Let them in on the Joke!

Just returned from the awesome Skeptic's Toolbox in Eugene, OR.  This skeptic conference is very different from most, in that the attendees are not allowed to just sit and listen to lectures.  They are assigned a "academic" paper to read in groups, research the topic with their fellow attendees (generally a group of 5-8 people) and then on the last day of the conference (Sunday) present their findings. 

On one of the days before breaking for dinner we tried to show a video that I had just uploaded 15 minutes prior.  The video is only one minute long and has Jim Underdown, Ray Hyman and Scott Nopp discussing Jim wrestling a bear.  That is all the group was told.  We didn't get the computer hooked up right and ended up trying to show it with a microphone held to the computer.  Lets just say that the audio was  bad and most people missed out on the joke.

The next morning I was thinking through the previous days events and suddenly realized that there is a world of people out there that can not get the joke, when it is presented as a video only. 

I'm going to ask you to watch this video without sound or captions.  So turn them off now.  (the video is only a minute long)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4RKBMOnOHM

See what I'm saying?  This video makes no sense except that Jim is fairly animated, and Scott and Ray think something is funny. 

Now what can be done to allow others into the joke?

That's right, captions.  New to the Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia project is Brad McDowell from Iowa.  Brad wanted to help out with the project but wasn't sure where to start.  I don't give assignments, as I want people to work on things they enjoy.  So after a bit of discussion, Brad decided he wanted to caption videos into English. 

And so he has.

Watch the video again, this time with the subtitles only on.  Make sure not to have audio on.

Now you can get it, by watching the faces and reading the text you can get the joke.  Okay, it isn't the best piece of comedy that exists on YouTube, but it does show off their personalities and how even the great skeptic Jim Underdown got scammed by the owner of this bear. 

Now watch the video one more time (I promise this is the last time).  Turn on captions and audio. 

The purpose of this blog isn't to tell you the story of Jim wrestling a bear (though it is a fun story) but to appeal to people to please get involved in the Wikipedia project.  Once these videos are captioned, not only does it allow someone who can't hear to be able to enjoy, but it makes it a lot easier for other people to caption into all kinds of languages.  Once that is done the video can be cited on Wikipedia in that language. 

I'm always desperate for editors, photographers and video people. I need content created, found, uploaded and so on in order to "prove" citations that we want to make.  I've asked you to look through your photos and videos, get them uploaded and correctly tagged so we can find them.  They aren't doing anyone any good sitting on your hard drive (besides, if something happens to that hard drive/memory card/DVD then a small piece of our history is gone, thanks a lot!)  It does not have to be high quality and professionally edited, just get the darn thing uploaded!






I've discovered that captioning videos is actually fun.  I'm watching videos in detail that I would normally have just glanced at.  It is really not that difficult to do once you get through a couple videos.

From what I understand, in order for the video to be captioned we have to have the owner of the video upload the captions.  We could "host" the video on a place like Amara (this is the company we are using to caption) but I'm not comfortable allowing this to happen, at least until I know more. 

I have over 200 videos (most concern skepticism in some way) waiting to be captioned.  I have other friends that would be willing to upload captions when they are ready (Kitty Mervine springs to mind).  And I'm sure lots of video owners would be willing to do so if asked.  BTW please share your passwords and permissions (with a close friend and/or family member) so that everyone else is not held hostage with the inability to move forward if needed. 

So if you have some history laying around someplace that you think should be brought to our attention, or want to help out and need training and what to caption first, please contact me at susangerbic@yahoo.com.

ONE MORE THING




About uploading images to the Internet.  Please consider uploading to WikiMedia Commons.  I believe Kitty Mervine was the photographer in the case of the below photograph.  This is my son, Stirling and we were on a JREF cruise "Chasing el Chupacabra" in Mexico.  Kitty had purchased this dried out skate and was telling everyone it was a chupacabra.  The picture was uploaded years ago to WikiMedia and just a week or so ago, Kitty got a message from one of her friends "Hey, isn't that Stirling?"  Sure enough Cracked Magazine used this image for an article on the chupacabra.  When the image is clicked on, you are taken to WikiMedia where the JREF is mentioned. (there are over 1,400 comments, so someone is reading this article) Pretty cool!

