We have just recently witnessed one of the funniest episodes of UFOlogical stupidity in recent memory: Some of UFO's top Disclosure Warriors dramatically announce they have uncovered a "secret cabal" manipulating Wikipedia articles about UFOs. Matt Ford of the Good Trouble Show posted this dramatic announcement on TwitX on January 21:
TODAY 530pm Pacific. @RobHeatherly1
joins us as he exposes the Secret Cabal of debunker Wikipedia Editors run by a non-profit 501(c)3 targeting Wikipedia pages on UFOs with a written statement by @LueElizondo
.joins us as he exposes the Secret Cabal of debunker Wikipedia Editors run by a non-profit 501(c)3 targeting Wikipedia pages on UFOs with a written statement by @LueElizondo
So there we have it - these Disclosure Warriors, including the esteemed Lue Elizondo himself, dramatically announce to official Washington, and to the world, that they have uncovered a major "Cabal" covering up UFO truth! So dramatic!!! Elizondo claims to have headed up the Pentagon's AATIP UFO investigation program, which unfortunately never had any budget. He later worked with Tom DeLonge, who promised to build spacecraft that would go "To The Stars." Here is what Lue had to say about GSoW:
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| Guerrilla Wikipedians must be good saucer pilots, since they are "wreckless." |
The only problem is: this is a "Cabal" that was never "secret" in the first place! Guerrilla Skeptics on Wikipedia (GSoW), headed up by skeptic Susan Gerbic, has been around since 2010. I wrote about it in this Blog in 2012, and again in 2013. It was the subject of a major article in Wired magazine in 2018, among other places. So anyone who thinks they have uncovered a "Wikipedia secret cabal" has the investigative skills not of a Sherlock Holmes, but of a Mr. Magoo. Here is a video from 2020 of Susan explaining what GSoW is all about.
Disclosure: Technically I am a member of GSoW, although I have not participated in it very much. I did add some info to a few pages, and I have uploaded a number of my photos to Wikimedia Commons that might have relevance to UFO history.
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Susan Gerbic, with her camera as always, making friends with the Dinosaur in the Creation Museum in Santee, California in 2012.
These UFO warriors seem to think that the skeptical Wikipedians are just arbitrarily changing article texts, and creating misleading articles. What they don't seem to understand is that Wikipedia has rules. You need to have citations, you also need to avoid copyright infringements, self-promotion, etc:
To maintain the highest standards possible, Wikipedia has a strict inclusion policy that demands verifiability. This is best established by attributing each statement in Wikipedia to a reliable, published source (but see Rules 7 and 8 on excessive self-citing).... All articles in Wikipedia should be impartial in tone and content. When writing, do state facts and facts about notable opinions, but do not offer your opinion as fact. Many newcomers to Wikipedia gravitate to articles on controversial issues about which people hold strong opposing viewpoints.
There is a "talk" page for many articles, to discuss or debate the application of these rules to the contents of that page. These sometimes turn into big debates for controversial articles, so if you have a problem with something you read in a Wikipedia article and want to change it, you'd better be able to solidly back up your claim. Given many UFOlogists' propensity for making exciting but unfounded claims, it is frankly no surprise that the articles they write would run afoul of Wikipedia rules, and end up removed or re-written.
Meanwhile, for any UFOlogist who believes that GSoW has been inaccurate or unfair in what it wrote in a Wikipedia article - then challenge them on the article's Talk page. If you can make a good case that they are not correct, it will get changed, and the change will remain. Plus, you can brag to all your friends about how you defeated the nasty Debunkers on Wikipedia. But I don't see this happening, and I think we can figure out why. 😉
