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I've noticed that the article "Barnum effect" has been in queue for quite some time, awaiting to be reviewed through the GA process. The Barnum effect is a very interesting topic, and one that is key to understand nearly all brands of pseudoscience. If any of our members are experienced in the Good Articles review process, it would be a valuable use of your time to help user:Meatsgains by reviewing this article! KarlPoppery (talk) 20:35, 21 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Article assessment and GA documentation are still on my TOREAD list unfortunately. It's something I'm willing to learn but I still consider that I lack the skills at current time. I would also be glad to closely follow the work of someone who can do it for my edification. Meanwhile, if noone qualified answers here in a reasonable time, I could participate to check logs of possibly related articles which have achieved GA status and attempt to "recruit" a reviewer... Among my current questions-list are:

• Can class vary from project to project? If so, which is the one shown or considered the default when an article is within the scope of multiple WikiProjects?
• Who does official assessment (apparently Wikiprojects)?
• What prevents class= from being faked/forged? Where is it officially listed, possibly bot-applied?
• Criteria for an article to be of GA status (I have various unread links for this).

— PaleoNeonate — 04:28, 22 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The "Good article" status is not given by a Wikiproject, it's a more official thing and there's a procedure to follow. You can read all about it on Wikipedia:Good_articles. Technically anyone can be a reviewer, but it's better to have experience with the process. The whole thing is supposed to take about seven days of work. KarlPoppery (talk) 06:27, 22 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

To answer your other questions, the class=ABC system is not official in any way. It's one of those Wikipedia thing that anyone can change.KarlPoppery (talk) 06:39, 22 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Karlpoppery: Thanks for the shoutout and bringing the GA nomination to the attention of editors within this wikiproject. Let me know if there is anything I can do on my end to help move this along and get reviewed! Meatsgains (talk) 01:03, 23 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Karlpoppery: Thank you for the explanations. I now see that the history seems more important than the class assessment field itself, via the talk page templates' "Article milestones". — PaleoNeonate — 22:56, 23 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

 Done Congrats to Meatsgains and Power~enwiki. —PaleoNeonate – 05:27, 2 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! Meatsgains (talk) 17:15, 2 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, Please note that Illusion, which is within this project's scope, has been selected as one of Today's articles for improvement. The article was scheduled to appear on Wikipedia's Community portal in the "Today's articles for improvement" section for one week, beginning today. Everyone is encouraged to collaborate to improve the article. Thanks, and happy editing! Delivered by — MusikBot talk 00:06, 13 November 2017 (UTC) on behalf of the TAFI team[reply]

You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Seventh-day Adventist historicist interpretations of Bible prophecy (2nd nomination). James (^talk/_contribs) 05:03, 3 December 2017 (UTC)Template:Z48[reply]

Hi, I would like to nominate the above article for deletion as a poorly written article that apparently duplicates Planetary objects proposed in religion, astrology, ufology and pseudoscience, but as an unregistered user I need someone to do this for me. 165.91.12.190 (talk) 04:45, 6 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

What did I just read? Boy that page is ... something... Sorry don't have time to give it more attention. Will check back later to see if it has a AFD notice.Sgerbic (talk) 05:29, 6 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I wrote this article about a ghost-hunter turned skeptical activist, and it was almost immediately put up for deletion after I published it. Feel free to weigh-in on the matter:

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Kenny Biddle is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Kenny Biddle until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. RobP (talk) 01:06, 6 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note that no consensus was reached, and it has now been relisted "to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus."

There is also a discussion going on regarding the content of the article (photo inclusion, etc) here: [1] RobP (talk) 05:19, 14 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Update: Last month the article was deleted due to "lack of notability". I of course, disagreed, but to no avail. I saved a copy off-line so if Biddle gets more coverage I will update it and resubmit. RobP (talk) 19:50, 24 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I took it upon myself to downgrade the Dietary supplement article from B-class to C-class because in my opinion so much of it was incomplete, incoherent, off-topic, under-referenced, etc. I have since been editing the article. Anyone else wants to get involved - great. I have no intention of "owning" this article. At some point the collective changes may warrant upgrading to B-class. I do not intend to make that decision, as I am too close to the topic. David notMD (talk) 17:06, 22 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Great job David notMD.Sgerbic (talk) 18:47, 22 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks David notMD. I'll work to make a habit of linking to that article, and add it to my personal list to tweak. Poorlyglot (talk) 02:33, 23 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