Should Skeptics write pages for Paranormal People?

Really hoping for a great discussion on this topic.  You all know my motivation, I want to improve skeptical content on Wikipedia, but always by following the rules of Wikipedia.  I also want to hold all paranormal topics and people to those same rules.  They can't make a claim on their page unless it is completely backed up with correct citations.

But what about skeptics writing pages for topics and people that are clearly on the other side of skepticism?  Aren't we exposing readers to the opposition?  Maybe even giving them more notoriety than they deserve?  Shouldn't we concentrate on our own skeptical spokespeople?  I mean I'm forever going on and on about how badly our people's pages need help. 

Lets take a look at a few pages that already existed and we have spent quite a bit of time keeping up-to-date.  Sylvia Browne, Chip Coffey, John Edward and James Van Praagh. 

Sylvia received 11,454 hits in February 2012.  Her star is really fading as she is either being replaced by others or because she isn't in the news as much anymore, I seem to remember seeing numbers in the 30K area each month.  Looking over her page a reader will find that nearly the entire page is devoted to her downfalls.  Whenever someone has tried to post something positive about her it is ripped down.  Why?  Because the positive things can't be backed up by good citations, noteworthy sources aren't writing about her, and editors aren't allowed to put up excerpts from her books and her blog saying how "nice she is".  Sorry.  The only things allowed are the facts, which includes the court transcripts of her indictment of fraud. 

Chip Coffey is another story, the page as you can see is a mess.  There is at least a picture of him.  Where is the skeptical side of the story?  We can only add in edits if the story is already written.  Either the articles don't exist or we haven't added them in yet.  This page was once on the list for deletion but it was saved mainly because of uninterest by other editors.  In Feb 2012 it received 4,026 hits.  That's quite a lot for a stub.  I think this page needs quite a bit of attention. 

John Edward is the new hot psychic thing now that Sylvia isn't as active.  His page received 25,464 hits in Feb 2012.  This page is far from ignored by skeptics, several of my edits are on this page as well as from others.  At least once a week one of us has to revert vandalism of someone calling him the Biggest Douche in the Universe somewhere on the page.  The reference already exists in its correct place on the page. 

James Van Praagh is in the middle of Sylvia and John as far as attention.  With 4,598 hits, the page is an advertisement for a bad psychic.  The criticism section is longer than most Wikipedia pages in total. 

Now why are we maintaining these pages?  Because readers are visiting them and we want to make sure there is a neutral place to leave the articles written from the skeptic world. 

Here are a couple more examples I bet you have never heard of.  Newly joined to the Guerrilla Skepticism world is Rick Duffy from Colorado.  Rick wrote a couple pages for two men who are rising in prominence in Colorado.  Voters there will recognize Jeff Peckman and Stan Romanek.  Rick told me he wrote these pages because they have become noteworthy enough to warrant them, and this way readers can get the whole story and not just the bits and pieces from TV news clips. 

Peckman received 530 hits and Romanek 902. 

I'm all for Rick's work, the pages are neutral from the perspective of the reader.  I'm sure Romanek and Peckman would love to remove some of the edits, but we can only add in what is out there already.  If positive information hits the media, we will add it in also. 

To answer the last question, shouldn't we be working on pages for our skeptical spokespeople instead?  I would love to see more focus on the skeptical pages, but Duffy's work allowed citations from Bryan Bonner and Matthew Baxter's work in Rocky Mountain Paranormal.  I've already written about this group on the Stanley Hotel blog and Wikipedia page.  At the moment RMP is not noteworthy enough to have their own Wikipedia page, but that is quickly changing now that Rick has done his work.

