GSoW Skeptic Book Project

December 2015 I announced that GSoW was going to focus on Skeptic Books. We had big goals and worked off this Wikipedia list. This list was envisioned and written by GSoW and during the 6 months we focused on this Book Project we completely expanded this list of over 500 books. 

What happened is that GSoW went through a complete turnaround with its training, organization and leadership. It was a massive change that I called GSoW 3.14, because of this we lost our focus on the Skeptic Book Project. 

So I apologize to anyone out there that was expecting great skeptic book pages to be turning out every couple days. The fact is that it takes a very long time to write a Wikipedia page correctly and everyone on my team has busy lives and we are all volunteers after-all. 

Enough with the excuses, lets see what we did turn out. 

Several of these books were not done in the last 6 months, but in the last few years. I'm going to include them anyway as they were created by GSoW and well worth some extra attention from our community. 

Tracking the Chupacabra by Ben Radford was created by Nathan Miller in June 2013. 

I Sold my Soul on E-bay by Hemant Mehta re-written by Christine Daley Feb 2014

Bad Astronomy by Phil Plait was created also by Nathan Miller as well as Plait's other book Death From the Skies! 

God Sent Me: A Textbook Case on Evolution vs. Creation was a Wikipedia page I wrote after reading a review of the book in a Skeptical Inquirer magazine. The book was written by Jeffery Selman. 

The Psychology of the Psychic written by David Marks was created by April Poff

Paranormality by Richard Wiseman I wrote March 2016

Psychic Blues written by Mark Edward received a brand new page by April Poff

Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes by Maria Konnikova was written by Janyce Boynton

Flim-Flam! by James Randi was rewritten in August 2014

Mysterious New Mexico written by Ben Radford was written by April Poff

Bigfoot: The Life and Times of a Legend written by Joshua Blu Buhs received a brand new Wikipedia page from Janyce Boynton


Far far less than was our intention. Yet, each of these pages are strong, well researched pages that our community can be proud of.

One more thing. What do the numbers look like? How many views have these Wikipedia pages received in the time that GSoW can say they took responsibility of the page?

This number is only a page view count, we can not know if these are unique visitors or how long the viewer stayed on the page. Just raw page views.

As of the writing of this blog on July 31, 2016 they have received

57,016 total views

4,387 in the last 30 days

975 in the last 7 days


Still quite an achievement.

If you would like to join our project, we would love to have you. Open up a Wikipedia account, friend me on Facebook so I can add you to the Secret Cabal and write to me at GSoWteam@gmail.com

July Updates - Scott - Gorski - Tyson - Radford and MORE

WoW July is only halfway done and we have so much to talk about.  Lots going on with the GSoW team.  So in no special order lets get started.

The beauty of having a world team like GSoW  is that we can't all be in the same place at the same time.  While many of my team were at the Amaz!ng Meeting - TAM 2013, others were busily at work editing.  Nix Dorf released the Eugenie Scott page in Portuguese.

Neil deGrasse Tyson just received two rewrites, one in Portuguese by Luis Pratas, here is the Portuguese before,  the other, by new editor Michael Steinkeller in German.  By the way Michael joined after watching the JREF workshop video.  If you haven't seen it yet, it is located here.  One more thing, Michael almost didn't join because he has two small children, but somehow he is managing to find a few minutes to work on this project, remember folks you set your own pace at GSoW.

Here was a major event.  You would think that David Gorski already would have a Wikipedia page wouldn't you?  Well someone attempted to create one, but left it in such embarrassing condition we had to jump in and do it right.  This is what we found.  Okay hold your breath and now look at what we created. Introducing the new and improved David Gorski Wikipedia page! Not sure why I always say "Strong enough to stand an elephant on it" but that phrase keeps coming to mind when I think of this page rewrite. Thankfully we released the page rewrite in time for TAM, Gorski's page views tripled during that weekend.

Sometimes it is the little things that give me that kapow feeling.  We managed to get Gorski mentioned on the Steve Jobs page.  Its kinda lost in the mass that is Jobs page, but still with the hit count it receives, it can't hurt. Searching for "Gorski" on the page, I learned that according to Gorski, the 9 month delay with the cancer treatment may not have killed Jobs, interesting.  Another thing I just learned is that even now in June 2013, Jobs is ranked number 70 in top Wikipedia views.

