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

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. 
 

Wikipedia World - 3 weeks later

There has been a lot of interest in the Wikipedia World Project.  Most are obviously not involved in the group but still rooting for it to be a big success.

We are now about 3 weeks out from TAM 2012 when I announced this project.  And I think an update would be welcome about now.

We now have 13 language groups formed; English, German, Norsk, French, Turkish, Dutch, Korean, Russian, Portuguese, Espanol, Danish, Farsi and Swedish.

The IIG Randi Beard photo has gone worldwide with it included on these pages...

English
German
Turkish
French
Spanish
Russian
Dutch
Portuguese
Norsk

Our next project is to produce a Jerry Andrus page in each language.  After that page is done we will be able to branch off onto more pages.

The English page re-write is almost done and just waiting for me to spend a week in Eugene, OR gathering more interviews and photos.

The Portuguese and Dutch pages for Andrus are about a forth of the way complete. 

We have identified 7 videos that show Jerry performing or just show his illusions.  These 7 videos have very few words and no need for captioning, they are ready to go.

We have 5 videos that discuss Andrus and need to be captioned first in English and then in all the other languages.  We have 3 of these done in English, and 1 in Portuguese and 1 in Dutch.

I'm really enjoying doing the English captioning, at first it was confusing to me and took a long time.  Now I've got the hang of it and its like a video game of sorts, but with an actual purpose.  I've done several others in my video library but only the 3 for this project,  I will focus on improving that number this weekend.

We have have several Andrus videos that are already in a language other than English.  Those are ready to go onto pages as is.

Several of the language groups have done a cursory look at what lies ahead for us.  From what we can discover we have our hands full.  Nix Dorf provided us with a good overview of the Portuguese and Spanish Wikipedia pages on this blog.

We are making to-do lists in many of the language groups, and of course the individual editors are free to work on whatever projects/pages they want.  Several have already expressed the desire to work on homeopathy in their native language.  Niels is very interested in creating this page in his language, MusiCure.  Apparently it is big news in Denmark.

My goal is to also really focus on creating pages (or improving pages) for people and groups that are specific to that language.  We get so focused on English speakers being the big-wigs in the skeptical movement that we forget there are skeptical spokepeople all over.  Each language group will need to identify who/what these are and make a plan.

We have had many glitches, most of Wikipedia World team are brand new editors, we are stumbling through this together as so far the editing screen is exactly the same in English and all languages.   Kind of like using an ATM with a different language on the screen, you just hopefully push the right buttons.

On Portuguese Wikipedia apparently you can't use YouTube videos as a citation unless you get the URL on the "whitelist" first.  That was interesting, but we managed to work through that.

I usually make a user page for myself on the different WP language pages.  On one I instantly received a "welcome to Wikipedia" kind of notice, and then seconds later a notice for speedy deletion of my user page.  It is still there but that was a bit unnerving.  Rian also got the same notice when she created a page on the Dutch WP.  We never figured that out.  Its been interesting, but we are starting to get the hang of this. 

As usual we really do need your help.  We need 20 times the amount of editors we have now.  Its an exciting time to be doing this, and an exciting project.  Even if you don't have a second language, we can help you find your way to helping out with this project.

Please write to me at susangerbic@yahoo.com

Creationists frustrated and give up editing Wikipedia

Thought I would share these Wikipedia links with you all.  (I probably discovered them from one of Tim Farley's links).

The first one Wicked Glitch writes that creationists are throwing in the towel (according to Evolution News and Views) as far as Wikipedia goes.  They just can't get their edits to stay on the page they are editing.  Wonder why?

Love how they envision us editors... 

Evolution News and Views, (an intelligent design blog) recently did a post whining about how ID proponents can’t force Wikipedia to represent them in a favorable light because a few “unemployed” evolutionists with too much time on their hands vigilantly monitor Wikipedia and immediately remove/modify any pro-ID edits. The post mentions a “highly technical” study...

Must make sure to get this good news to Dr. Eugenie Scott.  Now I guess she can relax!  Just kidding folks.  As was just recently reported by our very own Tim Farley, we can't just relax just because we are in the right.  Science and critical thinking needs us and letting down our guard is not a good thing.
 
The second URL is to a study someone did on  the Dynamics of Conflicts in Wikipedia.  Very interesting reading.


 I'm always on the lookout for good Wikipedia related articles, so pass them on if you find them.

BTW - I have turned off the ability for anonymous people to leave comments on this blog.  I was forever getting spammed and it was annoying.  The last person to leave an anonymous comment was James Randi, on this blog.  I don't think it will get better than that.





As always you can comment here, or send me an email susangerbic@yahoo.com

Spanish & Portuguese Wikipedia - a starting point

As regular readers of this blog knows, we are on week one of the Wikipedia World project.  We have groups formed for English, Russian, Spanish, Portuguese, Korean, Turkish, French and German.  Hopefully in the next couple weeks we will have doubled that number.

I asked several of the groups if they would give me their opinion of skepticism and science topics on Wikipedia this moment in their language.

Nix Dorf sprang to the challenge and supplied us with a lot of information about what the Portuguese and Spanish pages look like.  I'm really shocked about some of these pages, homeopathy in particular.  The last 10:23 campaign was  global, the videos created can easily be cited on the homeopathy page, we just need volunteers to help out.

The following is guest editorial by Nix, he asked me to correct his grammar, but I'm not touching a word.

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

Portuguese presence in Wikipedia as whole.

Nowadays Portuguese speakers are around 240 million native speakers in the World. Roughly 180 Million are Brazilians and the rest are mainly Portuguese, Angolan, Mozambicans and some other nations. But the bulk internet traffic comes from Brazil and Portugal, which are the most industrialized countries in this language. Brazil has about 81 million active Internet users, which make them the 5^th nation in the world by user access. Portugal has 5.5 million more users.^[3]

Portuguese isn't wide spread as English and Spanish. Portuguese is 6th most spoken language. But Portuguese Wikipedia has more than 742,000 ^[4] articles which is larger than WP in Chinese, Hindi-Urundu and Arabic which have a larger speakers base.

Considering that Spanish WP has approximately 900,000 articles while having roughly 400 million native speakers (it is the 2^nd or 3^rd most widespread language in the world ^[5]). That makes Portuguese to have a higher speakers/articles ratio, if that is really a valid way of measure anything. I’m just guessing based on the WP data available. But it looks like that the more industrialized the countries that speak a given language the more WP articles they seem to have. So my conclusion is that’s why German, Japanese and French have much more articles per speakers than Hindi or Chinese. But this doesn’t explain why Polish speakers have 900,000 articles with 40 million native speakers.

No language even compare to the amount of articles available in English. Even so English is not the most spoken language in the world as the number of native speakers; there are lots of people that have English as its second language and most English speaking countries are very industrialized too. On top of that USA is a well-known leader on all that happens online.

Skeptical presence on Portuguese Wikipedia.

