Borley Rectory - Harry Price and Brian Dunning

I love ghost stories.  If you love ghost stories too, but also like getting the facts straight, then this is the project for you.

I came across this Skeptoid episode tonight "Borley Rectory: the World's Most Haunted House?

Were the events at Borley Rectory a real haunting, or the product of a hoaxster" and started looking into the Wikipedia pages for the Rectory as well as for Harry Price whom Dunning claims made it all up. 

 The Rectory Wikipedia page is full of stories and even a ghost picture.  The "hauntings" and "investigation" make up the majority of the article.  No mention of anything that Dunning discovered in his research.  

The Harry Price Wikipedia page is the same.  He is listed as a paranormal investigator and author.  The only mention of "hoax" was under his picture, and that was because the portrait was taken by William Hope who was a hoaxer.  (who is also listed as a paranormal investigator at his page)

There seems to be some disconnect with all these pages and the research Brian Dunning did on his article. 

Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia is just that, we need to make sure that Wikipedia is correct.  If Dunning's research is incorrect then he needs to be told and I'm sure he will retract.  If Dunning is correct then these Wikipedia pages are in bad need of an over-haul.  

I do remember listening to a much more recent episode of Skeptoid when Dunning answers the question of why he loves doing these podcasts week after week for so many years.  He mentioned the Borley Rectory episode as one of his favorites because he was able to discover that the "spirit writing on the wallpaper" was actually people writing on a roll of wallpaper spread out on a table.  He also discovered that there was no evidence of the stories prior to Harry Price.  

Reading through the comments on the Skeptoid website I noticed one from someone who lived near the Rectory that said that the current residents are sick and tired of people trampling all over their property looking for ghosts.  That is really true, these stories are fun, but real people are harmed by them.  Can you imagine living in a really neat old house and having people standing outside your windows at night with EVP recorders and tossing stones at your windows?  That just isn't right. 

Brian Dunning offers several citations on his blog showing where he got his research from.  Good skeptics should never accept anything at face value.  Science tells us we should replicate findings and see if we get the same results. 

Surely there is one lover of ghost stories out there that would like to make a project of this?  Look into Dunning's research and see what conclusion you come to, keep an open mind like all good scientists should.  If the Wikipedia pages need to be rewritten, then we will take care of that.  Just let me know what you discover. 

Skeptoid 300th Episode - PARTY PARTY PARTY

Last night I attended the 300th Skeptoid episode party, great fun!  Sometimes opportunities are too good to pass up and I managed to get some nice images even though the lighting was really awful.  The Skeptiod Wikipedia page has been updated, but still needs more attention than I have time for.  I've left a blub about the "Gypsy Queen" (listen to episode before reading my edit).  I'm relying on my memory of what happened last night and could easily have several things wrong, if you think the edit needs rewriting please do so with my blessing.

While your at it could you also add in the third Skeptoid book and help expand the article?  We really need to find secondary sources to improve the article.  This means notable places/people talking about Skeptoid.

Noticed that the talented Rachel Bloom's Wikipedia page for her Ray Bradbury video needs updating as well.  Mark Edward and I have a personal connection with the video and Bradbury so I added Mark's skeptiblog article about the experience to the External Links.  (yes I know External Links and blogs are a no-no.  If someone complains I'll quote from the article as a reference and remove the external link)  While I was on the page I did a general cleanup of all the nasty red unlinked text and moved some things around.  Bloom's page before.  Bloom has a lot of articles in the External Link area, if someone wanted to take the time to read through all the articles there should be enough content from them to expand the Wikipedia page into something more substantial.  HINT HINT

Matt Kirshen did not have a picture on his Wikipedia page, which now has been fixed.  His page now links back to Skeptoid because of the image.

I got a few other nice images from that party.  I'll hold onto them in case one of the other people at the event need pictures for their future Wikipedia pages.

The moral of this story is to continually look out for opportunities to improve Wikipedia pages.  At times it seems like something "someone else should do" or "why bother?" I'm here to tell you that we need to stop looking for someone else to do it, and get busy.  There is a lot of work to be done (its fun trust me!) But we need to show the world that our skeptical spokes people are important, they are supported and We Have Their Wiki Backs!

NOTE:  Having a party or conference?  Keep me in mind!

Congratulations Brian Dunning on your 300th episode and your future endeavors!

Project Skeptoid

Like I need another project.

In my seeming never ending quest to understand how important Wikipedia is to the skeptic community and to the world,  I selected Brian Dunning's Skeptoid podcast for an experiment. 

I choose Skeptoid for several reasons, first, I have probably listened to every episode at least once, find them informative and know that Wikipedia readers will enjoy them as well. (editing Wikipedia is all about editing pages you enjoy after all).  They are available as a podcast as well as in written form which makes it really easy to quote from.  Also Dunning is very organized with a podcast every week, and the way he has the episode guide laid out with dates and titles I was able to quickly organize in a Google Document for my own use. 

Also when I explained what I was trying to do, Dunning immediately grasped the importance and has allowed me access to his web site stats, without which I could not analyze the impact of Wikipedia posts.

Let me summarize what I'm trying to prove and then get to the numbers.