Ben Radford's book Tracking the Chupacabra was front page of Wikipedia as a DYK.  Follows of the GSoW project know what that means, a ton of views for the 8 hour window it is up. Well the results are in, here are the view stats.  The ripple effect caused the page for Chupacabra to also receive a spike. And the movie Species as well.

Bill Grieb rewrote the WP page for Ronald Bailey (before) (after)

Another rewrite for Bill Grieb was this one for the Merseyside Skeptics, what a difference (before) (after)

Fresh new photos I took at TAM have been added to these pages... Daniel Loxton, Harriet Hall, Derek Colanduno, Mark Edward, Donald Prothero and Massimo Polidoro.  This isn't difficult to do, if you have a photo that you think would improve a WP page, please contact me and I'll walk you thought the process.

A GSoW team member reminded me that we are responsible for a lot of quick edits on Wikipedia that are pretty cool.  We do a lot more than just page rewrites.

Braco the gazer got a lot of attention from editors trying to get the first sentence of the article just right.  You would be surprised at how much time we can spend on a single word when dealing with believers and other WP editors.

Here's a fun one,  my son mentioned that Jenny McCarthy was going to be on The View, which led me to getting all ranty on Facebook skeptics needing to do something.  People quickly began posting links to noteworthy articles about this announcement.  I in turn threw the links over to my GSoW team and Nathan Miller quickly responded by successfully adding a couple of the links.  Since then other WP editors (not on my team) have added a whole section under the criticism section.  You will notice that not only is Bill Nye mentioned, but so is Derek Bartholomaus's Body Count website.  And just in time, Jenny isn't as popular as Steve Jobs, but she is sure rolling in the views this last week.

TAM 2013 was awesome.  I'm still not completely recovered.  Here are a few videos I created while there.  This first one is a 3-parter on Crowd-Sourced Activism.  I spoke with Shane Greenup (Rbutr) and Tim Farley (What's the Harm?) and had a major blast.

Susan in the Superwoman pose at the Crowd-Sourcing Workshop

Later in the afternoon I participated in the Preserving Skeptic History workshop with some of my favorite people, Daniel Loxton, Ray Hyman, Tim Farley and Robert Sheaffer. Special guest appearance by Susan Blackmore.

Here is a series of shots I took of people whose pages we created or rewrote along with the WP page. Just for fun.

Tim Farley

Robert Sheaffer

Leo Igwe

Sean Faircloth

Richard Saunders

Sara Mayhew

Recording a Skepticality episode

Recording a Virtual Skeptics episode

 The surprise of all surprises was the wonderful comments from James Randi and DJ Grothe when they presented me with the JREF award for Skepticism in the Public Interest,  It reads "With gratitude for your steadfast advocacy for skepticism on the World Wide Web and at the grass roots."

Backstage with DJ and Randi

Just of few of the GSoW team

Its all about having fun and changing the world

As you can image, we have far more work to do than editors to do it. Please contact me at susangerbic.com if you have questions or would like to join the project.  For the last two years we have been working out of secret Facebook groups.  I'm happy to say we have outgrown Facebook.  In the next few weeks we will be moving to a custom built forum that will allow better communication between the language teams, as well as better training of new editors.  Just like the Facebook groups, the forum will be hidden away unless you have joined our team.

Thank you for your support, and I hope to hear from you soon.

Susan

We got your Wiki Back! - Mary Roach

I noticed a post in the Bay Area Skeptic's Facebook group months ago by someone named Chris Parker.  She was looking for someone to give her "must read" material for a college research assignment on psychics she had to present in class.  I contacted her and gave her some ideas, and linked her with Mark Edward who is an expert on the psychic business (see Psychic Blues on Amazon).

Chris did her essay and wrote to tell me all about the professor and the other students reactions.  I thought she was a terrific writer and felt that a blog would be in order.  She worked it up and Mark decided that he wanted to post the story on his blog, and did so in July.