In general the articles for uncontroversial subjects are often fine. The ones that are Brazil specific can be very rich, while depending on the subject attention, some other articles may vary a lot on how well written Portuguese articles are compared to the English ones. Usually you see some few claims that are ungrounded or biased like it is on other languages, but the fact is that Portuguese Wikipedia probably may not have as much editors as needed to keep it 100% clean (I guess no language really can claim to have it).

But when we get to evolution, homeopathy, religion, skeptics then it gets worse. Let’s go to a few examples.

The Randi article is very bad, compared to the English version. When I was changing it, I couldn’t resist and had to change Randi's picture itself. The former one wasn’t very nice and it had no bio info (birthdate, birth place, etc).

When you go to other skeptics, they don't even appear. I was unable to get individual bio pages on Penn and Teller for instance (there is a draft article for “Penn & Teller” together^[1]). Even HBO used to air Penn & Teller Bullshit! on Brazil’s cable.

Michael Shermer^[8] and Adam Savage^[6] are just drafts. I would say that Mythbusters is a well-known show, at least in Brazil and I would guess in Portugal too, since the show itself has a decent page. Joe Nickell doesn’t even have a page.

Evolution pages have some discussions and back and forth reversals on ID and some had been blocked for edition sometimes. But the pages aren’t much biased. But they certainly should be improved.

Homeopathy page^[9] cites for example a Word Health Organization "publication" called "Homeopathy: review and analysis of reports on controlled clinical trials" that was a draft from 2005 that was never published (I believe that this report was heavily criticized by an article on The Lancet and never made a respectful scientific Journal ^[2]). Even though it is still there as a favorable point towards Homeopathy, while it is not even cited on the Spanish and English WP versions. The article is listed as a medical especially, and not as an alternative medicine. So the article doesn’t seems to be very pro Homeopathy but is too soft into criticize it in my opinion. And it barely mentions Randi, what a shame!

To be honest, the article on skepticism itself is very poorly written and in my opinion it is has some bias towards the skepticism. If we plan to keep ourselves unbiased we may have to pay attention and fix this kind of bias too. It requires lots of discipline to be actually “fair and balanced”.

My personal pet peeves are the Articles on Spiritualism. With more than 3 million followers it is a big religion in Brazil. One of the most important icons was very famous woo woo called Chico Xavier^[10], that is called by Wikipedia as a medium (not a supposed medium) and is very mild on criticism, while almost states that he was the true thing. When you compare these spiritualist articles with Shermer’s, and Randi’s you realize how big are the challenges that we may face.

Spanish Wikipedia as whole.

Spanish is the second (or 3^rd) most spoken language in the world. It is hard to state that something is the biggest, tallest, or whatever in the world because it depends on so many variables, like native speakers, or national interests, or on different census criteria, estimates, etc. But even though Spanish is very important and is growing as a second language to many, especially in US. It is hard to compare, but while Chinese Mandarin and Hindi-Urdu are spoken by lots of people, they are mainly spoken on their original countries while Spanish is the dominant language in the American continent. Due the Spanish dominium on the seas during the Spanish conquests during the XVI century it got very spread.

The main nations on Spanish by internet millions of users are Mexico (31), Spain (30), Colombia (16), Argentina (14), Peru (10), Venezuela (9) and Chile (7)^[3]. With all the Spanish speaking nations it may add up to approximately 120 million. This is a low number if you compare it to more than 400 million native speakers^[5]. To give you an idea, Japanese native speakers are about 123 million (almost all on Japan) while there are 102 million native users^[5]. Once again I’m working with the data available on Wikipedia and those numbers can vary. But, Japan has an 80% of the population as Internet, while several Spanish speaking nations are on underdeveloped countries.

Spanish Wikipedia has more than 900,000^[4] articles and on uncontroversial articles it seems pretty fine. It looks to have a richer content if you compare it with the Portuguese WP, but less detail than the English version.

Skeptical presence on Spanish Wikipedia

The Article about evolution seems to be very complete and balanced and discussions and reversals are frequent, but not as frequent as the ones that I have seen on the Portuguese version. It lacks of a Evidence of Common Decent as we have for the Portuguese version. This subject is treated inside of the evolution^[11]. This section needs to become an article and be expanded.

I’ve got the impression that the majority of the Spanish speaking countries are Catholic, which doesn’t require a belief on a literal truth of the bible, so perhaps the fundamentalists on those countries aren’t so willing to attack evolution. But my native Spanish speaking fellows might better comment on that.

Even the Article on James Randi^[12]is much better than the Portuguese version; it still needs lots of dedication and effort to be brought to the English standard. It lacks of references and citations. The article on Penn and Teller is very simple, almost a draft. Penn Jillette doesn’t have an article while Teller^[13] has one draft for some reason.

Michael Shermer ^[14] is pretty decent, but needs to be expanded.

The Article on Creationism has been edited and vandalized frequently on the last year. ^[15]

The article on Skepticism is really good, broken down in religious, philosophical, ecological and scientific types of skepticism. ^[16]

You can find pages for Ann Druyan , Harry Houdini, Susan Blackmore, Robert Todd Caroll, while Joe Nickell is missing. Most of the articles need some expansion and they are often drafts.

The article on Homeopathy^[17]is pretty good, providing lots of valuable information and it takes the scientific side. It lacks of some of Randi’s confrontations, I would expand on that.

It seems that some battle has been taken place on the Talk and history pages. The article is protected from anonymous edition.

In my opinion it looks like that the greater number of editors is making the Spanish version better than the Portuguese one. Since I’m not a frequent Spanish Wikipedia visitor, I may be wrong. But some of the problematic pages on the Portuguese version aren’t with the same problems on the Spanish ones. The main issue is lack good information about skeptics.

[1] http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penn_e_Teller

[2] http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2805%2967159-0/fulltext

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_Internet_users

[4] http://www.wikipedia.org/

[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_native_speakers

[6] http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Savage

[8] http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Shermer

[9] http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeopatia

[10] http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chico_xavier

[11] http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evoluci%C3%B3n_biol%C3%B3gica#La_evoluci.C3.B3n_como_un_hecho_documentado

[12] http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Randi

[13] http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teller

[14] http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Shermer

[15] http://es.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Creacionismo&diff=57117384&oldid=53657036

[16] http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escepticismo_cient%C3%ADfico

[17] http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeopat%C3%ADa

James Randi and Madonna

There are two names I doubt you will see in the same blog title.  Been having a great day/night.  Fresh from TAM 2012 I've got all my pictures uploaded as well as videos.  And I'm all organized with the Wikipedia World project.  People are starting to arrive, I'm placing them in the World group where only English is spoken, and we have groups set up for each language.  At the moment we have; English, Spanish, German, Russian, Turkish, Portuguese and French.  People are still arriving home from their vacation in Las Vegas, so we will probably see a lot more activity in a week or so.

