Are you checking your Watchlist?
I sit down several times a day and try to make an edit somewhere so I can cross something off my ever-growing to-do list. There is no end in sight of pages that need updating. My email inbox overflows with conversations I'm having with people to improve WP pages. (Don't let that discourage you, keep sending those emails) But I would LOVE to have some extra hands helping out. The small group we have out there editing have more of a life than I do, and can't spend as much time as is needed. This task is really big, but super important.
As I was saying, are you checking your watchlist? I mean to do a edit, then refresh the screen and notice someone has edited something onto a page incorrectly. I guess they mean well, but usually it is from someone anonymous (just a ISP number) which tells me they aren't someone planning on sticking around long enough to get an account (Its free folks!).
Just reverted an edit for psychic Sally Morgan. The person was quoting her personal website (incorrectly cited BTW) and spent more time talking about Gary Schwartz than Morgan. They also tried to cite his WP page by doing this... [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Schwartz|Gary E Schwartz]] instead of by doing this... [[Gary Schwartz]]. See the difference? Well maybe not here on this page but anyway.
In this case I went to the discussion page and explained my reasons for reverting the edit. I welcomed the person to WP and was totally polite. I hope, but doubt that the person will read what I left. They probably don't know about watchlists.
Here is another revert I did. I had left this quote from Ben Radford on the spontaneous human combustion page. “If SHC is a real phenomenon (and not the result of an elderly or infirm person being too close to a flame source), why doesn't it happen more often? There are 5 billion people in the world, and yet we don't see reports of people bursting into flame while walking down the street, attending football games, or sipping a coffee at a local Starbucks.”
Someone had changed the "5 billion" to "7 billion". Ahhh no. So I nicely responded by saying "yes, I know they are now saying that there are 7 billion people in the world, but I am QUOTING someone, and that is what he said". (actually I responded nicer than this, due to limited space)
Don't know if this person just searched for the phrase "billion people" and changed it to "7 billion people" everywhere they found it. Must be a lot of "reverting" going on today.
Checking my watchlist shows that there are a lot of other editors out there, reverting edits before I get to it. Thank you people! But we do need a lot more eyes out there.
We need to stay on this, because once the change is made, and no one notices, then it just tends to linger. And we know we are changing these pages so that when the general public wanders over to have a look, they will find a well written WP page explaining it, and hopefully they will find some critical thinking link left behind as well.
Today I re-listened to myself talk on the Rational Alchemy podcast (this was before I joined their cast) and I got the question from Brian Walsh "do you spend a lot of time reverting edits from paranormal people?" My answer was, "no, I spend most of my time reverting edits from skeptics". I don't think he expected that answer at all.
I sit down several times a day and try to make an edit somewhere so I can cross something off my ever-growing to-do list. There is no end in sight of pages that need updating. My email inbox overflows with conversations I'm having with people to improve WP pages. (Don't let that discourage you, keep sending those emails) But I would LOVE to have some extra hands helping out. The small group we have out there editing have more of a life than I do, and can't spend as much time as is needed. This task is really big, but super important.
As I was saying, are you checking your watchlist? I mean to do a edit, then refresh the screen and notice someone has edited something onto a page incorrectly. I guess they mean well, but usually it is from someone anonymous (just a ISP number) which tells me they aren't someone planning on sticking around long enough to get an account (Its free folks!).
Just reverted an edit for psychic Sally Morgan. The person was quoting her personal website (incorrectly cited BTW) and spent more time talking about Gary Schwartz than Morgan. They also tried to cite his WP page by doing this... [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Schwartz|Gary E Schwartz]] instead of by doing this... [[Gary Schwartz]]. See the difference? Well maybe not here on this page but anyway.
In this case I went to the discussion page and explained my reasons for reverting the edit. I welcomed the person to WP and was totally polite. I hope, but doubt that the person will read what I left. They probably don't know about watchlists.
Here is another revert I did. I had left this quote from Ben Radford on the spontaneous human combustion page. “If SHC is a real phenomenon (and not the result of an elderly or infirm person being too close to a flame source), why doesn't it happen more often? There are 5 billion people in the world, and yet we don't see reports of people bursting into flame while walking down the street, attending football games, or sipping a coffee at a local Starbucks.”
Someone had changed the "5 billion" to "7 billion". Ahhh no. So I nicely responded by saying "yes, I know they are now saying that there are 7 billion people in the world, but I am QUOTING someone, and that is what he said". (actually I responded nicer than this, due to limited space)
Don't know if this person just searched for the phrase "billion people" and changed it to "7 billion people" everywhere they found it. Must be a lot of "reverting" going on today.
Checking my watchlist shows that there are a lot of other editors out there, reverting edits before I get to it. Thank you people! But we do need a lot more eyes out there.
We need to stay on this, because once the change is made, and no one notices, then it just tends to linger. And we know we are changing these pages so that when the general public wanders over to have a look, they will find a well written WP page explaining it, and hopefully they will find some critical thinking link left behind as well.
Today I re-listened to myself talk on the Rational Alchemy podcast (this was before I joined their cast) and I got the question from Brian Walsh "do you spend a lot of time reverting edits from paranormal people?" My answer was, "no, I spend most of my time reverting edits from skeptics". I don't think he expected that answer at all.
someone else reverted this edit by Hayleysme today on Sally Morgan's page. Just wrote Hayleysme a quick note on the discussion page (hope they will read it) I think that maybe explaining why their edit was reverted might be a good thing, so they can improve their edits for the future. Here is my comment, what do you think?
ReplyDelete------
"Hayleysme: Your edit to the page was reverted. Just wanted you to understand why so that you can help us improve this page in the future. Here is what you wrote... "Sally's gift evolved organically over the years and through word of mouth she soon had a thriving psychic practice that she used to run from my home. Since becoming a professional medium she has read for thousands of people who have experienced a personal tragedy and suffered a great loss. Over the years Sally has been linked to A-list celebrities and Royalty famously reading for the likes of Uma Therman, George Michael, Natalie Imbruglia and most notably the late princess Diana."
Wikipedia "works" because everything written HAS to be cited. If you can just go from personal stories then you will find people saying that the moon is made of cheese and that they visit it often before they have friends over for a party. What you have written is firstly that she has something called a "gift" not sure what that means? Is there some kind of proof of that? Popularity is not proof. Running a "psychic practice" from your home tells us what? Is there proof of this? I'm sure we can prove that she has read a thousand people who have suffered losses, but how does that improve the article? So she has been linked to these celebrities, what does that mean? Where is the citation to prove they are "A-list". And seriously where is the proof that she is getting messages from Lady Di? Other than she says she is doing so, Wikipedia needs evidence.
Really would love to hear back from you, Its possible that you have this evidence but just don't know how to properly cite it in the article. Please paste the links here, and one of us can add the evidence into the article once we look over the link. Personal blogs or just hear-say isn't evidence by the way. We don't need more edits about moon cheese, please help us improve Sally Morgan's Wikipedia page. Would love to see some positive links showing how she is finding missing persons and solving crimes. Having that ability would really be awesome and could really make the police's jobs a lot easier. Maybe even stop crimes before they happen. Sgerbic (talk) 05:19, 3 November 2011 (UTC)"