Lets Talk Numbers

 

Get out there and Edit!

We are going to talk about numbers today.  We all can agree that editing Wikipedia for skeptical content is a great idea, but how can we measure results?  Do we know if people are actually accessing these sites?  I'm very interested in your opinions about the following stats.

I know that Sylvia Browne is not really performing these days, her star is fading as the criticism is rising.  The Montel Williams Show isn't promoting her anymore (in fact they were cancelled) so I would think that few people access her site.  Well just a few 11,966 looked at her page during June 2011.  I don't know how many hits Robert Lancaster got from his Stop Sylvia Site, but I would bet it would also be in the 5 digits.  Comparing June hits to her Wiki page she had 11,940 in 2008, 10,646 in 2009 and 9,681 in 2010.  So she is averaging about 10K hits in a month.  Robert if you are reading this, would you be so kind to let me know how many hits you got to your site in June of any of the above years? 

Power Balance Bracelets Wiki page was launched in Dec 2010, fairly recent but they have been getting in the news a lot lately.   Reading over the Wiki page there is almost nothing positive there.  Yeah Us!   Would you believe that 20,720 people looked at that Wiki page in June 2011?  Amazing!

I don't know how many hits we get to the IIG Wiki page from the Power Balance Wiki hyperlink, but I do know that in total 1,179 people visited the site for June 2011.  I can't access (yet) where the hits are coming from, direct from outside Wiki or because of a hyperlink left elsewhere on Wikipedia. 

If you have been following this blog you will remember my tussle for an edit on the  Lamar Odom Wiki page.  See this blog on the history of my effort to get my blurb to remain on his page.  Apparently he is a pretty popular fellow.  I had no idea how popular until now.  232,555 hits to his Wiki page just in June 2011.  Wow!

I suppose people are looking at his stats, but anyone a bit curious about Lamar will look at the section on his personal life and find these two blurbs...

On October 28, 2010 Olympic champion gymnast Dominique Dawes working for Yahoo Weekend News investigated Power Balance Bracelets for their claim that they improve balance, flexibility and strength. Odom endorses Power Balance bracelets and states on camera that "if it gives you an advantage, that's the advantage you want". Dawes asked "are you superstitious knowing you won...wearing power balance?" Odom's answer: "100%". After a scientific double blinded test done by IIG's LA office and Dawes the end result was no improvement when wearing the Power Balance bracelet.^[30]

A class-action lawsuit was filed January 21, 2011 against Power Balance, Shaquille O’Neal and Lamar Odom for endorsing the bracelet. The Power Balance company in Australia was forced by a court to admit that the $30 bracelet works no better than a placebo. The lawsuit by Brian Casserly and 100 others claims that Odom and O'Neal "wear the product in front of millions of impressionable fans watching on national TV."^[31]

Now doesn't that feel good knowing that over 200K people were exposed to Guerrilla Skepticism left on his page?  I know I feel good about it. 

Lets look at some other numbers, I'm just going to list June 2011 for no other reason except for consistency. These are all places that I've hit with some guerrilla skepticism. 

CVS Pharmacy - 9,924
Walmart - 121,493
John Edward - 21,956
James Van Praag - 6,258
TAPS - 23,277
Psychic Detectives - 493
Ghost Hunting - 11,177
Vassula Ryden - 1,238
Peter Popoff - 12,145
Harold Camping - 115,795 (with 20K hits on June 1st - 2nd)
Jenny McCarthy - 115,081 (ranked 1,950 in traffic that month) (this is a site that I didn't tag, others did)
Senator Claiborne Pell - 2,005
Wem Town Hall - 166
Stanley Hotel - 2,868
Andrew Wakefield - 9,215

Really really interesting isn't it. 

What does this all mean?  Well numbers are a great tool, you can view them in many ways.  I'm taking that these numbers mean that skeptical content is being put in the face of Wiki readers.  Are they actually reading the blurb and following the links?

That might be a bit harder to discover unless you are able to look at website stats.  Fortunately I can see the IIG stats each month.  Jan - June we averaged about 6.75% of the hits coming to www.iigwest.org are coming from Wikipedia.  Barry Karr (from CSI) checked May and June stats and they were 4% for May 2011 and 4.75% for June 2011.  Is that a lot?  It is difficult to say.  We know that people are venturing over to Wikipedia and being exposed to the skeptical content.  Only a small percent look further and actually go to the websites to read the original article, maybe their question about the person/place/thing was answered in the blurb written on the Wiki site?

It is also possible they are following other hyperlinks to explain what they are reading?

cold reading - 23,502
hot reading - 2,943
fallacy - 42,573
Occam's razor - 121,724 (ranked 2763)
conspiracy theory - 59,598
skepticism - 31.459

So how am I gaining access to all of these numbers?  I'm giving you the link at the bottom of this blog, otherwise you would not read another word.  This is an awesome toy tool that Tim Farley sent me today, I think it is going to become one of my favorite sites, use it wisely.

http://stats.grok.se/

PS.  Photo by Kevin Eldridge 








 

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.