Happy Halloween - The Bell Witch Page

Fresh off the plane, Ben Radford wrote to me about his visit to the Bell Witch house in Adams, Tenn.   Apparently he had visited the house while attending CSIcon in Nashville, and wondered what the Wikipedia page looked like.  He was surprised that the page did not have skeptical content, though he and Brian Dunning had written articles about the place.

I told him I would look into it, and vowed to only devote one hour to the page rewrite. After about 3 hours I had a good working rewrite of the page.  Fascinating story and as editor Brad McDowell pointed out, a great example of Hyman's Maxim, don't try to research something until you know there is a there, there.   As you will see from the page, the ghost writers base their writings on a book that was written 70+ years after the event.  Even that book was based on a (never seen) book that was from a 30 year old man's childhood memories of the events.  So not very reliable.

Anyway, as usual it is always fun to see how many views these pages get, so before you check this URL, make a guess how many people in October 2012 have visited the Bell Witch page.   And to prove that this is a Halloween story, you will see a major drop in visits from September. 

The Bell Witch before

The Bell Witch after

Indre Viskontas - We Got Your Wiki Back!

In September 2012 I lectured at the San Francisco, Reason 4 Reason "Skeptical Speaker Series".  This group is set apart from most other skeptic groups because it encourages becoming active in the movement.  Founder, Jay Diamond (also on my "people to watch list") asked me to speak because he knows that I am forever advocating people to find their passion in the movement and go out and make it happen.  Until they find that niche they should work on smaller crowd-sourcing projects like WOT, Wikipedia and others.

During that lecture, I was asked in the Q&A what could the audience do today to help with the Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia project.  The question came from a skeptic group that had traveled from Chico, CA to attend my lecture and also watch operatic soprano and host of "Miracle Detectives", Indre Viskontas, sing.

Thinking quickly, I told them to convince Indre that it was time for her to have a Wikipedia page.  I had approached her before at SkeptiCal in March 2012 after being impressed with her lecture about her time co-hosting "Miracle Detectives".   I never heard back from her.


Yes, I know that I don't need her support to write a Wikipedia page.  Anyone who has been through this process knows that it is very time-consuming and tedious.  Having some support with the target giving you their bio, and uploading images is such a time saver.  The tedious editing still remains.   Finding and getting correct licensing for an image is really the area that needs their help the most. 

So the Chico Skeptics worked their magic and the next day I received an email from Indre telling me that she would supply me with a bio if I needed it.  And that's all that was really needed from her, just a place to start.  Near the end she had to get the photographer to upload the awesome image that now sits on her page.



Enter Brad McDowell from Iowa.  Brad found this project while attending his first TAM this summer. He started out by captioning several Ray Hyman interviews into English, which was really helpful and allows other people to translate the videos into other languages.  Then those videos can be used as citations for pages in other languages.

He saw my call out for someone to begin a page on Indre Viskontas.  He was VERY new, but did a fabulous job as you are about to see.  Brad and I worked on this together by email, he did all the work and I just watched over his shoulder and explained code and editing as they came up.  We don't just throw people into the project with no training, we are careful with what we release, and several of the editors on the project oversee the page before its launching.

So here today I present a brand new page, by a brand new editor.

Congratulations Brad McDowell. 


Indre Viskontas

Let them in on the Joke!

Just returned from the awesome Skeptic's Toolbox in Eugene, OR.  This skeptic conference is very different from most, in that the attendees are not allowed to just sit and listen to lectures.  They are assigned a "academic" paper to read in groups, research the topic with their fellow attendees (generally a group of 5-8 people) and then on the last day of the conference (Sunday) present their findings. 

On one of the days before breaking for dinner we tried to show a video that I had just uploaded 15 minutes prior.  The video is only one minute long and has Jim Underdown, Ray Hyman and Scott Nopp discussing Jim wrestling a bear.  That is all the group was told.  We didn't get the computer hooked up right and ended up trying to show it with a microphone held to the computer.  Lets just say that the audio was  bad and most people missed out on the joke.

The next morning I was thinking through the previous days events and suddenly realized that there is a world of people out there that can not get the joke, when it is presented as a video only. 

I'm going to ask you to watch this video without sound or captions.  So turn them off now.  (the video is only a minute long)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4RKBMOnOHM

See what I'm saying?  This video makes no sense except that Jim is fairly animated, and Scott and Ray think something is funny. 

Now what can be done to allow others into the joke?

That's right, captions.  New to the Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia project is Brad McDowell from Iowa.  Brad wanted to help out with the project but wasn't sure where to start.  I don't give assignments, as I want people to work on things they enjoy.  So after a bit of discussion, Brad decided he wanted to caption videos into English. 

And so he has.

Watch the video again, this time with the subtitles only on.  Make sure not to have audio on.

Now you can get it, by watching the faces and reading the text you can get the joke.  Okay, it isn't the best piece of comedy that exists on YouTube, but it does show off their personalities and how even the great skeptic Jim Underdown got scammed by the owner of this bear. 

Now watch the video one more time (I promise this is the last time).  Turn on captions and audio. 

The purpose of this blog isn't to tell you the story of Jim wrestling a bear (though it is a fun story) but to appeal to people to please get involved in the Wikipedia project.  Once these videos are captioned, not only does it allow someone who can't hear to be able to enjoy, but it makes it a lot easier for other people to caption into all kinds of languages.  Once that is done the video can be cited on Wikipedia in that language. 

I'm always desperate for editors, photographers and video people. I need content created, found, uploaded and so on in order to "prove" citations that we want to make.  I've asked you to look through your photos and videos, get them uploaded and correctly tagged so we can find them.  They aren't doing anyone any good sitting on your hard drive (besides, if something happens to that hard drive/memory card/DVD then a small piece of our history is gone, thanks a lot!)  It does not have to be high quality and professionally edited, just get the darn thing uploaded!






I've discovered that captioning videos is actually fun.  I'm watching videos in detail that I would normally have just glanced at.  It is really not that difficult to do once you get through a couple videos.

From what I understand, in order for the video to be captioned we have to have the owner of the video upload the captions.  We could "host" the video on a place like Amara (this is the company we are using to caption) but I'm not comfortable allowing this to happen, at least until I know more. 

I have over 200 videos (most concern skepticism in some way) waiting to be captioned.  I have other friends that would be willing to upload captions when they are ready (Kitty Mervine springs to mind).  And I'm sure lots of video owners would be willing to do so if asked.  BTW please share your passwords and permissions (with a close friend and/or family member) so that everyone else is not held hostage with the inability to move forward if needed. 

So if you have some history laying around someplace that you think should be brought to our attention, or want to help out and need training and what to caption first, please contact me at susangerbic@yahoo.com.

ONE MORE THING




About uploading images to the Internet.  Please consider uploading to WikiMedia Commons.  I believe Kitty Mervine was the photographer in the case of the below photograph.  This is my son, Stirling and we were on a JREF cruise "Chasing el Chupacabra" in Mexico.  Kitty had purchased this dried out skate and was telling everyone it was a chupacabra.  The picture was uploaded years ago to WikiMedia and just a week or so ago, Kitty got a message from one of her friends "Hey, isn't that Stirling?"  Sure enough Cracked Magazine used this image for an article on the chupacabra.  When the image is clicked on, you are taken to WikiMedia where the JREF is mentioned. (there are over 1,400 comments, so someone is reading this article) Pretty cool!