In the mean time Chris shared that she was not taking college classes this summer and liked to keep busy, wondered about this Wikipedia project she kept seeing me yammer on about all over Facebook.   We exchanged emails for awhile and I asked her if she could pick a Wikipedia project what would it be?  So she spent a day and wrote me back with the suggestion that Mary Roach's current Wikipedia page was a stub and how sad that was.  She had been to one of Mary's lectures being that they both live in the Bay Area, and thought that if I showed her how, she would work on that page.

So, Chris and I went back and forth for a couple weeks, and then a few other editors from the project helped with ideas and how to cite some sources when I was at TAM.  Chris asked really great questions which helped me learn a lot about the gaps in my blog instructions and the reality of what I actually mean.  When you live and breathe this Wikipedia project daily, you tend to forget that others aren't as "connected" to the project and not reading and memorizing every word I write.

Want to point out that until this re-write I don't think Chris had ever edited Wikipedia.  I also don't suggest brand new people start with re-writes, but in Chris's case she was so excited and motivated that I thought "why not?".  She communicated with me clearly, asked lots of questions and we sent emails many times a day.  We started with the very basics, and once I pointed her in the right direction, she just took off.  I'm totally self taught, and Chris seemed to be learning the same way with only a bit of guidance.  One reason why I felt that Mary's page would be okay for a beginner was because her current page had a lot of external links to interviews and videos that only needed to be watched and quoted to expand into the article.  I knew Chris wasn't going to be searching for months trying to turn up secondary sources. 

We made a brand new user page for Chris's rewrite and made it "un-searchable", and on that page we had constant conversations about what should go where, and what to expand on and so forth.

Only after Chris was almost done did I approach Mary to get further citations we were missing, and had her upload some personal pictures (which warm my photographer's heart) they really make the page extra special,  I'm reminded of Lei Pinters's re-write of Kendrick Frazier's WP page a couple months ago. 

There was so much info on Mary Roach out there and Chris watched every video and read every link she could find.  (and yes, she even had a Google alert on her for incoming items) Now if Chris ever gets on Jeopardy and the category is Mary Roach, Chris will clean up.  One comment I remember from Chris, was she was surprised that interviewers always asked Mary the same questions over and over again. I suppose, now that if they start by reading Mary's new Wikipedia page they will be able to have a much well rounded interview. 

Okay, I know you have waited long enough.  Time to show you the before and after.  Hold your breath.

Mary Roach before

Mary Roach after

So wondering, Chris what's next?

As usual, if you would like to help with this project, I will keep you more than busy.  You don't even need to do as much work as Chris did, I have many tasks that await you, I will train.  Just please contact me at susangerbic@yahoo.com and lets get to work. 

Skeptoid 300th Episode - PARTY PARTY PARTY

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!

Keep Wikipedia Vandalism Free - Its up to us

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

Guerrilla Skeptism on Wikipedia ~ Podcast Outreach Project

Hello New Readers.  Welcome to Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia.  

This blog is designed for those of you who haven't been following this project since June 2011 when I went public.  I have stolen from several of my blog posts in order to make this intro to the project as simple as possible.  

Here's the pitch...

Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia is the act of inserting well written, carefully cited skeptical/scientific references into Wikipedia pages that need critical thinking, while still following the guidelines and rules to make it into everyone’s online encyclopedia. This grassroots method allows skeptics working at home the ability to contribute to the skeptical movement without personally confronting people.

Wikipedia users will find references to skeptical articles that they can follow or not. Changing a mind can be a slow process, facts stacked onto more facts. When they begin to question they will start to search the Internet for answers. Wikipedia will be there waiting for them with no eye-witness anecdotal opinions, and no one in your face telling you how stupid your beliefs are. We will go a lot farther changing minds when the person is doing their own research which will allow them to set aside their cognitive dissonance and celebrate critical thinking with a clearer mind.

We Got Your Wiki Back Project!  We need to think about what the "big picture" goal here is. When our skeptical "heroes" speak out for us in the "real world" they need the credibility of having a well maintained and cited page backing them up. Face it most people don't know who is who in the skeptical movement, Carl Sagan may be the exception but stop 10 people on the street today and ask them who James "The Amazing" Randi is and they will sadly shrug their shoulders. That's almost unfathomable to us skeptics. My point is, we don't live in the real world.  When someone turns on CNN and there is Randi talking about Sylvia Browne how many people are going to say "who is that?" a quick search on their favorite search engine and there they are on Wikipedia.  Shame on us if we don't have Randi's back. 

