Igwe - Prothero - Maher - MAAF - McCollum

So what do all these have in common?  They have a new face on Wikipedia. 

Vashti McCollum 

Not sure how this slipped off my radar but somehow this page re-write by Lei Pinter from last year never got the attention it deserves.  This was a lot of work, records on Vashti McCollum (the person) from notable sources were difficult to come by.   She tried to get a photo released by the family but couldn't make that happen. Possibly one of the GSoW readers might be able to help us out? 

Anyway, Lei tells a terrific story of a woman who faces off with the government over religious instruction in her son's school in the mid-1940's in Illinois.  We skeptics should be ashamed at the condition Lei found the page in before she started working on it.  Is this how we treat our representatives?  If we don't show them respect, why should we expect people outside our community to show them respect?  Thanks to Lei and the GSoW team, we now have McCollum's Wiki Back.

 

Leo Igwe

This page was in very sorry shape when Vera de Kok first took it on as you can see here. Brian Engler uploaded an image he took at TAM 2012.  Then Nathan Miller finished it up with a total re-write.  Much improved, great teamwork all.  Current Page

The Igwe release hit the front page of Wikipedia as a Did You Know in Feburary.  For regular followers of this blog you know that getting the front page for 8 hours is a big deal.  An extra effort is required to make it happen, and only brand new pages (no more than 5 days) or newly expanded pages within 5 days of its re-release are given that honor.  When I say expanded, I mean really expanded.  When you look at the before and after of Igwe's page you will see what I mean.  Only well-written and scrutinized articles are allowed.

The Igwe page received 3,607 views on that day.   That is about 3,550% above what is normal for page views.

That number is only a part of the story.  Igwe's article discusses other human rights groups doing similar work.  During the DYK for Igwe's article, the pages for Stepping Stones Nigeria received a 1,652%  daily increase.  That's a measurable effect to show how well we are raising awareness. The article on Witch Children in Africa, which receives virtually no traffic, received 4,339 visitors during that day.

Skeptical organizations receive extra attention from these Did You Know?  features as well. The Center For Inquiry article's daily traffic spiked by 33%, and daily visits to the James Randi Educational Foundation article grew by 20%.

Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers

Frederick Green along with some help from the team took on the rewrite of the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers page.  Here is the before  and now the after.

Because we expanded the article enough we were able to ask for a DYK, which appeared on the front page of Wikipedia on March 10, 2013.  Stats show a spike of 2,565 views.

The hook we used was this one... DYK ... that the Military Association of Atheists & Freethinkers provides "atheists in foxholes" with advocacy, community and education?

The atheists in foxhole page received 1709 views when normally it receives about 250 each day.

Donald Prothero

Everyone seemed surprised that Don Prothero did not already have a Wikipedia page, and once I started reading through Lei Pinter's drafts I can see why.  This man was long ago deserving a page.

We secured a Did You Know for Prothero also.  In the wee hours of the morning for America this appeared on the front page of Wikipedia.  DYK... that Stephen Jay Gould once called Donald Prothero "the best punctuated equilibrium researcher on the West Coast"?"

Prothero's page received only 1,120 views (probably because of the timing of the DYK).  Gould's page received a 50% increase in views, and the punctuated equilibrium page spiked with a 300% increase.

Bill Maher 

No, I didn't rewrite Bill Maher's Wikipedia page.  This is a example of working backwards, and guerrilla skepticism on Wikipedia.  I finally got around to watching Jamy Ian Swiss's lecture from TAM 2012.  In this video he talks about what scientific skepticism is.  I thought it was a good definition and would improve readers understanding of the term.  So I went to the scientific skepticism Wikipedia page and left a quote and citation to the video.  That one edit will expose the Swiss video (and the Swiss WP page) to 100K readers each year.  (note: the Swiss video on the JREF channel currently has 7,687 views.  If someone wanted to check back periodically, they could tell if there is a noticeable increase in views from today)

But this does not explain why I'm talking about Bill Maher.   In his video, Swiss goes on a awesome rant and calls Maher (an)  "anti-science, anti-vaxer, dangerous ignoramus, promoting toxic anti-scientific nonsense that kills people!"  That quote is just too good to waste.  So I ventured over to Maher's WP page and saw that the majority of the page is positive.  A man this popular and controversial needs a criticism section.  But this isn't a simple edit that just any editor of WP is going to be able to place without some problems.  So I made my intentions known on the Maher talk page, then went to my GSoW team and asked for more critical (and scholarly) citations from notable people. 