So, the first edit we were going to work on was to get the IIG tribute to James Randi photo over onto all the Randi pages we could.  I asked people at TAM to translate one sentence.  "The Independent Investigations Group [[IIG]] tribute to James Randi TAM9, July 2011".  I didn't plan this very well as I asked people to translate onto a piece of paper.  Once they gave them back to me, I realized that I do not know how to write all that out, plus I had a very hard time reading handwriting.

Some people emailed me the translation and that allowed me to copy and paste.

So how did I do this when I can barely speak English, and what does it have to do with Madonna?

First I opened up the Edit page of the English James Randi page.  And copied the edit for the picture that I left months ago.  It looks like this in English.

[[Image:JREF TAM9 Beard Photo.jpg|thumb|300px|The Independent Investigations Group [[IIG]] tribute to James Randi TAM9]]

Once the picture is loaded to WikiCommons any language can use the image.  So this part is what the photographer (me) named it.

 JREF TAM9 Beard Photo.jpg

Okay then I went to the Spanish James Randi page.   Clicked on the "editar" tab which is in the exact same place as "edit" in English.

I found the place I wanted it to be located and then pasted in the English (above) edit.  Then changed the caption to what someone sent me on email.  I think it was Patrick Mahoney, but not sure at the moment as several people sent me this caption.

It looks like this

[[Image:JREF TAM9 Beard Photo.jpg|thumb|350px|Un tributo a James Randi, dado por el grupo independiente de investigación durante TAM9 (La Junta Asombrosa, edición 9) en julio del 2011]]

I hit preview which is located in the same place as it is in English.  Here it is called mostrar previsualizacion.

Then I wrote "photo" in the reason for edit area and hit save (grabar la pagana).

I was feeling pretty proud of myself but only slightly because I already speak Spanish, so wanted to try something more difficult.

Noticed I have a translation from Ken Archbold in Russian, sitting on my email.

I went to the Russian James Randi page (took me a while to figure out what the word Russian looks like when written in Russian, but I have a son and they always want to appear smart so he pointed it out to me "Русский".  I clicked on the edit page tab which is labeled in a way that I would only know was correct because it was in the same place in English.  And because when I clicked on it, the edit page opened up.

Now I was really in trouble.  I have no idea how to write "image" in Russian.  Possibly it would have worked if I just did it in English, but I decided to find a page that would have pictures on it in the body of the page.  So I went to the Russian page for Madonna, opened up her "edit" page and found an edit for a picture.  Looks like this

[[Файл:Madonna 1990 cropped.jpg|thumb|180px|Мадонна во время [[Blond Ambition World Tour]] в [[1990 год]]у]]

So as you can see the format is the same as in English.  I simply removed the Madonna picture (Madonna 1990 cropped.jpg) and pasted in the Randi Beard jpg.  Then I removed the writing about Madonna that would be the caption area.  Мадонна во время [[Blond Ambition World Tour]] в [[1990 год]]у

Then pasted in Ken's text, and was left with this.

[[Файл:JREF TAM9 Beard Photo.jpg|thumb|180px|Должное Джеймсу Рэнди от независимой группы исследования в TAM, июля 2011]]

I "previewed" the edit and didn't like how small it looked so I raised the px to 300.  I don't do things in a small way.

I didn't know what to put in the "reason for edit" area, so just left a ?  I suppose I could have written in English "photo added" and most editors would understand.

Anyway, Nix caught the bug and went ahead and took care of the Portuguese James Randi page.

Everyone involved in the World project is going to become VERY familiar with this tool.  http://stats.grok.se/

So lets just see for fun, how many people are going to be viewing the photo we just uploaded?

You must copy the name of the page you are trying to look at exactly, and you must pick the language.  Here is what July 2012 looks like in Russian  for James Randi.

I think you get the idea. 

Here is a link from Lei Pinter (who is at the English only WP page) she thought this would be helpful to everyone, Inline interlanguage links.  

There is nothing keeping others from adding pictures to other pages.  If you get in trouble just don't "save" the page.  Or if you mess it up really bad, someone who has that page on a watchlist will clean up your mess with only two clicks of the mouse.  


One more thought, wonder if I'm going to see an surge in hits to this blog because I mentioned Madonna?  If so I better add a few more


Lindsay Lohan, Kevin Bacon, George W. Bush, President Obama, Mitt Romeny

Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia - World

The English guerrilla skepticism project has been amazingly successful in the last year.  With only a handful of active editors, we have created many new pages, re-written many more, and acted as police just about everywhere.  TAM 2012 has become a turning point for this project.  As I've been saying since March, we need to be global.  Wikipedia is the most important tool for skepticism that exists today, we can not keep ignoring that the vast majority of the world does not speak English.  Let's get over that, with current Internet tools we can easily communicate, organize and get this done.

The World project begins today.  We have already created a Portuguese, Spanish and French group that will work on WP in those languages.  All discussions (accept from English only editors like me) will happen in that group's language.  I want to encourage people who do not speak English to feel comfortable editing in their language to participate.

In the World discussion group we will discuss all the who/what/how of editing.  I have a bunch of volunteers (and still need more) with all levels of editing experience.  We will learn from each other, looking over edits and correcting grammar and so on.  I'm sure your reading/writing skills will really improve.

The World project will mainly follow the structure of the English project.  Improve pages of our skeptical spokespeople, add photographs, promote science and skepticism, remove vandalism, promote science/skeptic groups and tons more.

What this is not, a group promoting vandalism, or ganging up on other editors.  You have to still follow the rules of Wikipedia, we are going to turn around the reputation WP has amongst our community.   We aren't writing this for our own group, this is for the world.

How this is going to happen.  As I said if you talked to me at TAM, we are going to begin with some simple edits as a group.  First we are going to insert one JREF picture into James Randi's WP in all languages that the page exists in.  I have no idea what all those languages are.  So that is one of the first steps, 27 are listed. This is the area on the far left of the page.  This is the picture. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:JREF_TAM9_Beard_Photo.jpg and I already have the caption translated in many languages and hopefully will get this done tonight.

Months ago I tried to get people interested in editing the word Evolution in all languages, but it is an intimidating subject, very technical and too advanced to start with. 

So we are going to start with Jerry Andrus.  I have almost finished his page in English and we are not going to translate it, but write a new one in every language possible.  We are going to do this mainly by translating existing videos.  There are many Andrus videos already existing in other languages, we just need to know what they are.  We will all be using the same captioning software recommended by Tim Farley.  We need a ton of volunteers to subtitle in English as well.

Keep in mind that you do not have to only work on Jerry's page, you have free reign to edit everything, I highly encourage you to do so.  That kind of thing will happen naturally, once you learn how to add a picture to one page, you will go and add to others.  I'm using the Andrus page as a training tool, also it will make sure we all are together with a rich history of modern skepticism under our belts.  Once Andrus  is done we can link to Randi's, JREF, CFI, optical illusions, Uri, cold-reading, Ray Hyman and on and on.  So we do need to know what exists and what we need to create.

