William B. Davis ~ Page Makeover

Back in late October 2011 I wrote this article about improving William B. Davis's Wikipedia page.  I wouldn't really have cared about his stub page except for the fact that he is one of our skeptical spokespeople.  I hadn't known this before until I accidentally stumbled across an interview he gave where he credited skeptic Barry Beyerstein for introducing him to the skeptical community.  (I had Beyerstein on Google Alert which is how I discovered the interview) Once I discovered this fact, I knew I had to clean up his page.

So I looked around and added all the skeptical references I could find.  Then got my friend Brian Engler to upload a really nice image of Davis leaning on the CSICON podium.  I started making changes here and there and also contacted Davis on Facebook.

He was more than helpful.  I got all kinds of links from him as well as pictures.  Tonight I'm launching his page, along with the "before".  I think you will really be amazed at the changes.

Here is a bit of knowledge I picked up along the way.

One idea I had was to make his page a DYK page as they allow brand new pages as well as expanded stubs as candidates for the front page of Wikipedia.  What I didn't realize at the time was that by making changes to the "live" page and then waiting a few weeks and adding more and then a bit more I was taking the page out of the running.  The rule is that the page needs to expand "5 fold" and have at least 850 words (not counting citations, charts and captions).

If I had not made any changes to the page when I first approached it, and then did all the work on my user page (or sandbox) and then copied/paste/saved the page live I would have expanded the page 5-fold.  Adding bit by bit to the live page erased that condition.

Coping the page and pasting it on my user page enabled me to be able to work "off-line".  I was able to make changes to the page without having to give a reason for each change.  Also when I copy/paste/saved the page back "live" it will be with a fresh history.  Only showing the one edit where it is completely done.

Tim Farley looked the page over as well as Dustin and Lei and helped with some spelling and so on.  Tim changed the page from going to a redirect page for William Davis - Premier of Ontario page to a disambiguation page for William Davis people. 

Tim also wrote a code that kept my user page from being searchable whenever anyone typed in "William B. Davis" into a search engine.  Only people with the URL could now find the page.

I also wasn't familiar with IMDB, I looked at Martin Landau's WP page and discovered how that editor made a chart for all the film credits Landau had.  I went into "edit" and copied all the text on Landau, pasted them into Davis's page and through trial and error changed everything.  It took a long long time to type all that info into Davis's page.  In the end I learned a lot about making charts.  Learn by doing!

Another problem I ran into over and over with his film credits was that some shows had WP pages, others didn't and some "linked" to WP pages, but not the correct WP page.  I know there is a short-cut bot out there on WP that will fix these problems quickly.  But I don't know how to use it.  What I did for every title, person and place was to put the name into WP's search.  I could then make the edit for the hyperlink to go to the correct page.  (blog explaining how to do this in detail). 

The reason I went to all this trouble was three-fold.  Firstly anyone who is going to credit Barry Beyerstein with anything is going to touch a soft spot in my heart.  Secondly the whole idea of the We Got your Wiki Back! project is to make sure that when people venture over to our spokespeople's pages they can see that they have well-written and cared for pages.  Thirdly William B. Davis is famous.  He receives about 4-5 thousand hits a month to his page.  That means potentially 4-5 thousand people will be reading about Beyerstein, Skepticism, CSICOP and the critical thinking quotes that I left.  A total win for skepticism!

Not all of our spokespeople are going to make such an impact, Davis we know for sure will.  Who knows who might be next?  I'm not privy to everyones schedules.  Tomorrow Ben Radford might score an amazing interview on CNN and the world will be looking at his page, will it be ready?  Does it reflect well on skepticism? Does it appear that Radford is respected in his community?  In his case, the answer is "yes".  But so many of our spokespeople are lacking great pages.

I'm not sure where I will be focusing my Wiki eye tomorrow, but if you have a suggestion or would like to help with this project and don't know where to start, please contact me.  susangerbic@yahoo.com


William B. Davis page the first time I saw it

William B. Davis page after the We Got Your Wiki Back! project

Added Dec 25, 2011
Just finished listening to Jacob Fortin's "The Good Atheist" podcast whom interviewed Davis a few days ago.  Very funny how this interview happened and its link to the page make-over.  I'm going to submit the story to the IIG's www.theoddsmustbecrazy.com site.  Take a look.

