Plait, Gardner, Tyson, Kurtz, Andrus and so much more

For those of you just joining us, Welcome.  This is an update of all the new releases from the Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia project.  To learn more about what this project is please read this, its a little dated but should catch you up.

We translate well-written Wikipedia pages into other languages, currently we have 18 language teams working on the project (but we badly need more editors working with us, we train and mentor, see bottom of this blog for contact info). 

Not only do we translate but we need to write (or re-write) the pages that will be translated.  We have (and need far more) photographers, video interviewers, copy-editors, researchers, people to caption videos and just motivated people who like doing stuff. 

We have many more pages being worked on right now, but they didn't make the deadline for this update... so stay tuned.

So onto our most current updates... 



Martin Gardner &  Paul Kurtz 
Nix Dorf from the Portuguese team rewrote the Paul Kurtz page.  Here is the before... and now the after.   And then got on to the Martin Gardner page (before) & (after)  

Phil Plait
Filipe Russo created a brand new page for our very own Bad Astronomer, Phil Plait.  






Neil deGrasse Tyson
Luis Pratas rewrote Neil deGrasse Tyson  (before) & (after).  

I want to add that Nathan Miller did the research in English for the Penny4NASA section (under "views") on Tyson's page.  He is trying to build a complete page for the project but it might be too soon as they have not become noteworthy enough yet. 

Ken Feder
The English Ken Feder page got a Did You Know (front page of Wikipedia for 8 hours) unfortunately it was up from 11pm to 8am so we didn't get the hits we would have normally expected.  Only 1,190 for that night.  Other links on Feder's page also experienced a surge on that night. Keep in mind that these are mostly people outside our skeptical choir.  So total win for skepticism. 

Jerry Andrus - Now with it's 8th language... English, Dutch, Portuguese, French, Farsi, Spanish, Russian and now Swedish!  Way to go Philip Skogsberg and Wim Vandenberghe!  Very proud of you both!

Karl Shuker
Received a call-out from Blake Smith from MonsterTalk podcast asking if we might help out a cryptozoologist.  His page had fallen into disrepair, even threats to have the page deleted.  Editor Nathan Miller stepped in and cleaned it up.  Before and After.  Nathan stated "This has been a gratifying effort."

Point of Inquiry
Point of Inquiry is often used in our work as editors as a source for interviews.  This page (Before) had been on our to-do list for quite some time until new editor Ric Watts decided he wanted to take it on.  And he sure did.... here is the after Point of Inquiry.


Our Lady of Warraq
Before new editor Wim Vandenberghe joined the team he had been working on and off on this page for a apparition of the Virgin Mary in Egypt.  (before) He kept having problems getting his edits to stick, problems with other editors (believers) were mostly the problem.  He heard about our project and with a little training and some teamwork this page is in far better condition.  (after) 

As you can see from the before and after, no mention in the lede about what the "apparition" probably was existed until after we did the re-write. 


Danielle Egnew
You might remember from our last update that someone had added the name of Danielle Egnew to the Psychic page.  Listing her as a famous psychic.  I've never heard of her, but she has had an amazing career.  Check out some of these claims... 

Danielle Egnew is recognized in the United States, Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand for her work in the spiritual and metaphysical fields as a Clairvoyant Channel, Paranormal Investigator, and Healer. She is alleged to have successfully assisted law enforcement on cold case profiles, as documented on TV pilot Missing Peace.

Though she is alleged to utilize many spiritual aptitudes, she is widely known by film and radio audiences for her claims that her primary form of direct communication with spirit life is through angelic entities

Danielle Egnew currently owns and operates her own private metaphysical practice in the Los Angeles area.

She has more credentials in music, theater and LGBT activism.  I'm not concerned with those claims, just the psychic ones.  So my editors Nathan Miller and (3-day old Chris Pederson) went to town sorting through the mess.  First Nathan rewrote all of the citations so we could see where all the claims were coming from.  He discovered that nearly every footnote that supported a psychic claim was coming from her own website. 

Chris did some research to make sure that there wasn't a good secondary source for these claims elsewhere on the Internet.  Don't mean to spoil the surprise, but there were none.  So they spent about a day going back and forth researching and talking and finally Nathan said, everything comes back to Danielle's own website, "I'm pretty sure I could become a successful professional juggler, in the same sense that I could buy a domain name, and remain a 'successful, popular' professional juggle-master provided I'm not fired from my day job."

