Happy Third Birthday GSoW!

Life is good.

Here is a birthday video courtesy of our Portuguese team leader Nix Dorf.  Make sure you continue reading after with the most recent May and June page improvements.  Thank you all for your support. 

 

Péter Érdi - now translated into Hungarian by Peter Mogyoros

Tudományos szkepticizmus (Scientific skepticism) - complete rewrite in Hungarian by Attila Hartai

Gábor Hraskó - new page created by the Hungarian team

Neil deGrasse Tyson - new Hungarian page for our favourite astrophysicist, by Laura Csécsi and Attila Hartai

Erich von Däniken - expanded in Hungarian by Attila Hartai

Chemtrail - expanded in Hungarian by Attila Hartai

Faye Flam - Richard 

Death from the Skies! - rewritten by Peter Trussell  Before and After

Narendra Dabholkar - Svetlana Bavykina translated to Russian

Anne Nicol Gaylor - brand new page created by Sean Whitcomb

Floris van den Berg - Leon Korteweg had written this page in Dutch years ago and now has translated it into English with the help of Luke.

Marci Hamilton - rewritten by Michael Bigelow - Before & After

Terry Smiljanich - rewritten by Bill - Before & After

Nathan Phelps - now translated to Russian by Svetlana Bavykina and Jelena Levin

The 10:23 Campaign page now has been translated into Dutch thanks to Wim Vandenberghe & Leon Korteweg

New Atheism page has gone through an edit war for several months over on the Dutch WP, but Leon and Emile Dingemans stuck it out and got their changes to stick.

Comité Para is now in Dutch thanks to Leon, Rik and Emile

De Kennis van Nu Radio - in Dutch - Leon Korteweg

Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science in Dutch - Leon Korteweg

Gerrit Hendrik van Leeuwen - In Dutch - Emile Dingemans

Jan Willem Nienhuys' stub was greatly expanded in Dutch by Emile: Before & After

Merseyside Skeptics Society - In Dutch - Leon and Wim

Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science - In Dutch - Tijmen, Leon

The history section of Scientific Skepticism has been expanded by Leon and Luke in English: Before & After. Thereafter the entire page was translated to Dutch by Leon and Rik

SGU - Skeptics Guide to the Universe - now in Dutch thanks to Vera and Leon

Skeptical Inquirer magazine is now in Dutch - Leon

Barry Karr - Susan Gerbic

Vasolastine received a rewrite in Dutch by Emile

What's the Harm? is now in Dutch - Leon and Emile

Wonder en is gheen wonder in Dutch by Leon and Emile

Steve Novella rewrite - Jim Preston & Kyle Hamar - Before & After

Astronomical Society of New South Wales - new page created by Greg Neilson

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Just in case you have missed them here are some notable mentions GSoW has been involved in.  

Susan interviewed on Skeptically Challenged podcast 

Portuguese blog written by Nix Dorf

Susan on Skepticule Podcast with Paul, Paul and Paul

David Gorski Blog about Frustrated Paranormal People on Wikipedia
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T-shirts

Conference season is upon us! Looking to show your support of the GSoW team? Wear one of these new T-shirts, available at EvolveFish.com, to show your support for our project.

Order here
(use coupon code "GSoW" for 10% off your order!)

Special thanks to Kyle Sanders of Carbon Dating for the design!

Use your Lists!

Part of the "We Got Your Wiki Back" Project

Lists dominate my life.  My boss teases me that I write things on my to-do list that I have already completed just so I have the pleasure of being able to cross it off.  Maybe he is right, I do like lists.  I like to know where I've been and where I need to go next.

I have discussed a ton of projects to be done with  Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia as well as the "We Got your Wiki Back" project, that I'm almost thinking I should back down on adding more items to the list.

Almost.

This blog is about how to use lists to our advantage.  Maybe writing blurbs isn't your thing. Maybe your just starting out and want something simple to do, but still important.  Got just the thing for you.

Start with your favorite skeptical journal/magazine whatever.  Usually in the front of most of these magazines there is a list of people who are fellows of that organization.  JREF, Skeptical Inquirer, Skeptic Magazine and probably many more.  Probably choose the most recent publication so you have a current list.

In Skeptic Magazine I've found a list of people who are on the Editorial Board.  Looking up a random name "Gregory Forbes" I am able to find his Wikipedia page.  This page is a stub, badly maintained, hardly any information and clearly no picture.  Shame on us.  How will the general public view this man if he becomes a spokesman for skepticism today?  Even if he does not speak out for skepticism but still appears in the media readers are going to go to his page and not find a single mention of Skeptic Magazine.

