Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia

Forget English - What does the rest of the World see?

2012-03-04T19:10:00.000-08:00

Just finished reading Kylie Sturgess's interview with Amardeo Sarma concerning CFI's World Skeptic Congress in Berlin, May 2012. Would love to be able to afford to go but alas there is that house payment I must take care of every month.

Sarma states that alternative medicine (mainly homeopathy) is becoming a nuisance in Central Europe. He reasons this is because politicians are promoting it. In America, creationism in the classroom is an ongoing issue. Sturgess asks Sarma if they are seeing it as a problem in Europe as well.

"I must say that in Germany “evolution versus creationism” is not really an issue yet. But we see that coming up a little bit, not because of the Christian variants of creationism but because of the Islamic variants. That’s not an issue so much in Germany, but it is in some of the other countries like in Belgium.Interestingly, even though that’s the case, at the same time in Germany it’s not been so much of an issue yet with the Turkish population here as far as I can see. But it is becoming a problem more and more in the last years. That’s something I think we should be aware of and that’s why this has been one of the topics that we’ve taken up for this particular conference."

So I wondered what non-English readers are seeing when they access Wikipedia pages on Homeopathy and Evolution?

Homeopathy in English (over 100K hits in Feb. 2012)

Homeopathy in German (with over 35K hits in Feb. 2012)

Homeopathy in French (with over hits 22K in Feb. 2012)

The following pages appear (to my non-expert eyes) to be in good shape. I'd rather have an expert like Dr. Eugenie Scott's opinion.

Evolution article in English

Evolution article in German

Evolution article in French

Evolution article in Arabic

Evolution article in Punjabi

Evolution article in Hindi

Evolution article in Kurdish

As you can see, these pages vary in content. I have no idea what these pages say, but some are obviously only a few paragraphs long, with only one image. When a reader of Hindi or Punjabi opens the Evolution page and sees only one or two paragraphs what do you think they are thinking? Imagine what the Kurdish readers are thinking when they access the page and are only given a couple sentences? How important could evolution be if editors are ignoring the topic?

Evolution hits for February 2012 in English

Evolution hits for February 2012 in German

Evolution hits for February 2012 in French

Evolution hits for February 2012 in Hindi

Evolution hits for February 2012 in Arabic

So what is my point?

We are so focused on educating English readers that we forget about the rest of the world. These people deserve to understand the science of these topics, with real citations they can follow to more detailed articles.

Wikipedia is being accessed expediently as the world adds more Internet users. Just like in English, when someone is curious about a topic, if they don't directly go to Wikipedia, they will turn to a search engine for a neutral point of view. Within the first 5 hits they will see a Wikipedia link waiting for them. Wikipedia is virus and spam free, no pop-ups, click-able links to other pages if they don't understand a term, citations and external links for more in depth information and they don't even have to have an account to access the information.

Shame on us if we are ignoring this chance to educate.

Lists of languages on Wikipedia

Skeptoid 300th Episode - PARTY PARTY PARTY

2012-03-04T11:43:00.001-08:00

Last night I attended the 300th Skeptoid episode party, great fun! Sometimes opportunities are too good to pass up and I managed to get some nice images even though the lighting was really awful. The Skeptiod Wikipedia page has been updated, but still needs more attention than I have time for. I've left a blub about the "Gypsy Queen" (listen to episode before reading my edit). I'm relying on my memory of what happened last night and could easily have several things wrong, if you think the edit needs rewriting please do so with my blessing.

While your at it could you also add in the third Skeptoid book and help expand the article? We really need to find secondary sources to improve the article. This means notable places/people talking about Skeptoid.

Noticed that the talented Rachel Bloom's Wikipedia page for her Ray Bradbury video needs updating as well. Mark Edward and I have a personal connection with the video and Bradbury so I added Mark's skeptiblog article about the experience to the External Links. (yes I know External Links and blogs are a no-no. If someone complains I'll quote from the article as a reference and remove the external link) While I was on the page I did a general cleanup of all the nasty red unlinked text and moved some things around. Bloom's page before. Bloom has a lot of articles in the External Link area, if someone wanted to take the time to read through all the articles there should be enough content from them to expand the Wikipedia page into something more substantial. HINT HINT

Matt Kirshen did not have a picture on his Wikipedia page, which now has been fixed. His page now links back to Skeptoid because of the image.

I got a few other nice images from that party. I'll hold onto them in case one of the other people at the event need pictures for their future Wikipedia pages.

The moral of this story is to continually look out for opportunities to improve Wikipedia pages. At times it seems like something "someone else should do" or "why bother?" I'm here to tell you that we need to stop looking for someone else to do it, and get busy. There is a lot of work to be done (its fun trust me!) But we need to show the world that our skeptical spokes people are important, they are supported and We Have Their Wiki Backs!

NOTE: Having a party or conference? Keep me in mind!

Congratulations Brian Dunning on your 300th episode and your future endeavors!

Uploading pictures from Flickr

2012-03-03T14:15:00.000-08:00

The following comes from Vera de Kok who wrote instructions on uploading pictures from Flickr that other people have taken.

Your my first guest author Vera!

One other great way to get contemporary pictures onto Wikipedia is by looking for pictures on Flickr that have the right Creative Commons license. Under ‘Advanced search’ you can specify this:

Creative Commons is an alternative to regular copyright that lets the original author keep some of it rights but makes clear that he or she is OK with other people using his work. Because Wikipedia is an open encyclopedia that strives to be accessible in whatever shape or form. This means that commercial or modified use should be an option.

Being able to use the work commercial might seem a bit extreme. Keep in mind that the threshold for what can be considered commercial is very low. If you have a blog that has advertisement on it, that blog is commercial – even if it doesn’t run a profit. If you share content on Facebook: commercial because Facebook advertises. It also makes it possible for the content to be printed in books, still a cornerstone of many education systems.

Sometimes you can’t find a picture that has the right license. I haven’t shunned away from contacting Flickr users to ask if they might be ok with the publication of their photo on Wikipedia.

Here is my example letter:

Dear Mr/Madam. ******

I'm contacting you concerning this picture you made of *******

http://www.flickr.com/example

I was wondering if you would be willing to donate this picture to the public domain so it can be used on *****s’ Wikipedia page. You can do this by going over to the picture, and under "'Owner settings" change "All Rights Reserved" to a Creative Commons "Attribution-ShareAlike" license. This will make it possible for any use of this picture as long as they credit you as its source and use the same license for their derivative work.

Please note that “any use” includes commercial use of your work. This is necessary because Wikipedia strives to be an open encyclopedia that can be published in whatever shape or form. Being printed in books and published on blogs that carry advertisements. I will fully understand if you object to this.

Your Flickr account will be credited as the source. Please drop me a note if you're OK with this.

Thanks in advance,

Your Name

You do need a Flickr account to contact other users. Keep in mind that you are asking people a favor so stay polite. In my experience it is easier to get amateur photographers to agree with publication than professionals.

If you have found an interesting picture, the best way to upload it onto Wikimedia Commons is to use the Flickr bot.

Instructions there are fairly easy to follow. Do read the instructions if you go over it for the first time. Getting your picture in the right category might be an issue, but that will be covered by another blog post.

