Ken Feder - Sara Mayhew and More Updates

So many updates to the Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia project.   In case you missed it, here were the updates a couple weeks ago. 
 
 The Portuguese team is really working hard with several new pages coming out soon.  They are not included here because they can't release the pages yet.  The problem is that the Portuguese Wikipedia has different rules concerning YouTube videos than anywhere else we can discover.  YouTube is banned.  Nix Dorf figured out that he has to ask an admin permission to review and release each individual video so that it can be included in an article.  Very frustrating as they seem to have few admins working.  I'm dying to show you all these releases and hopefully I will be able to do so soon.

With the addition of new editor Jason Grant (who heard about this project on the Skeptic Zone interview I did with Penny Chan) we now have added Japanese to our World group.  That makes 17 languages! 

We have had some skeptical love recently, thank you to everyone who is helping to get the word out.   We have appeared on Jeff Wagg's Skeptoid Blog, Bob Carroll's Skeptic Dictionary newsletter, Skepticality Podcast 1 and 2, Sharon Hill's Doubtful News, Dani Johnson on Skeptoid Blog, and finally a big interview with me on Meet the Skeptic podcast.  Please give these a read or listen and support those that support us.

One really great thing happened as a result of the drama in the skeptical community (if you don't know what I'm talking about, be thankful and ignore it).  A group of people in Minnesota Skeptics have finally had it.  They are tired of all the fighting and nastiness and were looking for a project they could get involved in that makes real differences in helping people outside our little bubble of community.  

Jenny McCarthy

I'm sure you all heard about Jenny getting canned from a exercise festival in Canada. I know I saw the link being posted all over Facebook.  All great that we are informing the skeptical choir and patting ourselves on the back for making this happen, but we aren't done until we have let her supporters know what happened. They only are reading her tweets and getting the story from her.  When you have a reliable secondary citation like we have in this case, its no good wasting it. 

On Luke Freeman's lunch (he said this entire edit took him 20 minutes to finish) he updated the page with these sentences...  

In early 2013, the Ottawa Regional Cancer Foundation dropped their plans to have McCarthy headline^[49] their Bust a Move charity fundraiser^[50] because of criticisms^[51][52] of her using her celebrity status to promote views "considered dangerous by most of the medical establishment". ^[53] While McCarthy posted on Twitter that she had to "pull out" due to a "taping conflict", the event organiser Linda Eagen stated that they had to "negotiate a financial settlement with her [McCarthy's] representatives to get out of the deal" in an interview.^[53] 

 I'm sure that cost the charity fundraiser quite a penny.  Great work Jenny, I'm sure you need that money.

Oh yeah, almost forgot.  How many people each month are accessing Jenny's WP page?  Make a guess, then double that.... still wrong.  Stats for Jan 2013. 


Louisiana Science Education Act

My friend Deborah Warcken  pointed out that the Louisiana Science Education Act WP page has been getting vandalized quite a lot.  I've never heard of it, but went over to take a look.  So did one of our week-old editors.  Wim Vanderberghe (who also edits in Dutch and Swedish)  

He made some positive changes to the article as you can see in on the left side of this link.  What I'm showing you is a "diff/cur" link.  We use these all the time so we can quickly see changes to an article.  Probably more still needs to be done, but for a quick fix I think Wim did a great job.  This page is now on our watchlists to keep it vandalism free.

Just in case your interested in some major back and forth between skeptic and believers, check out the talk page for the Act.   


Whole Body Vibration

Editor Rick Duffy did some serious chopping to the Whole Body Vibration WP page.  All Rick's changes are on the right side of this URL.   Here are the Jan 2013 page views stats.

Psychic

Being vigilant is ever needed on Wikipedia.  We have watchlists (we add pages of interest to our watchlist by clicking on the empty star on the upper right side of a WP page) but as these lists grow (mine has over 100 pages on it) and sometimes things slip through.  This is why we need more editors.  One that slipped through was on the psychic page.  This sentence seems to invite people to add names of their favorite psychic, 

"Some famous contemporary psychics include Miss Cleo, John Edward, and Sylvia Browne."

I discovered that three names were added, Danielle Egnew whose WP has now been drawn to my attention (and on the to-do list) as well as these two people Michael and Echo Bodine, who are so unfamous that they don't even have a WP page. 

This was a simple edit, and Chris Pederson who has been editing exactly one day was able to fix this quickly.  I think her comment was something like "that was simple and I didn't blow the Internet up." 
 
Homeopathy 

On my last blog about Jimmy Wales and Homeopathy I received this comment.  