I got several suggestions and started to compile a list.  One of these citations wouldn't be enough alone, but several all together shows that there is a concurrence within the scientific skepticism community that Maher's anti-vax propaganda is dangerous.  So I added a criticism section to the Maher page.  Here is the page as I left it that night.

It took a few hours before other editors (not on the GSoW team) toned down my edit.  Swiss is quite aggressively verbal, as are others like Gardner who said, he (Gardner) was happy that Maher did not have children of his own that he could kill.  The rules dealing with living persons on Wikipedia are written so someone can't quote mine and attack.  The editors were quite right that the page is improved as it exists today.  They also changed my edit from anti-vax to anti-vaccination (which one of the GSoW editors also suggested) to make it clearer to readers.  

Also in the lede, before I got a hold of the page, the part in the second paragraph said... "He is also a critic of religion and is an advisory board member of Project Reason, a foundation to promote scientific knowledge and secular values within society."  I thought that was too wordy, and that the editor who wrote this was trying to infer that Maher was very sciency.  So I took off everything after the words "Project Reason."

The reason why I say this was working backwards, is because I was starting with a good citation from a notable person/place and then I took a look around WP and found a place to leave it.  Just the opposite of what most editors do.  Trust me this is much simpler to do this way.

This is guerrilla skepticism,  it is getting our skeptical message into areas that it wasn't before.  In ways that are non-traditional and mole-like.   

So to review, Maher's page now has citations for the SGU podcast, the JREF Swiss video and David Gorski's blog on ScienceBlog.  There are hyperlinks to many of our resources that were not there before, Steven Novella, Jamy Ian Swiss, Paul Offit, David Gorski, ScienceBlogs and Martin Gardner.   In the footnotes, beside each citation I have hyperlinked to the SGU, CSICOP and JREF.  

Time will tell if these edits I left will have any influence on changing minds.  It is too early to tell if people will click on the hyperlinks and discover our spokespeople and organizations.  I'm sure most people don't read through an entire Wikipedia page, they look for what they need and move on.  

But we have to try.  If I had just shared the Swiss video on my Facebook or Twitter timeline, it would have only reached about 2K people, and maybe only 20 people would click on the link and watch the video.  Then my "update" would move on and no one would notice it again. 

Leaving these edits, will expose people who are not necessarily in the skeptic community to the video/podcast/blog.  And not just for some arbitrary moment on a Facebook feed.  But every day, every month, every year (as long as they aren't removed).  And how many potential views are we talking about?  I'll leave you to play with this graph, but at the time of this writing the Maher page is receiving about 100K views each month.  Over a million views each year.  Quite a sizable difference from the 20 +/- views it would have received on my Facebook feed.

I wonder if Maher had been following the changes to his Wikipedia page?  He came out with this while I was writing this blog.  Religion, it's like Wikipedia. 

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Now, I hope I've whet your appetite.  This is powerful stuff.  We need your help, there are thousands of edits just waiting to be added into Wikipedia, maybe even hundreds of thousands of edits.  And hundreds of pages that need to be created or rewritten.  We need people who are good at proof-reading, and people who can improve the basic edits we leave.  Researchers, current editors, people willing to caption videos and so much more.  And it needs to happen in English and other languages.  We aren't looking for a handout, we don't want your money.  We want your time, we want your attention.  We train, we mentor,  please join this most powerful and important project.  

Write to me at susangerbic@yahoo.com if you have questions.  Or friend me on Facebook or twitter.  We are all busy people, my work-load would make your head spin, but this is important, what are you waiting for? Join us.  

How to categorize people on Wikimedia Commons

Hi, I'm Vera and I've been helping Susan and the rest of the group out in getting around on Wikimedia Commons, the media database the Wikipedia projects relies upon. I've written here before about how to transfer files from Flickr, and how the OTRS system works, today I'm going to tackle categories. I thought this was a good idea since Susan requested everyone to send in portraits last week.

Just like Wikipedia, files and pages on Commons are categorized, but unlike articles where categories are often an after though, they form the back bone of this project. This because there is no text that can link to other articles, so you often have to rely on the categories to find what you are looking for.

Please note: categories aren't tags. When you've added a file to say “Atheists from the United States”, there is no need to also ad “Atheism” or “Atheist”. The trick is to add the lowest level category as possible. Categories have a structure, for example:

Like this there is a huge tree structure on Wikimedia Commons, making all people in the end categorized in a subcategory of Homo Sapiens, even Kent Hovind.