Working Backwards!  Often the majority of the time you spend working on an article is trying to find the references to edit into a page.  I advise to start with the article (must be reputable) read it several times, sum it up and go to a Wikipedia page that is associated with the topic and see if you will be improving the page with your edit.  Cite the article correctly and Your Done!


Podcast Outreach Project.  This is specifically aimed at you who are coming to this page today from a podcast announcement.  Some podcasts have a Wikipedia presence; SGU, Skeptoid, Skeptically, Monster Talk, Point of Inquiry and The Skeptic Zone (and others).  These podcasts need to systematically be "gleaned" through and all relevant material that can be cited from them, put on Wikipedia pages.  Other podcasts can also be used, but as they do not have a presence on WP the extra "punch" is missing. 


For example Skeptoid covers many paranormal topics that can be easily cited.  See these examples on Wikipedia;  Racetrack Playa, Joseph McMoneagle,  Remote Viewing, Dyatlov Pass incident and Betty and Barney Hill abduction.  Not only will this give the Skeptoid podcast a giant hit to the www.skeptoid.com website and give a boost to the shows reputation.  This is serious outreach to a community of people interested in the paranormal, whom may never have heard of Skeptoid.


Other podcasts like The Skeptic Zone, SGU and Skeptically do a lot of interviews in the science/skeptic community.  If the person they are interviewing also has a Wikipedia page then it is possible to glean a quote or two from the interview and insert it on that person's WP page, and give the citation to the podcast.  For one example see Mark Edward ("find on page" Mark holds an impromptu séance for Michael Jackson).  The SGU has done hundreds of interviews and lists several of the more prominent people on their WP page.  But  these interviews are not all on that person's page giving reverse hits back to the SGU page.  Yet another example, Seth Shostak from SETI gets 1,000 hits a month to his WP page, those viewers may not know he is also associated with the skeptic community.  The SGU interview could be mentioned on his WP page, sending potentially 1,000 extra viewers to their WP page.  

Specific podcasts cannot directly appeal to you (listener and fan) to edit Wikipedia in their behalf.  They can appeal to you to edit Wikipedia for skeptical content, and also to get in touch with me personally at susangerbic@yahoo.com where I can help you learn how to edit and do so in an organized systematic way.   This project is very important to gaining more positive exposure to skepticism as a movement and community.  I only want you to edit topics that you are interested in and probably would be reading/listening to anyway.  I will direct you on how to do this the most efficient way possible.  I am offering to train you how to edit if you need that kind of help, even virtually hold your hand while you learn.   


If working on podcasts does not interest you, but editing Wikipedia for skeptical content does, this blog has hundreds of ideas for beginning to advanced editors to get started.  My offer of help is for anyone needing advice or training. 



Thank you for reading this far.  I hope you this will be a perfect fit for you as a way of becoming involved in the skeptical movement.  We so badly need your help.  You can work from home in your pajamas with a cat in your lap. You can edit like a crazy person for days, then drop off the Internet for months when you are busy IRL and then pick up editing again when you have time again.  This project is made for you. Welcome.




Thank you, 
Susan Gerbic

Rational Alchemy Podcast

Just released tonight.  Rational Alchemy Podcast ~  Mark Edward and I discuss Guerrilla Skepticism.  I rant on and on about Wikipedia, sounds like an obsession for me but suppose it is.  Jeff Wagg and Brian Walsh were wonderful, Jeff makes some excellent points near the end about the importance of Wikipedia, I think that maybe I should just let him handle my publicity in the future.  He was able to sum things up much better than I.

Anyway, please give us a listen.  Enjoy or Ignore the rants.

Paper Presentation of Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia at TAM9

Don't know what took me so long to get this out, but I'm finally getting this up on YouTube.


Paper Presentation at TAM9. Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpUd9uwVjqA


Its been a pretty exciting month, promoting Guerrilla Skepticism.  Thanks to John Farquhar and Tim Farley I'm going to volunteer (if they will have me) for the Wikipedia Ambassador Program.   As I learn more about this I will pass the info on. 