If anyone wants to give feedback about my article, go to the peer review page and feel free to do so. --LovelyGirl7 talk 22:40, 1 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I have nominated the Philipp Budeikin page for deletion. He is credited with creating the Blue Whale (game). The discussion has been resisted so I thought I might mention it here to drum up some interest, and hopefully get a consensus one way or another. The discussion is here 8==8 Boneso (talk) 09:37, 11 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Hi all. I have written an article on Bob Nygaard which you may be interested in. He is a private investigator I heard about on Skepticality who specializes in the investigation of psychic fraud. Please take a look at it in my sandbox and offer any constructive criticism you may have. If there are minor errors (punctuation, typos...) feel free to fix them right in the sandbox, but for bigger stuff, let me know here please. (I wish I had a photo, but there is nothing in Commons!) Thanks! RobP (talk) 20:58, 24 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

You can always try to contact him.Sgerbic (talk) 23:15, 24 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I did and he uploaded a great photo! Luckily he was easy to contact, being a PI for hire and all. Just lucky he wasn't under cover, incognito and off the grid. LOL. RobP (talk) 06:26, 25 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, I have been working on recommending new members for your project for a while, and have sent some lists to PaleoNeonate who helped invite those recommended editors. I wonder if you mind me sending invitations directly for WikiProject Skepticism on your behalf to save time and efforts of yours? Thank you! Bobo.03 (talk) 18:11, 25 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

BoBo if you mean Project Skepticism, then you don't have to ask, the project is open to anyone that wants to join. There isn't a "your project" here as far as I know. The more the merrier.Sgerbic (talk) 19:14, 25 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Sgerbic: Sorry about the wording. Yes, it should be WikiProject Skepticism:) I will then help send a small amount of invitations to selective editors with care. Bobo.03 (talk) 17:58, 28 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Bobo.03: Many thanks for helping with this, I'm sorry that I could not be very responsive lately on Wikipedia. —PaleoNeonate – 09:43, 14 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Here we go again. -Ad Orientem (talk) 15:44, 4 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Done, thanks for the heads up.Sgerbic (talk) 19:35, 4 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I've been aware of this page for some time. I've kept an eye on it but not really had the energy to do major work on it. The problem is simple; she's a woo merchant but the entire page is carefully constructed to give an appearance of respectability (multiple invocations of "research", etc). I'm sorry to drop the problem in your lap but hope someone has the time to give it a going-over and chase up some cites to say this stuff is woo. Pinkbeast (talk) 17:19, 6 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Hello there Pinkbeast. This is really interesting, I'm sure someone will check into it, thanks for bringing it to our attention, that's what WikiProject Skepticism is all about.Sgerbic (talk) 20:13, 6 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

And also, there is Family Constellations, which shows up in the Purce article as her specialty. RobP (talk) 18:26, 7 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, I am trying to improve the article Fallacy, and as the first step I have restructured it (shuffled sections and paragraphs around). I would like to ask for some feedback on its talk page to see if I am going the right way. Thanks :) Petr Matas 15:49, 7 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Petr Matas, I've looked at the edit history, and see your changes, they seem subtle and reordered, but I don't see anything that stands out as a problem (I didn't read it in detail) you are the best judge of the quality of your changes. I'm sure if you messed up, someone will be happy to tell you. ;-)Sgerbic (talk) 20:06, 7 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Got into an argument at work with someone over Kinesio tape at work today. He looked up the article on WP, and it was pretty neutral which he took to mean it likely works. To hell with that. Got home and went nuclear on it. Added SBM and Skeptoid (and other critiques) to the article - and then mentioned that it is pseudoscience right in the lead. Also removed all the Further Reading material as it was original research type stuff from proponents. Tagged the article as Alt-Med too. Don't know if this all will stick. May need support on this one! RobP (talk) 01:40, 13 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks - much better article now!Sgerbic (talk) 19:09, 14 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Checking to see if people have seen this news. Not sure when it is going to launch.

