Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Women of Wikipedia Unite project

For some of you out there, you might be interested in two upcoming efforts to improve female scientist's Wikipedia pages and improving the numbers of women editing Wikipedia.

I'm all for whatever it takes to get more people editing whatever gender they are.  And want all pages for scientists and skeptics to be improved.  Female or not. 

I say if these two projects inspire you to finally take the plunge and contact me, then Hurray!  I am always ready and willing to train.  Please contact me susangerbic@yahoo.com if you want to join our Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia project. 

Or, I'm sure the people listed on the links below would love to hear from you.

Women of Wikipedia event planned

WikiWomen Unite!




Sunday, September 23, 2012

How I became an Atheist and how that concerns Wikipedia

At a lecture for Reason 4 Reason, San Francisco Skeptic group on 9/22/2012.  I shared how I  found atheism.  The family consequences and my reasoning.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQs4IxX_-kQ

How I link this up to the reason why we need to edit Wikipedia.

Shouting and belittling believers does nothing but force them to circle the cognitive dissonance wagons and shut down. Allowing them to do their own research and think things through independently, without pressure, is the only way to potentially change minds. 

When they are ready to start thinking about their beliefs they first go to their friends/family.  Then to some kind of research (usually the Internet).  They probably will find themselves on Wikipedia and we better be waiting for them, with well researched, well linked articles.  And great citations for them to follow to the source.


We may never know that Wikipedia page changed their mind, there is no comment feature (thankfully), and they are unlikely to leave a message for an editor any more than they would have written to the encyclopedia editor years ago.

Besides, Wikipedia still has a stigma associated with it, people are unlikely to state that they changed their mind after reading Wikipedia. 

Video recording by Paulina Mejia.

Saturday, September 22, 2012

We Got Your Wiki Back - Nina Burleigh

I had never heard of Nina Burleigh when I happened upon her badly written Wikipedia page.  She had lectured at CFI and has written about topics relevant to our movement.  So of course I was interested. 

When researching her I was VERY impressed with her writing style.  Very engaging and page turning.  I dare you to read this one Elle article and not be discussing it with friends this week.  "The Race to Find Myself".

Before

After

Enjoy!



Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Wikipedia World - 2 Months - How are we doing?

This is an update on the World Wikipedia project.  Our two month anniversary is here and so much has been accomplished since my last update 5 weeks ago.

If you are not familiar with the World Wikipedia Project please first check us out here.  

Currently we have 45 World Wikipedia editors. 

In no special order these are the current groups.  16 language groups.

French - français - La guérilla scepticisme
German - Deutsch - Guerilla Skepsis
Russian - Русский - Партизанский скептицизм
Korean - 게릴라 위키 회의주의 (한국어)
Portuguese - Português - Ceticismo de Guerrilha
Spanish - Español - Escepticismo de Guerrilla
Arabic - Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia 
Turkish - Türkçe - Skeptik Vikipedi Gerillaları
Polish - Polska - Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia
Farsi - Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia فارسی
Norway - Norsk - bokmål - Geriljaskeptivisme på Wikipedia
Danish - Dansk - Guerillaskepticisme på Wikipedia
Dutch - Nederland - Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia
Swedish - Svenska - Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia
English - Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia
-------------------------------------
Jerry Andrus

Nix Dorf finished the first Jerry Andrus page. 

We Got Your Wiki Back Jerry Andrus in Portuguese.

We have the Andrus page started in French, Arabic, Dutch, Swedish and Russian.


------------------------------------


Bob Carroll -

I noticed that Bob Carroll had a WP page in French - actually it was a stub.  I took the English picture (I photographed at SkeptiCal 2011) and added it to the French page.  Editor Patrick Mahoney translated the English caption and while he was at it, he translated a lot more of the page.

Before

After

While I was at it, I added the picture to Carroll's  German, Spanish, Czech, Japanese and Romanian pages.


 -------------------------------------

Massimo Polidoro -

I emailed Massimo Polidoro and asked him to upload a new image to Wikimedia Commons that we could use on all the pages that exist for him.  He did so and I added the picture to his English, French, Italiano and Eesti pages. I keep trying to add it to the Finnish page (Suomi) but a bot keeps deleting it.  We don't have any Finnish editors to help fix this.  Also don't have any Italian editors, I explained this to Massimo and hopefully some will step forward.