DING DING DING 

Exactly right.  Wikipedia is not a place where you get to advertise, it is not a personal brag page.  Wikipedia is where secondary sources (not your personal website) backs up claims.  Wild claims like how you have solved missing person cases using only your psychic powers needs backing up.  

  Here is the before page... and now the after.   
 ----------------------------------------
 And now the plea for help.  We can not make these updates happen if we don't have help.  We need people to join with us to improve the 5th most popular Internet site in the world.  Yes, this is a crazy idea, but it is totally doable.  Once these pages are created it is pretty easy to maintain them, and we are only looking at a small section of Wikipedia, not the entire site. 

But we do need your help.   As I mentioned before, not just as editors but in all kinds of ways.  We also need help getting our message beyond the people who are currently reading this.  Do you have a blog/podcast that you can feature an interview of us or highlight our updates?  Can you tweet or post these on your own social network?  Can you write to skeptical and/or science media sources (and conferences) and encourage them to give us some time?  Especially need people willing to work in other languages besides English, we train, we mentor and are really nice people also.  
If you have ideas of helping us outreach, please write to me at susangerbic@yahoo.com so I can best advise how you can make the biggest splash.

If you want to become involved in the project.  First read everything on this blog as far back as you can stand (working from the bottom up is probably the best way to do so).  Then friend me on Facebook and let me know what your interests are, what language(s) you want to work in and what kind of training do you need.  And then the next thing you know you will amongst a group of people that are happy to see you and will get you helping.  

Thank you 

History of Scientific Skepticism through Pictures

Friend of the blog, Robert Sheaffer has been gracious enough to begin the tiring process of scanning old photos taken back when the world was only in Black and White  (At least this is what I thought when I was a kid)  and uploading them to Wikimedia Commons.  Robert has been a active member of the scientific skepticism world since the beginning and he has the photos to prove it.  Those of us trying to preserve our history really appreciate that.

When James Randi and Ray Hyman met up at a Alice Cooper concert, they discussed forming a club to combat Uri Geller.  They didn't realize then that we would be interested in knowing the history of that time.  They wanted to get things done, not record the moment.  So now 30+ years later we have to find all these old documents and photos and get them in places where we can show our history.  And I can't think of a better place than Wikipedia. 

For your viewing pleasure, enjoy these never before seen images...

James W. Moseley

CSICOP

Paul Kurtz

Banachek 

James Randi

Ray Hyman

Daryl Bem 

Philip Klass

Robert uploaded a lot more, we just don't have the Wikipedia pages written yet to put the photos on.  We stll have a lot of work to do.  Please consider helping out with the Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia project.   We train and mentor.  Contact me at susangerbic@yahoo.com or friend me on Facebook or Twitter as Susan Gerbic

Wanted: Photos for Wikipedia

As regular readers of this blog already know, we can not use just any ole' photograph on Wikipedia.  Each image must be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons with all the correct licensing.  The easiest is to have the photographer upload the image themselves.

Here are instructions for uploading
From Flickr
OTRS Open-source Ticket Request System

We need images.  Please please please check through your photo albums and see if you might have an image that we need.  If you aren't sure that the quality might not be good enough, run it by me (susangerbic@yahoo.com).   Hi-rez is not required, but it is best to have something that is well framed with little distractions.  It is possible to photoshop some of the problems, if you don't have that ability, I have people to do that for you and then send it back to you for uploading.  Many times, creative cropping will fix the image. 

Here are a few examples of people uploading pictures.  Check out the newest edition of Paul Kurtz's page, 4 founders of modern skepticism image was taken by DJ Grothe and uploaded by Ken Frazier, the Kurtz desk image was taken by Barry Karr, and the B/W of Kurtz and Gardner was taken by Robert Sheaffer. 

Robert Sheaffer also took and uploaded this image of Whitley Strieber, it is a low-rez image but looks okay here on the page.  This is also a good example of a page that needs work. 

Keep in mind that your image may go world-wide as this one by Greg Dorais.

One more point before I give the current list of needed photos.  

If you are attending a skeptic/science/atheist function, or know someone personally that has or probably will have their own Wikipedia page, please try to get that image for us.  The easiest way is to actually ask them to pose for an image.  Chose a uncluttered background and avoid water bottles and clutter.  The best photographs are at a high angle (very flattering on necks) have them sit and you stand, or you stand on a chair. 