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.   
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 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

Ken Feder - Sara Mayhew and More Updates

So many updates to the Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia project.   In case you missed it, here were the updates a couple weeks ago. 
 
 The Portuguese team is really working hard with several new pages coming out soon.  They are not included here because they can't release the pages yet.  The problem is that the Portuguese Wikipedia has different rules concerning YouTube videos than anywhere else we can discover.  YouTube is banned.  Nix Dorf figured out that he has to ask an admin permission to review and release each individual video so that it can be included in an article.  Very frustrating as they seem to have few admins working.  I'm dying to show you all these releases and hopefully I will be able to do so soon.

With the addition of new editor Jason Grant (who heard about this project on the Skeptic Zone interview I did with Penny Chan) we now have added Japanese to our World group.  That makes 17 languages! 

We have had some skeptical love recently, thank you to everyone who is helping to get the word out.   We have appeared on Jeff Wagg's Skeptoid Blog, Bob Carroll's Skeptic Dictionary newsletter, Skepticality Podcast 1 and 2, Sharon Hill's Doubtful News, Dani Johnson on Skeptoid Blog, and finally a big interview with me on Meet the Skeptic podcast.  Please give these a read or listen and support those that support us.

One really great thing happened as a result of the drama in the skeptical community (if you don't know what I'm talking about, be thankful and ignore it).  A group of people in Minnesota Skeptics have finally had it.  They are tired of all the fighting and nastiness and were looking for a project they could get involved in that makes real differences in helping people outside our little bubble of community.  

Jenny McCarthy

I'm sure you all heard about Jenny getting canned from a exercise festival in Canada. I know I saw the link being posted all over Facebook.  All great that we are informing the skeptical choir and patting ourselves on the back for making this happen, but we aren't done until we have let her supporters know what happened. They only are reading her tweets and getting the story from her.  When you have a reliable secondary citation like we have in this case, its no good wasting it. 

On Luke Freeman's lunch (he said this entire edit took him 20 minutes to finish) he updated the page with these sentences...  

In early 2013, the Ottawa Regional Cancer Foundation dropped their plans to have McCarthy headline^[49] their Bust a Move charity fundraiser^[50] because of criticisms^[51][52] of her using her celebrity status to promote views "considered dangerous by most of the medical establishment". ^[53] While McCarthy posted on Twitter that she had to "pull out" due to a "taping conflict", the event organiser Linda Eagen stated that they had to "negotiate a financial settlement with her [McCarthy's] representatives to get out of the deal" in an interview.^[53] 

 I'm sure that cost the charity fundraiser quite a penny.  Great work Jenny, I'm sure you need that money.

Oh yeah, almost forgot.  How many people each month are accessing Jenny's WP page?  Make a guess, then double that.... still wrong.  Stats for Jan 2013. 


Louisiana Science Education Act

My friend Deborah Warcken  pointed out that the Louisiana Science Education Act WP page has been getting vandalized quite a lot.  I've never heard of it, but went over to take a look.  So did one of our week-old editors.  Wim Vanderberghe (who also edits in Dutch and Swedish)  

He made some positive changes to the article as you can see in on the left side of this link.  What I'm showing you is a "diff/cur" link.  We use these all the time so we can quickly see changes to an article.  Probably more still needs to be done, but for a quick fix I think Wim did a great job.  This page is now on our watchlists to keep it vandalism free.

Just in case your interested in some major back and forth between skeptic and believers, check out the talk page for the Act.   


Whole Body Vibration

Editor Rick Duffy did some serious chopping to the Whole Body Vibration WP page.  All Rick's changes are on the right side of this URL.   Here are the Jan 2013 page views stats.

Psychic

Being vigilant is ever needed on Wikipedia.  We have watchlists (we add pages of interest to our watchlist by clicking on the empty star on the upper right side of a WP page) but as these lists grow (mine has over 100 pages on it) and sometimes things slip through.  This is why we need more editors.  One that slipped through was on the psychic page.  This sentence seems to invite people to add names of their favorite psychic, 

"Some famous contemporary psychics include Miss Cleo, John Edward, and Sylvia Browne."

I discovered that three names were added, Danielle Egnew whose WP has now been drawn to my attention (and on the to-do list) as well as these two people Michael and Echo Bodine, who are so unfamous that they don't even have a WP page. 