I am looking into if it is possible to get a list of articles they plan to link to and a list of articles by number of pageviews coming from Youtube.

Wondering what others measures people think could help prevent any issues from occurring due to this? As most of these topics will be semi protected already I do not imagine many problems. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:05, 14 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for sharing, first time I'm seeing this. My worry is that the people viewing these sorts of videos in the first place are the same people who wholeheartedly are in agreement with the content. Therefore if they see an "inflammatory" ad to an editable Wikipedia page spouting otherwise, it's going to be an easy target for vandalism. I don't like the fact that YouTube is doing this (I know that's neither here nor there), but I hope you can secure a list of pages that will be linked so at the very least we can add them to our watchlists. I don't see it becoming a big issue if we have advanced knowledge and semi-protected pages. SEMMENDINGER (talk) 20:30, 14 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

User:Semmendinger that was my first concern aswell. But than if the wider world see Wikipedia as a critical source of information for million this may bring in a lot of good faith editors who just want others to have accurate information. And we have lots of policies to help support those who come with good references and rebuff those without. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:52, 14 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

generally agree w/ Doc James--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 15:28, 15 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• I don't think this is quite as irresponsible of YouTube as the interviewees and author makes it out to be: An individual who regularly posted links to Wikipedia on the social media posts of others pushing conspiracy theories would not be seen as abrogating any sort of responsibility, even if they were being paid to debunk such theories. That's not to say I think this is some sort of panacea, however.

In fact, it raises two problems: First -as has been mentioned already- what about the lunatic fringe that will be drawn here as a result of that? Make no mistake, this is not a possibility, but an inevitability of this. The vast majority of consumers of this are either "True Believers" already, or far more open to belief in the conspiracy theories than to skepticism of them.

Second: How does YouTube know that a WP article will even be accurate at the time an individual is watching the video, or even over a long period of time? As already pointed out by the SPLC, we have at least one major article that gives equal credence to a fringe viewpoint, over at Race and intelligence. And that's exactly the sort of article this project will end up linking to. Right now, it makes the consensus view of experts seem like it has serious competition from the fringe view of racialists, but that's never been my understanding of the subject, and while it's never been a particular interest of mine, I've read quite a bit about it and all of my reading material would easily qualify as an RS. Most of it would qualify under WP:MEDRS, in fact. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 21:21, 14 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Very interesting. Thanks for sharing. Looks like we have more work to do, get more people trained and active. More people here at Project Skepticism would help also. I agree, we already have trolls aplenty, just need to keep on it. I doubt that much will change anytime soon. We need to stay on the ball though.Sgerbic (talk) 22:48, 14 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Glad that you guys saw this. I wasn't sure where to post it, so I did post about it on AN (thanks for sharing here Doc James). Also, this thread was just linked on Twitter by a Verge reporter not long ago --TheSandDoctor (talk) 22:54, 14 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I also cross-posted it to WP:FTN, so between the three boards, everyone with an interest should be aware of it by this time tomorrow. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it.

Very nice, thank you both. MPants, you bring up a good point that the information being linked might not be 100% accurate (although for fringe and conspiracy topics I don't think we can deal in absolute accuracy anyway). My only solace is that usually the 1% of pages which have unnoticed vandalism are infrequently visited pages. Something that's a hot enough topic to be linked to from YouTube should have at least a couple people keeping an eye on it. And like Doc James said, though the vandalism is inevitable, we'll also see a possible influx of users who want to contribute to the encyclopedia in a positive manner. These users might help offset the actions of the non productive contributors. SEMMENDINGER (talk) 23:55, 14 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Somebody who knows the appropriate contacts at YouTube might request that the interns or staff members who are assigned to post WP links to YouTube videos be given control of a dedicated WP account that allows them to list/log the entries here, or at FTN, more or less in real time. That would certainly help editors keep an eye on some of the more obscure articles that might be targeted for fringe rebuttals or vandalization. - LuckyLouie (talk) 02:13, 15 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

While I agree with you LuckyLouie, I doubt that that will happen . Depending on the account name (unless worked out with the WMF or whatnot), it could also fall under Usernames implying shared use section of the Username policy if it where to happen. --TheSandDoctor (talk) 04:38, 15 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]