Project Skeptoid

2012-03-02T20:29:00.000-08:00

Like I need another project.

In my seeming never ending quest to understand how important Wikipedia is to the skeptic community and to the world, I selected Brian Dunning's Skeptoid podcast for an experiment.

I choose Skeptoid for several reasons, first, I have probably listened to every episode at least once, find them informative and know that Wikipedia readers will enjoy them as well. (editing Wikipedia is all about editing pages you enjoy after all). They are available as a podcast as well as in written form which makes it really easy to quote from. Also Dunning is very organized with a podcast every week, and the way he has the episode guide laid out with dates and titles I was able to quickly organize in a Google Document for my own use.

Also when I explained what I was trying to do, Dunning immediately grasped the importance and has allowed me access to his web site stats, without which I could not analyze the impact of Wikipedia posts.

Let me summarize what I'm trying to prove and then get to the numbers.

Skeptoid is a podcast/blog that analyzes many topics that usually correspond with Wikipedia pages. Mostly they are paranormal topics (some very obscure) and a few like Darwinism are not. He even has a few pages that discuss historical topics (which are some of my favorites).

I discovered in a long conversation with other Wikipedia editors that Skeptiod is considered a reputable source for citations (way to go Dunning, not many podcasts can say that) when it comes to fringe topics. But not for more common topics like the "scientist", "raw food" "SUV" and "pitbull" ones. We actually got into it a bit and several Wikipedia editors sprang to his aid (I did not bring attention to the conversation) and championed his podcast. One editor had the nerve to say that podcasts can't be citations because the deaf could not listen to the podcasts. One person jumped on her comment saying how ridiculous that was and there was no policy for that, besides they pointed out Skeptoid has print as well as audio. It was quite obvious that some of his fans are also Wikipedia editors, very heart-warming.

Several Wikipedia pages like the ones mentioned above, I tried to just add an external link to the Skeptoid article which normally was reverted by other editors. Tim Farley explains that you should rarely leave external links, but instead add the article as a citation somehow, which are rarely reverted. External links are notorious for Spam. Well live and learn! There were a few pages that already had external links, I just cleaned up the citation and left it there. Also several of his podcasts do not have a corresponding Wikipedia page to leave a citation on (like several humorous ones).

So I copied his entire episode list into a Google document. On one page it has every episode and date as well as the corresponding Wikipedia page that has a link. Some of the episodes have more than one Wikipedia page, for example this episode "Orbs: The Ghost in the Camera (Skeptoid #29) - Are orbs really ghosts, or a common artifact of photography?" is mentioned on the Ghost Hunting page as well as the Orb (optics) page.

Someone had already left some links before I entered into the picture, looks like 2006 was the last time that editor was active. And while the citations were correct, I didn't think they looked as good as they could and maximize the amount of hits that were possible. So I started cleaning up the links and even used a couple as examples for the Cafe Inquiry workshop to repair.

For example the Bible Code Wikipedia page now has this...

The Bible Code: Enigmas for Dummies - Do messages hidden within the Bible really predict the future?

Skeptoid: Critical Analysis of Pop Phenomena

Whereas before it looked like this...

The Bible Code: Enigmas for Dummies

The Bible Code: Enigmas for Dummies

See how much more inviting this looks to the reader? There were many examples of these short edits dating back to 2006, some were even shorter. Not only does this look more appealing, but a reader can click on the link about the Skeptoid article as well as to the Wikipedia page for Skeptoid.

When I started Project Skeptoid in November 2011 there were 206 episodes to link to. By the end of November there were 38 references to the podcast on the corresponding Wikipedia pages. His hit results were 1.4% of the total views to www.skeptoid.com coming from Wikipedia. I'm not going to tell you how many hits 1.4% is because I'm measuring this purely by percentages. Lets just say it is several thousand views.

So I cleaned up a few of the already existing citations and added 10 more Wikipedia pages to the hit count which by the end of January 2012 became 48 Wikipedia pages. He had been adding more episodes all this time bringing his count up to 296 episodes. A look at his stats again and the month of January 2012 hit 1.82%.

Remember that not all of these episodes can have a Wikipedia page, they were humor episodes or were already rejected by editors, and some were student question or listener feedback episodes which I haven't bothered trying to link to.

As you can see, there is potential for improvement. Several thousand readers are following the links from Wikipedia to the episode on Skeptoid.com. These readers probably aren't normal Skeptoid listeners otherwise they would have just gone to his site. The goal is to improve Wikipedia as well as the skeptical/critical thinking exposure to NOT the choir (you and I) but to the general public. In this example I think it shows we are making a difference.

In February 2012 I added a few changes and new links but I'm going to take a break from reporting numbers at least till the March or April stats are available. I want to really make some head-way on the Google document, my goal next time I check the stats I will see 3 or 4%. I could really use some help, please contact me if you can, I will train. susangerbic@yahoo.com

Its a bit of an uphill battle to keep measuring against percentage of total Skeptoid.com views as the site becomes more popular he will naturally have more hits without Wikipeida. If someone can think of a better way of analyzing these numbers I would appreciate your thoughts.

By the way,

Regular Skeptoid fans you might be interested in which Wikipedia page is causing the majority of views back to his website.

HINTS - A very cold topic, this page only has an external link to follow and it has been overwhelmingly number one for both November and January with 5% of the total hits. This Wikipedia page receives about 130K views a month Click for Answer.

Cafe Inquiry in CFI - Hollywood - Fun Fun Fun!

2012-03-01T12:10:00.003-08:00


Editing Bible Code

Just finished last night an unusual workshop of this project. I learned a lot, and hope to be able to improve my delivery for future workshops.

I learned that when you are talking about a project that is this much fun and feel so passionate about, I can really get carried away with examples. People ask such interesting questions and want to show them examples of how I solved the problem that I can easily get off topic. BUT some of the tangents were very interesting.

It is difficult to really know where to go with these kinds of workshops when you have a mixed group of people, some are very aware of the project, and others are not. Some are beginning editors and some have edited quite a lot. Just really varies.

My Skeptical Inquirer interview about Guerrilla Skepticism

I provided examples of simple and advanced edits that really need to be done. First I went into the Wikipedia page and made the edit myself, then erased everything and wrote an email to myself with all the edits and the reasons why and how to make the changes. Then projected all the examples up on the screen and people came up one by one and selected the one they wanted to work on. I forwarded the email to them right there and they were able to go out in the lobby and follow the instructions to make the edit themselves. That worked quite smoothly and hope to be able to use that again. Takes a while to write the examples though.


Michael Brode edits Energy (esotericism) page

I'm hoping they found the instructions clear and enjoyed the process, as well as learned something. They still have the email and everything was put on their watchlist, so they can revisit the instructions. I checked with everyone (I hope) to make sure they knew how to check their watchlist and why. I think most people learn by doing, and this exercise was just that.

I want to share some of the pictures that Mark Edward took as well as some of the changes made last night. I even have four examples left over if someone wants to take them on. If you want one of these leftover exercises, first come first served.

