RationalWiki:Things you can do to help RationalWiki (even if you feel unqualified)

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Originally published as an essay by User:Rairyu75

Has it ever happened to you, dear reader, that you were reading one of our articles and you accidently clicked on Talk? I remember when I first did it, many years ago. Big walls of reasoned argumentation, silly jokes, lots and lots of yelling. How interesting... I saw lots of shiny signatures, which I just HAD to click on. That's when I got a bit more interested not just in the contents of this website, but the people who edit it as well.

Perhaps that's how you ended up here? You clicked on my userpage and saw this essay? Well, you are welcome! Snooping about is something we all did at some point before signing up. It's only natural. But perhaps the time has come, dear reader. Maybe reading is just not doing it for you anymore? Maybe, just maybe, you'd like to help out around here? Or, well... maybe YOU don't, but I do. I want you here. WE want you here. If you like our website and have the reading comprehension to wade through my essay, I think we'd quite like to get to know you and have you give us a hand.

High bars, low self confidence

One of the first User pages I ever peeped was Tmtoulouse's.

“”I am a doctoral candidate in Psychology with particular interests in neuroscience, neural modeling, and brain imaging. I have undergraduate degrees in Psychology and Biology and an intense interest in the overlap of human behavior and evolution. I have also done work with self-organizing systems and complexity theory. Most of my contributions will probably be focused along topics that touch most closely with these issues.

"Ah well, screw that!" I said to myself. This guy is a DOCOTRAL CANDIDATE? And that, right there, further down his user page... are those papers he co-authored?

Seeing that put me off signing up for a good while. I mean, yeah, sure, there is all these little paragraphs around the website, encouraging me to sign up. I remember the first time I read the help page on lurking, in the dead of night, hunched in front of my laptop. I had a small smile on my lips. Whoever put that there wants ME to write here? But... I'm not a doctoral candidate. I'm not an anything, really. No expertise, no qualifications. And that's the thing, dear reader. The kicker. YOU value those things. If you were reading a book about history, you'd rather read one written by a qualified historian, as opposed to someone like Graham Hancock. If you were watching a lecture on climate change you'd rather watch one by a real scientist quoting peer reviewed papers and not some bearded truck driver yelling about the deep state. As a skeptic you have higher standards for what you consume than the average person. And since the bar is so high, well, you might be afraid you don't clear it.

But that's just nonsense.

Because something else you already know, being a skeptic, is that the other side is NOT wracked by these feelings of inadequacy before they start flinging bullshit about the place. You think Andy, Kenny boy, nobs and all the other bible thumpers over at Conservapedia have degrees in theology, biology or politics? You reckon that Mark Sargent, one of the modern popularisers of the Flat Earth theory, is an astronomer? And riddle me this, reader: what if they were? If they had nice diplomas on their walls, you wouldn't call bullshit on them? Andrew Wakefield and Linus Pauling both got significantly more education than I ever did, but that doesn't mean that vaccines cause autism or that Vitamin C cures cancer. So you can stop this train of thought right now. It's just silly. If someone linked to a low quality article in the YouTube comment section you wouldn't link to a refutation? "Well, I did recently read a peer reviewed article that refutes all the nonsense this guy just posted here, but I'm not qualified, so I guess I'll just keep it to myself." I don't posses the power to silence the morons of this world, dear reader. I'm not sure it would be okay to use it if I did. All I can do, all any of us can do really, is to raise our voices when we see something stupid. You might think your voice is tiny, but it matters more than you know.

Like I said: You know how to read. You can use a computer. And you believe in our mission. That's all. That's all you need to help. You might not believe me right now, but you will soon see I'm right.

The list of things that you can do

Trollin', rollin' and patrollin': Keeping an eye on Recent changes

For more information, see: RationalWiki:Sysop guide

“”Regulators Sysops. We regulate any stealin' vandalising of his property wiki. We’re damn good too. But you can’t be any geek off the street. You gotta be handy with the steel mop, if you know what I mean. Earn your keep. Regulators Sysops, mount up!