"We need to remove the emotionallly manipulative test from the homeopathic page on wikipedia. Unbiased information sources are the root of any good research and wikipedia disqualifies itself from that because of it's bissed agenda. It is very easy to see. What is not easy to see is that the people most against homeopathy simply do not have the mental capacity to understand the principles behind it. That is what is really going on here. - Peter"

Again proving that Wikipedia is strong and on the front lines of fighting against bad research, opinions and anecdotes.  We have to be vigilant, and we need more editors to do so.

Homeopathy page view stats for January 2013.

Sara Mayhew

The Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia team has a very long (and growing) to-do list.  I made an effort the first of 2013 to try and clean it out.  You might have seen the Stuart Firestein page that was created from scratch, we also got it featured as a Did You Know? for 8 hours on the front page of Wikipedia.

At the same time I was writing the Firestein page, I also created the page of Sara Mayhew.  We don't have the to-do list in any special order, we work on what intrigues us, and also pages that we think we will have no problem finding the citations to complete the project.

I have many pages sitting in User:sgerbic Wikipedia heaven, waiting for inspiration and/or citations.  When we re-write a page, we copy the current page to our semi-private user page and work till its done.  When we have finished it, then it goes to the team, they work on it for awhile and eventually we contact the "target" if we can.  This helps us fact check everything and then get photos uploaded.

That is a lot of work, which is why it takes us some time to get these pages turned out, and the reason I'm always asking for more editors.  (we train)

So this brings me to the release of a brand new page, Sara Mayhew.  She was a joy to work on, having a young career, all her citations are on-line.  Much more difficult for people who came of age in our world pre-Internet.  Sara also allows us to tie in with the Manga and Anime world, people who might not be aware of skeptics.  When her fans look her up they will be exposed to ideas and citations that they hopefully will read.  A major win for us. 

I only managed to get half-way through Sara's page.  One of our brand new editors, Nathan Miller picked up the gauntlet and ran with it.  He finished listening to all the interviews and videos he could find and cleaned up my rambling efforts.  Nathan informed me that he looked at a lot of Manga author pages and Sara's is far superior to most of them.  This is what I mean when we have her Wiki back.

One more think I want to point out.  I noticed that one of the citations Nathan added was giving us a red WOT warning circle.  I looked and discovered it was Sara's own "Love Pet" page that was receiving this warning.  Web of Trust is a crowd-sourced rating system for positive/negative experiences you might have with a web site.  A green WOT means that the page has been rated as safe and trustworthy.  Love Pet had been rated as a negative page.

It was really suspicious why this happened, no comments were left, just negative scores.  Nathan thinks it might have been a spam bot that caused the problem.  I don't know, but after posting the problem on my Facebook page, many people went to Love Pet's page, looked around and found nothing untrustworthy or unsafe, and were able to vote the page back into a positive green WOT.  That is really community.  



Kenneth Feder

Way back when I was getting my BA (2002) I was required to take a archaeology class to finish off my degree.  It was all just general information, but lots of fun.  We were assigned to read Kenneth Feder's book Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries: Science and Pseudoscience in Archaeology.
Feder made learning about weird pseudoscience topics really fun.  But one thing bugged me, and that was his use of using B.C. and A.D. for dating. Professor Mendoza urged me to write to Feder and ask about it.  I was skeptical, never having approached an author before. (except the time I got a book autographed by Beverly Clearly when I was 10) But I sent him an email anyway, and surprise he wrote back!  I can't remember what he said, something about wanting to use the dating method that most students would understand, so he wouldn't alienate them to the bigger topic, understanding pseudoscience.  Anyway, I was thrilled that someone as important as An Author would write back to Ms. Nobody in Salinas, CA. 

So fast forward to 2013.  Someone added Ken Feder to the very long to-do list that exists in hiding for the Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia team.  His page as it existed on Wikipedia was very sad and lonely.  No photos and it had that ugly "stub" tab on it.  See for yourself. 

The way we work on these pages is mainly out of site of Wikipedia readers.  We copy whatever exists on the live Wikipedia page, and paste it onto a "sandbox" or a "user page". Then work and work and work on it.  Listen to every interview and article we can find on our target.  Then the page goes to the Guerrilla Wikipedia team for more ideas.  I discovered while researching Feder that he had been interviewed twice on MonsterTalk podcast, I'm friends with Blake Smith and Ben Radford so getting Feder's email was easy.  The next thing I knew, I was talking to Ken Feder again and asking for him to upload images.

Working with a team as we do really improves the experience of Wikipedia editing.  I might have started the Ken Feder page, but several other editors contributed to cleaning it up and finding more references, mainly Nathan Miller and Jerry Buchanan.