I'm in the process of creating an email list for anyone in the LA area that would like to have a less formal workshop once a month (or every couple months) when I'm in the area. We could do the same thing, project my computer onto the big screen and I can edit right there. We can look together at pages that need work, or whatever challenges or lessons that need to be learned. If you are interested in being on this list please contact me susangerbic@yahoo.com.

Brian Hart intent on his edit of Dr. Oz


Dave Richard editing Dr. Dean Edell

There is also a possibility that I can do the same at CFI in San Francisco (only 2 hours North of me) or any other place that has WiFi and lots of outlets. A giant projector screen like at CFI West would be wonderful.

It would be a fun Edit-A-Ton Party. Informal and fun!

Here are the edits that were completed last night. NOTE: The highlighted green writing on the left top of the page shows you what has been changed. Click on this icon on the left upper side of the screen and you can see what the previous page looked like.

Energy (esotericism) Before
Energy (esotericism) After

Bible Code

Dean Edell

Dr. OZ

FYI - just created a Facebook closed group for people wanting to edit and learn. http://www.facebook.com/groups/302869106442712/

Peter Gleick and Wikipedia

2012-02-22T19:22:00.000-08:00

You know I keep finding evidence of how important the We Got Your Wiki Back! project is. Opened the San Jose Mercury newspaper this morning and saw a familiar name and face looking at me. Peter Gleick sounded so familiar, then I remembered that he was one of the main lecturers at SkeptiCal May 2011. I presented that year also and took a lot of pictures which oddly enough made it up on the Wikipedia pages of Yau-Man Chan and Bob Carroll. I noticed that Peter Gleick had a nice Wikipedia page but was missing a picture so click click goes my camera and there goes up another image for Wikipedia.

Regular readers of this blog know I'm a major believer in making sure all our spokes people's pages are in good shape, with content as well as attractive looking. No red type, awesome photographs that help tell the story and citations that actually say what the citation links to.

Also I'm all for making sure that skeptical organizations are getting recognition where ever we can fit in a plug. All three of the aforementioned have SkeptiCal mentioned in the caption. IF SkeptiCal was noteworthy (not yet but hopefully soon) they would have their own Wikipedia page that would contain a live link so readers could link to. And that works backwards as well, when SkeptiCal gets its own page, the past speakers will be listed somewhere on SkeptiCal's page with live links so people can click over to their page. Don't you just love Wikipedia? I dare you to visit a page and NOT click on at least one hyperlink. Its like eating potato chips right?

Anyway, I posted the picture for Peter Gleick back in June 2011. Now it seems his name is all over the place and people are scrambling to find out who he is. The skeptical community already knew who he was, but as I keep saying we aren't improving Wikipedia for the choir, but for the rest of the world that is trying to find out who is who. I especially find it funny that people are going to see Gleick speaking at a skeptical conference that generally is skeptical of the global warming skeptics. That is going to confuse most people.

Having a well-tended Wikipedia page really helps with his credibility. His page needs more content (and probably more pictures) but for the most part it looks better than most.

The lede (also called leed) contains this bit.

On February 16, 2012 Gleick resigned in disgrace from the American Geophysical Union Task Force on Scientific Ethics after he confessed he had obtained and distributed documents from the Heartland Institute by impersonating a board member, and apologized.

I've already left a comment on the talk page that I believe the word "disgrace" should be removed. This is how things are done on Wikipedia. I can go in and just edit it out (the BE BOLD policy) but for the moment I'm just going to ask and see if whoever edited it in the first place can back up that word. It sounds like opinion to me? Maybe Gleick actually used the word disgrace somewhere? If so then the word should remain.

Now back to my main point, backing up my claim that people are visiting Wikipedia for more information. Yes I know that his personal website is probably getting a lot of hits, but that isn't a neutral site and people know that. They want someplace that will sum up the person, and that place is Wikipedia.

So what do the numbers look like? Normally Gleick gets about 80 hits a day to his Wikipedia page. Yesterday (remember this tool is off 24-36 hours in reporting numbers) the page got 3,774 views. When I came home from work ready to write this blog I noticed the next day's numbers are already in. 3,130. I'm leaving the link for you to watch the numbers hit as the story unfolds. Exciting huh!

So what about the supporting cast? Does the Heartland Institute have a Wikipedia page? Apparently they do and Gleick is already mentioned on their page. Someone is on it! What do their hits look like since the story broke? They have seen a spike in traffic as well.

Eugenie Scott and the NCSE might even see a spike in their hits. Don't see anything for Eugenie Scott, and only a slight increase for NCSE. But it is difficult to know what might trigger a wave of Wikipedia views. Tomorrow Dr. Scott might be interviewed on CNN discussing the issue, we just aren't able to plan for everything. Its like a giant pond with a stone thrown into the water causing a ripple effect with other Wikipedia pages seeing an increase in hits. This is why we need to have their backs.

We need to be ready.

Please help with this project.
Write to me at susangerbic@yahoo.com

BTW join me this April 21st at SkeptiCal (they have a great speaker list and some might just need their pictures taken. Race me!)

Join me at Cafe Inquiry Feburary 29 @ CFI Hollywood

2012-02-15T18:02:00.000-08:00

Just a quick mention I will be conducting a workshop at CFI West in Hollywood, CA. This will be a hands on workshop with some lecture and lots of do-it-yourself editing. CFI has a WiFi connection that will allow users to learn basic to more advanced editing.

The workshop is free!

http://www.cfiwest.org/calendar/CafeInquiry.htm

Bad Astronomer gets 2 hour makeover on Wikipedia

2012-02-13T20:57:00.000-08:00

I'm really busy. I'm working on the examples that I will be using for the Cafe Inquiry workshop at CFI West on Feb 29, 2012. At this workshop I am going to talk for a bit about this Wikipedia project and then allow people to edit real pages for the remainder of time. My idea is to forward the participants a email with specific instructions of exactly what to edit. Mainly the first few examples will be "copy this" and "paste exactly here". I'm also giving them the reasons why they are doing what they are doing, and forcing them to add it to their watchlists. I'm hoping they will go home and look at the watchlist again and look more in depth at their edit.

As I said, I am busy creating these examples and making sure they work correctly and the instructions are very clear.

I've written about Phil Plaits Wikipedia page many times here on this blog. He is one of those skeptical spokespeople that keep popping up in the public's eye and I know every time he does there is a spike in his Wikipedia hits. Currently he's generating about 3.5K hits each month. A page we ought to have an eye on, right?

I wondered if maybe I could write an example that could be used at the workshop. Looking over his page I felt that the changes I wanted to make are too advanced for beginners to copy/paste. I needed to move on to easier edits. But I felt guilty about leaving Plait's page for the to-do list that its been on for ages. So I decided I would invest 2 hours. That's it! Whatever I could accomplish in that time I would do.

I've just learned how to add filmography info to a Wikipedia page, and noticed Plait has a imdb link. So I ventured over and saw that he has quite a few film credits but not like William B. Davis's page that took me 8+ hours to edit. I'm not going to go into detail how to add tables like I did. Put it this way, I learned by copying the info from a famous actors page and studied the pattern. I played with it for awhile until I figured it out. Its the kind of task you don't want to stop in the middle of, you get into a kind of rhythm with all the | and the |- and <br/>.