This was a simple edit, and Chris Pederson who has been editing exactly one day was able to fix this quickly.  I think her comment was something like "that was simple and I didn't blow the Internet up." 
 
Homeopathy 

On my last blog about Jimmy Wales and Homeopathy I received this comment.  

"We need to remove the emotionallly manipulative test from the homeopathic page on wikipedia. Unbiased information sources are the root of any good research and wikipedia disqualifies itself from that because of it's bissed agenda. It is very easy to see. What is not easy to see is that the people most against homeopathy simply do not have the mental capacity to understand the principles behind it. That is what is really going on here. - Peter"

Again proving that Wikipedia is strong and on the front lines of fighting against bad research, opinions and anecdotes.  We have to be vigilant, and we need more editors to do so.

Homeopathy page view stats for January 2013.

Sara Mayhew

The Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia team has a very long (and growing) to-do list.  I made an effort the first of 2013 to try and clean it out.  You might have seen the Stuart Firestein page that was created from scratch, we also got it featured as a Did You Know? for 8 hours on the front page of Wikipedia.

At the same time I was writing the Firestein page, I also created the page of Sara Mayhew.  We don't have the to-do list in any special order, we work on what intrigues us, and also pages that we think we will have no problem finding the citations to complete the project.

I have many pages sitting in User:sgerbic Wikipedia heaven, waiting for inspiration and/or citations.  When we re-write a page, we copy the current page to our semi-private user page and work till its done.  When we have finished it, then it goes to the team, they work on it for awhile and eventually we contact the "target" if we can.  This helps us fact check everything and then get photos uploaded.

That is a lot of work, which is why it takes us some time to get these pages turned out, and the reason I'm always asking for more editors.  (we train)

So this brings me to the release of a brand new page, Sara Mayhew.  She was a joy to work on, having a young career, all her citations are on-line.  Much more difficult for people who came of age in our world pre-Internet.  Sara also allows us to tie in with the Manga and Anime world, people who might not be aware of skeptics.  When her fans look her up they will be exposed to ideas and citations that they hopefully will read.  A major win for us. 

I only managed to get half-way through Sara's page.  One of our brand new editors, Nathan Miller picked up the gauntlet and ran with it.  He finished listening to all the interviews and videos he could find and cleaned up my rambling efforts.  Nathan informed me that he looked at a lot of Manga author pages and Sara's is far superior to most of them.  This is what I mean when we have her Wiki back.

One more think I want to point out.  I noticed that one of the citations Nathan added was giving us a red WOT warning circle.  I looked and discovered it was Sara's own "Love Pet" page that was receiving this warning.  Web of Trust is a crowd-sourced rating system for positive/negative experiences you might have with a web site.  A green WOT means that the page has been rated as safe and trustworthy.  Love Pet had been rated as a negative page.

It was really suspicious why this happened, no comments were left, just negative scores.  Nathan thinks it might have been a spam bot that caused the problem.  I don't know, but after posting the problem on my Facebook page, many people went to Love Pet's page, looked around and found nothing untrustworthy or unsafe, and were able to vote the page back into a positive green WOT.  That is really community.  



Kenneth Feder

Way back when I was getting my BA (2002) I was required to take a archaeology class to finish off my degree.  It was all just general information, but lots of fun.  We were assigned to read Kenneth Feder's book Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries: Science and Pseudoscience in Archaeology.
Feder made learning about weird pseudoscience topics really fun.  But one thing bugged me, and that was his use of using B.C. and A.D. for dating. Professor Mendoza urged me to write to Feder and ask about it.  I was skeptical, never having approached an author before. (except the time I got a book autographed by Beverly Clearly when I was 10) But I sent him an email anyway, and surprise he wrote back!  I can't remember what he said, something about wanting to use the dating method that most students would understand, so he wouldn't alienate them to the bigger topic, understanding pseudoscience.  Anyway, I was thrilled that someone as important as An Author would write back to Ms. Nobody in Salinas, CA. 

So fast forward to 2013.  Someone added Ken Feder to the very long to-do list that exists in hiding for the Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia team.  His page as it existed on Wikipedia was very sad and lonely.  No photos and it had that ugly "stub" tab on it.  See for yourself. 

The way we work on these pages is mainly out of site of Wikipedia readers.  We copy whatever exists on the live Wikipedia page, and paste it onto a "sandbox" or a "user page". Then work and work and work on it.  Listen to every interview and article we can find on our target.  Then the page goes to the Guerrilla Wikipedia team for more ideas.  I discovered while researching Feder that he had been interviewed twice on MonsterTalk podcast, I'm friends with Blake Smith and Ben Radford so getting Feder's email was easy.  The next thing I knew, I was talking to Ken Feder again and asking for him to upload images.