Also, I think that it is really important to remember that we aren't getting paid for all this editing work.  This is a passion and a mission for me, it should be something you enjoy doing.  We should be working on the projects we enjoy, not crossing off items that Susan has assigned.  Find your passion.  I'll be happy to assist if you need some guidance but I think just spend some time on Wikipedia and start following the hyperlinks to other pages, in time you will be far away from your initial start and maybe you will bump into your mission. 

As always, if you want to become more involved in this project or need help learning how to edit please contact me at susangerbic@yahoo.com 

Anderson Cooper and John Edward ~ a new friendship

I'm just sick over this, well not sick but pretty close to it.  I've respected Anderson Cooper for years.  My avatar on the JREF forums is a picture of Cooper and Browne on CNN with the screen shot that says "Dead Wrong".  Cooper has always asked the hard questions and did his research, he never let anyone get away with vagueness, he slammed them to the floor.  Psychics were always handled firmly.

Now this.

Anderson allowed John Edward onto his show to give readings to his mother and himself.  Nothing skeptical mentioned from what I've heard.  This JREF SWIFT blog sums up how I feel.

Tim Farley on October 20th SWIFT blog talks about skeptical tools to measure how successful we are.  I concur we really need to be able to measure our impact.  We can't keep throwing darts into the forest if we never go and look to see if we hit anything.  When involved in any kind of event, there should be some discussion about how it went, what could we have done better and where did we go wrong.  We need to learn, and improve.

Tim asks the question.  Who of these psychics is more popular (Browne, Van Praagh or Edward)?  Interesting question.  Where do you concentrate your efforts if you have very limited time and resources?  I'm sure there are many ways of doing this, book sales on Amazon maybe?  Google search results?  Tim would probably have 34 different ideas if we asked him.

Here is a simple way.  Use the Wikipedia Article Statistics Tool.  It only takes 1.364 seconds and you will be amazed.   Keep in mind this tool has a bit of a delay.  So if we want to look to see if John Edward's Wikipedia page got any hits after his Oct 14th, 2011 debut on Anderson, we can just look it up.

Generally Edward has about 600 hits a day to his Wikipedia page.  On Oct 16th his page got 3.7K hits.  Then the next day 3.1K, then 2.7 and finally 1.6K  (maybe people were finally watching Anderson from their recording on Tivo?)

Wikipedia is a great way of judging popularity because it is accessed by the general public (believer, skeptic and fence sitter)  We can assume that Wikipedia users tend to be people who have access to the Internet, and I'm only looking at WP in English.

What kinds of things are people reading on his page?  There is quite a lot of skeptical content that I and other editors have left.  His page is patrolled quite carefully, I am one of them and have reverted edits from skeptics many times.  I've erased "he's the biggest douche in the Universe" at least 5 times this year alone, others have probably caught those edits before I got to it.  (BTW this isn't guerrilla skepticism)

I'm waiting for some other source (secondary) to pick up the JREF blog post so I can (or someone else can) put the article up on Edward's page.  We rather not put up primary sources if we can help it.

Lets just answer that question.  Which of these psychics is more popular?  Quick come up with your own guess before I reveal my answer.  Using Wikipedia as a resource we can come up with a few numbers.  I'm picking Sept 2011

Sylvia Browne - 14,003
John Edward - 16,244
James Van Praagh - 4,156

This just added Dec 25, 2011  


22K John Edward "fans" will read this quote from Michael Shermer this month "Pretending that the dead are gathering in a television studio in New York to talk twaddle with a former ballroom-dance instructor is an insult to the intelligence and humanity of the living".

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. 

Psychic Detectives

As more and more people get turned onto the idea of editing Wikipedia for skeptical content they ask me "what should I do?"

My advise is always the same.  Open a Wikipedia account (Wiki Commons if you are going to upload pictures) and read my entire blog.  Then pick something that interests you and get started.  Ask for feedback if you feel you need it.  Then comment here on the blog letting us know what your working on. 