Once done I realized I had 20 minutes left. I quickly uploaded an image I took when the IIG awarded Plait's "Bad Astronomy" show for critical thinking content. Popped that image onto the page (there is a nice empty area caused by the Filmography table) and time was up.

I still don't like the lede. As I've said before the sentence about him quitting his job in order to write a book is unprofessional. It might be true but there must be a better way of saying it. Phil Plait's page is going back on the to-do list. Maybe someone will get there before me and continue working on his page? Hopefully so.

Phil Plait Before

Phil Plait After

What Skeptics can learn from the Mormons

2012-02-04T20:16:00.000-08:00

Just ran across this interesting article on the Oh No Ross and Carrie! podcast Facebook page posted by fan Mike Thomson. For the few of you out there who don't already know Ross Blocher and Carrie Poppy and their very popular podcast, they visit paranormal venues "so you don't have to" then report back on the adventure to their listening audience. One two-part story line chronicled their experiences with joining the Mormon church and actually going through the Baptism process, very eye-opening for us voyeurs.

Reading through this article I discovered that the Mormon Church is loosing its members, mainly because people are able to read all about the history of the church and its beliefs on the Internet. Carrie mentioned that the young men in the missionary stage of their training are not allowed to be distracted by the Internet, they can visit the library for an hour once in awhile, but are not supposed to spend that time looking up doctrines or reading about the Church.

Elder Jensen who is the Official Church Historian is quoted as saying that all the leaders of the Church are aware of the problem of defections, and has a plan to counter the membership loss. "Among other steps, it has hired an expert in search-engine optimization to raise the profile of the church's own views in a web search."

Humm very interesting. Something all bloggers and webmasters are interesting in doing. I'm wondering how is this working out for the Mormons? So I propose to do a bit of Google searches for some key Mormon words, I want to see what are the top search sites. I will report the answers as I discover them myself. My question is ...Where does the Wikipedia page hit in comparison to the official LDS site hit? A follow-up question might be ...How many people are hitting these Wikipedia pages (obviously I don't know how many are hitting the LDS pages). Then I'm going to take a general look at what the average reader might see on the Wikipedia pages.

Because of Mitt Romney's bid for the Presidency, I would think that interest in Mormonism would be at a all-time high. And the Internet would be the place to discover the answer to their questions.

I'm really curious what we will find, but we are about to discover the answer together.

"Mormon"

Google Search

-First hit is a paid ad by mormon.org bi line is "Learn More About the Church of Jesus Christ. Chat with a Mormon!" which leads you to a very inviting page with a slideshow about various members. The first story I was presented with was from a biker. (riding without a helmet BTW)

-mormon.org - answers general questions about Mormonism (official LDS site)

-Wikipedia page

-(Book of Mormon) Wikipedia page

-exmormon.org

Stats
January 2012 - Mormon was the ranked 2,340 of top hit page on Wikipedia with 78,971 total views. There was a major hit on one day of 12,479 around January 27, 2012. Wonder what happened that day? An average day usually is 1,500 hits.

Wikipedia Content (a general look)

Its a very beautiful page, lots of images and very carefully written prose throughout the article. There is no criticism of Mormonism anywhere I can find. But it does seem to lay out the history and doctrines in a readable format. I see no mention of South Park's parody of the religion, or the Broadway play. Interesting. I would not suggest anyone try and edit the page to include those, any change you might want to leave on the page should be written on the "talk" page. I assume that anyone with little knowledge of Mormonism would be left with a positive feeling of the religion.

Just noticed the section of the way the Church has treated black people in the past. Apparently according to the Wikipedia article once the Church allowed ordaining men of African descent in the Priesthood it was met with "joy and relief".

I think it is safe to say that the page on Mormonism on Wikipedia carefully monitored by the Mormon Church.

"Polygamy"

Google Search

-First is an ad from mormon.org asking the question Multiple Wives - Do Mormons Practice Polygamy?

-Wikipedia site

-www.polygamy.org (general site discussing polygamy)

Stats
Ranked 3,383 in top hits for January 2012 the page had 111,343 hits in January 2012. No major spikes, about 3,000 views a day.

Wikipedia Content (a general look)

Another well-written page that focuses on polygamy in many cultures with lots of history. There are 4 good sized paragraphs devoted to polygamy in the Mormon church.

"Joseph Smith"

Google Search

-First is the same advertisement we keep seeing from mormon.org their bi-line is "Discover the facts and myths of Mormonism".

-Second is www.josephsmith.net which is a pro-Mormon site

-Wikipedia is third

-Images of Joseph Smith

The Stats
January 2012 the page had 81,577 hits

Wikipedia Content (a general look)
Nice looking image of Smith, another really well written page. Again, nothing I noticed that could be considered critical of Smith, no mention of South Park or the Broadway play about Mormonism. Another carefully watched page by the Church in my opinon.

The conclusion

Well it looks like the LDS Church has done a great marketing job, the first hit is always a paid advertisement for the church inviting people to visit and ask questions. When a Wikipedia page is presented the content is neutral but leans to the positive. I'm not condoning changing the Wikipedia pages as I doubt you would get anything to stick and it would become an edit war. I'm just saying, these pages are carefully written, and the Mormon Church is doing a great job of appearing to give information and answer the hard questions.

Looks like the LDS understands the We Got Your Wiki Back! project better than the skeptic community does. With over 200K hits to these three Wikipedia pages each month I think they understand how important Wikipedia is. Can we say the same?

Wikipedia and Skeptic Women

2012-02-01T17:24:00.000-08:00

My first She Thought blog mentions Rebecca Watson, Debbie Goddard, Greta Christina, Jennifer Michael Hecht, Annie Gaylor, Sikivu Hutchinson, Susan Jacoby, Wafa Sultan and Ophelia Benson.

Wikipedia Blackout

2012-01-17T12:14:00.000-08:00

Blackout

For 24-hours Wikipedia in English will shut-down. How horrible and exciting. Of course I am going to feel really at a loss as Wednesday I will have a lot of time that I would normally have contributed to the pages. I'm trying now to get a blog done for She Thought Blog that will focus on Skeptical Women on Wikipedia.

If you haven't already heard about this shut-down of one of the most powerful sites on the Internet, here is a link to their rationale. http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/English_Wikipedia_anti-SOPA_blackout

I'm not getting involved in the politics, but hope it brings awareness to the importance of Wikipedia and forces people to think about how often they refer to the site in a given 24-hours. I'm looking forward to the follow-up in the media.

Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia a year in review

2012-01-09T12:16:00.000-08:00

Reading Tim Farley's blog Skeptical Software Tools (SST) this morning really has me thinking about how we can measure the impact we have on the skeptical movement. His blog today is "My Top Posts of 2011" where he lists the various blogs he has written for SST and on SWIFT and compares the hits to the Wikipedia pages he has created. His conclusion was that if you don't count the very popular Mabus blog he wrote, then all of the Wikipedia pages he has created have been more popular than the blog posts, by far.