Please contact me if you would like to become involved in this project.  susangerbic@yahoo.com  You will also need to friend me on Facebook. (I apologize in advance if you refuse to use Facebook, you can use an alias and call it Bookface, but all communication about the projects are going to happen there in closed groups)

Thank you in advance, looking forward to getting to know you all and making real changes to critical thinking happen world-wide.

Susan

Video of Ray Hyman discussing Jerry Andrus and Wikipedia with me at TAM 2012

Video of Wendy Hughes explaining the We Got Your Wiki Back! project

Instructions on how to get started editing.

Blog on the speakers at the 6th World Skeptic Congress.

Video Interviews and Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia

I hear from people all the time they love this project, but they are looking for a non-editing way to help out. 

So, this blog is for you.

Editors of Wikipedia can not add in content that does not exist.  Most of us do not have the ability to create articles and publish them in noteworthy places, we badly need more content.  Editors can quote from podcast interviews (better if the podcast is noteworthy, but not necessary) but then again very few of us have the ability to create a podcast.

Blogs generally are a good way to stay informed and create community.  But Wikipedia editors are not supposed to cite blogs.

What most of us do have, is the ability to create video interviews of noteworthy people (not forgetting those who will soon become noteworthy).

I'm finding the use of video interviews increasingly valuable for the We Got Your Wiki Back! project.  You can't write a whole Wikipedia page based on YouTube video interviews, but it can work to supplement an article, shore up vagueness, and bring lots of personality back to a Wikipedia page that may otherwise seem dry.

The YouTube video just needs to be dated and location is also a good idea.  Any extra information you can add on the video is also helpful.

I am currently re-writing the Wikipedia pages for several of the founders of the skeptical movement.  As well as creating from scratch the Skeptic Toolbox page.  I've been having trouble finding citations about the formation of the Toolbox as well as the motivation for creating it.  So I sat down with the creator Ray Hyman on Father's day and on video asked him about the history and motivation.  Uploaded it to YouTube, quoted him and cited the video.  DONE!

While I was at it I managed to get 4 more videos about his history in science and skepticism.  His comments not only shore up citation holes on his page, but they work to confirm other citations on other people's pages.  When he mentions that the first workshop was with Jim Alcock and Steve Shaw (now Banachek) that strengthens citations on Alcock and Shaw's pages.  We have to constantly remember that back in the 70's and 80's people didn't carry around video cameras in their pockets, and no one realized how important those first meetings would be, the media surely wasn't paying attention.  We need to document our history moving forward, as well as recapture what we can of our past.

Some other examples of using videos for citations on Wikipedia.

I've met James Randi many times, and with my good friend Kitty Mervine we tag-team taping just about every story he tells.  You never know if it will be a magic trick or a personal story, or something about the history of skepticism, but it is always something worth capturing.

When I began editing in 2010 I went through my videos for some reason and came across this one.  Randi discusses Claiborne Pell.   (I was on a rocking cruise ship and missed the beginning of the story) and I had to ask Facebook friends who Randi was talking about because I had never heard the name before.  Here is the Pell page before I added a Paranormal belief section.  And now here is the page with the Randi interview. 

Another great example of using videos to support a page.  When the Reason Rally happened at the beginning of the year the WP page was heavily edited by religious editors trying to diminish the rally.  They quoted all the news sources they could find, which were noteworthy sources but they were all religious.

I didn't attend the rally, but a woman whom knew of this project but had never thought she would ever have a need for help, wrote to me.  The page was a mess, skeptics had not yet come out with any media supporting the rally.  As you can see from this link, the page had become very religious friendly.  According to all the newspaper articles, there were hundreds of Christians handing out flyers and free water to the bad Atheists.  The Atheists were holding really evil signs and saying bad things about religion.

One example was this one "Other atheist activists held more controversial signs such as “So many Christians, so few lions,” in reference to the Diocletianic Persecution, in which several Christians were tortured." That's right "one example", there were thousands of people there and one person holding a sign should be mentioned?  Funny that they said only "several Christians were tortured", I guess they didn't have the room to name each one individually?  Seriously, the bias of that editor was obvious.  

The page went under many changes with two people sitting on the page.  They were arguing and reverting edits like crazy.   See the talk page for more info on how crazy it was. 

It took me some time to finally take this page seriously and go in and change it to what it looks like now.  Finally skeptics started posting videos of the speakers, and people like Brian Engler uploaded images.  Once the videos were up, I searched for the ones with the best quality, and edited out the quotes that I thought represented the speaker best.  Then cited the video.  We never want to remove all criticism, but just get down to the facts.  


The video you get does not have to be fancy, don't wait until you have the perfect setting, turn on the camera and do the best with what you got.  When you upload it, tag it with everything you can think of, and again don't fuss on it too much, its more important that it is uploaded quickly than playing with it for months until you forget about it (or worse delete it)

As in the case of the Reason Rally, we do not always have time to wait for the "official" videos to come out.  Citations must be freely available to anyone who wants to follow the link and see whatever it is you saw when you wrote the citation. (note: this does not mean that you must have a URL, the reference has to be one that without a lot of effort they can also obtain)

So pull out your smart phone,  or video camera and get these interviews recorded.  I could also use some help finding these interviews that should be on these pages.  Please contact me with whatever you got stored on your YouTube feed that might be relevant. 

I was just asked yesterday to recommend a good book talking about the modern skeptical movement's history.  Other than a few mentions in journals, there isn't one that I know of.  We are still waiting on the biographies (or auto-biographies) for our founders.  In the meantime, some of us over on Wikipedia are doing our best to get the citations, pictures and videos all in one place.  Future historians will thank us!

As usual, if you would like to help out with this project contact me at susangerbic@yahoo.com

6th World Skeptics Congress

Exciting times in Berlin May 2012.  The 6th World Skeptics Congress will be hosting a wide array of speakers.  Some of them I'm already very familiar with, others I have no idea who they are.  So off to Wikipedia to discover who these people are that are representing the skeptical community. 

Regular readers already know where this is going... The We Got Your Wiki Back! project aims to support all the skeptical spokespeople's Wikipedia pages.  Because we know that people outside of our community are going to access these pages shame on us if we don't have their backs.  If we don't care about our spokespeople then why should anyone else?

So I'm going to access the pages of these speakers to see what the rest of the world is seeing when they do the same.  An added challenge, remember this is a world congress.  What do the pages look like in their native language? 

One more side note - If you haven't already read my blog Forget English: What the Rest of the World Sees you might want to check it out.  I talk about this same World Congress's message to combat Creationism and Medical Quackery.  Talk directly to the people needing the message (in their own language) by making sure Wikipedia pages related to Evolution/Creationism and medical quackery are all in good order, YOU might not use Wikipedia as a resource, but this isn't about preaching to the choir, its about getting the correct information in a place they will read... Wikipedia.

The Speakers...