Look at the image that was being used.  Pretty awful isn't it?

Patrick Mahoney, again came in after I added the picture, and changed the caption to French.
---------------------------------------

Ray Hyman - Portuguese by Nix Dorf is almost done but didn't make the two month deadline.

---------------------------------------

Penn & Teller - Portuguese by  Filipe Russo

Before
After

Blog link
---------------------------------------

James Randi -

Nicola Mazbar added the IIG beard photo and a Arabic translation to his page.

Istem Fer added the Beard image to the Turkish Randi page along with a caption.

Nicola Mazbar added the photo to the Hebrew page as well.

---------------------------------------

Video captions

You might remember that we are trying to caption videos (where we know the video owner) in English.  Once translated in English, then it is easier for the video to be translated into other languages.  Once that is done then we can use the captioned video as a citation on other language pages. 

We have one editor Brad McDowell from Iowa who is systematically captioning videos, first we focused on Jerry Andrus videos.  Now he is working on James Randi and Ray Hyman videos.  This is a big help, but a big project.  Brad could really use some help, and I can train, so please be in contact if you want to help.

Here are a few that we have finished right now...

Ray Hyman on Jerry Andrus on Wikipedia
English, Portuguese, Spanish

Rex Young and Jerry Andrus at TAM
English, French, Dutch

James Randi Describes Jerry Andrus
English, Portuguese, Spanish, French, Dutch

James Underdown Wrestles a Bear
English

Wendy Hughes Explains Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia
English

Ray Hyman and Mark Edward discuss Mentalism
English

Ray Hyman on Sylvia Browne
English

Conversations with Ray Hyman (part 3)
English

Conversations with Ray Hyman (part 2)
English

Conversations with Ray Hyman (part 1)
English

Conversations with Ray Hyman (part 4)
English

-------------------------------------

We were given a lot of space on the "Flying Teapot" blog which is one of the largest Portuguese blogs.  Nix Dorf arranged and wrote this article.

-------------------------------------

A few interviews about the project in the last two months.

Penny Chan from The Skeptic Zone podcast
Tumbling Brain Matter Public Radio
TAM 2012 with Chris Brown
The Skeptical Teacher blog
Tim Farley lecture at Dragon*Con
Tim Farley lecture at TAM 2012

-----------------------------------
 I hope I didn't forget someone or something.  Its been a busy 2 months just getting organized.  We are just getting started.  I hope to catch everyone up on what is happening with this project every few months.

You know my plea!  We have a lot of people involved, yet, we have room for so many more.  Don't think just because I already have a Spanish or German or whatever group we don't need your help. Some of these groups only have one lonely editor, they need company.   And look at how many missing languages we don't have.   

And even if you don't speak another language, or you feel rusty, don't be shy.  You will quickly pick on these skills.  I read only in English, yet I'm making edits in Russian, Dutch, Portuguese and more.  We also need more people captioning videos in English so they can be translated to other languages.  We need more pictures uploaded, more videos uploaded and so on.  There is enough work to be done for a thousand editors, and still need more. 

Please please please consider helping with this project.  Contact me at susangerbic@yahoo.com and I'll help you get started.

Thank you




Saturday, September 15, 2012

Putting People in Categories - Humanist Manifesto


The following message is from Lei Pinter...

So you’ve been following this blog for awhile and maybe you’ve even set up an account at Wikipedia but you haven’t found a way to get started? This is a great chance for you!

Have you ever noticed the categories at the very bottom of a Wikipedia page? That is a great way to the reader to learn about other pages of interest. For example on the Kendrick Frazier page you see links that will lead you to other Columbia alumni, fellows of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, or American Skeptics.

The newly created category “Signers of the Humanist Manifesto” needs to be added to the 200+ people who support that declaration. According to Wikipedia guidelines the fact that they signed needs to be included (and correctly cited) in the article before the category is added. So this assignment is a version of our Edit Backwards concept – given the fact that someone falls into this category we need you to add the citation and the category to their page.

The folks who signed the three versions of the manifesto (1933, 1973, and 2003) come from a wide cross section of society – philosophers, Nobel Prize winners, clergy, etc. As we touch all of these pages we can also catalog pages that need additional attention or a photo so that more experienced editors can make those changes. In fact as you get more confident and learn more about this distinguished list of people you may find a page that you want to work on more yourself.

