The trouble with Wikipedia

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Grahame
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Re: The trouble with Wikipedia

Post by Grahame »

Ian Pegler wrote:This looks like a relaunch of the old http://skepticalinvestigations.org/
Yes it is a rehash of that one - they do say that on the site somewhere.
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The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it - Terry Pratchett.
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Re: The trouble with Wikipedia

Post by Ian Pegler »

Going down the list of "notable" dowsers on the wiki page, I note that there were only two that I'd ever heard of, namely T.C. Lethbridge and Geller.

I had to look up the rest. One is better known as a scientist and climate-change skeptic and three others apparently had some Nazi association (an obvious attempt to smear dowsing, by association). Out of the whole list, only two are still alive.

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Re: The trouble with Wikipedia

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Ian Pegler wrote:Going down the list of "notable" dowsers on the wiki page, I note that there were only two that I'd ever heard of, namely T.C. Lethbridge and Geller.
Leicester Gataker is fairly well known - he's mentioned in Barrett & Bestermans' The Divining Rod, and I believe Simon's grandfather(?) had a connection with him.

Joseph Smith Junior, founder of the Mormons, was taught to dowse by someone by the name of Winchell, who also taught Nathaniel Woods, leader of the 'rodsmen' aka 'New Israelites' religious group in Vermont around 1800. I didn't know that Smith's father, Joseph Smith Sr., cited in the Wiki article, was a dowser. but there is a reference to it on the Wiki page for Nerw Israelites. I suspect there is some historical confusion between father and son in this instance.
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The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it - Terry Pratchett.
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Re: The trouble with Wikipedia

Post by simonwheeler »

Leicester Gataker is fairly well known - he's mentioned in Barrett & Bestermans' The Divining Rod, and I believe Simon's grandfather(?) had a connection with him
Great grandfather! Alfred Wills was his name. He and Gataker worked in a business partnership in and around Bath originally, then wider afield.


Click here for long article based on Alfred Wills' diaries, including stuff about him and Gataker.

Extract:
Mentioning Leicester Gataker brings me to the outstanding events of my business career.

It was in 1898 that I first met him, in business. He had started as a Professional Water Expert, and had some trouble with a small water supply, in a well, on Little Solsbury.

This old well, only required deepening two feet, but it was a most dangerous job, and no one would undertake it.

Against father’s advice, I took it on, and did the job myself. It makes me shudder today, when I realise the risk I took. The old sides were so rotten that they might have collapsed any moment, and the trouble I had made me almost throw up the sponge, but, I could never face defeat, kept on, and succeeded.

This laid the foundation of a lifelong friendship, and a business which materially helped to make the fortune of our family.
Don’t be so open-minded that your brains fall out. LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI

www.simongordonwheeler.co.uk

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Re: The trouble with Wikipedia

Post by simonwheeler »

Hundreds of “black hat” English Wikipedia accounts blocked following investigation
Full story is here
Don’t be so open-minded that your brains fall out. LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI

www.simongordonwheeler.co.uk

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Re: The trouble with Wikipedia

Post by Ian Pegler »

from the Daily Beast...
I Was Shaken Down by Wikipedia’s Blackmail Bandits

Dayramir Gonzalez faced threats if he didn’t pay up for edits to his Wikipedia page. Now, his scammer and 380 other blackhat editors have been banned for blackmail.
CLICK HERE for the article.

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Re: The trouble with Wikipedia

Post by Grahame »

Here's a rather good blog on Huffington Post about the organised sceptical attacks on Wikipedia's page on Deepak Chopra:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ryan-cast ... 49394.html
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The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it - Terry Pratchett.
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Re: The trouble with Wikipedia

Post by simonwheeler »

Nothing to with this Forum really, but a "Wikipedia experience" from an experienced professional journalist made me smile:
https://simonusborne.wordpress.com/2016 ... mea-culpa/
Don’t be so open-minded that your brains fall out. LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI

www.simongordonwheeler.co.uk

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Re: The trouble with Wikipedia

Post by Grahame »

Now you can't even tell if your Wikipedia page is being edited by a human:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ ... e_btn_link
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The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it - Terry Pratchett.
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Re: The trouble with Wikipedia

Post by Grahame »

This is a very handy summary of the Wikipedia 'guerilla sceptics' problem.