Do I dare write a blog stating the numbers I have for this blog? Tim's far outdistance mine. And not by just a little bit. This isn't a competition, Susan, Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia is even more a specialty blog than SST is. I love numbers also, I also need to know where I've been and where I'm going, numbers really help make things clearer.

So here goes... my year-end recap.

Okay actually it is on a 6-months recap as the blog began in June 2010 because I knew I would be doing a paper presentation at TAM9. Previously to that I had spoken at SkepticCamp: Fort Collins, CO and then SkeptiCal 2010 in Berkeley, CA.

I have been on a few podcasts talking about this project as well as my other hobby The Independent Investigations Group. The Pod Delusion, The Token Skeptic (which is the same interview but a different compilation of other interviews) and Rational Alchemy (where a became a host after my first interview).

I have also been fortunate enough to have a blog on SWIFT that generated 5,841 hits. That link got picked up by the Richard Dawkins Foundation and they featured it on their news site.

Tim Farley has been kind enough to give me shout-outs from time to time that have brought in traffic as well. Farley, JREF and Brian Dunning have tweeted about me several times also bringing in hits. William B. Davis on the Good Atheist Podcast discussed with the host his experience of getting his Wikipedia page made over (they didn't mention me by name though).

I and this project have become known as a place to go to when asking "what do I do if I want a WP page of my own"? or "someone vandalized my page, what do I do"? and the popular "there are a lot of wrong things written on my WP page, how do I get that changed"? I answer these questions usually privately but I suppose I should get a blog together I can just refer people to. I hear from people forwarding me blogs and articles that are written about Wikipedia. And I love all of this, keep sending me these questions and forwarding me the articles, I can't be everywhere at once and unless it is in my inbox, I'm probably going to miss it.

Now to Wikipedia itself. I've only created a few pages from scratch, Mark Edward (which probably needs to be rewritten now that I've learned so much more, James Underdown and The Steve Allen Theate r (which is located inside CFI West).

Mark Edward launched May 10, 2011 has generated 5,788 hits
The Steve Allen Theater launched Sept 18th, 2011 has 882 hits
James Underdown Sept 1, 2011 has 8,371 hits. 5.6K from one day when it was a Did You Know? article.

Besides these I worked on several existing pages that needed re-writes.

Ben Radford's Playing Gods game
Sean Faircloth
William B. Davis
Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture
Brian Dunning

plus many more pages that I've worked on. I'm very happy that nearly all of the pictures I've added to WP are still on the pages. Over 40 images have been used on skeptical sites this year. And at least 10 are up because I've asked the photographer to up load their images. This will become a focus in 2012.

I had no idea how many edits would be a lot for 2011, so I kept track on a spread sheet every time I did something that had an impact for skepticism (not just corrected spelling or grammar). I count 241 edits, 105 of those were to sites I considered "skepticial" like Kylie Sturgess, Barry Beyerstein, CFI, James Randi. 59 sites are "normal" pages that the general public wouldn't think skepticism when looking at the page, like Ya-Man Chan, Seth Shostak, J. Stewart Burns and The Stanley Hotel. Then there are the "woo" sites that I hit 77 pages. Examples are Haunting Evidence, Pet Psychics, Ghost Hunting, Power Balance and Sally Morgan pages.

Because of this blog I've been able to connect with several awesome editors that totally "get-it" thank you Dustin and Lei who continue to edit regularly. Many others have made contributions irregularly but that is completely awesome as I know they have the skills and can pop in and work on projects as they feel the urge. This project is perfect for people who can't completely dedicate themselves to writing a blog, or recording a podcast or anything that needs a commitment. A no-guilt project!

Now for this blog. What were the most popular posts? The very first post I wrote has generated the most hits, 1,903. Which seems odd because I wrote 10 blogs before announcing the blog to anyone, so when I started publicizing the blog people would have been directed to the most recent post, not the first post.

Wikipedia and Sylvia Browne
SGU-24hour show - What were their stats? - 582
We Got your Wiki Back! project - 286
Lamar Odom and Power Balance Bracelets - 267
We Got your Wiki Back! The Numbers from Nightline - 228

My blog hit 17K hits by the end of 2011, which is only a little bit more than the hits that were created from the 3 Wikipedia pages I created (which was about 14K).

2012 should be an interesting year. I have several Rational Alchemy podcasts coming out, and a SI article someday. I have earned the nickname WikiPediatrician from IIG friend Brian Hart, which is pretty awesome just by itself. I will be doing a lecture in late February at CFI West on how to edit (they already understand why we need to edit).

By the way, I'm really approachable and am willing to lecture at any skeptical meetup or event that I am invited to. I will be at Dragon*Con this year, but not as a speaker (at least no one has asked yet). Also I will be at TAM10 and SkeptiCal in Berekely April 21st. (not lecturing as I did last year).

My goals for 2012 are to continue to push for exposure hoping to generate more editors. Also increasing the hands-on training to anyone willing to learn the basics.

I've become more organized with my to-do list and am still focusing on improving pages I feel inspired to fix and not just the ones that reach the most people.

I will be including more information about other WP languages throughout as we have to get the message out to non-English language sites. As more and more people across the world gain Internet access so will their reliance on Wikipedia.

Photography is also a focus, we really need to improve these pages of our skeptical spokespeople, and getting photographers involved is a great way to do so. Plus it gets people excited to contribute more.

Sooo many pages still need work, Kylie Sturgess's page was almost deleted by someone Hell-Bent on removing it, it does need a major rewrite (I have a lot of the references but not the time to do so). Would love to see a page for the Skeptic Toolbox, again the problem is time.

What has been done already is mostly still up. We are making improvements and making a difference to people who are not in the choir. We have to keep the movement moving forward. It is a big task, but it is an important task. We need you!

Thank you for your support!

Homeopathy and Wikipedia

2012-01-04T23:59:00.000-08:00

I'm going to want you to read this page in a minute. Try to read it as if you know almost nothing about the topic. Maybe pretend you just encountered someone at work that tried to give you homeopathic pills for some ailment you have been complaining about. Or possibly you are just getting involved in a romantic relationship with someone who espouses the benefits of homeopathy to you. The person now has you curious, they speak wonders about how wonderful their health is now, how inexpensive the treatments are, and want you to set up an apt with their practitioner.

You know you aren't getting a unbiased description from this person, maybe you have heard that homeopathy isn't real medicine, or something about the English Royals being totally supportive of it. Heck, you even heard that the British medical system will pay for homeopathy treatments, and why would they do that if it does not work? So you turn to the Internet. Where do you look if you are just looking for a description? Maybe a search engine?

"Homeopathy"
(23 million hits)

This is the order of links I received on Yahoo Search

Homeopathy on Wikipedia
ABCHomeopathy which is a pro-Homeopathy site
U.S. National Institutes of Health site
The National Center for Homeopathy
Quackwatch site
What's the Harm in Homepathy? (Tim Farley's site)

Okay now read the first hit that the average person will also see.

What do you think? Does this page reflect a good definition of homeopathy? If you didn't really understand the topic before hand, what would you think after reading it?

Look at the external links. Someone put the Merseyside Skeptics Society "Homeopathy, There is nothing in it" link as well as 14 minute video by James Randi. Awesome!