It all happened so quickly.  We got his page re-write off our to-do list, but in the meantime we have added many more.  I guess it is just job security.

If your ready and have already looked at the before... here is the after - Kenneth Feder.

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

So I hope I have wet your appetite for getting involved in something so important to getting critical thinking out beyond the skeptics.  From feedback I'm getting from new editors, I need to be clearer with my plea for new editors.  Friend me on Facebook and let me know in a PM that you are interested in the project.  You can also email me at susangerbic@yahoo.com if you are more comfortable doing so, but eventually you are going to need to be placed in one of several Facebook groups.  

Also I want to be clear, we train and mentor.  We are not going to allow you to "blow up the Internet" and all your first edits are watched and reviewed.  Depending on your skill level and confidence we may have you correcting commas and spelling errors to start with.  Nothing wrong with that, most people start that way.  Some people move right in and start on more difficult edits, we don't care, just come join us. 

I've also learned that it takes multiple pleas from me before people join the project.  So pardon me if I continue to harp on the subject.  But we badly need you.  Please consider joining with us to change people's minds on the 5th most popular Internet web site World-Wide.
 

Homeopathy - An open letter to Jimmy Wales

One of the Guerrilla Skepticism editors (Vera) turned me on to this awesome article about homeopathy.  The author is Jimmy Wales.  In case you don't know, Jimmy Wales is the founder of Wikipedia. 

Apparently Wales feels that homeopathy is a scam and taking it instead of real medicine is dangerous. He wants to know what can be done about homeopathy.

Then he writes that the homeopathy Wikipedia page editors have "eloquently explain[ed] what this means: "Mathematically, in order to have a reasonable chance to obtain one molecule of the original extract, the patient would have to consume an amount of the remedy roughly 10^321 times the number of atoms in the observable universe."

Right on Wikipedia editors!  We spend a lot of time trying to get the article as close to perfect as possible.  Just take a look at the "talk" tab (located on the right upper side of the page) and you can see the never-ending discussion about everything.  The discussion on whether or not to have the word "quackery" in the lede went on for months. There are several homeopaths that frequently engage in the discussion on talk, so the discussions get quite interesting.  

If you are one of the 140K people who visit the English homeopathy page this month, you will be greeted with this first paragraph...

Homeopathy ⁱ/ˌhoʊmiˈɒpəθi/ (also spelled homoeopathy or homœopathy; from the Greek hómoios- ὅμοιος- "like-" + páthos πάθος "suffering") is a system of alternative medicine originated in 1796 by Samuel Hahnemann, based on his doctrine of similia similibus curentur ("like cures like"), according to which a substance that causes the symptoms of a disease in healthy people will cure similar symptoms in sick people.^[1] Scientific research has found homeopathic remedies ineffective and their postulated mechanisms of action implausible.^[2][3][4][5] The scientific community regards homeopathy as a sham;^[6] the American Medical Association considers homeopathy to be quackery,^[7][8] and homeopathic remedies have been criticized as unethical.^[9]

If the reader feels the need to continue reading past the first paragraph, they will be treated to the entire history of homeopathy as well as quotes like the one Wales stated.   If someone insists on using homeopathy after reading this Wikipedia page, then I don't think anything will convince them.

And before you get all gloomy about all the people who still take homeopathic products, remember most people don't use them.  Most people understand that homeopathy is quackery.  Maybe they don't know what homeopathy is, but once it is explained, they usually say "that's nuts".   We skeptics are too close to the issue, we see and hear about these stories because we are interested in the topic.  It feels like we spend all our time rolling our eyes and raising our blood pressure over these discussions, but really we are winning this war on pseudoscience.  We are, trust me.  We still have a long way to go, but we have the tools to do so.  We just need help to get it done, and done in a way that it is settled. 

Wales states in his conclusion, "Who should I talk to about this in order to encourage the creation of a campaign to stop this?  This is not my primary area of interest and so I am not the right person to lead it myself.  But I would like to help."

My answer to him is this.  "Jimmy you have already done more than anyone could possibly dream that can be done.  You created the most amazing resource in the world.  I mean that, not only in English but in every language possible. The English homeopathy page alone gets over 140K views EACH MONTH.  That is a lot of people being educated about homeopathy.  Thank you.  Allowing us editors to 'do our job' and keep these articles honest and correctly cited is enough.  I can't imagine what else you can do, my brain is teeny tiny compared to your mighty brain, if you come up with something please oh please let us in on it, we want to help."  