—RationalWiki sysops Warren G and Nate Dogg Bongolian and Cosmikdebris, talking about Recent Changes

On your left, you will see a link that says Recent changes. Give it a click, aaaaaaaand... voilá! Behold! A stream of nonsense, the likes of which you have never seen before:

Wow, what a shithole!

Recent changes is the home of the terminally online AND the occasional editor. The person who has a boring office job and can sneakily glance at our wiki everyday and the person who is so busy in real life they forget this place even exists. Which category you fall into is not very important. What IS important is that you understand what you are seeing here and what you can do from here.

With a few mouse clicks we can get rid of nasty things before anyone sees them.

This is everything that goes on here behind the scenes. All of it, edits to Main space, crude comments on the Talk pages, blocks and uploads, the whole shebang. A lot of what you will see here is boring stuff, but occasionally, something exciting happens:

“”joe biden. joe biden. 9/11. joe biden. joe biden, wake up.

Well well, what do we have here? This doesn't belong in the Main space, no sir. Let's mop this garbage up, before any of our readers see it.

• click

There, done. You hit revert and it goes back to it's previous form. Pretty nifty eh?

As you can tell, our troll was no expert on the subject of US Politics. They were just bored and had access to the internet. If you are also bored and have access to the internet you can undo the silly edits of bad faith editors and make sure our readers can enjoy our articles as the FSM intended. No diplomas needed.

"Wow Rairyu75, that seems really simple! I see crap in Main space and I just undo it. That makes sense!"

I'm glad it does reader, I'm glad it does. Let's look at something else that's pretty simple to do.

Freeze! It's the Grammar Police: Making this place readable

For more information, see: Help:Manual_of_style

Here is another easy one: fixing formatting and grammar errors. Wiki markup can be a bit fiddly to use for a beginner (as you will soon find out for yourself) so occasionally elements in a page don't display the way they are supposed to.

Let's say an editor wants to put the picture of a goat on a page. Writing this:

[[File:Baby_Goat.JPG|thumb|center|300px|Baby goat]]

Will give you this:

Baby goat

But if even a simple square bracket is missing:

[File:Baby_Goat.JPG|thumb|center|300px|Baby goat]]

You will end up with this:

[File:Baby_Goat.JPG|thumb|center|300px|Baby goat]]

In this case, all you do is add a

[

at the start and the picture will display properly.

And there, you fixed it! All that was required of you to make the article look better was press [ on your keyboard. And I don't know how bad you are with tech, dear reader, but I would wager anyone can pull that off. Once again, no diplomas necessary.

Next, spelling. Pretty self explanatory that one. Not everyone speaks English as their first language, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be allowed to contribute. Occasionally you will spot a new user in Recent changes, adding a well sourced paragraph to an article, only to find that it's replete with grammar mistakes. If you are using a modern web browser you can just right click on every word that has a squiggly red line underneath and you will be given options to correct the spelling. No dictionary required.

I could give loads more examples, like using a colon to indent talk page comments, or adding {{subst:unsigned|}} and {{subst:unsignedIP|}} when people forget to sign their stuff, but you get the point. You don't need qualifications to help with this, just a keen eye while you are enjoying the articles.

"So if someone misspells Goat as Gaot I can just come along and fix it? That sounds easy!"

That's because it is, dear reader. It's quick and painless, unlike this last thing we are going to be dealing with...

The refs here suck and someone should do something about it: Fixing refs

For more information, see: Help:References

This last one is not like the previous two. While this still IS something that anyone can do regardless of their qualifications, it's pretty time intensive - which is probably why most people don't bother to do it.

But they should, because it's hella important. It's the thing that separates the reliable sources of knowledge from the dens of misinformation that this place makes fun of. I speak now of the references, dear reader, those tiny little numbers you see floating next to statements. You are a skeptic, so you know the rules: the burden of proof lies with those who make the assertions and all that can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. We would look really fricking stupid if our website, supposedly a bastion of reason and intelligence, would be full of claims pulled directly out of our asses with nothing to back them up.