Working with a team as we do really improves the experience of Wikipedia editing.  I might have started the Ken Feder page, but several other editors contributed to cleaning it up and finding more references, mainly Nathan Miller and Jerry Buchanan.

It all happened so quickly.  We got his page re-write off our to-do list, but in the meantime we have added many more.  I guess it is just job security.

If your ready and have already looked at the before... here is the after - Kenneth Feder.

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So I hope I have wet your appetite for getting involved in something so important to getting critical thinking out beyond the skeptics.  From feedback I'm getting from new editors, I need to be clearer with my plea for new editors.  Friend me on Facebook and let me know in a PM that you are interested in the project.  You can also email me at susangerbic@yahoo.com if you are more comfortable doing so, but eventually you are going to need to be placed in one of several Facebook groups.  

Also I want to be clear, we train and mentor.  We are not going to allow you to "blow up the Internet" and all your first edits are watched and reviewed.  Depending on your skill level and confidence we may have you correcting commas and spelling errors to start with.  Nothing wrong with that, most people start that way.  Some people move right in and start on more difficult edits, we don't care, just come join us. 

I've also learned that it takes multiple pleas from me before people join the project.  So pardon me if I continue to harp on the subject.  But we badly need you.  Please consider joining with us to change people's minds on the 5th most popular Internet web site World-Wide.
 

Homeopathy - An open letter to Jimmy Wales

One of the Guerrilla Skepticism editors (Vera) turned me on to this awesome article about homeopathy.  The author is Jimmy Wales.  In case you don't know, Jimmy Wales is the founder of Wikipedia. 

Apparently Wales feels that homeopathy is a scam and taking it instead of real medicine is dangerous. He wants to know what can be done about homeopathy.

Then he writes that the homeopathy Wikipedia page editors have "eloquently explain[ed] what this means: "Mathematically, in order to have a reasonable chance to obtain one molecule of the original extract, the patient would have to consume an amount of the remedy roughly 10^321 times the number of atoms in the observable universe."

Right on Wikipedia editors!  We spend a lot of time trying to get the article as close to perfect as possible.  Just take a look at the "talk" tab (located on the right upper side of the page) and you can see the never-ending discussion about everything.  The discussion on whether or not to have the word "quackery" in the lede went on for months. There are several homeopaths that frequently engage in the discussion on talk, so the discussions get quite interesting.  

If you are one of the 140K people who visit the English homeopathy page this month, you will be greeted with this first paragraph...

Homeopathy ⁱ/ˌhoʊmiˈɒpəθi/ (also spelled homoeopathy or homœopathy; from the Greek hómoios- ὅμοιος- "like-" + páthos πάθος "suffering") is a system of alternative medicine originated in 1796 by Samuel Hahnemann, based on his doctrine of similia similibus curentur ("like cures like"), according to which a substance that causes the symptoms of a disease in healthy people will cure similar symptoms in sick people.^[1] Scientific research has found homeopathic remedies ineffective and their postulated mechanisms of action implausible.^[2][3][4][5] The scientific community regards homeopathy as a sham;^[6] the American Medical Association considers homeopathy to be quackery,^[7][8] and homeopathic remedies have been criticized as unethical.^[9]

If the reader feels the need to continue reading past the first paragraph, they will be treated to the entire history of homeopathy as well as quotes like the one Wales stated.   If someone insists on using homeopathy after reading this Wikipedia page, then I don't think anything will convince them.

And before you get all gloomy about all the people who still take homeopathic products, remember most people don't use them.  Most people understand that homeopathy is quackery.  Maybe they don't know what homeopathy is, but once it is explained, they usually say "that's nuts".   We skeptics are too close to the issue, we see and hear about these stories because we are interested in the topic.  It feels like we spend all our time rolling our eyes and raising our blood pressure over these discussions, but really we are winning this war on pseudoscience.  We are, trust me.  We still have a long way to go, but we have the tools to do so.  We just need help to get it done, and done in a way that it is settled. 

Wales states in his conclusion, "Who should I talk to about this in order to encourage the creation of a campaign to stop this?  This is not my primary area of interest and so I am not the right person to lead it myself.  But I would like to help."

