OTRS system works, today I'm going to tackle categories. I thought this was a good idea since Susan requested everyone to send in portraits last week.

Just like Wikipedia, files and pages on Commons are categorized, but unlike articles where categories are often an after though, they form the back bone of this project. This because there is no text that can link to other articles, so you often have to rely on the categories to find what you are looking for.

Please note: categories aren't tags. When you've added a file to say “Atheists from the United States”, there is no need to also ad “Atheism” or “Atheist”. The trick is to add the lowest level category as possible. Categories have a structure, for example:

Like this there is a huge tree structure on Wikimedia Commons, making all people in the end categorized in a subcategory of Homo Sapiens, even Kent Hovind.

Plait, Gardner, Tyson, Kurtz, Andrus and so much more

For those of you just joining us, Welcome.  This is an update of all the new releases from the Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia project.  To learn more about what this project is please read this, its a little dated but should catch you up.

We translate well-written Wikipedia pages into other languages, currently we have 18 language teams working on the project (but we badly need more editors working with us, we train and mentor, see bottom of this blog for contact info). 

Not only do we translate but we need to write (or re-write) the pages that will be translated.  We have (and need far more) photographers, video interviewers, copy-editors, researchers, people to caption videos and just motivated people who like doing stuff. 

We have many more pages being worked on right now, but they didn't make the deadline for this update... so stay tuned.

So onto our most current updates... 



Martin Gardner &  Paul Kurtz 
Nix Dorf from the Portuguese team rewrote the Paul Kurtz page.  Here is the before... and now the after.   And then got on to the Martin Gardner page (before) & (after)  

Phil Plait
Filipe Russo created a brand new page for our very own Bad Astronomer, Phil Plait.  






Neil deGrasse Tyson
Luis Pratas rewrote Neil deGrasse Tyson  (before) & (after).  

I want to add that Nathan Miller did the research in English for the Penny4NASA section (under "views") on Tyson's page.  He is trying to build a complete page for the project but it might be too soon as they have not become noteworthy enough yet. 

Ken Feder
The English Ken Feder page got a Did You Know (front page of Wikipedia for 8 hours) unfortunately it was up from 11pm to 8am so we didn't get the hits we would have normally expected.  Only 1,190 for that night.  Other links on Feder's page also experienced a surge on that night. Keep in mind that these are mostly people outside our skeptical choir.  So total win for skepticism. 

Jerry Andrus - Now with it's 8th language... English, Dutch, Portuguese, French, Farsi, Spanish, Russian and now Swedish!  Way to go Philip Skogsberg and Wim Vandenberghe!  Very proud of you both!

Karl Shuker
Received a call-out from Blake Smith from MonsterTalk podcast asking if we might help out a cryptozoologist.  His page had fallen into disrepair, even threats to have the page deleted.  Editor Nathan Miller stepped in and cleaned it up.  Before and After.  Nathan stated "This has been a gratifying effort."

Point of Inquiry
Point of Inquiry is often used in our work as editors as a source for interviews.  This page (Before) had been on our to-do list for quite some time until new editor Ric Watts decided he wanted to take it on.  And he sure did.... here is the after Point of Inquiry.


Our Lady of Warraq
Before new editor Wim Vandenberghe joined the team he had been working on and off on this page for a apparition of the Virgin Mary in Egypt.  (before) He kept having problems getting his edits to stick, problems with other editors (believers) were mostly the problem.  He heard about our project and with a little training and some teamwork this page is in far better condition.  (after) 

As you can see from the before and after, no mention in the lede about what the "apparition" probably was existed until after we did the re-write. 


Danielle Egnew
You might remember from our last update that someone had added the name of Danielle Egnew to the Psychic page.  Listing her as a famous psychic.  I've never heard of her, but she has had an amazing career.  Check out some of these claims... 

Danielle Egnew is recognized in the United States, Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand for her work in the spiritual and metaphysical fields as a Clairvoyant Channel, Paranormal Investigator, and Healer. She is alleged to have successfully assisted law enforcement on cold case profiles, as documented on TV pilot Missing Peace.

Though she is alleged to utilize many spiritual aptitudes, she is widely known by film and radio audiences for her claims that her primary form of direct communication with spirit life is through angelic entities

Danielle Egnew currently owns and operates her own private metaphysical practice in the Los Angeles area.

She has more credentials in music, theater and LGBT activism.  I'm not concerned with those claims, just the psychic ones.  So my editors Nathan Miller and (3-day old Chris Pederson) went to town sorting through the mess.  First Nathan rewrote all of the citations so we could see where all the claims were coming from.  He discovered that nearly every footnote that supported a psychic claim was coming from her own website. 