Ben Radford and I are on the same mindset of a page that badly needs help.  Psychic Detectives (in my opinion the lowest of the woo people).  I remember reading an article in SI ages ago about the best evidence for a actual "solved" case using psychics.  I didn't know (at that time) any of the parties concerned, but some time has passed and I'm familiar with all the players now.  The investigator of that article was Ben. 

At TAM9 at the CFI table they were giving away free copies of SI, one issue was this one from March/April 2010.  I snagged it and kept trying to read it at the IIG table when I wasn't talking to people.  I never got more than a couple sentences into the article when I had to put it back down.  To make a long story short (too late) I did not come home with that issue, nor can I find the one I had at home and it isn't on-line.

So I'm asking for help.  I can't update this site without having access to articles.  That issue was totally awesome with references to Sylvia Browne and the "best case for psychic detectives" in it.

When you look at the psychic detective page you will see how pathetic it actually is.  Badly sourced for something that we could easily fix.  It does not generate a lot of hits (only 493 in June 2011) but we don't know who these people are, they might be total believers or maybe fence sitters accessing this page.  It does not matter, this page is in the public's eye and needs attention.

Besides, once the blurbs are written for this page, we can take the citations and blurbs and leave them on all the mentioned psychic pages.  Sylvia Browne included.  Spread the knowledge.

Please help.

Lets Talk Numbers

 

Get out there and Edit!

We are going to talk about numbers today.  We all can agree that editing Wikipedia for skeptical content is a great idea, but how can we measure results?  Do we know if people are actually accessing these sites?  I'm very interested in your opinions about the following stats.

I know that Sylvia Browne is not really performing these days, her star is fading as the criticism is rising.  The Montel Williams Show isn't promoting her anymore (in fact they were cancelled) so I would think that few people access her site.  Well just a few 11,966 looked at her page during June 2011.  I don't know how many hits Robert Lancaster got from his Stop Sylvia Site, but I would bet it would also be in the 5 digits.  Comparing June hits to her Wiki page she had 11,940 in 2008, 10,646 in 2009 and 9,681 in 2010.  So she is averaging about 10K hits in a month.  Robert if you are reading this, would you be so kind to let me know how many hits you got to your site in June of any of the above years? 

Power Balance Bracelets Wiki page was launched in Dec 2010, fairly recent but they have been getting in the news a lot lately.   Reading over the Wiki page there is almost nothing positive there.  Yeah Us!   Would you believe that 20,720 people looked at that Wiki page in June 2011?  Amazing!

I don't know how many hits we get to the IIG Wiki page from the Power Balance Wiki hyperlink, but I do know that in total 1,179 people visited the site for June 2011.  I can't access (yet) where the hits are coming from, direct from outside Wiki or because of a hyperlink left elsewhere on Wikipedia. 

If you have been following this blog you will remember my tussle for an edit on the  Lamar Odom Wiki page.  See this blog on the history of my effort to get my blurb to remain on his page.  Apparently he is a pretty popular fellow.  I had no idea how popular until now.  232,555 hits to his Wiki page just in June 2011.  Wow!

I suppose people are looking at his stats, but anyone a bit curious about Lamar will look at the section on his personal life and find these two blurbs...

On October 28, 2010 Olympic champion gymnast Dominique Dawes working for Yahoo Weekend News investigated Power Balance Bracelets for their claim that they improve balance, flexibility and strength. Odom endorses Power Balance bracelets and states on camera that "if it gives you an advantage, that's the advantage you want". Dawes asked "are you superstitious knowing you won...wearing power balance?" Odom's answer: "100%". After a scientific double blinded test done by IIG's LA office and Dawes the end result was no improvement when wearing the Power Balance bracelet.^[30]

A class-action lawsuit was filed January 21, 2011 against Power Balance, Shaquille O’Neal and Lamar Odom for endorsing the bracelet. The Power Balance company in Australia was forced by a court to admit that the $30 bracelet works no better than a placebo. The lawsuit by Brian Casserly and 100 others claims that Odom and O'Neal "wear the product in front of millions of impressionable fans watching on national TV."^[31]

Now doesn't that feel good knowing that over 200K people were exposed to Guerrilla Skepticism left on his page?  I know I feel good about it. 