And yet it happens. Unreferenced (and badly referenced) material frequently, without fail, like CLOCKWORK, rears it's ugly head in Main space and sometimes sits there for months, because we don't have nearly enough active editors to comb the thousands of articles that have been made in the last 17 years. At best, we look like negligent hypocrites. After all, isn't this the reason this website exists? Because there is too much nonsense in the world and we want to fight it? And at worst, we are doing harm. We are spreading lies. Fake news. Take a look at this excerpt, taken from the Authoritarianism of Donald Trump article, as it appeared on 24 October 2020:

“”This directly encouraged the police to intensify the crackdown by rounding up and assaulting peaceful protesters. One infamous moment is when protesters were trapped on a hill and deliberately shot by teargassing cops. More video evidence showed police shooting protesters near their own homes. Cops shoved a 70 year old man on a concrete floor and walked over him as he lay there bleeding from his head motionless. A protester named Sarah Grossman was killed by teargas thanks to the police.

"A protester named Sarah Grossman was killed by teargas thanks to the police." That's a pretty serious claim. A believable one, too. I remember watching footage of police brutality in the US in 2020. To call it a tumultuous year would be an understatement. Trump and his bastard cops, leading to the death of some poor woman. How messed up. Except... click on that ref there, dear reader. The source for this supposed fact:

First reported here.

A tweet. A deleted tweet. No matter, no matter. We can copy and paste the URL and head over to the Wayback Machine. If anyone saved this tweet before it was deleted, we'll find it there.

And here it is, the way the tweet appeared on the 5 June 2020. But that's hardly a good source... and anyway, why the heck was it deleted? Let's type "Sarah Grossman death" into Google and look for a reliable news source. Within about two minutes you should find an article from the Associated Press:

Coroner: Death after Ohio protest was due to natural causes Associated Press News 11 July 2020 “”An autopsy has concluded that a recent Ohio State University graduate who died in late May after attending a protest in Columbus died of natural causes, authorities said. Sarah Grossman, 22, died May 30, two days after having participated in a protest over the death of George Floyd in Minnesota. Her family released a statement in early June confirming that she had been exposed to pepper spray but saying there was “no evidence” that such exposure was a factor in her death. According to the autopsy report provided by the Montgomery County coroner’s office, Grossman died of a coronary artery dissection due to a previously undiagnosed genetic condition known as Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, a rare disorder that according to the Mayo Clinic affects connective tissue, primarily skin, joints, and blood vessel walls.

Well, shit. The claim is untrue. Not because of malice, mind you; the person who put that claim into our article was a good faith editor. But it was badly sourced, literally "I read a thing on Twitter so it must be true." Not a good look for a website that promotes critical thinking. Let's hope not too many people saw it before we could boot it. When you edit a website this big, you can never know who will read your words. Young, impressionable teenagers, looking for direction in their lives? Good people whose reputation you are about to ruin? This website has been sued in the past for the things it has written. Do you want to be responsible for our next law suit, dear reader?

I thought not. So let's have a detailed look at how to reference things properly to avoid all that unpleasantness, shall we?

A complete absence of refs

Unreferenced statements come in two flavours. The ones with a "[citation needed]" tag are easy to spot and deal with. The other kind is the kind that sits sneakily in the middle of an otherwise well referenced paragraph. Often you will see a big wall of text with 4 or 5 refs stuck to it's tail and presume that those refs will back up EVERY statement in the paragraph - but that's not necessarily the case. Stay vigilant when parsing articles and ask yourself: "Where is that coming from? Is that too outrageous to be true?"

Regardless of how you found them, use your Google-fu to find a source to back up the statement. Alternatively, if the sentence appears to be made up garbage you can just boot it altogether.