Chris did some research to make sure that there wasn't a good secondary source for these claims elsewhere on the Internet.  Don't mean to spoil the surprise, but there were none.  So they spent about a day going back and forth researching and talking and finally Nathan said, everything comes back to Danielle's own website, "I'm pretty sure I could become a successful professional juggler, in the same sense that I could buy a domain name, and remain a 'successful, popular' professional juggle-master provided I'm not fired from my day job."

DING DING DING 

Exactly right.  Wikipedia is not a place where you get to advertise, it is not a personal brag page.  Wikipedia is where secondary sources (not your personal website) backs up claims.  Wild claims like how you have solved missing person cases using only your psychic powers needs backing up.  

  Here is the before page... and now the after.   
 ----------------------------------------
 And now the plea for help.  We can not make these updates happen if we don't have help.  We need people to join with us to improve the 5th most popular Internet site in the world.  Yes, this is a crazy idea, but it is totally doable.  Once these pages are created it is pretty easy to maintain them, and we are only looking at a small section of Wikipedia, not the entire site. 

But we do need your help.   As I mentioned before, not just as editors but in all kinds of ways.  We also need help getting our message beyond the people who are currently reading this.  Do you have a blog/podcast that you can feature an interview of us or highlight our updates?  Can you tweet or post these on your own social network?  Can you write to skeptical and/or science media sources (and conferences) and encourage them to give us some time?  Especially need people willing to work in other languages besides English, we train, we mentor and are really nice people also.  
If you have ideas of helping us outreach, please write to me at susangerbic@yahoo.com so I can best advise how you can make the biggest splash.

If you want to become involved in the project.  First read everything on this blog as far back as you can stand (working from the bottom up is probably the best way to do so).  Then friend me on Facebook and let me know what your interests are, what language(s) you want to work in and what kind of training do you need.  And then the next thing you know you will amongst a group of people that are happy to see you and will get you helping.  

Thank you 

History of Scientific Skepticism through Pictures

Friend of the blog, Robert Sheaffer has been gracious enough to begin the tiring process of scanning old photos taken back when the world was only in Black and White  (At least this is what I thought when I was a kid)  and uploading them to Wikimedia Commons.  Robert has been a active member of the scientific skepticism world since the beginning and he has the photos to prove it.  Those of us trying to preserve our history really appreciate that.

When James Randi and Ray Hyman met up at a Alice Cooper concert, they discussed forming a club to combat Uri Geller.  They didn't realize then that we would be interested in knowing the history of that time.  They wanted to get things done, not record the moment.  So now 30+ years later we have to find all these old documents and photos and get them in places where we can show our history.  And I can't think of a better place than Wikipedia. 

For your viewing pleasure, enjoy these never before seen images...

James W. Moseley

CSICOP

Paul Kurtz

Banachek 

James Randi

Ray Hyman

Daryl Bem 

Philip Klass

Robert uploaded a lot more, we just don't have the Wikipedia pages written yet to put the photos on.  We stll have a lot of work to do.  Please consider helping out with the Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia project.   We train and mentor.  Contact me at susangerbic@yahoo.com or friend me on Facebook or Twitter as Susan Gerbic

Ken Feder - Sara Mayhew and More Updates

So many updates to the Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia project.   In case you missed it, here were the updates a couple weeks ago. 
 
 The Portuguese team is really working hard with several new pages coming out soon.  They are not included here because they can't release the pages yet.  The problem is that the Portuguese Wikipedia has different rules concerning YouTube videos than anywhere else we can discover.  YouTube is banned.  Nix Dorf figured out that he has to ask an admin permission to review and release each individual video so that it can be included in an article.  Very frustrating as they seem to have few admins working.  I'm dying to show you all these releases and hopefully I will be able to do so soon.

With the addition of new editor Jason Grant (who heard about this project on the Skeptic Zone interview I did with Penny Chan) we now have added Japanese to our World group.  That makes 17 languages! 

We have had some skeptical love recently, thank you to everyone who is helping to get the word out.   We have appeared on Jeff Wagg's Skeptoid Blog, Bob Carroll's Skeptic Dictionary newsletter, Skepticality Podcast 1 and 2, Sharon Hill's Doubtful News, Dani Johnson on Skeptoid Blog, and finally a big interview with me on Meet the Skeptic podcast.  Please give these a read or listen and support those that support us.