My answer to him is this.  "Jimmy you have already done more than anyone could possibly dream that can be done.  You created the most amazing resource in the world.  I mean that, not only in English but in every language possible. The English homeopathy page alone gets over 140K views EACH MONTH.  That is a lot of people being educated about homeopathy.  Thank you.  Allowing us editors to 'do our job' and keep these articles honest and correctly cited is enough.  I can't imagine what else you can do, my brain is teeny tiny compared to your mighty brain, if you come up with something please oh please let us in on it, we want to help."  

We can't all do something as amazing as Wales and create the most useful and amazing resource on the Internet.  Most people commenting on his blog suggest things HE CAN DO.  I know he asked, but really its our turn now.  Don't point fingers at other people who are currently involved, like James Randi and the 10:23 campaign.  We can all do something.  Pick your topic, psychics, vaccines, cryptozoology  or whatever gets your heart rate going.  You can work with the Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia team (we train) or hundreds of other ways to take care of these issues.  Quit bitching in your beer, rolling your eyes and DO SOMETHING!

Write to me at susangerbic@yahoo.com if you are interested in helping out with the Wikipedia project (all skill levels are needed, and we also need languages other than English, did I mention we train and mentor too?)

We keep on turning them out - Updates in the world of Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia

A lot has been completed by the Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia team in the last couple months. Here are the updates.

Portuguese

Erich von Däniken received a re-write by editor Luís Pratas. 
Erich before  
Erich after 
what a difference, the page receives about 2,500 views each month, so very important it is in great shape, complete with the skeptical message.

Luís Pratas also re-wrote the page for Indigo Children, and while he was researching the topic to include as much Portuguese content as possible he wrote a page for this group that operates in Portugal called Indigo House.   The Indigo Children's page is one of the most popular on Portuguese Wikipedia with over 400 views a day.  It is ranked at 4,149 most popular for November 2012. 

As an aside, the English Indigo Children page (which is well-written IMO and includes a quote from Bob Carroll) receives an amazing 2,000 views a day. 

And one more... this new release from Luís Pratas,  Power Balance.

Dutch 

Herman just joined our team and started translating Bob Carroll's personal WP page for us. 

Russian

Paul Kurtz's page got a makeover.  Before the re-write.

English

Mark Boslough's page got a makeover
Here it is Before.

A brand new released page for Stuart Firestein.  The even cooler part was that we managed to get Firestein's page on the front page of Wikipedia for 8 hours.  That added a few thousand views from people outside the skeptical world.  

 

The Burzynski Clinic on Wikipedia

Regular readers of this blog will remember my mentioning Bob Blaskiewicz as a person to watch in our community.  He is one of the very few people out there doing the real work to combat pseudoscience. Currently he has organized a group of people (but he is still doing most of the work) to present Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski with a unique 70th Birthday present on Jan 23rd.  Bob is asking for donations that will go to the St. Jude Children's Hospital in Houston, TX.  Then Bob is going to ask Burzynski to match that amount.  This is something we can make happen, a statement that will make the news. 

Once the media picks up this story, then guess what, we can cite it on the Burzynski Clinic's Wikipedia page. 

Does that mean anything?  Are people reading that page? 

Lets look at the stats... December 2012 it appears that 17,607 people accessed his Wikipedia page. Who are these people?  No idea.  But I bet a chunk of them are people thinking about treatment in his clinic.  They do an Internet search and the Wikipedia link is one of the first ones that appears.  We know that desperate families continue to trust the Burzynski Clinic, what we do not know is how many families have been scared off once they read the lede for the page.  I don't know about you but if I read this, "There is a scientific consensus that antineoplaston therapy is unproven and of little promise in treating cancer." I might rethink a visit to the clinic. 






Our work in skepticism can be very frustrating, we hear stories all the time about how people have fallen for psychic scams and these medical horror stories.  People never seem to learn, and there is always another angle for a fraudster to make a buck. 


Please don't give up hope.  We do make a difference.  Please read through some of these patient histories that Bob has listed on his blog.  But be careful, these are emotional stories Bob has pulled together mostly from family blogs where they chronicle their loved one's illness.   Educate yourself, share with your contacts and if you have any access to the media please make them aware of this story. 


Once these stories are printed (or aired) I have a whole section I want to add to the Burzynski Wikipedia page. Please forward the links to me, susangerbic@yahoo.com





My previous blog concerning the Burzynski Clinic.