Lets look at some other numbers, I'm just going to list June 2011 for no other reason except for consistency. These are all places that I've hit with some guerrilla skepticism. 

CVS Pharmacy - 9,924
Walmart - 121,493
John Edward - 21,956
James Van Praag - 6,258
TAPS - 23,277
Psychic Detectives - 493
Ghost Hunting - 11,177
Vassula Ryden - 1,238
Peter Popoff - 12,145
Harold Camping - 115,795 (with 20K hits on June 1st - 2nd)
Jenny McCarthy - 115,081 (ranked 1,950 in traffic that month) (this is a site that I didn't tag, others did)
Senator Claiborne Pell - 2,005
Wem Town Hall - 166
Stanley Hotel - 2,868
Andrew Wakefield - 9,215

Really really interesting isn't it. 

What does this all mean?  Well numbers are a great tool, you can view them in many ways.  I'm taking that these numbers mean that skeptical content is being put in the face of Wiki readers.  Are they actually reading the blurb and following the links?

That might be a bit harder to discover unless you are able to look at website stats.  Fortunately I can see the IIG stats each month.  Jan - June we averaged about 6.75% of the hits coming to www.iigwest.org are coming from Wikipedia.  Barry Karr (from CSI) checked May and June stats and they were 4% for May 2011 and 4.75% for June 2011.  Is that a lot?  It is difficult to say.  We know that people are venturing over to Wikipedia and being exposed to the skeptical content.  Only a small percent look further and actually go to the websites to read the original article, maybe their question about the person/place/thing was answered in the blurb written on the Wiki site?

It is also possible they are following other hyperlinks to explain what they are reading?

cold reading - 23,502
hot reading - 2,943
fallacy - 42,573
Occam's razor - 121,724 (ranked 2763)
conspiracy theory - 59,598
skepticism - 31.459

So how am I gaining access to all of these numbers?  I'm giving you the link at the bottom of this blog, otherwise you would not read another word.  This is an awesome toy tool that Tim Farley sent me today, I think it is going to become one of my favorite sites, use it wisely.

http://stats.grok.se/

PS.  Photo by Kevin Eldridge 








 

James Van Praagh ~ How to Edit

With all the fame and fans supposedly licking the heels of grief vampires like Van Praagh you would think that their Wikipedia pages would be extra patrolled by the thousands that he has helped put in contact with their dead family and friends.  When in fact his page is rarely touched, and the criticism area has had very little action (just the one I will mention in a minute).  His page doesn't even have a picture, guess the paranormal community doesn't have Van Praagh's back, wonder why?

There already was a criticism area when I started editing his page, so I just added on the SI article by Joe Nickell.

Investigator Joe Nickell believes modern day self-proclaimed mediums like John Edward, Sylvia Browne, Rosemary Altea and James Van Praagh are avoiding the Victorian tradition of dark rooms, spirit handwriting and flying tambourines as these methods risk exposure. They instead use “mental mediumship” tactics like cold reading or gleaning information from sitters before hand (hot reading). Group readings also improve hits by making general statements with conviction, which will fit at least one person in the audience. Shows are carefully edited before airing to show only what appears to be hits and removing anything that does not reflect well on the medium. ^[9]

And the investigation by the IIG.  

In 2003 the IIG attended a taping of James Van Praagh's syndicated series “Beyond,” in order to document the difference between what actually occurred at the taping and how it appeared on TV after editing. As suspected, there were many significant differences, the IIG concluded that Van Praagh’s power emanates from the editing room. ^{[10] [11]}

While I had the Joe Nickell blurb and citation already completed I just mosied over to John Edward, Sylvia Browne and Rosemary Altea's pages and "tagged" their sites as well.