Contact Susan if you want to help out on this interesting, easy project.

----------------------
Now from me...

Lei has done most of the work by creating the category and a spreadsheet that you will be entering simple data.  I was just messing around with this spreadsheet today and found that many people on this list do not have a Wikipedia page, and a lot of the others have horrible stub pages.  I don't think this project will require a lot of time.  That is unless you count the time that you will find yourself engrossed in reading the pages, and then following the hyperlinks to other pages until you remember you had a task. 

Please consider volunteering to help with this fun project.  Contact me and I will train you.  susangerbic@yahoo.com

We Got Your Wiki Back! - Penn & Teller - Portuguese

Brand new Wikipedia World editor Filipe Russo writing from his home in São Paulo, Brazil has just created his first page.  Super proud of Filipe and his motivation and support of this project.  He joined this project only one month ago and has jumped in with both feet.   

Before

After

Note: We still need one or two nice pictures of Penn & Teller (separate and together) to be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons for inclusion in this project. Please contact me for more instructions.  susangerbic@yahoo.com

This Penn & Teller page now links to the Nix Dorf creation of the Jerry Andrus page.  This is what I planned when creating the Wikipedia World project, one well-written page builds on the next page and the next. 

Can't wait to see what Filipe moves on to next. 

Monday, September 10, 2012

All Summed Up - Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia

Every so often I have to sit down and sum up all the Wikipedia projects we have going right now.  So this is that blog, if you have been reading the blog from the beginning, you can skip this one.  If you are new to the project this will really help you catch up. 

Next week will be the 2 month anniversary of the Wikipedia World project and I will give you real numbers and show updates next week. 

The following will explain all the different projects, with lots of links to blogs and articles explaining what this Wikipedia thing is all about. 

Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia (general)

This is the project I began with in 2011.  I first began editing WP by myself and quickly began picking up others who were like minded.  BTW there is nothing keeping non-English editors from doing this same kind of editing.  Ben Radford just sent me a link to Pensar magazine (Spanish language magazine owned by S.I.)

I advocate editing backwards.  This means first find an article that is from a noteworthy source, and then cite it on the appropriate page(s).

The most recent example I can think of that I personally edited began with an  email I received from the JREF.  It was a general email to the JREF mailing list.  I followed the link on that email to the Huffington Post article by JREF president D. J. Grothe.  (Both the Huff Post and D.J. Grothe can be cited as they both have WP pages, this makes them notable).

I was able to leave this on the Priceline.com Wikipedia page. 

JREF President DJ Grothe released a press release calling out Priceline.com for endorsing Caputo, stating, "It is difficult to watch the show and not feel heartbroken for those who are desperate to hear from the departed... and even more so if they are being manipulated by a charlatan." Grothe urges Priceline.com to "invite... your new representative" to take the James Randi Million Dollar challenge and prove her credentials.

As you can see I was able to hyperlink to JREF, DJ Grothe and to the James Randi Million Dollar challenge with this simple edit.  This is an example of getting skepticism, out past the skeptical choir and into the reading hands of people who may never have heard of the JREF or skepticism.  How many Priceline readers were reached with this one edit?  16,361 potential readers for August 2012 alone.  For September that page is trending 500+ readers each day.  Everytime Priceline.com is in the media, more traffic will be drawn to their WP page.

How many people would have read about the JREF challenge if I had simply reposted the JREF announcement if I had put it on my Facebook/Twitter/Google+ page?  About 1,900 people, all of whom are in the skeptical choir and they would be limited to viewing it just as long as it is in the "feed".    I don't know what the potential readers of the Huff post are, I'm sure it is sizable, as well as the amount of people who are on the JREF mailing list.  My point is, I do not have the ability to be DJ Grothe and write for Huff Post, we need that content written first.  But once written, those of us who are a part of the skeptical movement (a subset of the skeptical community) have many avenues to spread the message further and outside the choir.  We need to think outside the box.