A good alternative site worthy of support is https://psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/
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The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it - Terry Pratchett.
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Re: The trouble with Wikipedia

Post by Parks »

True Wikipedia is full of false statements and therefore an unstable platform and BAD idea for A.I.
If you look back in history you will find the false statements came from the invention of the printing press.
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Re: The trouble with Wikipedia

Post by Geoff L »

Firstly - exposure of the Guerilla Skepticism on Wikipedia sabotage group. How they work. Background: the controlling group of skeptics who denigrate and block anything they see as pseudoscience, has been exposed through 4 months or more meticulous detective work by this guy in the UFO/UAP community. He’s been outraged by the bias and manipulation of that subject on any related Wiki pages. The first episode about it on The Good Trouble Show was 3 hours (edited down would have been better, but it was done live, and is eye-opening). So this link is instead to the followup ‘deep dive’ into the subject, which is shorter.

Secondly - fairly urgent help please. Those 2 videos aired coincidentally/synchronisticly as I’m working on the exact same Wiki bias problem, but more widely than UFOs/UAPs. I’m including a bit about dowsing. I’d welcome any links please to good information on either or both of Donovan Wilkins and George Applegate. I’m into the videos of them at work, but I’m after 'the written word' saying specifically that Donovan worked on a ‘no water no fee’ basis [as I understand it]. I haven’t been with Devon Dowsers for some time, but a DD friend tells me that Donovan ran 5 drilling rigs, and I'd like to confirm that. Also, to get an online map of all the boreholes he drilled which is shown briefly in the BSD film. (Why is it so dark?) And I have notes from George Applegate's talk to DDs in 1998, when I was present - I could say more on this over the phone. Can anyone confirm the 'no water no fee' please for Donovan Wilkins, with something in writing?

What I'm writing about the Wikipedia sceptics may have a fairly wide circulation (hopefully), it's a campaigning piece, so I want the segment on dowsing to be both as accurate as possible; and as persuasive to a general audience as possible. I see dowsing as part of the case to be made about why what the sceptics called pseudoscience, is part of a greater reality that science doesn't recognize. If you can help and we could have a chat I'd be most grateful. Thanks, Geoff L.
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Re: The trouble with Wikipedia

Post by Parks »

As I have said before.
The trouble with Wikipedia is that it is religiously biased.
This was caused by the invention of the printing press to compact the bible for a more convenient version.
The old scripts told of stories of divining.
But with the invention of the press the old bible was tested against the then scientific knowledge.
Anything that did not add up was regarded as the work of the devil and was edited out as rubbish.
Therefore we are now facing a wikicommunity who chastise anyone who dares to go against them.
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Re: The trouble with Wikipedia

Post by Geoff L »

Hi, I agree with your sentiment. But I'm working on something, with others, to try and do something about Wiki. It may turn out to be wishful thinking, as so many other efforts against the Wiki bias have. Or it could have impact. And dowsing evidence is a part of my much longer narrative. Hopefully it will 'go live' in the next couple of months. Provided (and that's a big 'if') it all comes together, then when I/we go live, I'll definitely flag it up here. ATB, Geoff.
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Re: The trouble with Wikipedia

Post by Grahame »

Here is an interesting case study of a Wikipedia bio edit of journalist George Knapp that was repeatedly 'reset' by the Guerilla Skeptics group (Knapp is an investigative journalist noted for his reporting on UFOs). This is very typical behaviour when it comes to Biographies of Living Persons (BLPs).
The parent organization for the Guerrilla Skeptics on Wikipedia (GSoW) is the Center for Inquiry, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting secular humanism throughout the world. They are formidable, with an annual budget exceeding seven million dollars, and they host several websites promoting their particular brand of atheism. This is not speculation.
It's worth a read.
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The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it - Terry Pratchett.
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