One really great thing happened as a result of the drama in the skeptical community (if you don't know what I'm talking about, be thankful and ignore it).  A group of people in Minnesota Skeptics have finally had it.  They are tired of all the fighting and nastiness and were looking for a project they could get involved in that makes real differences in helping people outside our little bubble of community.  

Jenny McCarthy

I'm sure you all heard about Jenny getting canned from a exercise festival in Canada. I know I saw the link being posted all over Facebook.  All great that we are informing the skeptical choir and patting ourselves on the back for making this happen, but we aren't done until we have let her supporters know what happened. They only are reading her tweets and getting the story from her.  When you have a reliable secondary citation like we have in this case, its no good wasting it. 

On Luke Freeman's lunch (he said this entire edit took him 20 minutes to finish) he updated the page with these sentences...  

In early 2013, the Ottawa Regional Cancer Foundation dropped their plans to have McCarthy headline^[49] their Bust a Move charity fundraiser^[50] because of criticisms^[51][52] of her using her celebrity status to promote views "considered dangerous by most of the medical establishment". ^[53] While McCarthy posted on Twitter that she had to "pull out" due to a "taping conflict", the event organiser Linda Eagen stated that they had to "negotiate a financial settlement with her [McCarthy's] representatives to get out of the deal" in an interview.^[53] 

 I'm sure that cost the charity fundraiser quite a penny.  Great work Jenny, I'm sure you need that money.

Oh yeah, almost forgot.  How many people each month are accessing Jenny's WP page?  Make a guess, then double that.... still wrong.  Stats for Jan 2013. 


Louisiana Science Education Act

My friend Deborah Warcken  pointed out that the Louisiana Science Education Act WP page has been getting vandalized quite a lot.  I've never heard of it, but went over to take a look.  So did one of our week-old editors.  Wim Vanderberghe (who also edits in Dutch and Swedish)  

He made some positive changes to the article as you can see in on the left side of this link.  What I'm showing you is a "diff/cur" link.  We use these all the time so we can quickly see changes to an article.  Probably more still needs to be done, but for a quick fix I think Wim did a great job.  This page is now on our watchlists to keep it vandalism free.

Just in case your interested in some major back and forth between skeptic and believers, check out the talk page for the Act.   


Whole Body Vibration

Editor Rick Duffy did some serious chopping to the Whole Body Vibration WP page.  All Rick's changes are on the right side of this URL.   Here are the Jan 2013 page views stats.

Psychic

Being vigilant is ever needed on Wikipedia.  We have watchlists (we add pages of interest to our watchlist by clicking on the empty star on the upper right side of a WP page) but as these lists grow (mine has over 100 pages on it) and sometimes things slip through.  This is why we need more editors.  One that slipped through was on the psychic page.  This sentence seems to invite people to add names of their favorite psychic, 

"Some famous contemporary psychics include Miss Cleo, John Edward, and Sylvia Browne."

I discovered that three names were added, Danielle Egnew whose WP has now been drawn to my attention (and on the to-do list) as well as these two people Michael and Echo Bodine, who are so unfamous that they don't even have a WP page. 

This was a simple edit, and Chris Pederson who has been editing exactly one day was able to fix this quickly.  I think her comment was something like "that was simple and I didn't blow the Internet up." 
 
Homeopathy 

On my last blog about Jimmy Wales and Homeopathy I received this comment.  

"We need to remove the emotionallly manipulative test from the homeopathic page on wikipedia. Unbiased information sources are the root of any good research and wikipedia disqualifies itself from that because of it's bissed agenda. It is very easy to see. What is not easy to see is that the people most against homeopathy simply do not have the mental capacity to understand the principles behind it. That is what is really going on here. - Peter"

Again proving that Wikipedia is strong and on the front lines of fighting against bad research, opinions and anecdotes.  We have to be vigilant, and we need more editors to do so.

Homeopathy page view stats for January 2013.

Sara Mayhew

The Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia team has a very long (and growing) to-do list.  I made an effort the first of 2013 to try and clean it out.  You might have seen the Stuart Firestein page that was created from scratch, we also got it featured as a Did You Know? for 8 hours on the front page of Wikipedia.

At the same time I was writing the Firestein page, I also created the page of Sara Mayhew.  We don't have the to-do list in any special order, we work on what intrigues us, and also pages that we think we will have no problem finding the citations to complete the project.

I have many pages sitting in User:sgerbic Wikipedia heaven, waiting for inspiration and/or citations.  When we re-write a page, we copy the current page to our semi-private user page and work till its done.  When we have finished it, then it goes to the team, they work on it for awhile and eventually we contact the "target" if we can.  This helps us fact check everything and then get photos uploaded.

