Half-Dozen New Releases - Skeptic's Toolbox Faculty

The day has finally arrived!  I'm super excited to launch two brand new pages and four rewrites to Wikipedia today.  I'm really hoping that everyone reading this will read through each page and follow the links.

If you thought you knew these people, you're about to get to know them better.  If you have never heard of these people, then frankly you need to brush up on the history of the modern scientific skeptical movement.  Get back to basics. 

The Skeptic's Toolbox is the longest running skeptic conference in our history, bet you never heard of it! 

Beyerstein and Andrus are no longer physically with us, but their memories and work continues.  I'm very proud to have met them both.  

When you meed Alcock, Hyman and Pankratz at a conference, make sure you introduce yourself, thank them for making the skeptical movement possible and then ask them what they got up their sleeves next.  Cause they aren't even slowing down. 


Before I get to the launchings, I might add that faculty member Harriet Hall already has a beautiful Wikipedia page that Tim Farley launched over a  year ago.  I have just been keeping it updated for this release.

HERE YOU GO

Skeptic's Toolbox - brand new

Loren Pankratz - brand new

James Alcock - before

James Alcock - current

Ray Hyman - before

Ray Hyman - current

Jerry Andrus - before

Jerry Andrus - current

Barry Beyerstein - before

Barry Beyerstein - current

One more random thing I want to mention.  The Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia team has decided that moving forward when we link to the term skeptic we are going to start linking to the WP page for scientific skepticism. If you find pages where this has not happened, please make the change for us.  If you are not comfortable doing this,  and don't want to be trained, please just drop me a email.

Like what you see.  think you want to get involved?  Please contact me at susangerbic@yahoo.com and I will keep you busy. 

The Accuracy of non-Wikipedia articles vs Wikipedia

As if we need another good reason to make sure Wikipedia's pages are up to speed, another one showed up in my email a few minutes ago. 

I have Google alerts set for many people and subjects, but one of the oldest alerts I have set is for Barry Beyerstein.  If I could show you my desktop at this moment you would see a Barry Beyerstein edit page tab wide open awaiting a grammar check before I hit save.  (you can't see it yet as I'm working on this in my user space, but very soon I hope to be done)

And noticed that a new email in my inbox is a Google alert for Beyerstein.  Wonderful and timely!  I follow the alert to  this article for Business Insider. I use the "find" feature to find the mention of Barry and sure enough the author is quoting an article done years ago about myths concerning using only 10% of your brain.  I notice that the author has footnotes scattered around the article, but they don't seem to be hyperlinked to anything. 

I explore a little further and realize that he is citing Wikipeidia, a page called Ten percent of brain myth.  I'm always amazed at the Wikipedia pages I didn't know exist, so I go over to that page to see if Beyerstein has a mention on it.  Again I use the find feature on my computer to see if he is cited. 

To my amazement almost the entire Business Insider article is copied word for word (along with the footnote numbers, but not the citations) from the Wikipedia page.   He has done no research to check the Wikipedia article, just assumed that it was correct. 

I'm not going to comment on plagiarism or the accuracy of Wikipedia.  I'm just pointing out that this is a common practice for reporters and bloggers.  The information we are leaving on Wikipedia influences many more people than just the readers of Wikipedia.  I believe Lei pointed this out to me a few months ago but I hadn't come across such an extreme example as this before. 

Sometimes I hear from anti-Wikipedia users that they refuse to use Wikipedia because they have had run-ins with editors when they tried to edit or because they think Wikipedia contains incorrect information.  Well I now have news for them, what they think they are reading in their non-Wikipedia source may still be Wikipedia. 

William B. Davis ~ Page Makeover

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!

William B. Davis ~ We Got Your Wiki Back!

Hard to imagine anyone not following the X-Files series, and one of the creepiest characters we all loved to hate.  The Smoking Man (or in our household we called him The Cancer Man).  Well apparently he is William B. Davis and is a Canadian Skeptic.

I discovered this when I received a Google alert for Barry Beyerstein this week and it gave me this interview with Davis.  Its all about his acting career and then a couple questions about skepticism, then on again to acting.  The Got Your Wiki Back! project is all about improving the pages of our skeptical spokespeople and Davis's page badly needs it.

His page is considered a Stub which means we need someone to adopt it and improve it.  Davis states in his interview... " I ended up becoming a kind of spokesman for the skeptic community. Because of The X-Files, I had the notability, and now I had some knowledge. So I did some talks on the subject at various places, and then Discovery Channel grabbed me to host a couple different shows, where I’d look at paranormal events and see what the science behind them is."

I've updated his page with a link to this article, and added an category called "Skepticism".  Its just waiting for someone to start looking for these Discovery Channel shows and even some of these "talks... at various places".  Someone had already added him to the Canadian Skeptic category on Wikipedia, which is nice, but if nothing is mentioned on his page, then what good is that?

BTW Davis's WP page is getting about 4 - 5 thousand hits a month.   IF this page were to be awesomed up to a really nice full page we could apply for the Did You Know? front page of WP.  And really get the word out.

Just checked out his FB page and it looks like he has a new book out.  I think I'll write to him and see if he will send over some links to make finding the links quicker.  Remember when approaching the WP subject, we have to be firm about the decisions we put in the final edit.  We are trying to improve Wikipedia, and must see that as the bigger picture.  But we are also looking for the skeptical slant to improve our spokespeople's pages and bring awareness to the general public about this topic. 

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.