I was just on Rational Alchemy podcast last week with Jeff Wagg, Mark Edward and Brian Walsh.   I promise to let you all know when it airs.  It was really really exciting, they let me rant on and on for some reason, but the best part was when Jeff said something like "as much as we are talking about Wikipedia here tonight, I know we are are completely underestimating the importance of Wikipedia to skepticism".  Jeff was with the JREF for years and he has seen it all.  If Jeff says that this project is important then it is.

I'm also going to be featured on a few other skeptical blogs here hopefully soon.  I've been invited to do a couple more podcasts (just waiting to hear back on a date and time) and I'm totally open to doing more, it they will let me rant on and on about Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia.

Also Mark Edward came up with an exciting idea to get more people editing Wikipedia.  A 24-hour Edit-A-Thon.  The idea has changed several times in scope but I'm still loving the idea, and am working with Tim Farley on how to make this happen world-wide over a weekend.  Don't panic, it isn't the same person editing 24 hours, but groups and solo people editing and posting their edits to a single area so others can watch it happen in real time.  Pretty exciting, if you would like to get involved, please let me know, details will come soonish.

In the mean time, keep editing.  We are going to need far more than a weekend to finish this project.  

Susan

P.S. here is the link to the Rational Alchemy Podcast mentioned. 
http://rational-alchemy.com/home-page/1127-rational-alchemy-09132011-guerrilla-skepticism-released

Portraits on Wikipedia

Part of the "We got your Wiki Back" project.

A large part of what makes a Wiki page engaging is the use of pictures on the page.  By profession I am a portrait photographer (I specialize in people who don't want their pictures taken, usually the very young and the old and cranky).  Portraits on Wikipedia fits right into that skill set. 

Lets just go to the category American Skeptics for a quick look at how we are doing with photographing our spokes people.  Remember you can access this page by just going to a skeptic's page, scroll down to the bottom of the page and under Categories you should see this link.  If you don't see the link then it probably needs to be added and you can see my other blog on how to add that.  At the moment we only have 93 people listed on this page, something tells me we are a bit behind. See this blog about how to add a category.

Looking over this list I'm really surprised how many I've "tagged" with my pictures.  Some are the main image, others are somewhere else in the page like Hal Bidlack "relaxing" on the stage at TAM8 while some nameless "psychic" tries to discover who is missing a kidney.  (there is no accident that she is missing from this picture as well as her name in this blog) Same picture and reference is on Derek Colanduno's page. 

Brian Dunning, Harriett Hall and several others have pictures from the IIG 10th anniversary party up where they received awards for their contributions.  When I do this kind of post I'm able to link back to the IIG page for a bit more publicity.  They are also mentioned on the IIG page.  We are small fish in the ocean that is Wikipedia, we need to use our resources (each other) to become mainstream and linking to each other is a way to do that.

George Hrab has a great picture of him wearing a balloon hat.  Mark Edward took my camera away from me when we were at the Drinking Skeptically party at TAM7 and snapped it.  Tim Farley is the person who wrote this page and asked if I might have any images of Hrab, I searched my library and found this one.  In fact I think this was one of the first I've posted.  Again a plug for the JREF with this picture reference.

I've talked about Yau-Man Chan's picture in another blog, but want to mention it again.  This man is famous for his ping-pong skills and his two Survivor shows.  Only in our little world is he known as a skeptic. But now someone who might be looking him up for other reasons is going to come across this adorable picture with the JREF Pigasus.  Another hit for the JREF.  And someday when SkeptiCalCon gets enough notoriety this will link to their page with free publicity.

Here's an interesting image that I uploaded for Power Balance Bracelet, it was taken during the test done by Dominique Dawes and IIG.   I hyperlinked to the IIG under the picture and also in the article itself. I know people are clicking on the hyperlink because I am watching the IIG's "stats" page and can see where the hits come from.  You might notice on Dawes page that there is also a reference to the IIG and Power Balance that I left there some months ago.

Ray Hyman, Barry Beyerstein, James Alcock and Wallace Sampson all get linked together through this picture and it gets a quick mention of the Skeptic's Toolbox as well.  (The toolbox is in very bad need of a page, I just haven't managed to get to it yet). Most of these men are in bad need of a new picture for their site, so don't wait for me.  Barry's daughter is going to upload some images for me someday soon and I'll post them when she does. 