Refs are added with "ref" tags. Add them to the end of a sentence and copy-paste your source in between them like this:

Right-wing extremist Richard Spencer got punched, but it was memes that bruised his ego.<ref>http://www.theverge.com/2017/1/23/14356306/richard-spencer-punch-internet-memes-alt-right</ref>

Which looks like this: Right-wing extremist Richard Spencer got punched, but it was memes that bruised his ego.

Badly formatted refs

You will notice, dear reader, that hovering your mouse over our example ref gives you a bare URL. Formatting refs according to the manual of style will allow our readers to tell at a glance where the ref came from and when it was published. Bare URLs, on the other hand, just look like a confusing mess of letters.

For news articles, use [] brackets to include the name of the article, italics for the name of the outlet and then include the date the article was published.

Right-wing extremist Richard Spencer got punched, but it was memes that bruised his ego.<ref>[http://www.theverge.com/2017/1/23/14356306/richard-spencer-punch-internet-memes-alt-right Right-wing extremist Richard Spencer got punched, but it was memes that bruised his ego] ''The Verge'' 23 January 2017</ref>

gives us: Right-wing extremist Richard Spencer got punched, but it was memes that bruised his ego. If you wish you can also include a time stamp and the name of the author(s), as well as the date you accessed the article on. But the above is the bare minimum that everyone should be aiming for.

If you are citing academic texts, most websites have a handy little "Cite" button, which will copy the proper citation format to your clipboard. Once you paste it, use [] to attach a URL to the title.

This requirement was Popper's solution to the demarcation problem, or what is and what is not science. Popper's view is not widely acceptable in contemporary philosophy of science.<ref>Hansson, Sven Ove, [https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pseudo-science/ "Science and Pseudo-Science",] ''The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' (Fall 2021 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)</ref>

gives us: This requirement was Popper's solution to the demarcation problem, or what is and what is not science. Popper's view is not widely acceptable in contemporary philosophy of science.

Broken URLs and deleted social media posts

Things don't last forever on the internet. Blogs go out of business, news outlets move address, tweets get deleted. In your ref fixing adventures you will encounter many broken URLs that weren't properly formatted, so you will have no clue what they were or where they come from. Or a certain wannabe Nazi has been covering his tracks on Twitter and talking out of both sides of his mouth.

That's where the archives come in. Both archive.org and archive.is have easy to use search functions that will help you find old deleted stuff. Once you have what you are looking for, insert the archived ref and let us know when the URL was archived:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20120504013721/http://climateconference.heartland.org/our-billboards/ Our Billboards] ''7<sup>th</sup> International Conference on Climate Change, Heartland Institute'' (Archived on 4 May 2012)

gives us: Our Billboards 7^th International Conference on Climate Change, Heartland Institute (Archived on 4 May 2012)

You will notice that http://climateconference.heartland.org/our-billboards/ is broken, but the archived version works just fine.

If you use

{{a||}}

when citing tweets the archived versions will automatically appear alongside the originals. You should get in the habit of doing this, even if the tweet is still there. There is no guarantee it won't be deleted in the future.

Were our conflict to turn violent I suspect the long besieged whites of California would greet America's forces as liberators. Discuss.<ref>{{a|https://twitter.com/RichardBSpencer/status/828903036642734080|Richard 😎 Spencer on Twitter}} 7 February 2017</ref>

gives us: Were our conflict to turn violent I suspect the long besieged whites of California would greet America's forces as liberators. Discuss.

Give it a try. Click on the original, then click on the small floating a or w:

Richard 😎 Spencer on Twitter^[a w] 7 February 2017

"I saw it on YouTube/I read it on the Huffington Post:" Refs that aren't up to snuff

For more information, see: Help:Sources_for_on_mission_articles

Not all sources are created equal. Some of them straight up suck. Occasionally, they get used because there is no better alternative. At other times they are put there by people who genuinely think they are good sources. I won't list every bad and good source here because we'd be here all day, but I would like to encourage you to replace garbage citations with superior ones wherever possible.

