Watchlists Again ~ Busy Busy Me

Are you checking your Watchlist? 

I sit down several times a day and try to make an edit somewhere so I can cross something off my ever-growing to-do list.  There is no end in sight of pages that need updating.  My email inbox overflows with conversations I'm having with people to improve WP pages.  (Don't let that discourage you, keep sending those emails) But I would LOVE to have some extra hands helping out.  The small group we have out there editing have more of a life than I do, and can't spend as much time as is needed.  This task is really big, but super important. 

As I was saying, are you checking your watchlist?  I mean to do a edit, then refresh the screen and notice someone has edited something onto a page incorrectly.  I guess they mean well, but usually it is from someone anonymous (just a ISP number) which tells me they aren't someone planning on sticking around long enough to get an account (Its free folks!).

Just reverted an edit for psychic Sally Morgan.  The person was quoting her personal website (incorrectly cited BTW) and spent more time talking about Gary Schwartz than Morgan.  They also tried to cite his WP page by doing this... [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Schwartz|Gary E Schwartz]] instead of by doing this... [[Gary Schwartz]].  See the difference?  Well maybe not here on this page but anyway.

In this case I went to the discussion page and explained my reasons for reverting the edit.  I welcomed the person to WP and was totally polite.  I hope, but doubt that the person will read what I left.  They probably don't know about watchlists. 

Here is another revert I did.  I had left this quote from Ben Radford on the spontaneous human combustion page.   “If SHC is a real phenomenon (and not the result of an elderly or infirm person being too close to a flame source), why doesn't it happen more often? There are 5 billion people in the world, and yet we don't see reports of people bursting into flame while walking down the street, attending football games, or sipping a coffee at a local Starbucks.” 

Someone had changed the "5 billion" to "7 billion".  Ahhh no.  So I nicely responded by saying "yes, I know they are now saying that there are 7 billion people in the world, but I am QUOTING someone, and that is what he said".  (actually I responded nicer than this, due to limited space)

Don't know if this person just searched for the phrase "billion people" and changed it to "7 billion people" everywhere they found it.  Must be a lot of "reverting" going on today.

Checking my watchlist shows that there are a lot of other editors out there, reverting edits before I get to it.  Thank you people!  But we do need a lot more eyes out there.

We need to stay on this, because once the change is made, and no one notices, then it just tends to linger.  And we know we are changing these pages so that when the general public wanders over to have a look, they will find a well written WP page explaining it, and hopefully they will find some critical thinking link left behind as well. 

Today I re-listened to myself talk on the Rational Alchemy podcast (this was before I joined their cast) and I got the question from Brian Walsh "do you spend a lot of time reverting edits from paranormal people?"  My answer was, "no, I spend most of my time reverting edits from skeptics".  I don't think  he expected that answer at all.  

We Got Your Wiki Back! The Numbers from Nightline's Beyond Belief

You have all heard me go on and on about the need to improve the Wikipedia pages of our skeptical spokespeople.  This I call the "We Got Your Wiki Back!" project.  I've mentioned not only the reasons for doing so but whose pages desperately need help, and how you can help edit.

Today I want to talk about the numbers.  We can use our handy Wikipedia Statistics tool brought to us by Tim Farley.  http://stats.grok.se.  I want to point out that this website is not exact to the day, because of time zones ect I believe that the stats are off by a day.  (again not sure)

I'm going to work just with the ABC Primetime Nightline "Beyond Belief" show that aired August 17, 2011.

The first segment featured a reporter investigating James Van Praagh, and being unimpressed with him, pretty much saying that he thinks he is cheating when he says he talks to dead people. Van Praagh did a reading on the reporter, giving some amazing hits.  But after the fact the reporter was able to pull up an interview he gave two years ago listing all the details that Van Praagh supposedly got.  This SWIFT blog pretty much sums everything up.

James Randi was also featured on the show, lets look at his Wikipedia hit statistics.



There is a clear jump with about 550 hits over what he had been trending that week.  Because Randi is all over the media it is unclear if the July 18th jump was because of Nightline or not. 

I think that the next featured skeptical spokesperson will give us better clearer results.  Banachek was very prominent in the show, using the stats tool we can see what his hit rate looked like for months even years before the Nightline show aired.  This next graph is from July 2011.

We see that he averages about 56 hits a day.  Because of TAM9 July 15-17 this might be the reason why the jump in numbers on July 17-18th. 

Banachek July 2011

Here is August 2011.  We clearly see a major jump in numbers hitting about an 800% increase over normal. 

Banachek August 1 - 18,  2011

 

Something Van Praagh did in the media caused an upsurge of hits.  Looks like he normally gets about 200 hits a day, then suddenly in the 900's?  As I said I don't really follow his schedule (and don't watch TV) so these could be from the Nightline show.  I'm sure someone will clear this up for me.


What about other people featured on the show?  ABC reporter Josh Elliot is the one who interviewed Van Praagh.  By the way I think he did a terrific job and maybe the skeptical movement should approach him for future media coverage.


 Major jump.  Averaging 423 hits a day during August 2011, he has a 600% increase when the show aired.


Lets try one more.  The JREF was mentioned a few times on the show, did it see an increase in hits?




An increase, but not a significant amount like with Banachek.

Another person mentioned on the show (and his name appeared on the screen) was Dr. Gary Schwartz.  Lets look at his stats for August.



A small increase in hits, but nothing significant. 

Here is Allison DuBois's page stats for August.  The other psychic interviewed was Rebecca Rosen who does not have a Wikipedia page, but according to Nightline has a 2 year waiting list for readings.  Odd that if she has changed that many lives that she is not noteworthy enough to have her own page.  Remember Georgia O'Conner?  She has testimonies from thousands of people she has helped, you got it, no Wikipedia page. 



What does this all mean?

These are just the raw numbers, there are a lot of factors that could effect who gets hits and who does not.  Was the name written on the screen?  Van Praagh and Schwartz names were.

I think overall that I have made my point.  When our skeptical spokespeople are in the media, they are going to get an upswing in hits to their Wikipedia page.  People want to know who these people are.   What are we presenting to the world? 

Not only our spokespeople's pages need updating but so do the pages of people like Gary Schwartz.  Nightline went to a lot of trouble to mention that he was a Harvard Professor now working at the University of Arizona.  Major creds right?  Allison DuBois's page also needs some serious cleanup.

I'm sure the page for Psychic Kids could use some updating.  I think Banachek's powerful words would really help to spruce it up.  In fact I think Banachek's comments could be used all over these psychic's pages.  Hint Hint

What about this Nightline Show?  We need to get it up on the pages of all these people and onto the JREF page.  That's keeping things updated.

Get Editing!