We can't all do something as amazing as Wales and create the most useful and amazing resource on the Internet.  Most people commenting on his blog suggest things HE CAN DO.  I know he asked, but really its our turn now.  Don't point fingers at other people who are currently involved, like James Randi and the 10:23 campaign.  We can all do something.  Pick your topic, psychics, vaccines, cryptozoology  or whatever gets your heart rate going.  You can work with the Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia team (we train) or hundreds of other ways to take care of these issues.  Quit bitching in your beer, rolling your eyes and DO SOMETHING!

Write to me at susangerbic@yahoo.com if you are interested in helping out with the Wikipedia project (all skill levels are needed, and we also need languages other than English, did I mention we train and mentor too?)

Spanish & Portuguese Wikipedia - a starting point

As regular readers of this blog knows, we are on week one of the Wikipedia World project.  We have groups formed for English, Russian, Spanish, Portuguese, Korean, Turkish, French and German.  Hopefully in the next couple weeks we will have doubled that number.

I asked several of the groups if they would give me their opinion of skepticism and science topics on Wikipedia this moment in their language.

Nix Dorf sprang to the challenge and supplied us with a lot of information about what the Portuguese and Spanish pages look like.  I'm really shocked about some of these pages, homeopathy in particular.  The last 10:23 campaign was  global, the videos created can easily be cited on the homeopathy page, we just need volunteers to help out.

The following is guest editorial by Nix, he asked me to correct his grammar, but I'm not touching a word.

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

Portuguese presence in Wikipedia as whole.

Nowadays Portuguese speakers are around 240 million native speakers in the World. Roughly 180 Million are Brazilians and the rest are mainly Portuguese, Angolan, Mozambicans and some other nations. But the bulk internet traffic comes from Brazil and Portugal, which are the most industrialized countries in this language. Brazil has about 81 million active Internet users, which make them the 5^th nation in the world by user access. Portugal has 5.5 million more users.^[3]

Portuguese isn't wide spread as English and Spanish. Portuguese is 6th most spoken language. But Portuguese Wikipedia has more than 742,000 ^[4] articles which is larger than WP in Chinese, Hindi-Urundu and Arabic which have a larger speakers base.

Considering that Spanish WP has approximately 900,000 articles while having roughly 400 million native speakers (it is the 2^nd or 3^rd most widespread language in the world ^[5]). That makes Portuguese to have a higher speakers/articles ratio, if that is really a valid way of measure anything. I’m just guessing based on the WP data available. But it looks like that the more industrialized the countries that speak a given language the more WP articles they seem to have. So my conclusion is that’s why German, Japanese and French have much more articles per speakers than Hindi or Chinese. But this doesn’t explain why Polish speakers have 900,000 articles with 40 million native speakers.

No language even compare to the amount of articles available in English. Even so English is not the most spoken language in the world as the number of native speakers; there are lots of people that have English as its second language and most English speaking countries are very industrialized too. On top of that USA is a well-known leader on all that happens online.

Skeptical presence on Portuguese Wikipedia.

In general the articles for uncontroversial subjects are often fine. The ones that are Brazil specific can be very rich, while depending on the subject attention, some other articles may vary a lot on how well written Portuguese articles are compared to the English ones. Usually you see some few claims that are ungrounded or biased like it is on other languages, but the fact is that Portuguese Wikipedia probably may not have as much editors as needed to keep it 100% clean (I guess no language really can claim to have it).

But when we get to evolution, homeopathy, religion, skeptics then it gets worse. Let’s go to a few examples.

The Randi article is very bad, compared to the English version. When I was changing it, I couldn’t resist and had to change Randi's picture itself. The former one wasn’t very nice and it had no bio info (birthdate, birth place, etc).

When you go to other skeptics, they don't even appear. I was unable to get individual bio pages on Penn and Teller for instance (there is a draft article for “Penn & Teller” together^[1]). Even HBO used to air Penn & Teller Bullshit! on Brazil’s cable.

Michael Shermer^[8] and Adam Savage^[6] are just drafts. I would say that Mythbusters is a well-known show, at least in Brazil and I would guess in Portugal too, since the show itself has a decent page. Joe Nickell doesn’t even have a page.

Evolution pages have some discussions and back and forth reversals on ID and some had been blocked for edition sometimes. But the pages aren’t much biased. But they certainly should be improved.

Homeopathy page^[9] cites for example a Word Health Organization "publication" called "Homeopathy: review and analysis of reports on controlled clinical trials" that was a draft from 2005 that was never published (I believe that this report was heavily criticized by an article on The Lancet and never made a respectful scientific Journal ^[2]). Even though it is still there as a favorable point towards Homeopathy, while it is not even cited on the Spanish and English WP versions. The article is listed as a medical especially, and not as an alternative medicine. So the article doesn’t seems to be very pro Homeopathy but is too soft into criticize it in my opinion. And it barely mentions Randi, what a shame!