Another cool link located near the external links is a box stating that there is a Wikipedia News Article related to homeopathy. The headline...

"Parents prosecuted after homeopathic treatment leads to daughter's death"

The homeopathy page didn't just happen with one editor working on it. This took years and many many editors contributing to the page. It is still evolving, with discussions all the time happening on the talk page.

The reason why I'm pointing this out is to make you really understand why Wikipedia is so important to getting critical thinking to the people who need it. I'm not advocating for people to start editing the homeopathy page, this is a recognized "natural science good article". Please don't try to edit this page unless you discuss it on the talk page first.

Now go to the talk page. I want you to see what the editors see when they are thinking about changing the page. Look at the FAQ section, these are decisions that have already been decided and letting everyone know that changes to the page aren't up for discussion.

If you ever questioned whether or not Wikipedia is a skeptical site or not, this should leave no doubt in your mind that it is. We might not be able to get people to read the skeptical blogs we keep releasing but we should recognize the importance of Wikipedia.

Just in case you were wondering what kind of impact I am talking about, here are the stats for homeopathy for December 2011... 86,425. For the 2011 year... 1,266,752 hits. Name another single page website that generates those kind of numbers?

In this case the page for Homeopathy is really well written. Not so for many other Wikipedia pages. Won't you take a moment to help out with this project?

further note -

Homeopathy generally gets 2-5 thousand hits each day. Once in a while there is a spike in the hit numbers, to me this is extremely intriguing as it shows how media attention (maybe something WE did?) sends people indirectly to Wikipedia. (by indirectly I mean, the media didn't give them a URL to follow, but Homeopathy was in the news and people just sent to WP to learn more about the topic).

These spikes are usually off a couple days because of the way they are reported on http://stats.grok.se

A normal day is 2-5 thousand hits
Jan 4 - 32.4K
Jan 5 - 23.4K
Feb 7 - 6.4K
Feb 8 - 5.7K
June 5 - 6.5K
June 6 - 7.3K
Aug 13 - 11.5K
Oct 31 - 8.8K

It is quite possible that the surge in numbers for the early Feb was because of the 10:23 campaign.

Lets not forget our non-English Wikipedia friends. Personally I can't update other-language pages because I don't read/write in other languages. This is where we have to get creative. The project of improving Wikipedia pages for skeptical content is FAR to important to only focus on English. If you can help in other languages please please contact me.

Here are a few numbers for homeopathy in other languages...   All November 2011 (note: when the page has a ranking, that means the page was really popular, most terms are not ranked)

Homeopathy - English - 106,894 (ranked 4,498 most popular page on WP in English)
Homeopatia - Polish - 12,373 (ranked 1,156 most popular page on WP in Polish)

Omeopatia - Italian - 13,929 (ranked 1,873 most popular page on WP in Italian)
Homeopatía - Spanish - 44,072 (ranked 1,794 most popular page on WP in Spanish)
   it reached 3,236 most popular page in Hebrew - hits in Hebrew (it writes left to right) 1,231 הומאופתיה

I could go on and on but have no idea what language most of these are. Hrvatski, Galego, Ελληνικά, Ido, 日本語, తెలుగు, and ייִדיש are just a few other Wikipedia languages that have homeopathy pages. Wonder what their visitors will read?

Branching Out with Pictures

2011-12-25T21:17:00.000-08:00

Today is Christmas 2011 and I thought I would add some pictures to various pages today. All these pictures were taken in the last couple days while I'm spending the holiday with Mark Edward in LA. Nothing is skeptical related, but the skills of uploading to Wikicommons and adding pictures onto pages is something to keep up on.

Tim Farley has often advised me to spread out my edits to not only skeptical issues, from time to time work on edits to your hometown, your school, books whatever interests you. This makes other editors take your work seriously as you won't appear to be a one-trick-pony.

This was a change of pace and quite fun. Here is my Wikimedia Common's contribution page.

I added pictures to...

Heritage Square Museum - actually I had uploaded most of the images on the page in January 2010. Tonight I changed many images and added one or two more. Heritage Square Before

Little Tokyo just added the friendship knot sculpture

Bradbury Building I added a few images (one was taken down already) and changed out some that I thought were dull. Bradbury Building before.

Chinatown was a lot of fun, bright colors. I got rid of a dull picture and added mine instead. Chinatown before.

Added the close-up picture here of a shelf in a Botanica. This was directly across the street from the Bradbury Building. I didn't openly take this picture, but had my camera in my hands and snapped just whatever. Got some great images this way. I decided that I would only add the one image that I cropped in even further.

The MOCA page you would think would have better images. I added the night scene of the downtown buildings with the airplane sculpture. The next time I visit this place I'm going to get better images of the building.

The Museum of Jurassic Technology badly needed images. The mouse on toast picture they had was blurry. This isn't a place for amateur photographers. The museum is in near darkness except for the exhibits, and no flash photography is allowed. I love my camera, the lens I purchased allows me to shoot in low light and I use the "sports" setting on my camera always. This works great indoors and out. If you click on the images you will see that mine are still a bit blurry, they are lucky they have images at all. I must go back and shoot a better main image. Here is the page when I found it this afternoon. Extra points if you can find Mark Edward in one of the images.

Lastly I added a picture taken on Bunker Hill. We took a ride on the Angles Flight tram. According to the article there was a death on the tracks a few years ago, wonder if there is a ghost still lingering. Bet we could get a local ghost hunting group out to use their little meters to tell us.

I know this isn't very guerrilla skeptic focused. But editing Wikipedia should be fun, work on the pages you enjoy. Pull out your photo albums, I bet you already have a bunch of needed images. Don't wait for your next vacation, look at the Wikipedia pages of places you pass every day, bet they need some updated pictures. We really are trying to improve Wikipedia overall.

William B. Davis ~ Page Makeover

2011-12-20T21:55:00.000-08:00

Back in late October 2011 I wrote this article about improving William B. Davis's Wikipedia page. I wouldn't really have cared about his stub page except for the fact that he is one of our skeptical spokespeople. I hadn't known this before until I accidentally stumbled across an interview he gave where he credited skeptic Barry Beyerstein for introducing him to the skeptical community. (I had Beyerstein on Google Alert which is how I discovered the interview) Once I discovered this fact, I knew I had to clean up his page.

So I looked around and added all the skeptical references I could find. Then got my friend Brian Engler to upload a really nice image of Davis leaning on the CSICON podium. I started making changes here and there and also contacted Davis on Facebook.

He was more than helpful. I got all kinds of links from him as well as pictures. Tonight I'm launching his page, along with the "before". I think you will really be amazed at the changes.

Here is a bit of knowledge I picked up along the way.

One idea I had was to make his page a DYK page as they allow brand new pages as well as expanded stubs as candidates for the front page of Wikipedia. What I didn't realize at the time was that by making changes to the "live" page and then waiting a few weeks and adding more and then a bit more I was taking the page out of the running. The rule is that the page needs to expand "5 fold" and have at least 850 words (not counting citations, charts and captions).