Several are missing pictures, Dr. Dean Edell and Elizabeth Loftus are just a couple.  Then again I'm sure Roger Ebert is wishing he didn't have a picture up, check this out?  Is there an award for worst Wiki portrait? 

The Robert Lancaster picture has a funny story behind it.  When I'm going out with my camera I usually have a picture goal I'm hoping to get.  At TAM6 I had heard that RSL was going to be attending, and I'm a big fan of his www.stopsylvia.com site.  My photo goal for TAM6 was to get a picture of me shaking his hand.  My friend Paulina Mejia took this image, you can't see me because when Tim Farley wrote Robert's page he asked me if I had a picture, I cropped out my mug and this is what we were left with.  The photo was taken pre-stroke.

Here's a great example of guerrilla skepticism on Harold Camping's page.  I managed to put up a picture of the IIG at the rapture party on May 21, 2011. (click on the image to read the signs) And a great quote from American Atheists while I was at it.  Use your resources.

Michael Stackpole's portrait is linked to the Dragon Con page more publicity for a skeptical event, good job.

Here is one that needs a new portrait, Greg Epstein 

And now a list of people who are missing their profile picture.
Claude Allegre, Farrell Till, George Abell, Isidor Sauers,  Robert Sheaffer, Stanislaw Burzynski, Andrew Weil, Stephen Barrett, Bart Bok, Chris French, Drauzio Varella. Eddie Tabash, James Oberg, Jerome Clark, Kendrick Frazier, Linda Howe, Michael Goudeau, Sanal Edamaruku, Sherwin Nuland, Phillp Klass, Dean Radin, Robert Priddy, Victor Stenger, Curtis Peebles, Donna Kossy,  Gerald Glaskin, Terence Hines.

James Moseley Not sure about this guy, I found him on the Rational Skepticism Project Page, I'm sure someone will let me know. 

Really sad pages here, I had to take a look at them again as I linked them to Wikipedia, and we really have our work cut out for us.  This list is long, but the list of people missing are even longer.  Please, if you know of people to add to this list let me know here and then others can see and help out.

How to post a picture on a site.  It isn't as easy as you might think, you don't just upload it from somewhere on the Internet.

First you have to open an account on WikiCommons.  Then you go to the "upload" page.  Follow the instructions and hopefully you will be left with a .jpg file that can be stored for someone writing a page, or for you to upload that very minute.

It will ask you for categories, I'm not sure how to find these categories, so I just start typing in the word skeptic and it usually gives me several choices.  I "add" all that pertain to the person.

How to actually edit a picture onto a Wikipedia site.  Place your courser on the WP page you want the picture to appear.

Select the 5th image from the left side of this image.  (The rectangle photo)

A box will appear.  In the "Insert File" you are going to place the file name of the image that was uploaded to Wikimedia Commons.

In the lower box is where you write your caption.

When done the edit may look like this below.  You can see that the | is in-between each area.  You do not have to have the picture size in your edit.

If you want your image to appear on the left or center side of the WP page, you can add the word, "left" or "center" to this edit.  Make sure you have a | before and after the word.

[[Image:Four Founding IIG.jpg|thumb|250px|Four founding members of the IIG, James Underdown, Brian Hart, Milton Timmons & Sherri Andrews, celebrate the 10th Anniversary of the IIG, August 21, 2010]]

The 250px is where you change the size of the picture.  Play around with different numbers in here and keep hitting "preview" on the page you are inserting the picture in.  Look at what the result is and see if you should raise or lower that number.   This writing is the name of your uploaded picture. Four Founding IIG.jpg Do not change anything, otherwise your image will not load. 

This writing Four founding members of the IIG, James Underdown, Brian Hart, Milton Timmons & Sherri Andrews, celebrate the 10th Anniversary of the IIG, August 21, 2010 is what you want to appear under the image.  You can [[ hyperlink ]] to other Wiki pages even in this area.  Which is what I have done on several pictures I referenced above.  See Ya-Man's picture with Pigasus.

I have quite a few pictures just sitting in the Common's area waiting for a page to be made.  This TAM9 I'm photographing everybody separately for their future Wiki picture, you never know who will need it next.  

Get Shooting!

p.s. Here is my Wiki Commons page with all the pictures I've uploaded.