Also took the interview with Fortin and gleaned the best quotes about Dawkins and John Mack and created a citation back to the podcast.  This is how it is supposed to work folks.   Get as much information out there for the world to follow back to our skeptical content.  We need to have each other's backs as well.   http://www.thegoodatheist.net/2011/12/22/the-good-atheist-podcast-episode-154/

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This just in.  Received this message a few minutes ago on my "talk page"

"William B. Davis is fantastic, your edits made a huge difference in quality! Nicely done! You should put it up for Good Article status! Not sure if you're aware, but there are some great article checking tools here

 

Dreadstar ☥ 19:58, 25 December 2011 (UTC)" 

That was a really welcome message.  Usually I cross my fingers whenever I see that I have a new message on my talk page, and say to myself "what did I do wrong now"?

So I followed the instructions Dreadstar gave and read everything I could find about what is a "good article" and how to nominate the page.  Apparently a Good Article is something that if approved will appear at the top of the discussion page.  Only one in every 250 WP articles are considered "good articles" (I would think that would be a bigger spread, but they are counting ALL WP pages, not just the paranormal pages I keep running into)

I nominated the page, now I wait as there is quite a back-log.  An editor will be in touch to review the page and offer suggestions to improve the page.  I guess I have 7 days from that time to make the changes.  It gets reviewed again and again and if approved then it will get the special attention as a "good article" They have a page devoted to "good articles" so it will join that.  I have the page listed under "the Arts" which is Davis's main claim to fame. 

There is an even higher honor apparently, one called the "featured article" page.  This is for pages that are the Best of Wikipedia. Only one in 100 pages are featured articles.  Guess I have some new goals for 2012.  I'm a competitive sort, and want my gold star!

Uploading images to Wikimedia Commons

Thank you to several photographers that are currently uploading images to Wikimedia Commons.  It really adds a lot to the page.  Just want to mention that my very first edit to Wikipedia as a skeptic was uploading a image of Brian Dunning I took on a JREF cruise.  Now look at me.

I find Wikimedia Commons really confusing to use when you try to do anything other than just upload an image you took yourself.  I have no idea how to edit or delete something, so I try to get it correct the first time, otherwise I just rename the file and reload it.  I'm sure I'm not the best teacher when it comes to uploading pictures.  But I'm going to try and do it anyway, at least just the basics.

Skeptic Brian Engler sprang to action when I asked if he could add some of his images from CSICON to Wikimedia, but he asked some really great questions along that journey, hopefully the answers will be of use to others. 

First question was...

"I'm always happy to share photos with our community and ask only that I be credited (Brian D. Engler) when my photos are used.  Question:  My Wikipedia edit name is not my actual name.  With it, however, I find that I can log onto WikiCommons.  If I upload photos there, though, how do I get my actual name attached for photo credit?"


My solution was for Brian to make a user page for himself on Wikimedia, that way anyone who clicks on the contributor's name will end up going to his user page.  You can add all the images and a bio to the page.  I don't have much of a user page on Wikimedia so I guess I should get on it.  But you can click on my uploads and you will get this page.

One thing Brian did to give himself photo credit was to rename himself on Wikimedia to his real name.  The only problem I can see with that is that he will have two separate accounts,  if he wants edit the image into Wikipedia then I believe he will have to sign back in under the new name.  I use the same name on Wikipedia and Wikimedia so I can move back and forth without signing in again.  I guess it might be easier to change his name on Wikipedia to his name, and then on his old user account write that he has changed his name, so Wikipedia does not think he has a sock-puppet.

Next question from Brian...

"I followed their upload steps, adding both categories and a description, but once the photo showed up I found that it was labeled "Uncategorized" and did not show the description I'd added ("Tom Flynn at CSICON in New Orleans, October 2011").  I then tried to edit and add categories, which seemed to work except they're listed now in red under "Template." I saw no obvious way to add the description."

This is a little more complicated.   Generally when something is in red then that means it is not "linked" correctly.

When you want to upload first go to the Wikimedia main page.  On the left hand side click on "upload file" it will ask you to click on "select media file to upload".  Make sure that whatever your going to upload has some kind of name and not just the numbers that your camera named it.  I'm going to select one of my favorite pictures of Mark Edward that I took in Solvang, CA last month.  Save it as a .jpg,  it does not have to be high resolution.  Find the image on your computer and select upload.  Once it has uploaded, select "complete".

Click the "this is my own work" button.  Then "next".  It should look like this. 

There is a blank box you can write in next to description. 

Here is where you can write all the information about the image you want.  Be descriptive and informative.