Here is all we know about Gregory Forbes

Dr. Greg Forbes (born 1950) is The Weather Channel's current severe weather expert and has a significant research background in the areas of severe storms and tornadoes.
Born and raised near Latrobe, Pennsylvania, Forbes earned a Bachelor of Science degree in meteorology at Pennsylvania State University. He studied tornadoes and severe thunderstorms at the University of Chicago, where he obtained his M.S. and Ph.D. There, Dr. Forbes studied under famous tornado scientist Ted Fujita and his thesis was regarding the 1974 Super Outbreak where he and Fujita made researches in areas hardest hit to help determine which thunderstorms can spawn the most intense tornadoes. It was by then, he discovered that the hook echo can produce the strongest tornadoes.
He has taught such classes as Severe Storms Seminar and Computer Applications in Meteorology at Pennsylvania State University before moving to The Weather Channel in Atlanta. He continues limited research and was on the development team of the Enhanced Fujita Scale which in 2007 replaced the original Fujita Scale from 1971.

That's it.  I just grabbed a random name off a list and this is what I found.  

Now lets take SI magazine.  Front cover of March/April 2011 shows a long list of fellows.  Lets pick another random name from the list.  "Jere Lipps" who was one of the first people I met when I went to my first "conference" in San Jose, CA in 2000.  I have never looked at Jere's Wikipedia page, but apparently he does have one.  Well guess this is where we stand on his page

He has been elected a fellow of eight organizations and serves on the board of directors of Micropaleotology Project and the Cushman Foundation.

Not a single mention that he has been actively involved in the skeptical movement and is a Fellow for CSI.  Why?

Have you heard about Project Steve?  Stirling, my son loves his Steve shirt and I've looked at it many many times and thought "very clever".  That shirt contains a list of 1,000 Steve and Stephanie scientists that support Evolution.  One quick blurb that links to Project Steve Wiki page as well as the National Center for Science Education website would be all it takes. I randomly looked for these people on Wikipedia and didn't find a page for any that I selected.  As we do find these pages a quick copy/paste of the blurb and citations you have already written would suffice.  Also check to see if they are on the American skeptic list of people.  (I just added Jere Lipps page, now we are up to 95 American Skeptics)

Looked at Stephen Jay Gould's Wikipedia page.  No mention of Project Steve on his page.  Just looked at his "Discussion" page and still no mention of it.  The reason why it is called Project Steve is because of Stephen Jay Gould.  Wow!  At least he has a picture. 

I'm sure you have your favorite lists.  Please help out this project if only by supplying ideas of lists we can use to get more skeptical content onto Wikipedia.

Susan

General Overview and Plea for Help

We know that shouting and being in people's faces about their lack of critical thinking does not work.  It might make you feel superior for the moment but really belittling people about their beliefs is only going to force them to "circle their thinking wagons" and just defend their beliefs more.  When they can go onto sites like Wikipedia and see a well written blurb about their favorite woo or paranormal belief they might just get curious and start reading links on cold-reading and other methods, maybe even follow the footnote to the actual article.  Once on that site they might look around at other articles and so on...   People change their minds when THEY get to do the research and THEY make the decision that what they once believed is no longer making sense to them.  Wikipedia (which is going to be one of the first hits they receive when searching for a word/phrase/person on the Internet) is the place to facilitate that experience.


Most of us came about becoming skeptics in this same fashion (not necessarily through Wikipedia which has only been around 10 years) but by questioning our beliefs through discussion with ourselves and others.  Articles, TV shows and other media play a big part in getting the conversation going.

Originally I had written this introductory post explaining the overview and philosophy of Guerrilla Skepticism for the JREF TAM committee.  They asked if I would write a blog post that they would put up on their site.  I did so and was selected to present a paper at the Sunday morning session at TAM9 Las Vegas July 2011.  I then decided to pull the blog article from this site so as not to conflict with the blog they were going to be putting up.


I started this personal blog after giving two lectures one at SkeptiCamp: Fort Collins, Colorado in February, and at SkeptiCalCon in Berkeley Memorial Day weekend 2011.  I get a lot of questions about what I'm doing and how can people help.  This blog answers all kinds of those questions.  How you can help is easy.  Just comment on this blog so we can get started.  I could make this a 40 hour work week job for the rest of my life and still not get caught up.