"We Got Your Wiki Back" Project ~ The Bigger Picture

Hopefully by now everyone understands that Guerrilla Skepticism usually involves "tagging" paranormal Wikipedia pages inserting a bit of critical thinking into the knee-deep woo. At its best that is what I advocate.

But what about the skeptical sites. Do we really need to update and cite people involved in the skeptical movement. Why do they need their own personal pages? Everyone knows who Carl Sagan is so why keep up his page?

Because I said so! That's why!

No seriously, it is a good question. 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 (so to speak) our language is unique to us (woo, troother, JREF, IIG, SI) are just a few examples. 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 Wikipedia is going to do a lot of educating, and shame on us if we don't have Randi's back.

Also skeptical topics and people should have a ton of links the researcher can follow that will expand the knowledge of not only the lay person but also avenues that we skeptics didn't know existed. Many times I have been reading a Wikipedia page and discovered podcasts and articles that I didn't know they were on. Having a live link to click on opens up my interest level and the next thing I know I've found a new podcast to subscribe to.

Face it we are a very small group of fish in this ocean. There are more bowling activists than there are skeptic activists (don't ask for the stats on this cause I just made it up). We have a lot of work to do to get the message out that skepticism is awesome and active. We also need to look out for each other. Someone looking on Joe Nickell's page is going to see links to other podcasts and articles he has been quoted in.

When someone looking at Vassula Ryden's (see earlier blog post) Wikipedia page sees the article by Joe Nickell they might follow his hyperlink. When they say "who is this guy?" they can click on his link and find out exactly who this guy is. There are a ton of people on her site that reportedly have investigated her, only one has a hyperlink to a Wikipedia page, all the others I say "who the hell is this?" No credibility at all.

We need to remember that most of the skeptics on Wikipedia also have other interests not related to skepticism. For example Yau Man Chan is known for his time on the reality show Survivors, plus he is really active in the world of ping-pong. We know him for being one of the Skeptologists. I recently listened to him lecture at SkeptiCalCon in Berkeley this May, while there I photographed him wearing his nametag and holding the JREF Pigasus. I uploaded the picture to WikiCommons and posted it on his Wikipedia page along with this reference "Yau-Man Chan & JREF Pigasus after lecture at SkeptiCalCon, May 29, 2011 Berkeley, CA". There wasn't any reason to post a blurb on his site as he lectures all the time and there was nothing notable about the SkeptiCalCon lecture. BUT the picture is really cute and awesome and I'm able to link back to the JREF and if SkeptiCalCon had a Wikipedia page of its own it would also be linked.

Also from that same conference I photographed Anthony Pratkanis, Robert Carroll and Peter Gleick all three of these men had Wikipedia pages but none with a picture. Now they all do, with the reference back to SkeptiCalCon. This might expose people reading their pages to this concept of skepticism.

Mark Edward is known as a mentalist as well as a skeptic heavily involved in Guerrilla Skepticism, his Wikipedia page expresses both of these worlds. I have left his name on the famous mentalist Wikipedia page as well as the Street Magic page. People interested in knowing more about the mentalists and street magicians will see his name and follow the hyperlink and discover Mark. This is kinda a back door to exposing them to skepticism, there is a quote on Mark's page saying "I've always been a skeptic because I'm a magician. When I see something in this hand (points to right hand) I automaticly want to know what the other hand is doing." This quote may engage anyone coming to his site with a magic interest.

In some minds, Skepticism is thought of as a negative term, "only old white men with no humor are skeptics" seems to be the statement most popular. My friend John Rael from Skeptically Pwnd recently told me that we need to "take back the term skeptic and remind people how cool that word is". Well okay John I agree, in my opinion we don't need to be looking for a better word to describe ourselves, just need to market ourselves better.

One way is to show on the Wiki pages how human we actually are. Check out Barry Beyerstein's page. When I first tried to read this page I nearly fell asleep (look at history of page before I began to edit it and you will see what I mean) another editor on Wiki approached me and asked if I could help edit the page. I knew Barry and loved his sense of humor and compassion for people (he would go to any lengths to explain something) just an all-round neat guy. So I remembered that he had signed a book for me that he wrote an auto-bio essay in called "Skeptical Odysseys" (yes we can and should be quoting from books also). So after reading the essay a few times I took notes and quoted a ton from it.

Should note that this is not the correct way to edit references on Wikipedia, you are to use your own words as much as possible. But I loved the tone and that it seemed to come from Barry's voice so I did something totally different and wrong. So sue me! Its been months and no one has said a word (its on my Watch List). If and when someone does I'll clean it up or allow them to do so. But for the moment Barry describes himself like this " I frequently found myself the odd man out...(they thought) I was a nice guy, but hopelessly 'linear' and 'left-brained', despite my de rigueur shoulder-length hair, tie-dye t-shirt, bell bottoms and cowboy boots.” How human is that?

He didn't even have a picture on his site. I did have some group pictures I had taken years ago, so I cleaned them up the best I could and inserted them on his page. I then "friended" his daughter on Facebook and let her know I had updated his page. She was delighted and said that her dad would be very happy with it. Recently I asked Lindsay if she would please upload some nicer images of her dad (she is a photographer) to WikiCommons and I'll link those pictures to his site. She assured me she would get to it soon and again thanked me.

So remember the big picture. We need to keep these pages up to date and well tended. If they don't have a site maybe we should consider making one (currently I am working on James Underdown and Barry Karr's pages). We want to market skepticism better and give these people more creditability, so get on it.