Gerd Antes  -  No Wikipedia page exists in English or Deutsch

Anila Asghar -  No Wikipedia page exists

Johan Braeckman - Page exists but as a stub (more like a stub of a stub)

Chris French - Wikipedia page exists but needs work.

Luigi Garlaschelli - No Wikipedia page but mentioned here.

Dittmar Graf - No Wikipedia page - but mentioned on this page.


Harriet Hall - Great page

Sven Ove Hansson - Very nice page (needs a picture)

Holm Hummler - No Wikipedia page

Ray Hyman - Nice page

Walter Kramer - No Wikipedia page

Benedikt Matenaer - No Wikipedia page

Chris Mooney - Needs expanding but still a nice page

Simon Perry - No Wikipedia page

Massimo Polidoro - Good page in English - Page in Italian (but with a horrible picture)

James Randi - Awesome page with 40K hits in Feb 2012.  There is a page in Deutsch as well with 1,800 hits in Feb 2012.  French page got 700+ hits. 

Gita Sahgal - Very informative page

Eugenie Scott - Very nice page

Simon Singh - Awesome page! (received 6,600 hits in Feb 2012)

Samatha Stein - No Wikipedia page

Kylie Sturgess - Darn good page

Rebecca Watson - Already addressed the issues with this page here.

Jurgen Windeler - No Wikipedia page but mentioned here.

Tomasz Witzowski - No Wikipedia page

Its either hit or miss with these pages.  If no page exists then it is possible that person has not met the notability requirements for Wikipedia.  It is also possible that they do meet the requirements but no page has been created.

So what can we do to help?  

The pages that need help like Braeckman's page need someone to re-write the page.  The speakers from non-English speaking countries should also have pages in that language.  Everyone needs to have a nice picture taken of them (at the podium with the Skeptics World Congress logo) in the shot.  If we don't use the picture now (giving publicity to the Congress BTW) then we might use the picture later. 

Homeopathy and Wikipedia

I'm going to want you to read this page in a minute.  Try to read it as if you know almost nothing about the topic.  Maybe pretend you just encountered someone at work that tried to give you homeopathic pills for some ailment you have been complaining about.  Or possibly you are just getting involved in a romantic relationship with someone who espouses the benefits of homeopathy to you.  The person now has you curious, they speak wonders about how wonderful their health is now, how inexpensive the treatments are, and want you to set up an apt with their practitioner. 

You know you aren't getting a unbiased description from this person, maybe you have heard that homeopathy isn't real medicine, or something about the English Royals being totally supportive of it.  Heck, you even heard that the British medical system will pay for homeopathy treatments, and why would they do that if it does not work?  So you turn to the Internet.  Where do you look if you are just looking for a description?  Maybe a search engine?

"Homeopathy"
(23 million hits)

This is the order of links I received on Yahoo Search

Homeopathy on Wikipedia
ABCHomeopathy which is a pro-Homeopathy site
U.S. National Institutes of Health site
The National Center for Homeopathy
Quackwatch site
What's the Harm in Homepathy?  (Tim Farley's site)

Okay now read the first hit that the average person will also see.   

What do you think?  Does this page reflect a good definition of homeopathy?   If you didn't really understand the topic before hand, what would you think after reading it?  

Look at the external links.  Someone put the Merseyside Skeptics Society "Homeopathy, There is nothing in it" link as well as 14 minute video by James Randi.  Awesome!

Another cool link located near the external links is a box stating that there is a Wikipedia News Article related to homeopathy.  The headline... 

"Parents prosecuted after homeopathic treatment leads to daughter's death"

The homeopathy page didn't just happen with one editor working on it.  This took years and many many editors contributing to the page.  It is still evolving, with discussions all the time happening on the talk page.  

The reason why I'm pointing this out is to make you really understand why Wikipedia is so important to getting critical thinking to the people who need it.  I'm not advocating for people to start editing the homeopathy page, this is a recognized "natural science good article".  Please don't try to edit this page unless you discuss it on the talk page first.   


Now go to the talk page.  I want you to see what the editors see when they are thinking about changing the page.  Look at the FAQ section, these are decisions that have already been decided and letting everyone know that changes to the page aren't up for discussion.  

If you ever questioned whether or not Wikipedia is a skeptical site or not, this should leave no doubt in your mind that it is.  We might not be able to get people to read the skeptical blogs we keep releasing but we should recognize the importance of Wikipedia.  

Just in case you were wondering what kind of impact I am talking about, here are the stats for homeopathy for December 2011... 86,425.  For the 2011 year... 1,266,752 hits.  Name another single page website that generates those kind of numbers?

In this case the page for Homeopathy is really well written.  Not so for many other Wikipedia pages.  Won't you take a moment to help out with this project?  


further note - 

Homeopathy generally gets 2-5 thousand hits each day.  Once in a while there is a spike in the hit numbers, to me this is extremely intriguing as it shows how media attention (maybe something WE did?) sends people indirectly to Wikipedia.  (by indirectly I mean, the media didn't give them a URL to follow, but Homeopathy was in the news and people just sent to WP to learn more about the topic).

These spikes are usually off a couple days because of the way they are reported on http://stats.grok.se


A normal day is 2-5 thousand hits
Jan 4 -  32.4K
Jan 5 -  23.4K
Feb 7 - 6.4K
Feb 8 - 5.7K
June 5 - 6.5K
June 6 - 7.3K
Aug 13 - 11.5K
Oct 31 - 8.8K


It is quite possible that the surge in numbers for the early Feb was because of the 10:23 campaign.  


Lets not forget our non-English Wikipedia friends.  Personally I can't update other-language pages because I don't read/write in other languages.  This is where we have to get creative.  The project of improving Wikipedia pages for skeptical content is FAR to important to only focus on English.  If you can help in other languages please please contact me.  


Here are a few numbers for homeopathy in other languages...   All November 2011 (note: when the page has a ranking, that means the page was really popular, most terms are not ranked)


Homeopathy - English - 106,894 (ranked 4,498 most popular page on WP in English)
Homeopatia - Polish - 12,373 (ranked 1,156 most popular page on WP in Polish)

Omeopatia - Italian - 13,929 (ranked 1,873 most popular page on WP in Italian) 
Homeopatía - Spanish - 44,072 (ranked 1,794 most popular page on WP in Spanish)
   it reached 3,236 most popular page in Hebrew -  hits in Hebrew (it writes left to right)  1,231 הומאופתיה

I could go on and on but have no idea what language most of these are.  Hrvatski, Galego, Ελληνικά, Ido, 日本語, తెలుగు, and ייִדיש are just a few other Wikipedia languages that have homeopathy pages.  Wonder what their visitors will read?























 

JREF President issues challenge to psychics

If I might paraphrase Wikipedia editor Dustin Phillips who says he got into editing Wikipedia because he kept putting up great links on his Facebook page to share with his skeptic friends, after awhile it seemed to make more sense to put those same links up on Wikipedia so everyone could see them.  Exactly.