Caution Wiki Technology Below

When you do something like this you have to remember to "link" and "unlink" the Wikilinks to the apporate page.  Using the Joe Nickell example above, you have several names mentioned in your blurb.  Each person that is NOT ON THE PAGE you are editing needs to have [[ and ]] around the name.  If I am on Sylvia Browne's edit page then I remove the brackets from around her name.  [[Sylvia Browne]] and put them around the person whose page I'm not on.  

When you "preview changes" before you publish the article you will see that the names that have the [[ and ]] around them are in blue "hyperlink" color.  If you have red writing then you know something isn't linked right.  Misspelling or missing a middle initial ect.   That gets more complicated to sort out in this blog.  The easiest way to solve this problem is to open another "tab" on your browser and go to the Wikipedia page you are trying to link to.  Copy the name of the page and paste it into the page you are trying to edit.  

For example you might have problems linking to C Everett Koop's page unless you have a period after the C.  There are ways around this and it can get complicated but for now just copy from the page you are hoping to link to and paste it into the edit. 

Back to Van Praagh

Whenever you make an edit to any page (no matter how small) you need to write in the "Edit Summary" box a summary of whatever you just did.  And don't try to hide your edit by writing something other than what you did.  This is what someone who thought they were clever tried to do with Van Praagh.  On the watchlist (I explained on an earlier blog)whenever you refresh you will see all the pages that you have on your watchlist that have had any kind of change done to it.  The edit summary will tell you briefly what change was made, like "corrected misspelling of the word dozen" or maybe "revised comma use" or "added article by Joe Nickell".

Well someone named Booradley08 thought they would be clever and wrote "references removed" when what he/she did was remove the ENTIRE criticism section.  Not funny!  Editors might not think to check on something like a spelling error, but they would check in a flash if Booradley08 had written that they had removed the criticism section.

Thankfully I was in a curious mood that day and only 2 days passed before I noticed this edit.  You do not have to go through the entire page looking for what was changed.  You simply just click on "dif" and you can see "before and after" edits.

It is also possible for edits to be hidden by making a big change, correctly writing what you did, saving the page and then going back editing it again with a very small change, writing on the edit summary about the simple change and possibly the person watching the page will only notice the last change done (which was the small change).  I've done this by accident several times, and it is not ethical to hide your edits this way.  I'm only pointing this out in case if you are watching a page, you should look over changes carefully, maybe looking at the history of the page from time to time to see if someone is trying to hide the major edit.

Editing Wikipedia ~ "How To Edit"

Found this comment from JMA on the Skeptics Guide to the Universe forum today.  I hear comments like this all the time and he/she makes some very valid points to which I will respond.

"Interesting blog. I'm looking forward to read more. I have been contributing skeptical contents on wikipedia (especially the French version, wikipédia) for years, but it's very frustrating and time consuming. I created my own blog because I was so tired to have woo-proponents editing my stuff away... Editing wikipedia is more easily said than done."

Mark Edward gets hit with the statement that his style of Guerrilla Skepticism (which is where the term came from) is too "in your face" and he can't expect others to follow his style.  Some say we need to be gentle when confronting the woo in the world and not call them out for their stupidity.  His response is that there are many ways to educate and confront.  The spectrum of skeptical activism is broad and we each need to find our own way.  The Penn & Teller approach isn't for everyone.  (BTW if you haven't already seen this video of Mark Edward punking grief vampire Sylvia Browne you should)

Mark is correct.  There are many avenues to take, you need to find the style that fits you comfortably and take advantage of the skills and opportunities you have.  I'm not a in-your-face kind of person but I'm always up for something behind the scenes.  Guerrilla Skepticism is VERY behind the scenes but subtly in-your-face. To be fair to Mark, he isn't really after the believers, and he has said many times to leave the little old lady card reader on the street corner alone.  The big fish like Praagh and John Edwards need our attention.  When he confronted Sylvia Browne he did so in a way that She Knew he was on to her, and that we skeptics could be invisible and get close to her, also that we were organized, creative and motivated and had no qualms to letting other people know.  Sylvia Browne very soon after this started cutting back on her live shows.