I added this edit August 15, 2012 and no one has touched it, nor are there any grounds for its removal.  Now for the icing on the cake.  Why stop with Priceline.com?  I went over to the Long Island Medium's WP page and placed nearly the same edit on that page.  Some other editor(s) had been there before me and left some great guerrilla skepticism edits.  (I left footnote 11 only)


In June 2012, Mrs. Caputo appeared in a commercial for Priceline.com, in which she portrayed herself "connecting" with the late Priceline Negotiator character previously played by William Shatner.(9)However, this commercial has sparked controversy, since the commercial appears to make light of the Native American belief of smudging.(10)JREF President DJ Grothe released a press release calling out Priceline.com, stating, "It is difficult to watch the show and not feel heartbroken for those who are desperate to hear from the departed... and even more so if they are being manipulated by a charlatan." Grothe urges Priceline.com to "invite... your new representative" to take the James Randi Million Dollar challenge and prove her credentials.(11)


and


On April 1, 2012, the James Randi Educational Foundation awarded Caputo a Pigasus Award for being the "psychic" performer who fooled the greatest number of people with the least effort in the preceding year. JREF founder James Randi stated "[the show] is utter nonsense and dangerous". A Pigasus award was also given to TLC for continuing to air the show.



These are all great examples of Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia.  I worked backwards by finding the notable citation first, I can assume the other editors did the same.  How many potential readers are reached with the Long Island edits?  21K in August 2012.  In September we can see one day alone that page had over 10K views.  Every mention of Long Island Medium in the media brings in more views to the WP page.  So over 37K WP readers can read about JREF calling out the Long Island Medium, remember this is EACH MONTH. 

My team of editors (along with the other editors on WP) have placed tons of these citations.  Yet, it remains that the potential is for thousands more.  Imagine how many backwards edits could be left with one single Skeptical Inquirer magazine?  Skeptic Magazine? Scientific American?  When you start with a source that is noteworthy  (in other words it has its own WP page) and if you quote someone who also is noteworthy (not always needed, but it is better) then the potential to affect hundreds of WP articles is amazing.

One more mention, this to Dustin Phillips whose first edits on this project were backwards edits to the Oscillococcinum and Bioron pages. 

Podcast Project

This is also an example of working backwards and guerrilla skepticism.  We are small fish in the big world.  Getting the message out that we have podcasts, blogs, magazines and such centered around a skeptical theme is difficult.  There are many ways of breaking out of the choir, my project is only one way.  Again, you have to start with a noteworthy podcast, and find quotes that are relevant to the WP articles.  My favorite is Skeptoid for many reasons.   How many podcasts have you heard discussing the Philadelphia Experiment or Ball lightening?  BTW I just picked these two pages off the top of my head, you might be interested in the amount of views these pages get.  PE got 89K for August 2012 and Ball got 156.  You just don't know sometimes what interests people which is why we have to be diverse. 

At this moment, one editor, Jim Preston has made the Skeptoid project his baby.  It is time consuming but he is making progress.  In time we will review the hit counts  to see if he has increased the hits to Skeptoid.  I love it when we get to see measurable results. 

Skeptoid isn't the only notable skeptical podcast out there.  Several others also exist, but most don't discuss a topic like Dunning does using citations and such.  It is more difficult to quote a hosts opinion of something in the news, not impossible, but leaving this citation might be problematic in the eyes of other WP editors.




Recorded Interviews

When a noteworthy person is interviewed on a podcast they can be quoted and cited on WP.  This means all interviews on podcasts (noteworthy or not) can be gleaned for great quotes, cited and left on WP articles.  If the podcast is noteworthy (i.e. they have their own WP page) then that just makes the citation stronger.

The same thing goes for recorded interviews on YouTube.  If the WP can follow the link and listen to the interview and find the quote then it is fair game.  This means that all the interviews I have of James Randi, Mark Edward, Ray Hyman and so on are potentially usable for cites on WP.  So please pull out your video camera and start recording.  If you have something sitting around on your computer, get it up on YouTube.  If you think it might be valuable to quote from, but you don't want to make the edit, please leave the URL on the talk page of the person, or bring it to my attention.

Captioning Videos

This is another new project that is so important to the movement, and does not require a WP account, or any editing.

All videos we use as citations should be captioned in English.  Not only for the benefit of  hearing impaired viewers, but because once translated into English, it makes it easier for the video to be translated into other languages, then cited into WP articles that are not English. 