Posting links for your friends is a good idea.  A better idea is to get the links in a place that the world can enjoy.  A place that holds an encyclopedic hold on our hearts and knowledge.  Maybe a place like Wikipedia?

Found this link left on Mark Edward's Facebook page today and I knew exactly who needed to be reading it.  Yep you know where. 

So I read through all the links on the page (thank you DJ for including so many).  I went through every single link and made a nice paragraph that could be inserted on the pages of Van Praagh, Sylvia Browne, Carla Baron, John Edward and Alison DuBois.  I just changed a few words here and there to make it fit nicely into their pages.

On Van Praagh's page I went a bit farther.  Because of the links that DJ left in the Huffington Post I was able to add two awesome YouTube videos to his page.  I didn't label them as "failures" like the videos state, but just mentioned one as "Van Praagh often appears in the media to promote his group readings, seminars and workshops. One such appearance on the TV show "The Circle" shows Van Praagh giving a 5 minute reading to several audience members". The 5 minute reading is pretty horrible to watch BTW.  I didn't put these two sentences under criticism/skepticism but under the category of "Career as a Medium", mainly because I don't want to give my opinion that it is a failure of a reading, I'm just letting the viewer decide.  I'm sure true believers will think he did rather well (he did seem to get a few hits) and they might say that they know he is for real because sometimes he has a bad day. 

In another link I wrote a completely separate paragraph about a medical statement he made about Barbara Walters.  He told her that she had elevated white blood cells, she went to the doctor and found out that her blood was normal.  She states on the video that what he told her is harmful.  So I left that video for his fans as well.

I'm sure that the JREF's exposure on TIME.com, ABC, Nightline, AOL, Huffington Post and on and on will get more readers than my few paragraphs on the psychics pages on Wikipedia.  But they work together, people go specifically to Wikipedia to learn about these people, and will look at the references left.

What kind of numbers are we talking about anyway?  Lets look at only Sept 2011 and see what kinds of hits we can expect Oct 2011 will get.

James Van Praagh - 4,156
Carla Baron - 718
John Edward - 16,244
Sylvia Browne - 14,003
Alison DuBois - 263

So about 35K people are looking at these pages each month.  That's quite a lot when you think it just took me about an hour to update these pages.  Almost a half a million will view these citations in a years time.  Also leaving these citations exposes readers to our skeptical spokespeople, publications and organizations, that is a win for Guerrilla Skepticism!  

So keep this in mind the next time you paste a link to your Facebook page or Twitter feed.  That's nice and keeping your friends informed is a good thing.  But if you aren't willing to take an hour once in awhile to edit that link into Wikipedia, then maybe you should bring it to the attention of someone who will.

Seriously think about this next statement of mine.  Are you a skeptic, part of the skeptical community?  Fine, hang out, share links, socialize and bitch about stuff.   Or are you a part of the skeptical movement?  If so, what are you doing? If you are in the movement then you need to start doing so. 

YouTube, Interviews and Senator Claiborne Pell on Wikipedia

I'm a photographer. I don't like to shoot video but I know a opportunity when I see it and anytime James Randi is talking it is an opportunity. Often times he goes from one story into the next one like a river. You don't know what your going to get so I just turn the video camera on and go with it.

This is one reason why I have 192 YouTube videos (my user name is sgerbic) they aren't the best quality (I'm getting better at it) but it really isn't something I'm excited to do. The editing is the worst part, actually just getting the darn video to load/save and publish is insane, it can take hours to just get the darn thing uploaded. Pictures it just takes me a couple minutes to crop/save/upload.

Anyway, I have a lot of video of James Randi, my son Stirling and I have done two Amazing Cruises with him and during lectures and meals my camera is always pointed at him. I posted the link on Facebook over a year after I shot it and asked people if they could identify who Randi was talking about. My friend Don Lacey knew right away who it was, Randi says the name but I didn't recognize it. This turned out to be about an experience Randi and Blackstone (the magician) had with Senator Claiborne Pell.

Apparently Pell was enamored with Uri Geller and felt that he (Pell) could not be fooled because he was a Senator and smarter than everyone else. The story goes that Randi fooled Pell with a trick and Pell was so thunderstruck that he believed that Randi had psychic powers like Geller. Pell is taken out of the room by his security team and Randi and Blackstone shared a laugh about how easy Gueller had it to fool Pell. Anyway it is a funny story and you will just have to watch the video to learn how it was done.

This blog post is about using YouTube as a citation for Wikipedia. Normally it isn't allowed as something editors want to see used. I'm not sure why but I suppose it is like a blog that is too often opinion. In this case I am recording a video of an interview told in a public place. When I quote what Randi says on Claiborne's page I cited the video. Opinions aren't proper on Wikipedia it shows bias. BUT quoting an opinion is fine as long as it is well cited.

I must mention that I had never heard of Pell before I learned who Randi was talking about on the video. Again this is an example of working backwards, finding the reference, writing a blurb and then posting it on the Wikipedia page (and hopefully other pages as well). Pell's page was pristine before I touched it, no criticism at all, he looked like a pretty upstanding Senator who gave us Pell Grants BTW. Even his grandson is quoted about what a neat man he was. I almost felt a twang of regret when I hit the publish button after leaving this quote. Almost.

Interest in the Paranormal

"According to Uri Geller, Pell in the late 1980s took an active interest into Geller's claims of remote viewing. On Geller's personal website he states that he was called by Pell and asked to describe a drawing he was looking at that moment. When Geller answered "a dagger with an ivory handle", Pell replied that he had gotten it correct and he was now convinced that Geller was genuine. Gueller reports that Pell was one of the most "forward-looking" and "open-minded people" he had ever met who was very interested in using psychic powers for peaceful means.^"

"In an 2009 interview with James Randi, he discusses his experience with Senator Pell who asked him to try and duplicate one of Geller's remote viewing feats. The Senator upon seeing that Rand's drawing matched his own drawing yelled, "I know a trick when I see one and that was not a trick...you have the power!"

I think I was kind compared to what I could have said, right? Anyway I wanted a second proof of this relationship between Geller and Pell and as you can see I went on a Internet search and found quotes on Geller's page about Pell's belief in Geller's powers. Now what Geller says is not necessarily factual as far as I know he could be making it all up. But I am clear that the quote is from Geller's personal website and not something probably more reputable. Readers can follow the links as I did and find more stories as well as pictures of Geller and Pell together. Along with Randi's account I think the evidence weighs pretty strongly on the side of Geller's account.

So look for sources in all kinds of places. Books, magazines, journals, newspapers as well as YouTube can produce all kinds of nuggets for Guerrilla Skepticism.