That is a lot of work, which is why it takes us some time to get these pages turned out, and the reason I'm always asking for more editors.  (we train)

So this brings me to the release of a brand new page, Sara Mayhew.  She was a joy to work on, having a young career, all her citations are on-line.  Much more difficult for people who came of age in our world pre-Internet.  Sara also allows us to tie in with the Manga and Anime world, people who might not be aware of skeptics.  When her fans look her up they will be exposed to ideas and citations that they hopefully will read.  A major win for us. 

I only managed to get half-way through Sara's page.  One of our brand new editors, Nathan Miller picked up the gauntlet and ran with it.  He finished listening to all the interviews and videos he could find and cleaned up my rambling efforts.  Nathan informed me that he looked at a lot of Manga author pages and Sara's is far superior to most of them.  This is what I mean when we have her Wiki back.

One more think I want to point out.  I noticed that one of the citations Nathan added was giving us a red WOT warning circle.  I looked and discovered it was Sara's own "Love Pet" page that was receiving this warning.  Web of Trust is a crowd-sourced rating system for positive/negative experiences you might have with a web site.  A green WOT means that the page has been rated as safe and trustworthy.  Love Pet had been rated as a negative page.

It was really suspicious why this happened, no comments were left, just negative scores.  Nathan thinks it might have been a spam bot that caused the problem.  I don't know, but after posting the problem on my Facebook page, many people went to Love Pet's page, looked around and found nothing untrustworthy or unsafe, and were able to vote the page back into a positive green WOT.  That is really community.  



Kenneth Feder

Way back when I was getting my BA (2002) I was required to take a archaeology class to finish off my degree.  It was all just general information, but lots of fun.  We were assigned to read Kenneth Feder's book Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries: Science and Pseudoscience in Archaeology.
Feder made learning about weird pseudoscience topics really fun.  But one thing bugged me, and that was his use of using B.C. and A.D. for dating. Professor Mendoza urged me to write to Feder and ask about it.  I was skeptical, never having approached an author before. (except the time I got a book autographed by Beverly Clearly when I was 10) But I sent him an email anyway, and surprise he wrote back!  I can't remember what he said, something about wanting to use the dating method that most students would understand, so he wouldn't alienate them to the bigger topic, understanding pseudoscience.  Anyway, I was thrilled that someone as important as An Author would write back to Ms. Nobody in Salinas, CA. 

So fast forward to 2013.  Someone added Ken Feder to the very long to-do list that exists in hiding for the Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia team.  His page as it existed on Wikipedia was very sad and lonely.  No photos and it had that ugly "stub" tab on it.  See for yourself. 

The way we work on these pages is mainly out of site of Wikipedia readers.  We copy whatever exists on the live Wikipedia page, and paste it onto a "sandbox" or a "user page". Then work and work and work on it.  Listen to every interview and article we can find on our target.  Then the page goes to the Guerrilla Wikipedia team for more ideas.  I discovered while researching Feder that he had been interviewed twice on MonsterTalk podcast, I'm friends with Blake Smith and Ben Radford so getting Feder's email was easy.  The next thing I knew, I was talking to Ken Feder again and asking for him to upload images.

Working with a team as we do really improves the experience of Wikipedia editing.  I might have started the Ken Feder page, but several other editors contributed to cleaning it up and finding more references, mainly Nathan Miller and Jerry Buchanan.

It all happened so quickly.  We got his page re-write off our to-do list, but in the meantime we have added many more.  I guess it is just job security.

If your ready and have already looked at the before... here is the after - Kenneth Feder.

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So I hope I have wet your appetite for getting involved in something so important to getting critical thinking out beyond the skeptics.  From feedback I'm getting from new editors, I need to be clearer with my plea for new editors.  Friend me on Facebook and let me know in a PM that you are interested in the project.  You can also email me at susangerbic@yahoo.com if you are more comfortable doing so, but eventually you are going to need to be placed in one of several Facebook groups.  

Also I want to be clear, we train and mentor.  We are not going to allow you to "blow up the Internet" and all your first edits are watched and reviewed.  Depending on your skill level and confidence we may have you correcting commas and spelling errors to start with.  Nothing wrong with that, most people start that way.  Some people move right in and start on more difficult edits, we don't care, just come join us. 

I've also learned that it takes multiple pleas from me before people join the project.  So pardon me if I continue to harp on the subject.  But we badly need you.  Please consider joining with us to change people's minds on the 5th most popular Internet web site World-Wide.