When someone is searching for more information about a person/place/thing or phrase on the Internet most often within the first 3 links they will receive will be a Wikipedia link (yes it is just that powerful and we need to take advantage of that power).  Which link will the researcher take?  I call it the Goldilocks effect.  Choosing the personal website of the person might be just too positive, a anti site like www.stopsylvia.com might be too negative.  But Wikipedia is just right, and the researcher knows this.  So that is where they are going to invest their time reading, from the Wikipedia page once they have some background, they can follow more links both positive and negative.

So going back to JMA's statement.  Personal blogs and websites are a wonderful avenue for people wanting to express opinions and make bold statements (your reading my blog after all). These serve a purpose in the skeptical movement and you have a specific audience.  I don't expect Sylvia Browne fans to find this blog, read it and change their minds, this blog is for the skeptical community people who want to get active and DO SOMETHING to move our movement forward into the public eye (and take back the word Skeptic to mean something other than the pejorative it has become in some minds).

Wikipedia is a totally different approach.  The power of this site has changed our vocabulary (who ever heard of Wikianything 11 years ago?)  Everyone on the Internet uses Wikipedia.  I find references to it everywhere and when someone in a blog or their website wants to explain a term they just link to the Wikipedia page instead of explaining the term.

Editing Wikipedia might seem frustrating and time consuming.  You Bet!  But it satisfies some part of my OCD mind, I love creating order.  When I've left a new blurb on a paranormal site it is an awesome feeling.  And when I see it still linked there months later, Wow!  I am involved with the IIG (Independent Investigative Group and have many references to IIG all over Wikipedia.  When I see the web stats come in for www.iigwest.org and find that we have 4 hits from Carla Baron's Wikipedia page, or 6 from See Clearly Method that is really a nice feeling.

If you have chosen this for a hobby as I have, you must enjoy what you are doing.  If you don't see the importance of what you are doing and it becomes a task then this isn't the project for you.

I have had very little problems with "woo-propondents editing" my posts.  I don't know if it is the topics I choose or my style of editing but I'm just not encountering it.  I find that in life if you make bold statements with confidence most people will not challenge you, this also seems to be true on Wikipedia.  I have a "user" page that other editors can see if they want, I also have a lot of edits which also gives confidence.

I am on the "first-responder" committee for the IIG and daily I see the emails come in from people looking to take our $50K paranormal challenge.  Mostly these people can't write a coherent sentence, let alone do it without being in ALL CAPS.  I'm not too worried about them managing to find their way to a Wikipedia edit page.

I'm sure you have heard this phrase before, "The nice thing about Wikipedia is that everyone can edit Wikipedia, which is also the sad part of Wikipedia."  And that is true, you can be anonymous and leave edits.  They aren't taken seriously by other editors and you can't leave it on a "watchlist" if you don't have an account.  So when that post is quickly removed (and it will be) they have no idea it is gone unless they just check back.  They can also get their IP address banned from Wikipedia if they do it often.

Some pages are semi-protected and only people who have "auto-confirmed" their user name can edit.  That's me!  Its a nice feeling when I see that note at the top of the page and know that I can edit.  Some pages are even more protected like the $cientologist page.  Followers of that cult have been aggressive about cleaning up any info that is anti-$cientology.  Editors have been able to research their IP addresses and found that they are coming from $cientology centers.  This was very bad media for them and it banned many from the site, also being a protected page means that only the facts appear on $cientology.  Anyone researching this group will be able to go to Wikipedia and get an honest look at them.  What a cool feeling that is.  (I take this back they are only semi-protected now)

So thank you JMA for your comment as it has allowed me to discuss some really important issues.

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...