If I had not made any changes to the page when I first approached it, and then did all the work on my user page (or sandbox) and then copied/paste/saved the page live I would have expanded the page 5-fold. Adding bit by bit to the live page erased that condition.

Coping the page and pasting it on my user page enabled me to be able to work "off-line". I was able to make changes to the page without having to give a reason for each change. Also when I copy/paste/saved the page back "live" it will be with a fresh history. Only showing the one edit where it is completely done.

Tim Farley looked the page over as well as Dustin and Lei and helped with some spelling and so on. Tim changed the page from going to a redirect page for William Davis - Premier of Ontario page to a disambiguation page for William Davis people.

Tim also wrote a code that kept my user page from being searchable whenever anyone typed in "William B. Davis" into a search engine. Only people with the URL could now find the page.

I also wasn't familiar with IMDB, I looked at Martin Landau's WP page and discovered how that editor made a chart for all the film credits Landau had. I went into "edit" and copied all the text on Landau, pasted them into Davis's page and through trial and error changed everything. It took a long long time to type all that info into Davis's page. In the end I learned a lot about making charts. Learn by doing!

Another problem I ran into over and over with his film credits was that some shows had WP pages, others didn't and some "linked" to WP pages, but not the correct WP page. I know there is a short-cut bot out there on WP that will fix these problems quickly. But I don't know how to use it. What I did for every title, person and place was to put the name into WP's search. I could then make the edit for the hyperlink to go to the correct page. (blog explaining how to do this in detail).

The reason I went to all this trouble was three-fold. Firstly anyone who is going to credit Barry Beyerstein with anything is going to touch a soft spot in my heart. Secondly the whole idea of the We Got your Wiki Back! project is to make sure that when people venture over to our spokespeople's pages they can see that they have well-written and cared for pages. Thirdly William B. Davis is famous. He receives about 4-5 thousand hits a month to his page. That means potentially 4-5 thousand people will be reading about Beyerstein, Skepticism, CSICOP and the critical thinking quotes that I left. A total win for skepticism!

Not all of our spokespeople are going to make such an impact, Davis we know for sure will. Who knows who might be next? I'm not privy to everyones schedules. Tomorrow Ben Radford might score an amazing interview on CNN and the world will be looking at his page, will it be ready? Does it reflect well on skepticism? Does it appear that Radford is respected in his community? In his case, the answer is "yes". But so many of our spokespeople are lacking great pages.

I'm not sure where I will be focusing my Wiki eye tomorrow, but if you have a suggestion or would like to help with this project and don't know where to start, please contact me. susangerbic@yahoo.com

William B. Davis page the first time I saw it

William B. Davis page after the We Got Your Wiki Back! project

Added Dec 25, 2011
Just finished listening to Jacob Fortin's "The Good Atheist" podcast whom interviewed Davis a few days ago. Very funny how this interview happened and its link to the page make-over. I'm going to submit the story to the IIG's www.theoddsmustbecrazy.com site. Take a look.

Also took the interview with Fortin and gleaned the best quotes about Dawkins and John Mack and created a citation back to the podcast. This is how it is supposed to work folks. Get as much information out there for the world to follow back to our skeptical content. We need to have each other's backs as well. http://www.thegoodatheist.net/2011/12/22/the-good-atheist-podcast-episode-154/

----------------------

This just in. Received this message a few minutes ago on my "talk page"

"William B. Davis is fantastic, your edits made a huge difference in quality! Nicely done! You should put it up for Good Article status! Not sure if you're aware, but there are some great article checking tools here

Dreadstar ☥ 19:58, 25 December 2011 (UTC)"

That was a really welcome message. Usually I cross my fingers whenever I see that I have a new message on my talk page, and say to myself "what did I do wrong now"?

So I followed the instructions Dreadstar gave and read everything I could find about what is a "good article" and how to nominate the page. Apparently a Good Article is something that if approved will appear at the top of the discussion page. Only one in every 250 WP articles are considered "good articles" (I would think that would be a bigger spread, but they are counting ALL WP pages, not just the paranormal pages I keep running into)

I nominated the page, now I wait as there is quite a back-log. An editor will be in touch to review the page and offer suggestions to improve the page. I guess I have 7 days from that time to make the changes. It gets reviewed again and again and if approved then it will get the special attention as a "good article" They have a page devoted to "good articles" so it will join that. I have the page listed under "the Arts" which is Davis's main claim to fame.

There is an even higher honor apparently, one called the "featured article" page. This is for pages that are the Best of Wikipedia. Only one in 100 pages are featured articles. Guess I have some new goals for 2012. I'm a competitive sort, and want my gold star!

Keep Wikipedia Vandalism Free - Its up to us

2011-12-17T21:10:00.000-08:00

Trolls are no-longer under bridges and on Internet discussion boards. Sometimes they reside on Wikipedia. I believe that these trolls really think they are clever because they add their rants right into the article that everyone reads. Sometimes it isn't trolls but graffiti and other times it is someone thinking they are really clever. Its really annoying, but something we have to deal with in order to keep Wikipedia the place where everyone can edit.

Tonight I'm going to show you step by step how to revert an edit. Some of the steps can look intimidating to newer editors but never fear I'm going to use pictures so you can see how its done, then turn you loose to clean up the crap.

Firstly it is really important to understand Watchlists. Here are two blogs I've written about the topic.
Very Very Basic Editing
Watchlists Again Busy Busy Me

Adding pages to your watchlist is the first step towards reverting vandalism. You can only revert edits if you are made aware there is a problem with the page. In order to do that you have to have a watchlist. Adding pages to your watchlist is fairly simple. First you need to be logged into Wikipedia. Then every page that you think you might be interested in watching you need to actually go to. You will see an empty star on the right side of the page.
Click on the empty star and it will turn blue and give you a message that you have just added this page to your watch list. Click on the blue star and it will remove it from your watchlist. Okay?

Here is what the right top page looks like for me.

Click on the "my watchlist" and you will see every page that has been changed appear on a daily list. Here is a snapshot of what I'm looking at.

The lower case "m" means that it is a "minor edit". You can remove all the minor edits from the watchlist cue. I don't want that option because the person who is making the edit selects "minor edit" before saving. I'm suspicious that someone trying to sneak through vandalism will check the minor edit box so that very few people notice.

Also whenever someone edits a page they give a reason why they edited it. Sometimes it is simple like "typo" or "added reference" something simple that you might not even check. Again what is written in that reason box was written by someone who might be wanting to sneak something in.

So I check everything on my watchlist, even if it looks innocent. Another reason I do this is that I can learn from the better editors.

The color + and - numbers in the ( ) I believe mean how many characters were added or removed. That's another clue to whether you should check the edit or not.

On the left side it says "diff" that means the difference before/after.

I'm trying to find some vandalism, but of course I can't find any at the moment. Here is an edit I made a couple days ago for Mark Edward's page. It shows up like this on my watchlist.

When you click on the "diff" you will see the page I linked to below.

Mark Edward WP page with slight change

The right side is yellow and the left side is green. Every change is in red print. So you can see I changed the word "a" to "as"

On the top right side above all the green you will see this area.

See the "undo" box. If you click that you will see the following...