To be honest, the article on skepticism itself is very poorly written and in my opinion it is has some bias towards the skepticism. If we plan to keep ourselves unbiased we may have to pay attention and fix this kind of bias too. It requires lots of discipline to be actually “fair and balanced”.

My personal pet peeves are the Articles on Spiritualism. With more than 3 million followers it is a big religion in Brazil. One of the most important icons was very famous woo woo called Chico Xavier^[10], that is called by Wikipedia as a medium (not a supposed medium) and is very mild on criticism, while almost states that he was the true thing. When you compare these spiritualist articles with Shermer’s, and Randi’s you realize how big are the challenges that we may face.

Spanish Wikipedia as whole.

Spanish is the second (or 3^rd) most spoken language in the world. It is hard to state that something is the biggest, tallest, or whatever in the world because it depends on so many variables, like native speakers, or national interests, or on different census criteria, estimates, etc. But even though Spanish is very important and is growing as a second language to many, especially in US. It is hard to compare, but while Chinese Mandarin and Hindi-Urdu are spoken by lots of people, they are mainly spoken on their original countries while Spanish is the dominant language in the American continent. Due the Spanish dominium on the seas during the Spanish conquests during the XVI century it got very spread.

The main nations on Spanish by internet millions of users are Mexico (31), Spain (30), Colombia (16), Argentina (14), Peru (10), Venezuela (9) and Chile (7)^[3]. With all the Spanish speaking nations it may add up to approximately 120 million. This is a low number if you compare it to more than 400 million native speakers^[5]. To give you an idea, Japanese native speakers are about 123 million (almost all on Japan) while there are 102 million native users^[5]. Once again I’m working with the data available on Wikipedia and those numbers can vary. But, Japan has an 80% of the population as Internet, while several Spanish speaking nations are on underdeveloped countries.

Spanish Wikipedia has more than 900,000^[4] articles and on uncontroversial articles it seems pretty fine. It looks to have a richer content if you compare it with the Portuguese WP, but less detail than the English version.

Skeptical presence on Spanish Wikipedia

The Article about evolution seems to be very complete and balanced and discussions and reversals are frequent, but not as frequent as the ones that I have seen on the Portuguese version. It lacks of a Evidence of Common Decent as we have for the Portuguese version. This subject is treated inside of the evolution^[11]. This section needs to become an article and be expanded.

I’ve got the impression that the majority of the Spanish speaking countries are Catholic, which doesn’t require a belief on a literal truth of the bible, so perhaps the fundamentalists on those countries aren’t so willing to attack evolution. But my native Spanish speaking fellows might better comment on that.

Even the Article on James Randi^[12] is much better than the Portuguese version; it still needs lots of dedication and effort to be brought to the English standard. It lacks of references and citations. The article on Penn and Teller is very simple, almost a draft. Penn Jillette doesn’t have an article while Teller^[13] has one draft for some reason.

Michael Shermer ^[14] is pretty decent, but needs to be expanded.

The Article on Creationism has been edited and vandalized frequently on the last year. ^[15]

The article on Skepticism is really good, broken down in religious, philosophical, ecological and scientific types of skepticism. ^[16]

You can find pages for Ann Druyan , Harry Houdini, Susan Blackmore, Robert Todd Caroll, while Joe Nickell is missing. Most of the articles need some expansion and they are often drafts.

The article on Homeopathy^[17] is pretty good, providing lots of valuable information and it takes the scientific side. It lacks of some of Randi’s confrontations, I would expand on that.

It seems that some battle has been taken place on the Talk and history pages. The article is protected from anonymous edition.

In my opinion it looks like that the greater number of editors is making the Spanish version better than the Portuguese one. Since I’m not a frequent Spanish Wikipedia visitor, I may be wrong. But some of the problematic pages on the Portuguese version aren’t with the same problems on the Spanish ones. The main issue is lack good information about skeptics.

[1] http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penn_e_Teller

[2] http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2805%2967159-0/fulltext

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_Internet_users

[4] http://www.wikipedia.org/

[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_native_speakers

[6] http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Savage

[8] http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Shermer

[9] http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeopatia

[10] http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chico_xavier

[11] http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evoluci%C3%B3n_biol%C3%B3gica#La_evoluci.C3.B3n_como_un_hecho_documentado

[12] http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Randi

[13] http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teller

[14] http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Shermer

[15] http://es.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Creacionismo&diff=57117384&oldid=53657036

[16] http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escepticismo_cient%C3%ADfico

[17] http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeopat%C3%ADa

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

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

Homeopathy and Wikipedia

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?