If you are photographing at a lecture, ask before hand if you can take a picture of them at the podium before they begin, remove the water bottle and other distractions for the picture, then put it right back.  Explain that by doing this quickly beforehand you are going to be able to concentrate on what they are saying and not popping around in front of them while they are speaking.  Also doing this will remove the chance you are going to get them in a speaking moment, a lot of us move our hands when we talk so it helps to get a posed image instead of something with blurred hands.  

If they tell you they hate getting their picture taken, then explain it is a necessary evil. Would they rather have an image of themselves chewing food at dinner?  Someone is going to get a shot of them somewhere, might as well be a flattering one. 

Here is the list so far, hopefully we can get these items off the list.  Some people have one image on their Wikipedia page already, but more would be better, we want to tell a story with these images.  So send the URL to the uploaded picture to me.  If you want to add names to the list also post here on the blog and I'll add them to the list. 


Dean Cameron (any)
Jim Lippard (any)
Marilyn vos Savant
Robynn McCarthy
Stephen Barrett (any)
R. Joseph Hoffmann (any)
Mac King (more)
**Here are some photos that are needed for the "Signers of the Humanist Manifesto project:
    A. Eustace Haydon (professor of history of religions, University of Chicago.)
    E. Burdette Backus (minister, First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles)
    Edwin H. Wilson (managing editor, the New Humanist)
    F.H. Hankins (professor of economics and sociology, Smith College.)
    John H. Dietrich (minister, First Unitarian Society, Minneapolis.)
    John Herman Randall, Jr. (department of philosophy, Columbia University.)
    R. Lester Mondale (minister, Unitarian Church, Evanston, Illinois.)
    Robert Morss Lovett (editor, The New Republic; professor of English, University of Chicago.)
A. B. Shah, Pres., Indian Secular Society
Alan F. Guttmacher, Pres., Planned Parenthood Fed. of America
Alfred McC. Lee, Prof. Emeritus, Soc.-Anthropology, C.U.N.Y.
Antony Flew, Prof. of Philosophy, The Univ., Reading, England
Archie J. Bahm, Prof. of Philosophy Emeritus, Univ. of N.M.
Arthur Danto, Prof. of Philosophy, Columbia University
Brigid Brophy, author, Great Britain
Chaim Perelman, Prof. of Philosophy, Univ. of Brussels, Belgium
Chauncey D. Leake, Prof., Univ. of California, San Francisco
Clinton Lee Scott, Universalist Minister, St Petersburgh, Fla.
Corliss Lamont, Chm., Natl. Emergency Civil Liberties Comm.
Edward Lamb, Pres., Lamb Communications, Inc.
Edwin H. Wilson, Ex. Dir. Emeritus, American Humanist Assn.
Eustace Haydon, Prof. Emeritus of History of Religions
H. J. Blackham, Chm., Social Morality Council, Great Britain
Herbert Feigl, Prof. Emeritus, Univ. of Minnesota
Herbert J. Muller, Professor, University of Indiana
James Hemming, Psychologist, Great Britain
James W. Prescott, Natl, Inst. of Child Health and Human Dev.
John Anton, Professor, Emory University
John Herman Randall, Jr., Prof. Emeritus, Columbia Univ.
John W. Sears, clinical psychologist
Joseph Fletcher, Visiting Prof., Sch. of Medicine, Univ. of Virginia
Joseph L. Blau, Prof. of Religion, Columbia University
Kai Nielsen, Prof. of Philosophy, Univ. of Calgary, Canada
Lionel Able, Prof. of English, State Univ. of New York at Buffalo
Lord Ritchie-Calder, formerly Univ. of Edinburgh, Scotland
M. L. Rosenthal, Professor, New York University
Mark Starr, Chm., Esperanto Info. Center
Mary Morain, Editorial Bd., Intl. Soc. of General Semantics
Maxine Greene, Prof., Teachers College, Columbia University
Miriam Allen deFord, author
Paul Blanshard, author
Paul Edwards, Prof. of Philosophy, Brooklyn College
Raymond B. Bragg, Minister Emer., Unitarian Ch., Kansas City
Richard Kostelanetz, poet
Roy Wood Sellars, Prof. Emeritus, Univ. of Michigan
Theodore Brameld, Visiting Prof., C.U.N.Y.
Babu R.R. Gogineni (Executive director, International Humanist and Ethical Union)
James Dewey Watson (Medicine, 1962)
Jerome I. Friedman (Physics, 1990)
Jim Herrick (Editor, the New Humanist)
Johann Deisenhofer (Chemistry, 1988)
Lloyd L. Morain
Paul D. Boyer (Chemistry, 1997)
Riane Eisler (President, Center for Partnership Studies)
Sherwin Wine (Founder and president, Society for Humanistic Judaism)
Stephen Mumford (President, Center for Research on Population and Security)
Vashti McCollum
Vern Bullough (Sexologist and former copresident of the International Humanist and Ethical Union) Warren Allen Smith (Editor and author)
Claude Allegre, Farrell Till, George Abell, Isidor Sauers,  Stanislaw Burzynski, Andrew Weil, Stephen Barrett,  Drauzio Varella. James Oberg, Jerome Clark,  Linda Howe, Michael Goudeau, Sherwin Nuland, Dean Radin, Robert Priddy, Victor Stenger, Curtis Peebles, Donna Kossy,  Gerald Glaskin, Terence Hines, James Moseley
Penn & Teller separately