Scary message telling you that if it is vandalism you are reverting you don't have to leave a reason for the revert. If not, then you must explain why you are reverting.

Personally I like to leave a reason that might help the editor. If it is something that I can't sum up in a few words then I will go to the discussion page and leave a more detailed reason why I reverted their edit.

Near the bottom you will see this area...

See where you can click the "minor edit" box? You write in the area that starts out with "undid revision 466...." the reason why you are reverting the edit. Then click "show preview" to make sure you did it correct. Then "save page".

Okay, now your free to help keep Wikipedia vandalism free.

Susan

Every day is Spring Cleaning on Wikipedia - BE BOLD

2011-12-11T16:12:00.001-08:00

Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia isn't just leaving well-cited well-written blurbs on paranormal Wikipedia pages. Sometimes a good Spring cleaning is needed. Uncited material needs to go. Often times we leave a "citation needed" tag beside the sentence. Looks like this...

{{Citation needed|date=October2011}}

Other times it is best to just be BOLD and delete the mess (cited and uncited)

Let me give you a few examples of what I mean.

I was adding articles by Ben Radford and Brian Dunning to the Spontaneous Human Combustion page when reading through the article I noticed this cited reference...

Two examples of people surviving static flash events^{[clarification needed]} are given in a book on SHC.^[2] Author John Heymer claims that the two subjects, Debbie Clark and Susan Motteshead, speaking independently and with no knowledge of each other, give similar histories.^[3]
In September 1985, Debbie Clark was walking home when she noticed an occasional flash of blue light.^[4] As she claimed, "It was me. I was lighting up the driveway every couple of steps. As we got into the garden I thought it was funny at that point. I was walking around in circles saying, 'Look at this, mum, look!' She started screaming and my brother came to the door and started screaming and shouting 'Have you never heard of spontaneous human combustion?'" Her mother, Dianne Clark, responded, "I screamed at her to get her shoes off and it [the flashes] kept going so I hassled her through and got her into the bath. I thought that the bath is wired to earth. It was a blue light, you know, what they call electric blue. She thought it was fun, she was laughing."
In winter 1980, Cheshire, England, resident Susan Motteshead was standing in her kitchen, wearing flame-resistant pajamas, when she was suddenly engulfed in a short-lived fire that seemed to have ignited the fluff on her clothing but burned out before it could set anything properly alight.^[3]
In addition, Jack Angel claims to have survived an SHC-like event.

Yep, that is true evidence of SHC right? I deleted the whole thing and went over to the discussion page and left this note.

I removed this section on survivors. There is no evidence that these people were experiencing spontaneous human combustion, no indication of medical evidence following up on these "stories". One girl had a "blue light" coming out of her that she thought was funny, her mother put her in the bath. The other story is about a woman wearing her PJ's in the kitchen when she caught on fire. So? The third reference is to someone mentioned but not cited. If someone would like to put these edits back in and can give a compelling reason why they should be in the article, then they are below for you to copy/paste. Sgerbic (talk) 00:02, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Its been a month and no one has responded to my deletion. BTW the page received 52,171 hits November 2011.

Can't remember how I stumbled on this one, I think I might have been searching for "Long Island Medium" and "Theresa Caputo" on Wikipedia and the page for Hicksville, New York came up in the search. Apparently they have a small list of "notable natives/residents" which includes Billy Joel (you might get that question on a trivial pursuit card). Someone had added Theresa Caputo from Long Island Medium on the notable list. Because there is no page for either, the words were in red ink on the Hicksville page. I removed the names and went to the discussion page and left this for the editor...

Having a list of notable people means they should be Notable. *Theresa Caputo of Long Island Medium neither person or show is notable. Sgerbic (talk) 20:54, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Today I noticed that the same person went back and added the names back in the list (thankfully I have Hicksville, NY on my watchlist). I reverted the edit and followed the editors ISP (no user name just anonymous editor) and found that the only edits they have done on Wikipedia are the ones here on Hicksville's page. That's kinda strange. Then there is one more edit, to this page. The editor is trying to create a page called Long Island Medium with the only thing on the page this...

Long Island Medium is a television show on TLC that follows the life of Hicksville, New York's Theresa Caputo, a psychic medium.

Wow! Going to need a lot more info before that page becomes reality. I put it on my watchlist so I can watch the page as it grows with citations. This person didn't just make the page, they somehow are asking administrators to make the page. It is being reviewed and I'm sure nothing will come of it. One admin left a really nice welcome note on that editor's user page (yes, even anonymous editors have a user page) explaining how to edit and what notable means. NOTE: while writing this blog I noticed that another admin has already deleted the request, stating that there is insufficient context.

Here is another clean-up I did this time for Rosemary Althea's page.

I'm removing all of this until it can be cited.
Rosemary Altea is a New York Times best-selling Author and psychic medium who also runs a charitable healing organization. As well as writing books and doing private consultations with clients, Altea gives lectures and holds events talking about the subject of spirituality and healing. She is well known world wide and has a large following in England, America, Italy and Latin America in particular.
Sgerbic (talk) 01:50, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

Still no response from the original editor.

Here is a rather pleasant discussion I left on the Sally Morgan (stage artist) WP page. Someone named Hayleysme left the edit, I reverted it... Hope I don't sound too snarky.

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)

This happened over a month ago and no response from anyone. I'm just noticing that in October I left a "citation needed" for several of her books. I think I will just remove those books as it has been a couple months and no one has gone to the trouble to cite them. I can't stand seeing "citation needed" from several years ago.

I just removed this bit and will leave a note on the discussion page saying why I did so. If someone wants to take the time to add them back in with the correct citations then wonderful.

In March 2010, she appeared on an episode of ''[[What Katie Did Next]]'' in which she investigated the home of British model [[Katie Price]].{{Citation needed|date=October 2011}}

Sally has also filmed a biopic titled "The Psychic Life of Sally Morgan" which was shown on Sky's Bio Channel.{{Citation needed|date=October 2011}}

Sally Morgan has published two books, these were her autobiography 'My Psychic Life' published by [[Penguin]] in 2007 and 'Healing Spirits' which was published by Penguin in 2009. Her new book 'Life After Death' was released by Penguin on the 7th April 2011.{{Citation needed|date=October 2011}}

Just noticed that in her now one-sentence Career section the only reference is to a TV-show she did and the link is dead. Someone tagged it long before. Maybe there is a better link? I'm not going looking for it at the moment. It isn't a good idea to remove dead links from articles as it probably worked at one-time. If I remove the one sentence from her Career area then the only thing on her page is 4 paragraphs of criticism. Not even a picture of her. Guess her fans really don't have her Wiki back, so sad.

This is a small edit I did for a New Zealand TV show called "Sensing Murder" the lede read like this before I got to it...

Sensing Murder is a television series in New Zealand, Australia, and the United States, in which alleged psychics are asked to act as psychic detectives to help solve famous unsolved murder cases in each country. The psychics have not managed to solve any of the cases so far.

I erased the last two words. I noted that as the show is cancelled, it is unlikely that they are going to solve the cases.

These are only a small percent of the edits that remain to be done. Every day is Spring Cleaning day! Please help.