 

Oscillococcinum, Boiron and CFI

So working backwards here is a project that someone might be interested in tackling.  Keeping in mind that Wikipedia Editors are a bit nervous about me sending a bunch of skeptics over to a page for some of this "guerrilla skepticism" stuff.  I think it is called "sandbagging".  Anyway, this arrived in my email a few weeks ago and I thought it might be useful but never got to it.

CFI and CSI Petition FDA to Take Action on Homeopathic Drugs

Apparently CFI and CSI have this going in a press release.  Here is the link to the article.  I haven't looked into it in great depth, so I'm not sure that a press release is a good citation.  There may be links to follow that will get you to something more noteworthy.  Remember a secondary cite is better.  Don't quote the person writing the blog/petition/press release but quote the newspaper/journal/TV news show that quotes the primary cite.

Anyway, I think a mention on the Boiron and the Oscillococcinum pages might be warranted.  Its not every day they get such attention from skeptical groups...or maybe they do?  If so why isn't there already a bunch of mentions on their pages?  We can't just assume that the public knows as much as we do about these products.

Bioron gets about 1,000 hits a month, and Oscillococcinum gets 7,000-8,000 hits a month.  I would avoid the homeopathy page unless you have a really awesome citation and blub.  That is a well-watched page and the editors have worked long and hard coming to some kind of agreement about what should be on the page.  Before editing homeopathy (which is semi-protected) discuss what you want to do on the discussion page, listen to the comments from the other editors.  BTW homeopathy gets about 90,000 hits a month, so people are clearly interested in this topic and coming to Wikipedia for answers.

And don't just stop there, I'm sure there are a lot more places the citation can be used, with slight modifications to the blurb left on the page.  There are a lot of "fringe" smaller pages that the public is reviewing and we need to make sure they are getting the entire picture. 

Remember editing on Wikipedia needs to be neutral, let the article speak for you.  Less is more sometimes and make sure the citation is really good.  Think about the importance of this, over 1 million people are reading the homeopathy page each year, do you think that a well-written blog/podcast on that subject would reach that many people? No pressure or anything.  

Welcome New Wikipedia Editor Dustin Phillips!

Mark Edward and I were recently on the Rational Alchemy podcast discussing Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia and elsewhere.  The podcast released on Sept 15, 2011 which caused a jump in my stats for this blog on that day. 

I received a really interesting email from Dustin Phillips who lives in Louisville, Kentucky.  I'm going to share some of the conversations I've had with Dustin (yes I have his permission to do so) because I think that the questions he asks and the things he learns are all relevant to others reading this blog and wanting to edit.  Also Dustin is really articulate and organized, both traits that make for excellent Wikipedia editors.  I'm really excited that Dustin is on board with this project. 

==============================

"I heard the Rational Alchemy podcast today that you and Mark Edward were interviewed on, and I found it very inspiring. I like the idea of a "skeptic army," and I'm eager to join. My research and writing skills are fairly good, and I would like to put them to use in the work you're doing on Wikipedia. I'm looking for something I could devote two or three hours per week to do--maybe more eventually. Would you say a good place for me to start is by picking a few topics I'm interested in, and tracking their respective pages on Wikipedia (monitoring for changes and editing as needed?) Or is there some other way I can put my skills and time to better use in helping the cause? I imagine you might be receiving a number of e-mails like this, in light of the Rational Alchemy interview, so if you can't respond right away, I'll certainly understand. And if you are unable to respond directly to me, that is ok. I'm following your Guerrilla Skepticism blog now, and look forward to reading about more of your ideas for the skeptic cause."

Thanks,

Dustin Phillips

==============================

...The first thing to do is to gauge your level of ability.  You probably already are comfortable using the computer, do you already have a Wikipedia account?  That is the first thing to do, make sure it is active.

Second thing is probably to start reading through my blog.  I know it is long, but have a ton of stuff in there, easy to advanced.  All kinds of ideas of things to do as well as not to do.  I want you to be happy with the area you pick.  I have a few people working on pages that they feel passionate about and are really getting into it, sites I have never heard of.

Something that really surprised me is that many people who are really comfortable using the computer and doing software things really aren't comfortable editing Wiki.  There are a lot of rules and it can be intimidating.  I am more than willing to walk you through whatever means needed to help you.  I am very friendly and approachable.  Yes, I am busy but this project is really important and I don't have a problem with even the little instructions.  So if you get lost on something just let me know.

If you have some real interest in a specific area, or maybe a specific talent then maybe I can steer you towards a specific blog or two?"

