Wednesday, October 26, 2011

William B. Davis ~ We Got Your Wiki Back!

Hard to imagine anyone not following the X-Files series, and one of the creepiest characters we all loved to hate.  The Smoking Man (or in our household we called him The Cancer Man).  Well apparently he is William B. Davis and is a Canadian Skeptic.

I discovered this when I received a Google alert for Barry Beyerstein this week and it gave me this interview with Davis.  Its all about his acting career and then a couple questions about skepticism, then on again to acting.  The Got Your Wiki Back! project is all about improving the pages of our skeptical spokespeople and Davis's page badly needs it.

His page is considered a Stub which means we need someone to adopt it and improve it.  Davis states in his interview... " I ended up becoming a kind of spokesman for the skeptic community. Because of The X-Files, I had the notability, and now I had some knowledge. So I did some talks on the subject at various places, and then Discovery Channel grabbed me to host a couple different shows, where I’d look at paranormal events and see what the science behind them is."

I've updated his page with a link to this article, and added an category called "Skepticism".  Its just waiting for someone to start looking for these Discovery Channel shows and even some of these "talks... at various places".  Someone had already added him to the Canadian Skeptic category on Wikipedia, which is nice, but if nothing is mentioned on his page, then what good is that?

BTW Davis's WP page is getting about 4 - 5 thousand hits a month.   IF this page were to be awesomed up to a really nice full page we could apply for the Did You Know? front page of WP.  And really get the word out.

Just checked out his FB page and it looks like he has a new book out.  I think I'll write to him and see if he will send over some links to make finding the links quicker.  Remember when approaching the WP subject, we have to be firm about the decisions we put in the final edit.  We are trying to improve Wikipedia, and must see that as the bigger picture.  But we are also looking for the skeptical slant to improve our spokespeople's pages and bring awareness to the general public about this topic. 

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