Mormonism on Wikipedia

Mormonism is a topic that I have discussed here before.  I suggested that pages about the LDS are well-written but with little criticism.  I also stated that I think they are carefully monitored by the LDS and I believe that Mormons understand marketing and the We Got Your Wiki Back! project probably better than skeptics.  With over 200K hits a month for the 3 search terms (polygamy, Mormon & Joseph Smith) these pages need to be in excellent shape.  Even more importantly because according to the LDS church historian I quoted, the Mormons are losing membership mainly because of all the information about the church on the Internet.

Interesting.  People are leaving the church because they are learning about it.  I wonder if it is also true that numbers of new members are down because potential newbies are researching the church beforehand?

I have not edited LDS Wikipedia pages, nor do I advocate the average person to do so.  The pages that exist today are carefully watched and maintained.  Everything must be discussed on the Talk page before making the change, otherwise your edit will be reverted.  This is the way it is on many high-profile pages (astrology, homeopathy and others).  All the sides of the discussion have worked for years(?) gaining agreement on the presentation.  I'm sure there have been edit wars over single sentences, maybe over single words. 

Tonight I've found this article published by Meridian Magazine (a LDS publication) that discusses the problems with the Mormon presence on Wikipedia.  The author, Larry Barkdull is very informed about how Wikipedia works, he is also aware of search optimization importance.  Barkdull explains that the LDS is not well-represented in some places.  He details some of the edits that need to be fixed (all are out of my expertize) and advocates that Mormons should venture over to Wikipedia and politely but persistently become involved in improving Wikipedia for all the pages concerning Mormonism.





http://ldsmag.com/article/1/11916/1/page-1

Where have I heard this before?

It seems I have a lot more in common with Mormonism that I would have thought.

Equally important is to be educated on the subject being edited. Acquiring a thorough knowledge of the available sources is the key to success on Wikipedia. Editors’ own opinions should not remain in Wikipedia articles, but cited facts will stand a much better chance of remaining. One should not remove citations, even if they appear disagreeable to the editor, unless the source used is obviously in violation of Wikipedia policy. An editor who consistently behaves in a civil manner toward others, and patiently works to achieve consensus with those editors with whom he or she may disagree, will build a solid reputation within the Wikipedia community. Over time, misrepresentations about our faith can be corrected.

 Fascinating.

Penny4NASA & Neil deGrasse Tyson

Thanks to editor Nathan Miller, the Neil deGrasse Tyson Wikipedia page now has two paragraphs mentioning the Penny4NASA project. 

I know you're all wondering, how much of an impact can that have?  If we consult our handy-dandy traffic page we discover that November saw 115,967 hits to Tyson's page.  That's a lot of potential traffic being sent to the Penny4NASA website. 

When Cosmos is released, and all the media coverage that will proceed it, I'm hoping that the 115K number will look miniscule in comparison.   

Nathan has also spent considerable time researching whether Penny4NASA has enough notoriety to warrant their own Wikipedia page.  He discovered that they don't, yet.   Hopefully all that work won't go to waste, he has the beginnings of the page written and waiting.  Lets help make that happen.  The Penny4NASA webpage has many ideas for our community to become involved in the project and pressure Congress to add a half-penny to NASA's budget. 

Remember I need hundreds of new editors to the Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia project.  If you can help, I will train.  Contact me at susangerbic@yahoo.com

Power Balance on Wikipedia

I've written about my experiences editing the Power Balance Wikipedia page and how important it is to get the message out to people who need to hear it.  Nothing has changed, Power Balance is still one of the top search terms that bring people to this blog, and the WP page still gets over 25K hits a month.  I don't know if those people are following the link from Lamar Odom's WP page, or maybe they just purchased the product and are curious how it "works" or possibly searchers are trying to remind themselves how thoroughly the product was debunked. For whatever reason we still need to make sure the Wikipedia page correctly reflects the best definition and citations possible.

My friend Steve Muscarella shared a new link on Facebook about Mark Cuban's opinion of the product.  He's upset that the NBA is still endorsing the bracelets.  Nathan Miller added the quote to the growing list of criticisms on the WP page. (citation #25)

This made me take another look at the Power Balance Wikipedia page.  I must say that I'm still impressed with the amount of coverage and citations.  I discovered a second period at the end of a sentence but left it for one of you to find and correct.  (One way to get you all to discover how easy it is to edit)

What amazes me is that with all this amazing evidence gathered in one easy to use place, that people still are endorsing and purchasing the product.  I expect that probably with the demise of Power Balance, the spin-offs are taking up where PB left off.  Creating a WP page for each of these companies will happen if they become noteworthy enough, but at the moment that hasn't happened.