==============================

I live in Louisville, Kentucky. I recently joined the Louisville Area Skeptics, but I've been following the skeptic movement for many years.

In response your questions: I'm very comfortable with computers. I do Internet-based research on a daily basis as part of my job, so scouring the net for information is something I'm quite good at. I have some, limited experience with html.

I actually just opened a Wikipedia account today. I've anonymously edited a few pages on there in the past, so I at least know the basics.

As far as specific areas of interest, I'm particularly interested in keeping tabs on alternative medicine--especially herbs, homeopathic remedies and vitamin supplements (ie anything sold in stores.)

I will definitely start reading through your blog. I'm excited to read more about your ideas for cooperative skeptic work! 

==============================

...Alt med.  Good choice.  I admire someone wants to work on that area, VERY important but not my area of interest.  On my blog there is a list of "keywords" and you should maybe search for homeopathy as I have done a little work on the Normal pages of Walmart and CVS Pharmacy. 

Also with Power Balance bracelets, check that out. 

You have opened an account as a real person.  Excellent.  Now you need to make sure you follow all of the rules and we can get you started.  I'm on skype and if you need help doing edits just let me know and we can screen share so I can watch you or you can watch me edit. 

If you have a page you really want to work on, let me know in advance and I will suggest how to go about that.  The changes you should make for awhile should be small, learning ones so that you can make bigger changes later. 

Again there is so much you can do, and you can do them at your leisure.  Just stay organized so you don't spend a lot of time remembering where you were, or where the document you were using to edit. 

Dustin it is so difficult for me to tell you what to do, please read through as much of my blog as you can.  Ask me questions, I'll get back to you as quickly as I can.  Please avoid the main homeopathy page as well as the other really popular pages.  Those pages are patrolled by experienced editors and you shouldn't try changing anything unless you really know what you are doing.  Some editors aren't really excited about new editors messing with something that it has taken them months to get agreement with.  Read the discussion areas first. 

I don't want to scare you away from editing, as it is really important and a blast to do.  But start out simple, gain confidence.  If you don't see something obvious you want to start with, then try working backwards.  One of my early blogs I talk a lot about this.  Find an article in a reputable journal or newspaper ect that would make a great cite.  Read the article several times looking for a way to make two or three good sentences that kinda sum up the point of the article.  Then go to the site you want to leave it, then decide if it is something that should be there and where on the page.  Blaa Blaa Blaa ect...(I describe on the Pet Psychic blogs how to edit in detail)

Anyway, if you write comments on the blog I get an email directly.  I love that because the comments (and how I answer them) are where the best conversations happen, plus other people learn from the discussion. 

===================================

 From Dustin-

"Awesome! Thanks so much for your help. I'll catch up with your blog this weekend, and stick my toe in the wiki editing waters. I'll also browse through Wikipedia and see what specific topics I might be interested in. Power Balance bracelets are definitely of interest to me. Avoiding main topics is great advice--I hadn't thought about that. I also had never payed much attention to the discussion areas on Wikipedia. I'll catch up with your blog, and familiarize myself with Wikipedia better, and let you know when I need help with the next step.

Thanks again! I think this is really important work, and I'm so happy to be able to help out."

===================================

"Hi Susan! I just made my first major Wikipedia edit. I watched the film Contagion this weekend, and was pleased with its depiction of science, so I added a section to its wikipedia entry called "Scientific accuracy." Other wiki editors had been expressing interest in adding it, but they hadn't done anything in the past week, so I went ahead and added it. I added some references to a medscape article written by Paul Offit and a slate article by Carl Zimmer, so I got some skeptic folks in there."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contagion_(film)#Scientific_accuracy

"Hopefully you'll be able to see the edit I made before anyone takes it down. I hope I did everything right. I've never done a wikipedia edit beyond grammar corrections before this, so let me know if I messed up anything. :-)"

====================================

From Dustin-

" I read through your blog. It was very helpful! There are parts of Wikipedia (like the discussion page and view history) that I never knew existed. I have added "power balance" to my watch list as well as the dowsing wand "GT200." I'm creating some Google alerts to help me keep up to date on all these issues. I really like the idea of "working backward" that you mentioned on your blog. In some ways, that's how my edit of the Contagion page came about. I was pleased with the film's depiction of science and googled for articles regarding that. I found Paul Offit's review of the film, and realized that a mention of pro-vaccine crusader Paul Offit on the Contagion wiki-page would be fantastic. And now I can track the Offit page views and see if there's an increase in hits. Ben Radford wrote a review of the film on CFI's site, but unfortunately, I'm having troubles finding a line in it that would be suitable to quote in the "Scientific Accuracy" section I created. http://www.centerforinquiry.net/blogs/entry/contagion_film_review--_now_with_20_more_anti-vaxx_conspiracy/