We need lots of help.  I can show you how to edit if you need that kind of help.  (First you need to make an account on Wikipedia).  We need people who are great at writing blurbs for articles that are well cited (this means journal articles, newspaper articles, magazines ect...)  I say start backwards by finding your source first that fits all the Wikipedia requirements and then look at places to put it on, write your blurb and citation and place it in as many locations as possible.

If you don't want to edit Wikipedia you can just work on writing the blurbs.  I read an SI article on the plane yesterday and wrote the blurb on the page of the magazine.  Now all I have to do is type it out, cite it and paste it in.

We need photographers to get to the skeptic pages and update with current images.  Events as well as portraits.  I think we need a whole blog just on this subject which I will get to soon.  Photographers don't need to actually post the pictures on the Wiki site but they will need to open an account on WikiCommons and upload the image and make it available to editors.

People to correct my grammar and spelling before posting it on Wikipedia are easy to find.  I have found having over 1,000 Facebook friends rather helpful.  I get instant feedback on any problems.  Then I can go in and make the changes to my blurb and post.

Barry Karr from Skeptical Inquirer Magazine and I have been having an on-going conversation about a comment that Dr. Eugenie Scott (yes that Eugenie Scott!) made during my lecture at SkeptiCalCon.  She said that SI magazine does not have 100% of its print articles on-line for people to link to.  Barry's concern is that he needs to sell magazines and if the entire content is on-line why would people want to subscribe to a print magazine?  Good point.  I'm not in the business of selling magazines, I just want people to find the article on-line.

So what he proposes is for us to begin by going to the http://www.csicop.org site and find an article we want to write about and then place the link in the Wikipedia article.  That way we know that the article is on-line.  I think this is brilliant and where we should tackle first (working backwards remember).

If you look at my "tag" on Vassula Ryden's page you will see that the footnote does not go to a on-line link.  Only to a print magazine reference.  Most people will just stop there and not research further.  I'm sure if we ask Barry nicely he will put up specific articles like Joe Nickell's on Vassula Ryden.  But in the mean time we should try doing articles that are already on-line.

Barry was pretty excited about the "tag" I put up on Walmart's massive page concerning their support of homeopathy. (See my blog for discussion on this event) He says he "likes the idea" of what we are doing and would like me to write an article for the online version of SI.  Of course I would love to do so but will have to wait until after TAM9 so as not to step on the JREF toes that got me first.

BTW I keep giving SI examples to work on and there are thousands that need to be done.  But that does not mean that is the only area to tackle.  We have many many science and skeptic journals that relate to pseudoscience topics.  Plus we need to keep up our support of those scientists/skeptics who are on the front lines writing the articles and educating people on critical thinking. 

Barry has informed me that CSI gets about 4% of its hits from people following links from Wikipedia.  I'm really glad we have a starting number and with some effort I'm sure we can make that percentage rise.  The IIG gets about 6% of its hits to www.iigwest.org from Wikipedia.  The number has risen from about 5% when I started.  IIG receives most of its hits from UFO Wiki sites on Billy Meyer.  Our Wiki UFO articles have been translated to Japanese as we get the majority of hits from Wiki Japan.  Guess that makes sense.

Anyway, I'm going to "launch" this blog now that I'm over 10 articles.  I'm sure you will get the drift of what I'm advocating by just reading through the blogs.  The skeptical community really needs your help on this.  If you have the desire to reach out and do something that will really make a difference please consider getting involved in this project.

Welcome

Wem Town Hall Ghost on Wikipedia

Here is another example of working backwards.

Never heard of this place or the ghost but while reading through a Skeptical Inquirer article I found this really great investigation into the ghost photo of a burned out building in the town of Wem. The investigation felt that the ghost girl might have been edited into the picture as a hoax but didn't have the final proof. A sharp eyed reader of their local newspaper saw a resemblance of the ghost girl to an postcard from 1922 of the city street that had a young girl (very alive in 1922) standing on the sidewalk.

Investigator Blake Smith did an awesome job comparing the two images and there is no doubt that the ghost photo was a fake. All this appears in Skeptical Inquirer Magazine along with all the photo evidence needed.

The Wem Town Hall Wikipedia page was not without skeptical comment when I started editing. Someone had already posted a blurb and citation about the newspaper article reporting on the ghost and a investigation. I added to the blurb and included the citation to the article in SI.

No one has bothered to edit the page or comment. But it was a simple edit on a topic I would have probably forgotten about. Sometimes Guerrilla Skepticism is just that easy.