The problem we have run into on the Wikipedia World project is that the captions have to be added by the owner of the video.  This really restricts us to a very small number of videos.  I have written to several video owners  and not heard a peep back.   Thankfully, because of social networking I am "friends" with several people that own some of these videos, they have been gracious enough to upload the captions when asked. 

This video owned by Rex Young has now been captioned into English, Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish and French (all within the last 5 weeks) More languages will follow.  (note: click on the little cc area to see all the translations)

Photographers Needed

Another area that we need a lot of help with are people willing to take and upload images that we can add to WP pages.  Most people do not understand that we can not add a picture to WP unless it has been uploaded to Wikimedia Commons.  The easiest way is to have the photographer do this.  The image does not have to be perfect, amazing or anything of the sort.  Sometimes we add the picture then find something better and change them out, it isn't difficult if we have access to the image.

Here are two guest articles from Vera de Kok explaining in better detail this subject.   Flickr and OTRS.

Also Portuguese editor Filipe Russo is looking for some good Penn & Teller images that can be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons.  Here is all we have to work with.  Remember we can't take anything off the Internet without the photographer's permission.   So we would prefer something shot at a skeptic or magic event, uploaded by the photographer.

We Got Your Wiki Back! project

One of the more popular of all the projects.  This one is a blast because the editors are usually creating pages for people they don't know, but by the time they are done they find they have become an expert.  I receive the most comments and thank you's for these, they are a lot more work than simple edits working backwards.

I've written about this project so many times that I'm just going to let Wendy Hughes explain it to you quickly.  (BTW this video has only been captioned in English so far, hint hint)

Now I'll just list a few of the people and groups we have added or re-written in the last few months.  I think you will get the idea.

Barry Beyerstein, James Alcock, Ray Hyman, Loren Pankratz, Skeptic's Toolbox and Jerry Andrus

Kiki Sanford

Mary Roach

Bryan & Baxter,  Jennifer Ouellette, Tim Farley and Alan Melikdjarlian

Kendrick Frazier

Robert Ingersoll

Tom Flynn

Alison Gopnik

Sikivu Hutchinson


Wikipedia World project

The world project has evolved over time.  I started by asking for people to translate two paragraphs into many non-English languages and find places to put up the paragraphs.  I was hoping to get people interested in editing in other languages.  My idea was to just introduce the idea then step back and hope they stuck with it.  I got no help from this shout-out.  

Next I tried to appeal to the 6th World Skeptic Congress for help, and then I made the case that we really need to branch out into other languages and used the page for Evolution as my reasoning.  Again no offers of help.  What I discovered was that people were reluctant to edit pages on Evolution because they felt they lacked the scientific background to do so.

So I regrouped and thought a lot about this, I wasn't giving up so easily.

I then decided that optical illusionist Jerry Andres would be the perfect page to write in all languages.  I wrote a blog introducing the idea, but still no one offered help.

Finally, I decided to have a long talk with the English editors that attended TAM 2012 (Brian Engler, Brian Hart, Tim Farley and Lei Pinter) I bounced off several ideas and they gave me great feedback.  We quickly put a plan into action, made some announcements and the next thing I know I was surrounded by people offering to help. 


We had great success using Facebook as a way to train and communicate when it came to the English group.  So why not try the same thing with a World group?  I wanted non-English editors to be able to participate, so we had to have a way for each language to have their own space for that specific language only. 

So what I did was to form a Wikipedia World FB group that only English is spoken in, here we can bond, share ideas, encourage, share links and just learn from each other.  Then each language group has its own FB group where I am the only English speaker.  In that group, editors can discuss specific issues to editing in that language.  They can also train each other on how to edit (most people come to this project never having edited WP before).  Inside these groups we can have people doing all the above projects that I mentioned earlier; captioning videos, photography, adding videos, We Got Your Wiki Back, guerrilla skepticism and so on. 

I will share a few blogs about this project here, but won't reveal what we have accomplished the first two months just yet (next week).

Overview of the World project

Overview of the Spanish and Portuguese WP pages by Nix Dorf

The first 3 weeks

Jerry Andrus in Portuguese


 And finally, thank you for bearing with me through this very long post.  Here is my first year in Review.