Over time I will expand the number of topics I track. Let me know if there are any specific topics where my help is especially needed. And, of course, I'll continue to follow your blog. :-)"

====================================

Dustin.  Your edit and conversation on the discussion area is all picture perfect!  I can't see anything that might need to be changed.  Only thing I noticed and didn't check were if there were Wikipedia hyperlinks to Homeopathy and to some of the names where you left.  Maybe they were but just somewhere else I didn't read?  I would really like the homeopathy one hyperlinked (I read it in the plot summary) as it would bring people to that nasty bit of pseudoscience. 

I read the article by Ben Radford and agree, there isn't anything you can put in the article from him, sad as I would love to see even more skeptics quoted and linked.  You did wonderful with what you found. 

I read through the discussion area and you responded exactly as you should, and I love that they even responded with "It's great! Thanks for adding. Erik (talk | contribs) 16:28, 18 September 2011 (UTC)"

====================================

Thanks so much! I really appreciate your help and the jump-start your interview on Rational Alchemy gave me!

I put Wikipedia hyperlinks on the names (Paul Offit, Carl Zimmer, etc) but I hadn't thought to check the Plot section for potential work. Hyperlinking "homeopathy" is a great idea! I hadn't thought of that. I'll perform that edit right now.

Yeah, a quote from Ben Radford and link to CFI would have been perfect, but, oddly, his review doesn't really mention the science of the movie. However, I will continue to monitor the skeptic-sphere for any articles that I could use. It seems like the kind of thing that skeptic doctors like Steven Novella and Harriet Hall might write about in the coming weeks. I follow their writing closely, so if they say anything, I'll definitely catch it.

On a side note, I definitely recommend the film to skeptics. It's rare to find a film that gets the science so right. And the villain of the film is a alt med, conspiracy theorist who makes money promoting a homeopathic remedy. He's sorta' an amalgam of Mike Adams (aka "the Health Ranger"), Andrew Wakefield, and so forth. And the film even makes it clear that he's a fraud. It's satisfying to see some skepticism in major Hollywood film.

Next on my plate is to collect some info I can use on power balance and GT200. I'm usually pretty busy during the week, so I might not be able to do too many edits over the week, but I'd like to get into a rhythm of collecting data over the week, then aim to perform a couple major edits on the weekend, then gradually increase my work over time. I'm not exactly sure how the rhythm will work yet...I imagine I'll figure out what works best for my schedule as I do this more and more. Today was like me "testing the water," and I definitely like it and can't wait to do more! I'll definitely keep you updated on my progress.

Walmart and Homeopathy

Wow this was really a big one in my book. Same SI magazine an article on page 7 about CSI and CFI teaming up to condemn Walmart on its support of homeopathy products. Walmart is a big company and has a massive Wikipedia page. They even have a separate criticism page that I didn't want to use.

Here is the blurb I left

The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry [[CSICOP]] and the [[Center for Inquiry]] along with several medical doctors and one [[Noble Laureate]], [[Venki Ramakrishnan]] teamed up to condemn Walmarts promotion of [[homeopathic]] medicines in its stores and websites. Walmart states that Boiron Oscillococcinum is effective against flu-like symptoms, when in fact there is no science that shows Boiron Oscillococcinum or any homepathic solution contains a single active ingredient and performs no better than a [[placebo]].

I had to keep it factual and neutral so I think it is as good as I can get it. Would welcome anyone else who wants to clean up grammar or whatever. The page is semi-protected so not just anyone can go on the page and edit it.

The reason why I didn't want to use the criticism page is because in the discussion area of that page people were saying that there was no evidence of the criticism. Well in the case of CFI and CSICOP there is a lot of evidence. Anyone just needs to follow the hyperlink to homeopathy I left for evidence. This will be my argument if pushed to it. If I have no choice I will move the blurb to the criticism page, but not until pushed to it. Besides on the normal page there looks like there is some criticism already of Walmart's gender relations when hiring/firing/promoting.

So for the moment it is there 5:23pm on Tuesday June 15, 2011. Maybe it will squeak by?

Also a cool note I learned how to make the size of the category text change. I had to leave a category in order to put my blurb so I called it "support for homeopathy" when I looked at what I wrote it didn't match other categories on the page already. So I kept looking and looking when finally I realized that my category looked like this ==Support for Homeopathy== and the other categories were like this ===Support for Homeopathy===. The extra equal sign on each side of the phrase increases/decreases the font. Wow! I'm still a long way from being good at this.