Guerrilla Skepticism of Sylvia Browne on Wikipedia

Anyone that knows me understands that I hold the "grief vampires" like Sylvia Browne, Robbie Thomas, James Van Praagh and John Edward on the top of my to-do list. Anyone that can tell a desperate family that their loved one has been kidnapped and sold into slavery in Japan needs to be slapped down hard. The grief that is heaped on these families must be overwhelming and adding these sick opportunists to the stress is just uncalled for. Whether or not they offer to do it for free or not is not the case, if they manage to even get it partly correct they will claim victory (heck they will claim that even if they get nothing right). They are hoping for publicity which will lead to fame and money. As they say "given enough time, enough monkeys...eventually the monkeys will type out Hamlet".

I'm not going to rant on and on about how much I hate these people because I really need to keep my blood pressure down. Lets just say that of all the woo out there, psychics that reportedly receive messages from the dead are right up there with the worst of the worst. (We all know that anyone can "talk" to the dead, I do, its getting messages back that is the problem).

I've just finished reading an amazing book that came highly recommended to me from Mark Edward and James "The Amazing" Randi. Nightmare Alley (and the movie version) follows the fictional story of Stan who begins his career as a magician in a carney act, over time he becomes a slick medium that cons people into believing he is in contact with their dead loved ones. Though this is fictional it does show how far these people will go to pull off a con. Another great read by Lamar Keene is The Psychic Mafia which is about his years working as a psychic. He exposes the whole gaff. Mark Edward's soon to be now published book Psychic Blues is a modern update of the years he spent working in the psychic industry and is also a "tell all".   All three of these books I highly recommend to expose psychics for what they are.

So now with that background on to what this blog is supposed to be about. Sylvia Browe's Wikipedia site. I'm writing this June 8th, 2011 and maybe by the time you read this there may be a lot of changes to her site, but essentially reading it through right now you will find almost nothing positive about her as a spiritual medium or as a person.

Wikipedia prides itself on having a neutral point of view and just reporting the facts that are carefully cited in the media. They do not allow opinions (except when quoting an article that is giving an opinion), no eye-witness testimony and no stories stating how great something is. So that really doesn't leave much when it comes to Sylvia Browne except negative articles.

Her many books are listed on her site which is only appropriate as she is an author of many works. Her personal very pro-Sylvia website is also listed and that's about it. Because of the amazing Robert Lancaster, we have been shown the way to create a website where the facts are laid one on top of the other until there is a mountain of evidence showing Sylvia Browne for what she is. He repetitively has asked Sylvia and her followers for just one case where she has been correct. Other than Sylvia hiring private detectives to find dirt on Robert, and her also having a lawyer send him a "stop" letter no word has come from the Sylvia Browne camp, nor from any of her many followers.

The opening bio on her page reads thus..."Sylvia Browne is an... who describes herself as a psychic and spiritual medium." Awesome, very appropriate. Often times these pages are written by a fan and you have to watch out for "peacock words" which violates the neutral policy of Wikipedia.

The second paragraph about Sylvia Browne includes what I call Guerrilla Skepticism, carefully cited facts that should be neutral in tone, but come from reliable sources. "In 1992, Browne was convicted of investment fraud and grand theft, and has been involved in numerous controversies regarding her claims and predictions, with reports about her failed predictions and claims appearing in several newspapers." All factual and relevant as to the character of Sylvia Browne.

"Critics such as James Randi, with whom she has had a long running feud, say that she is a cold reader whose readings are indistinguishable from those achieved by mentalists using cold and hot reading techniques. Recent press coverage has asserted that she is overall inaccurate." Again here the editor is using facts to state terms that readers can follow to explain how psychics appear to do what they do. This sentence also exposes readers to James Randi who has a long-standing feud with Sylvia Browne.

"A detailed three-year study of her predictions about 115 missing persons and murder cases, published in Skeptical Inquirer, concluded that despite her repeated claims to be more than 85% correct, "Browne has not even been mostly correct in a single case." This final sentence from the second paragraph should be the last straw to anyone who is not a total fan of Sylvia Browne. (face it trying to convince them will take more than this Wikipedia article, but as Robert Lancaster has reported over and over, he receives emails from her fans telling him that after reading his www.stopsylvia.com site they are now ex-fans).

Love this line, "She has given thousands of one-on-one readings and with a wide variety of groups and individuals; as of 2008, she charges $850 for a 20-30 minute telephone reading." All factual and in-your-face about what kind of money we are talking about, any reader with any common sense can see why Sylvia is in this business. If she just did 100 readings in a year at that rate then she earned $85,000 for 50 hours of work, unbelievable! Wikipedia does not have to do the math (that wouldn't be neutral) but hopefully anyone reading the article with a critical eye will discover this outrageous amount.

"Browne claims to have provided information to police departments and the FBI as a psychic detective. James Randi has researched this and in at least one case found that a police officer Browne claimed to work with did not work at the police department." Again the word "claims" and the citation at the end of the article (which isn't here BTW) leads to where this information was published. Even if you aren't a fan of James Randi you have to wonder why this article still is allowed to be up if it isn't factual?

"She was married to Gary Dufresne from April 1959 until 1972 in that time she moved to Kansas City, Missouri. Dufresne said in a February 10, 2007 interview that he does not think Sylvia has any paranormal abilities, and that she admitted it, saying that the gullible deserve to be taken advantage of. Dufresne again called Browne a "fraud" in a 2010 interview with KMOV-TV" Really don't think I would place much credibility on an interview with an ex-husband, but if you follow the links you will witness his genuineness on the video, and that with the mountain of other evidence just is overwhelming.

"Sylvia acquired the surname Brown from Kenzil Dalzell Brown during the third of her five marriages, and added a final e after she was indicted on security fraud charges." It just keeps getting better and better.

"Browne appeared on CNN's Larry King Live eight days before the September 11, 2001 attacks, but did not predict the event. After the fact she claimed she had disturbing dreams involving a lot of fire in the week preceding the attack". This is a stab at all psychics that did not prevent the 9-11 attacks.

I'm not going to go on and on about all the failed predictions that are listed (and correctly cited) on her Wikipedia page, spend some time yourself and enjoy the facts... But I do want to mention one of my very first edits to Wikipedia. I added Mark Edward's punking of Sylvia Browne to her page, I went back and forth about how to go about writing it in the article. I finally decided on this blurb, "At the Gibson Amphitheater, Universal Studios, Los Angeles, Dec. 29, 2009 Skeptic/Mentalist Mark Edward approached the microphone during the question portion of Sylvia Browne's show and said he had been hearing voices in his head, they were giving him the names...Opal Jo Jennings...Terrence Farrell...Holly Krewson and the Sego Miners. Browne could not tell he was lying and explained the voices were his spirit guides" the video if you haven't already seen it has a surprise ending and really shows what kind of person Sylvia Browne is. If you have already seen it, watch it again, this time with friends.

Many causal readers are not aware of what goes on behind the main Wikipedia page. Little do they know that with a click of a button "Talk" which is usually a blue tab next to the word "article" you can discover that the editors are real people.

This is where the discussion about what to put on the page, take out, rewrite ect... goes on. Here are a few interesting exchanges you might be interested in.