• Fox News/MSNBC/New York Post/Huffington Post: The American political dichotomy is hard to fathom for a Europoor such as myself, so why anyone would use these at all is mystifying. Perhaps you quite like one of these outlets, dear reader? If so, well, I don't mean to offend you by including them here. But I would STRONGLY encourage you to avoid them, due to their blatant partisanship, history of failed fact checks, promotion of pseudoscience and EXCESSIVE use of loaded language. If you saw something related to current affairs here then chances are we can do a lot better for a ref.
• YouTube: Particularly popular with some of our younger editors who seem to have a great admiration for some YouTube/Twitch personalities. I would encourage you to avoid "Here is a well produced video essay that I watched" as a source. I understand that in recent years a number of well meaning content creators have made videos debunking reactionary right-wing talking points - and more power to them! I actually quite enjoy watching some of them myself. But these videos are often very long and sometimes come with silly internet drama attached. Not to mention the fact that they are prone to getting deleted.

Instead, try using:

• The Conversation: Non profit outlet, ran by universities, all articles written by academics. Good stuff.
• The Associated Press: If you read or watch a news story there is a very high chance the basic facts contained within came from the AP. The AP is where the other news outlets go to get their news. Why not cut out the middlemen?
• PubMed and PLOS: Health woo spotted? In need of a paper? Grab it at the National Library of Medicine or the Public Library of Science. AND READ THEM. Yes they are very complicated, yes they weren't written with the lay person in mind, yes they tend to be loooooooong and kinda dry - but if you are gonna chuck it into Main space you should do your homework. Google the names of the authors. Are they legit? Does the journal where the paper was published have a bad reputation? Dodgy methodology? Small sample size? Conflict of interest? We tell others to do it, so why would we exempt ourselves? Besides, you will learn so much.
• Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy and PhilPapers: For all your philosophy needs. Again, very academic and dry, but give it a shot.

If you are ever in doubt about the veracity of a source:

• Type the name of the author(s) into Google. If they have a history of spewing crap, it will be very obvious.
• Type the name of the publisher into Wikipedia. Look for any past controversies.
• MediaBiasFactCheck is an ad riddled mess of a website but certainly not without it's uses. It's NOT fool proof, but it's always a good starting point to get a general idea about a media outlet.
• For rumours on social media, take a look at Reuters Fact Check, PolitiFact or Snopes.
• Take a gander at Retraction Watch or Science Integrity Digest if you are reading a suspicious looking paper. Perhaps the professionals got there ahead of you and have already done the legwork.

I could go on and wax lyrical about other sources I like, such as the Science-Based Medicine blog, DW, BBC, NPR etc. but I won't. Suffice to say that there is no excuse for the ""I saw it on YouTube/I read it on the Huffington Post" mentality. Not when there is so much quality stuff at your fingertips. And for the love of God, DO NOT put "Here is a massive Twitter thread with a good breakdown" as a ref. It makes the goats cry.

In conclusion

Picture of RationalWiki sysop Rairyu75 in real life.^{[citation NOT needed]}

Badly formatted crappy refs bad, well formatted reliable refs good. It takes a long time to turn one into the other, but it's a job worth doing. Take your time; there is no need to fix everything in one sitting. Maybe you are busy and can only spend 10 minutes a week on our wiki. Believe it or not, that is enough. If once a week, for just 10 minutes, you log on and revert vandalism, fix a spelling mistake and turn a trash ref into a good one, you will have played your part. You will have done more to help us than most people ever will. And if after all this you still don't believe you are up for it dear reader, well, that's okay. Just do it anyway.

I have enough faith in you for the both of us.

"Wow Rairyu75! You are so handsome and intelligent! It's a mystery why none of the other sysops have made you the supreme leader of this website yet!"

I know, right?

One more thing...

If you do go on a tear of fixing shitty refs, don't do it in silence. It will drive you up the walls. Take frequent breaks, listen to a podcast, play some tunes in the background.

"Wow Rairyu75! You have a shit taste in music!"

Go fuck yourself, dear reader.

See also

• Help:Bored