Now click on the blue "add categories..." link.



Start typing something in the box and it hopefully will auto-link.  It should "suggest" categories for you.  I know "American skeptics" is a category, so I'm going to type this in the box.  When you have a category you want, hit "save category".  The link should be a blue hyper-link.  If it appears in red ink, that means that the category does not exist.  Think of all the categories you can and select them all, in this case I added "mentalist" and "mentalists" and many other categories.  Generally you can look at the bottom of the WP page and see all kinds of categories.  These are case sensitive.  When you think you are done, select "next".  It will upload and you should be left with something like this.

This blog explains how to upload the image onto the Wikipedia page. 

Keep in mind that having pictures on the WP page does more than make the page look good.  It can also be a great advertisement for the event it was taken at.  Having the podium with the event's logo really helps.  Andy Ngo from the Portland Humanist Film Festival uploaded several images that I put on WP.  Here is one he did of Roger Nygard. 

Barry Karr gave me the names of several people at CSICON that did a lot of photography.  I've contacted Robert Sheaffer and Adam Isaak who are both opening up their portfolios for possible WP images.  Robert Sheaffer BTW uploaded an old image he had of Phillip Klass to Wikimedia and now his page has an image.  

Thank you again photographers.  I hope this inspires more people to look through their photo files and start uploading.  If you don't want to be the one inserting the image onto the WP page, then bring it to the attention of a WP editor like myself and maybe soon thousands of people will be viewing your image.  Don't let this become a gloating match, pictures go up and pictures go down on WP.  

EDITED November 27, 2011
Thanks to Brian Engler several WP pages have been updated with great photos.  A few of these pages were completely missing even one picture.  I referenced CSICON on the caption (as well as most of the pictures show the podium with CSICON on it).  Because there isn't a WP page for CSICON what I did was add this to each edit... What this does is make the words on the WP appear saying CSICON but when it is clicked on, the reader will be redirected to Committee for Skeptical Inquirer's WP page.  

[[CSICOP|CSICON]]

Now that CSICOP has announced that it will be having CSICON yearly, it is probably a good idea to add a reference to the event on their page.  Adding this hyperlink to these pages exposes WP readers to the CSICOP page.  What is the potential?  October 2011 showed 53,862 hits to the following pages. 

Seth Shostak
Chris Mooney
Massimo Polidoro
Bill Nye
Tom Flynn
 

Barry Karr's Wikipedia page is currently being written and not publicly launched yet.  I added one of Brian's pictures to the page for later use. 

Thank you Brian Engler.  I look forward to you looking through all your old photo albums and uploading more.  Especially helpful was the way Brian cited the images, in the description area he wrote completely the citation that was needed to insert under the image, I copied the text, changed CSICON to

[[CSICOP|CSICON]] and pasted it in. Very simple for an editor to quickly add the image and description.

Here is Brian's Wikimedia page.   

Another Edit 11/27/11

example of adding a picture to a page that already has an info box but no image.  

Here is what it looks like before I add the picture.  

 

I am only concerned with the areas for "image =" and "caption =" Now I'm going to take a .jpg from Brian's wikimedia page.  I'm copying and pasting exactly what he wrote.  

 

Now I'm going to change the CSICON in the caption to  [[CSICOP|CSICON]] so that when someone clicks on the hyperlink they will go to the CSICOP page.  



Then hit "preview" and write an reason for the edit.  Click the "add to watchlist" box so you can know if someone changes the page.  Then if you like the way it appears then click on save.  

 

In this case I'm not sure that this image is the best image for his page.  William B. Davis is not known for his work in the skeptical movement, but as an actor.  That should be the main image, but because there is no image on the page and Brian and I have William B. Davis's Wiki back this is the image that is going up.  

When we get something that better reflects his career then all the steps I just explained will be done again and this picture along with the caption will be inserted into the text somewhere on the page.  Exactly where?  You just try it out in different places, keep hitting "preview page" and seeing if you like it where it is appearing.  

When this picture is moved the edit will look just like this.  

[[Image:CSICON 2011-William B Davis.JPG |thumb|250px|William B. Davis participating in
"Skepticism and the Media" panel at [[CSICOP|CSICON]] 2011 in New Orleans ]]

If you think the image is too big or too small, try changing the number of px in the citation.  Try 100 or 150 to make the image a lot smaller.  The reader can always click on the image to make it bigger and get the specifics of who the photographer was.