Question: "Rarely has so much negativity been contained in a biographical article. It should be split in two, one called 'Sylvia Browne' and the other, 'Sylvia Browne Criticisms.'"

Answer: "It's really not the right way to write an encyclopedia article, it should contain a description of all the relevant facts in an article of appropriate length for a person with this degree of popularity. The criticisms should be shortened to one section of appropriate length and linked to references."

Question: "Rather than removing critical material, why not just add more supportive material? As long as it can be cited, it should be fine."

Answer: "Thing is though, there are many referenced and verifiable facts that show her failure as medium and clairvoyant and how many that that show her success? Oh yes, I remember, bugger all." AND "I concur. How could this entry be anything BUT overwhelmingly negative?"

another Answer: This is absurd. Your idea of "weight" is a destruction of reality. If you look at the article for suicide, you don't see an argument that more "positive" effects of it should be added for "weight". You won't find people arguing the "sex abuse" article should have more positive points made either. If a person's public life overwhelmingly consists of fraudulant activities, it is disingenuous to try to alter reality in an article by intentionally "weighting" it down with positives, and acting to remove the negatives. But this is precisely what most of you are proposing."

Question: Sylvia is notorious yes, to a certain audience. But she's also written book after book that have all made it to New York Times Bestseller status as well as thousands of fans on online social networks, indicating that a separate group of people find sufficient validation in her work. Who are any of us to say what is "obvious" when so many people support her, and so many people do not? She needs to be represented fairly for both her successes and failures. As this article stands, it is still tangibly negative to a neutral reader."

Answer: "That would be false balance, again. Wikipedia isn’t about balancing info from fans and detractors, it’s about verifiable information from reliable sources. It’s obvious what’s right and what’s wrong when the “many people [who] support her” are fans and the “many people [who] do not” are people with training, education and experience that clues them in to her tricks and low rate of success."

Another person posted a headline in January 2011 that said that the article was overly negative towards Sylvia Browne. They wrote..."I realize that much of this page is dedicated to discussing the bias of the article and whether or not that bias is justified. But all that notwithstanding, the "Predictions" section needs special attention for bias for a few key reasons...Basically, whether or not one believes the bias of subject matter in this section is justified, bias in the writing is not and needs to be removed. I plan to do so in the near future, though I encourage anyone reading this to do so before I do."

The response: "Given that your plan to address the claimed bias (which has been discussed before ad nauseam) in the "near future" has proven to be as accurate as Browne's predictions, I'm going to go right ahead and assume you couldn't find well sourced balancing information or a better way to put the section in the intervening 2 months. I'll take that tag off for you." March 2011

Here is another section again talking about how slanted the article is toward criticism of Sylvia Browne...near the end yours truly chimes in.

Question: "It's beyond pathetic. This whole thing needs a re-write. It's so negative and Browne-bashing, how could this have gone so long without action being taken?"

Answer: "How so? Her claims are extraordinary and the reason for her notability are those claims. It seems most if not all serious sources that look at those claims critically have seen no indication of them actually being true. As such the biography should definitely be written to reflect that her claims have serious scrutiny. What would you change more specifically?"

Another response: "I personally worked with Browne and Company, and I can say that they are all frauds. This article is really too nice and gives Browne way too much credit. Browne is a self-promoter, and those who think that people are too hard on her do not know who or what Browne and her money making empire are really all about."

Apparently there was a tag saying that the criticism section was too large, and the next person removed the tag (in other words saying that we were going to stay with the article as is).

Answer: "I removed the tag. There has been four months to add in "positive" references. The reason the article is "slanted" is because there are no WP:RS to prove her claims. There is no proof she has been right once. If anyone has any positive sources, add them in. Until then, we won't be removing WP:RS. The article reflects WP:RS"

Supporter SmithJones "Don't bother trying to get people to be more reasonable here. Sylvia Browne being a fraud is an article of faith here; when even the takedown of the StopSylviaBrowne site isnt enough to convince people to reconsider, nothing said here can do that. Rob Samuels - your operation w. Browne and her FAMILY is unverifiable, and FOUR MONTHS is HARDLY enough time to do any serious research on any academic subject. I ask you politely and with reaspect to SERIOUSLY CONSIDER extending our time limit to find more reliable sources that fit within Wikipedia policies and write more additions to this article. the psirit of Wikipedia depends on it; if only u can edit, how can this be an OpenSource WIkpieda"

It was mentioned several times on the talk page about the history of www.stopsylviabrowne.com being taken down, the fact was that the webmaster Robert Lancaster had a stroke and he lost the URL while he was in the hospital. The site was turned into a pro-psychic page. Friends of Robert purchased the www.stopsylvia.com URL and transferred all the articles to that site. Many of Sylvia's followers do not understand the history behind it and claim that the original site was "taken down" because it was wrong.

Sgerbic: "Smith Jones - why do you need 4 months, it should take you 4 minutes to find credible sources that show Browne has actually solved a unsolved crime. If you can't find it in 4 months then you won't find it in 4 years. Browne has been asked repeatedly for evidence of her best case, so far nothing has come out of her camp except testimonials from people who claim to have been helped, which proves nothing. BTW Lancaster's site was NOT taken down, he had a stroke and the domain got purchased out from under him, so now www.stopsylvia.com is alive and well."

SmithJones: "no disrespect but its obvious you have no serious background in serious scientific reserch endeavors. I do, and I know it takes MUCH longer than 4 minutes to do much even the basic underpinnings of a major resarch expedition. Its much more than just a Google event; it is most required that you can go to libraries, resarch museums, and find sources that are NOT ONLY deeply incredibly detailed to provide information but are also have meeting the WP:RS statutes. I admit that 4 months is in error; it should require nearly .5x times with that, to do such a good job that would meet the standards of Wikipedia."

Sgerbic: "Smith Jones - Gee we are only asking for ONE example. Well the scientific community will be waiting for that evidence. Why don't you just ask Sylvia? Seems she should be able to supply some evidence. Good luck on that."

Another editor answers SmithJones: "Smith Jones, see WP:THEREISNODEADLINE. Wikipedia will wait for you to find a reliable, verifiable source to substantiate the claims Browne makes. Until then, the article must rely on the already substantiated evidence against her."

SmithJones: "very good, and i was not aware of that policy. is it new? either way, i thank you for your patience and forbearance and i agree with your assertionthat we must rely on the allegedly "substantiated" evidence against her for now. BUT MAKE NO MISTAKE this will not stand as the status quo inedefinitely. just because the truth has been scoure d from theInternet doesnt mean thtat it exists nowhere on earth. I just hope that these policies will be respected continuously when that day comes very soon on wings of rosyfingered dawn...SGerbic -- as for www.stopsylvia.com; it's only a matter of time..."

Sgerbic: "Smith Jones - Really? Can't wait to see what could possibly take down a website like that. Guess I'll set the stopwatch. LOL" This was from November 2010

When it hits November 2011 I guess I better go in and add that we are all still waiting...