Just for fun, here is my list of contributions.

World Wikipedia - 4 months later

World Wikipedia has been busy.  We are on month four of the formation of this group and moving forward. 

Here are a few updates. 

Luis Garcia Castro created the Spanish version of SkeptiCamp's page.  That really makes me smile when thinking about a grassroots group like SkeptiCamp being supported by another grassroot group.

Today, the Dutch Wikipedia group (lead by editor Rian van Lierop) launched the 7th version of Jerry Andrus, this means the page is available in English, French, Spanish, Arabic, Russian and Portuguese.

I've learned how to add info boxes to Dutch Wikipedia pages that already exist, and have had some success improving the appearance of a few skeptical pages. 

James Randi Before
James Randi After

Michael Shermer Before
Michael Shermer After

The Wendy Hughes video that explains the We Got Your Wiki Back! project has now been translated into Spanish and Dutch (plus the English subtitles). 

The French Paul Kurtz page now has some new pictures, waiting for the French team to start improving the whole page, but in the mean time there is more to look at. Same for the Polish page.

We now have an Indian Wikipedia team.  This is a unique approach we are taking, as they will be editing in English but will focus on topics more associated with India.  This group just formed and is still in the reading everything process of learning, but expect great things from them. 

One thing that came out of the formation of the group was that a page on this elderly gentleman was brought to my attention.  I spent a bit of time cleaning out most of the nonsense (maybe more will need to go).  I was amazed that he was reported to be several hundred years old, someone had even added his name to a category stating that he was born in the 900's.  Yet we know that he died in the 1970's.  I don't think so. 

I've left only one reference and am waiting to see if others come in and improve the article, otherwise this mud man's page is likely to be deleted.

Devaha Baba Before
Devaha Baba After

We also added our first Urdu editor, just waiting for him to get settled in before we start him on projects.

Nix Dorf arranged our first Google Hangout for the editors.  It was a blast but as usual we had a bunch of technical problems.  Getting those all ironed out for our second try.  Finding a time was also interesting, but really very exciting to have people from all over the world on the call. 

Nix is in Brazil
Nicola Mazbar in Atlanta, Georgia
Svetlana Bavykina in Russia
Luis García Castro in Spain
Luis Filipe Pratas in Portugal
and myself in California



If you haven't been keeping up with the World Wikipedia project, here is the blog from our 2 month anniversary. 
 

The Humanist Manifesto Project

This baby is all Lei Pinter's. Humanist Manifesto Category Page.

A couple months ago Lei came up with the idea to start a category called the Humanist Manifesto.  We got one volenteer, Terry from the UK.  Terry hadn't edited before but was game to learn how on this project.

I've been watching Terry and Lei's progress for the last couple weeks, and it looks like they have mostly finished.  I've been waiting to write this blog but keep thinking that it will be done any day now.  Finally I spent some time on Lei's Google spreadsheet tonight and decided that they won't be completely done for ages.  And not because they aren't working on the project, but because of the way that Lei organized it.  With each edit they make, the to-do list grows.

Lei and Terry have been visiting every name on the list of the three manifestos.  Some do not have Wikipedia pages which is noted on the spreadsheet.  If they do have a page, then the citation for the manifesto is added, and at the bottom of the page the category is left. 

Here is a good example of a page that now has a mention of the manifesto as well as at the bottom is a link to the category page.  Philip Warren Anderson. 

They are also looking over each page and making notes on the condition of the page, does it need a photo?  Is it a stub?  Does it need a rewrite?  And so on.

The Atlantic newsletter/blog announced yesterday that Wikipedia is almost complete, most of the big subjects like WWII, and most sports heroes are written and don't need revision.  In my opinion, Wikipedia has a lot of work left to do, just click though some of the names on this category list and you can see why I said that Lei and Terry have created a to-do list for the rest of us. 