Skeptoid is a podcast/blog that analyzes many topics that usually correspond with Wikipedia pages.  Mostly they are paranormal topics (some very obscure) and a few like Darwinism are not.  He even has a few pages that discuss historical topics (which are some of my favorites). 

I discovered in a long conversation with other Wikipedia editors that Skeptiod is considered a reputable source for citations (way to go Dunning, not many podcasts can say that) when it comes to fringe topics.  But not for more common topics like the "scientist", "raw food" "SUV" and "pitbull" ones.  We actually got into it a bit and several Wikipedia editors sprang to his aid (I did not bring attention to the conversation) and championed his podcast.  One editor had the nerve to say that podcasts can't be citations because the deaf could not listen to the podcasts.  One person jumped on her comment saying how ridiculous that was and there was no policy for that, besides they pointed out Skeptoid has print as well as audio.  It was quite obvious that some of his fans are also Wikipedia editors, very heart-warming.

Several Wikipedia pages like the ones mentioned above, I tried to just add an external link to the Skeptoid article which normally was reverted by other editors.  Tim Farley explains that you should rarely leave external links, but instead add the article as a citation somehow, which are rarely reverted.  External links are notorious for Spam.  Well live and learn!  There were a few pages that already had external links, I just cleaned up the citation and left it there. Also several of his podcasts do not have a corresponding Wikipedia page to leave a citation on (like several humorous ones). 

So I copied his entire episode list into a Google document.  On one page it has every episode and date as well as the corresponding Wikipedia page that has a link.  Some of the episodes have more than one Wikipedia page, for example this episode "Orbs: The Ghost in the Camera (Skeptoid #29) - Are orbs really ghosts, or a common artifact of photography?" is mentioned on the Ghost Hunting page as well as the Orb (optics) page.  

Someone had already left some links before I entered into the picture, looks like 2006 was the last time that editor was active.  And while the citations were correct, I didn't think they looked as good as they could and maximize the amount of hits that were possible.  So I started cleaning up the links and even used a couple as examples for the Cafe Inquiry workshop to repair. 

For example the Bible Code Wikipedia page now has this...

• The Bible Code: Enigmas for Dummies - Do messages hidden within the Bible really predict the future?
   
  Skeptoid: Critical Analysis of Pop Phenomena

Whereas before it looked like this...

The Bible Code: Enigmas for Dummies

 

The Bible Code: Enigmas for Dummies

See how much more inviting this looks to the reader?  There were many examples of these short edits dating back to 2006, some were even shorter.  Not only does this look more appealing, but a reader can click on the link about the Skeptoid article as well as to the Wikipedia page for Skeptoid.

When I started Project Skeptoid in November 2011 there were 206 episodes to link to.  By the end of November there were 38 references to the podcast on the corresponding Wikipedia pages.  His hit results were 1.4% of the total views to www.skeptoid.com coming from Wikipedia.  I'm not going to tell you how many hits 1.4% is because I'm measuring this purely by percentages.  Lets just say it is several thousand views.

So I cleaned up a few of the already existing citations and added 10 more Wikipedia pages to the hit count which by the end of January 2012 became 48 Wikipedia pages.  He had been adding more episodes all this time bringing his count up to 296 episodes.  A look at his stats again and the month of January 2012 hit 1.82%. 

Remember that not all of these episodes can have a Wikipedia page, they were humor episodes or were already rejected by editors, and some were student question or listener feedback episodes which I haven't bothered trying to link to. 

As you can see, there is potential for improvement.  Several thousand readers are following the links from Wikipedia to the episode on Skeptoid.com.  These readers probably aren't normal Skeptoid listeners otherwise they would have just gone to his site.  The goal is to improve Wikipedia as well as the skeptical/critical thinking exposure to NOT the choir (you and I) but to the general public.  In this example I think it shows we are making a difference. 

In February 2012 I added a few changes and new links but I'm going to take a break from reporting numbers at least till the March or April stats are available.  I want to really make some head-way on the Google document, my goal next time I check the stats I will see 3 or 4%.  I could really use some help, please contact me if you can, I will train.  susangerbic@yahoo.com

Its a bit of an uphill battle to keep measuring against percentage of total Skeptoid.com views as the site becomes more popular he will naturally have more hits without Wikipeida.  If someone can think of a better way of analyzing these numbers I would appreciate your thoughts.

By the way,

Regular Skeptoid fans you might be interested in which Wikipedia page is causing the majority of views back to his website.

HINTS - A very cold topic, this page only has an external link to follow and it has been overwhelmingly number one for both November and January with 5% of the total hits.  This Wikipedia page receives about 130K views a month  Click for Answer.

Guerrilla Skeptism on Wikipedia ~ Podcast Outreach Project

Hello New Readers.  Welcome to Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia.  

This blog is designed for those of you who haven't been following this project since June 2011 when I went public.  I have stolen from several of my blog posts in order to make this intro to the project as simple as possible.  

Here's the pitch...

Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia is the act of inserting well written, carefully cited skeptical/scientific references into Wikipedia pages that need critical thinking, while still following the guidelines and rules to make it into everyone’s online encyclopedia. This grassroots method allows skeptics working at home the ability to contribute to the skeptical movement without personally confronting people.

Wikipedia users will find references to skeptical articles that they can follow or not. Changing a mind can be a slow process, facts stacked onto more facts. When they begin to question they will start to search the Internet for answers. Wikipedia will be there waiting for them with no eye-witness anecdotal opinions, and no one in your face telling you how stupid your beliefs are. We will go a lot farther changing minds when the person is doing their own research which will allow them to set aside their cognitive dissonance and celebrate critical thinking with a clearer mind.

We Got Your Wiki Back Project!  We need to think about what the "big picture" goal here is. When our skeptical "heroes" speak out for us in the "real world" they need the credibility of having a well maintained and cited page backing them up. Face it most people don't know who is who in the skeptical movement, Carl Sagan may be the exception but stop 10 people on the street today and ask them who James "The Amazing" Randi is and they will sadly shrug their shoulders. That's almost unfathomable to us skeptics. My point is, we don't live in the real world.  When someone turns on CNN and there is Randi talking about Sylvia Browne how many people are going to say "who is that?" a quick search on their favorite search engine and there they are on Wikipedia.  Shame on us if we don't have Randi's back. 

Working Backwards!  Often the majority of the time you spend working on an article is trying to find the references to edit into a page.  I advise to start with the article (must be reputable) read it several times, sum it up and go to a Wikipedia page that is associated with the topic and see if you will be improving the page with your edit.  Cite the article correctly and Your Done!


Podcast Outreach Project.  This is specifically aimed at you who are coming to this page today from a podcast announcement.  Some podcasts have a Wikipedia presence; SGU, Skeptoid, Skeptically, Monster Talk, Point of Inquiry and The Skeptic Zone (and others).  These podcasts need to systematically be "gleaned" through and all relevant material that can be cited from them, put on Wikipedia pages.  Other podcasts can also be used, but as they do not have a presence on WP the extra "punch" is missing. 


For example Skeptoid covers many paranormal topics that can be easily cited.  See these examples on Wikipedia;  Racetrack Playa, Joseph McMoneagle,  Remote Viewing, Dyatlov Pass incident and Betty and Barney Hill abduction.  Not only will this give the Skeptoid podcast a giant hit to the www.skeptoid.com website and give a boost to the shows reputation.  This is serious outreach to a community of people interested in the paranormal, whom may never have heard of Skeptoid.


Other podcasts like The Skeptic Zone, SGU and Skeptically do a lot of interviews in the science/skeptic community.  If the person they are interviewing also has a Wikipedia page then it is possible to glean a quote or two from the interview and insert it on that person's WP page, and give the citation to the podcast.  For one example see Mark Edward ("find on page" Mark holds an impromptu séance for Michael Jackson).  The SGU has done hundreds of interviews and lists several of the more prominent people on their WP page.  But  these interviews are not all on that person's page giving reverse hits back to the SGU page.  Yet another example, Seth Shostak from SETI gets 1,000 hits a month to his WP page, those viewers may not know he is also associated with the skeptic community.  The SGU interview could be mentioned on his WP page, sending potentially 1,000 extra viewers to their WP page.  

Specific podcasts cannot directly appeal to you (listener and fan) to edit Wikipedia in their behalf.  They can appeal to you to edit Wikipedia for skeptical content, and also to get in touch with me personally at susangerbic@yahoo.com where I can help you learn how to edit and do so in an organized systematic way.   This project is very important to gaining more positive exposure to skepticism as a movement and community.  I only want you to edit topics that you are interested in and probably would be reading/listening to anyway.  I will direct you on how to do this the most efficient way possible.  I am offering to train you how to edit if you need that kind of help, even virtually hold your hand while you learn.   


If working on podcasts does not interest you, but editing Wikipedia for skeptical content does, this blog has hundreds of ideas for beginning to advanced editors to get started.  My offer of help is for anyone needing advice or training. 



Thank you for reading this far.  I hope you this will be a perfect fit for you as a way of becoming involved in the skeptical movement.  We so badly need your help.  You can work from home in your pajamas with a cat in your lap. You can edit like a crazy person for days, then drop off the Internet for months when you are busy IRL and then pick up editing again when you have time again.  This project is made for you. Welcome.




Thank you, 
Susan Gerbic

Brian Dunning "Start with Wikipedia"

Just found a nice article by Brian Dunning from 2007 about Wikipedia.  While the topic is about finding good quality journal articles, he quickly moves into his opinion, "start with Wikipedia."

Many Wikipedia articles end up being the closest thing to an authoritative consensus that we have on a given subject. Each article continually improves over time until it becomes what Wikipedia describes as the "ideal" article: "balanced, neutral and encyclopedic, containing notable, verifiable knowledge."

Note that I'm no doubt going to be criticized for pointing laypeople toward Wikipedia as a starting point for research, mainly due to the usual criticisms of Wikipedia. But, as I said before, Wikipedia's weakness is also its strength, and I do stand by this recommendation, especially for laypeople of a given subject who don't otherwise have the experience to choose a good starting point.