So just want to take a moment and thank each and every person/group that has done their research and written (filmed or tested) about this product.  This allowed several Wikipedia editors (not all are from my guerrilla skepticism group) to place these citations (with quotes) onto the WP page for the use of over 300,000 readers each year.  Imagine that. 

One more point.  I'm always a little thrilled to see the familiar red WOT symbol on pages like this.  (see citation #5) This means that if you are one of the 40 million people who have WOT (Web of Trust) installed on your computer, you can rate Internet pages based on your opinion of trustfulness.  Here is one of several articles by Tim Farley explaining WOT much better than I can. Obviously enough people rated Power Balance's website negativity, which is why you see a red warning screen if you try to access their page. Try it!  www.powerbalance.com  

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. 
 

We Got Your Wiki Back - Jerry Andrus en Español

The World Wikipedia project is still moving along as planned.  Joining Arabic, English, French, Portuguese and Russian is a brand new Spanish page.

Thank you Linda Mazarredo and the Español team for another beautiful page everyone in our community should be familiar with, Jerry Andrus.

As a special treat Linda seems to have found a new video of Jerry Andrus performing his illusions, the video is in Español, but don't let that keep you from watching.  There are a few illusions I've never seen before and I thought I had seen them all.  The ability to WOW us with his own handmade illusions is one reason I selected Jerry Andrus to be the first focus of the World Wikipedia project, he is Universal, no words are needed to amaze us. 

As I look out my window tonight I see a gray and cold evening closing in.  The perfect night to stay home bundled up, take some time to watch all of these videos in whatever language you chose (many of these, our World Wikipedia editors have captioned in several languages).  You can show these to the young people in your life and open their eyes to the amazing world of optical illusions, and then have the discussion of how easily we can be fooled by our eyes.  Think about it, Jerry Andrus can be a discussion everyone on every political spectrum will enjoy, maybe it will facilitate that all important discussion we need to start having with each other, how do we know what we know?

Enjoy!

Jerry Andrus in Español



25,252 11/8/12

Hurricane Sandy - Wikipedia - Global Climate Change

Thank you Tim Farley for bringing this article to my attention this morning.  BTW Tim, I love your blog Skeptical Software Tools.  I receive it right in my inbox and know I'm going to learn something new that will make advancing the skeptical movement cause even easier.  Just hope the good guys are reading also.

Anyway.

This article by POPSCI's reporter Dan Nosowitz tells one of the stories of the Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia project.  We do not advocate vandalism, we advocate getting the message of science into the hands of people who need it, the readers of Wikipedia. 

I know very very little about global warming, so would be VERY uncomfortable editing a page about hurricanes or global climate change.  That is why we need a diversified team of editors who understand the rules of Wikipedia, what is allowed and what is not.  How to cite and how to work with other editors to make the best page possible.  Wikipedia is not a joke, it is where the majority of people get their information.  Even if they do not go directly to the Wikipedia page, we know that the reporters that are creating the media (radio, TV, print) are getting their information from the Wikipedia page.  Maybe not always cut and paste, but are influenced by the write-up, citations and hyperlinks to other pages.

Here is one paragraph from the above article that I cut and pasted here.   (my bolding)

When I told Jay Walsh about the back-and-forth regarding climate change, he said, "It doesn't surprise me to hear that. Climate change is a bastard--it's one of those really complicated topics within Wikipedia, because the [editors] are so science-focused." But he wasn't upset that one point of view had been steamrollered on a Wikipedia page that received more than half a million hits in three days--he was intrigued about how the process went, and about how it was eventually ironed out, in a way. "The article doesn't not do its work because of that," he said. Walsh talked about a "good faith" versus "bad faith" edit: Ken Mampel really thinks he is improving that page by eliminating an unclear passage about climate change, so that's a "good faith" edit. Which, for Wikipedians, means the system is working. But what about for those 500,000 readers who didn't get the full story?

Make sure you look at that Wikipedia article traffic statistics link in the middle of the paragraph, I use this tool several times a day and I know you will find it interesting to play around with too.  Just make sure that the name you insert in the search box is exactly the name on the page you want to look up.  Also you can see the hit count for different languages (again you have to put the name exactly as it is on that other language page)

So if you want to help out with the Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia project, please contact me at susangerbic@yahoo.com.  You don't have to be an expert on anything, I need doers more than I need experts.  I do train.