On a sad note, the death this week of Paul Kurtz gave quite a boost of views to the manifesto's pages.  Kurtz was the writer of the Humanist Manifesto II (this page is in need of some work also by the way) and after his death was announced, his page received a few hits.  Over 18 thousand views in 5 days, when normally he would receive about 500 views in that same 5 days.  Someone else can figure out the math.

This brings on the ripple effect, we have been working on the Paul Kurtz page and thankfully we got it in shape in time for all the views. 

Humanist Manifesto had a 85% hit increase
Humanist Manifesto II experienced a 800% increase in views on one day (over the previous day) 
Humanism and Its Aspirations jumped 285% over normal





There is a lot of work remaining to be done.  Here is one that is similar to this project.  The Amsterdam Declaration from 2002,  great potential for a category page.

I would love to do the same thing Lei has done with the Manifesto, to the Project Steve list.  Maybe even contrast and compare it to the list of scientists that signed on to the creationist project.  Now that would be interesting.  All I need is you and you and you.  Contact me at susangerbic@yahoo.com if you are ready to get started.

Paul Kurtz - We Got Your Wiki Back!

Assume good faith.  Assume good faith. Assume good faith.  Assume good faith.

My mantra for today.  Wikipedia editors believe to keep the project civil we should always assume that the other editors (some from the opposite side of the fence) are also working to create the best encyclopedia possible.

This is why when I started looking further into some edits made in the last couple days on the page for Paul Kurtz I started to get a bit upset.

 -----------------------------

As you all know by now, one of the founders of the modern skeptical movement died on Saturday, Oct. 20.  I've met Dr. Kurtz several times, once for a week summer session at CFI in Buffalo.  He was one of our instructors on Naturalism.  I'm almost embarrassed to say that I had no idea what he was talking about most of the time.  I am just one of those people who can not grasp philosophy, I'm sorry if that shatters your illusions of me as an intellectual, but that's just the way it is. 

Another time was at TAM8, where one of my photo goals was to try and get a image of Kurtz and Randi together. I thought it might be difficult as they had been at odds with each other for years.  I found getting the image to be really easy as they were together often.



So when I learned about Paul Kurtz's death yesterday I went over to his Wikipedia page to make sure there was no vandalism, and to make sure it was in great shape so that when the media started to access the page to find out more about this amazing man, they would find something worth looking at.  In the back of my mind I was worried about someone with a agenda saying that he had converted to XYZ religion on his deathbed, then the media picking up on that and the next thing you know it is on the front page of some newspaper. 

First thing I noticed was that two people had spent a couple hours taking up a big chunk of the page to showcase his last project, The Institute for Secular Human Values.  Personally I don't think that an organization that has only existed for 2 years should get more prominence on the page than CSICOP which has been around for 30+ years. 

The second thing that concerned me was this sentence.  "Upon being forced out of the Center for Inquiry, by the board and management for power and control of the vast network and holdings he had envisioned, developed, managed and maintained for decades, he launched the Institute for Science and Human Values as a separate entity."

That definitely can not remain,  there is no citation to prove this statement, so it sounds just like opinion.

Assume good faith.  Assume good faith. Assume good faith.  Assume good faith.

Lei just removed another major addition to the page.  Someone added in over 2,000 characters of content, trying to prove that Kurtz was opposed to militant atheists.  While this might be true (I don't know) an edit this big and controversial needs to be discussed on the Talk page first.  And added in only after a discussion of why it is necessary and should take up a good sized chunk of the page.

At this moment I'm not that interested in knowing who these people are, I'm sure it would be easy to figure it out if someone wanted to, but I'm busy with other pages waiting to be looked after.  I'm only curious why they thought that these kinds of edits would pass unnoticed?  Do they not understand that the page might have a hundred editors watching the page? 

I'm more interested in drawing attention to the fact that we need to make sure that our skeptical spokespersons pages are always in great shape. We need to keep a good eye on this page the next few days and keep the discussion on the talk page going.  

Professor Paul Kurtz deserves better.  Not only because he was one of our founders, but because he represents us, and we him.  Now before the media starts getting the wrong impression, lets get this page in shape.  

10/23/2012
Out of curiosity just thought I would take a peek at the stat views for Paul Kurtz's page.  I almost cried.  This is why this project is so important.
  http://stats.grok.se/en/201210/paul%20kurtz

Extra credit points for the first person who sends me a news story that obviously copied the WP article.