WikiChristian - User contributions [en]

Talk:Christian wikis

2006-11-15T04:59:54Z

MediaWiki spam cleanup: Reverting to last version not containing links to wikible.org

[[Talk:Christian wikis/Archive 1]]

==An open letter to users and administrators of the various different Christian wikis==

Hello,

Thanks for reading my two cents worth. As a bit of background information, my name is G. Grove and you can contact me at graham_grove@yahoo.com.au to discuss any of the following issues. I've been involved in Christian wikis for a while now. In fact, I first tried to set up a Christianity book in wikibooks 2 years ago, but then I discovered that there were three other Christian wikis at the time and I left the wikibook and joined WikiChristian. At the time there was also Compass and Theopedia, but not anything else. In an attempt to try and get WikiChristian used more I started the wikipedia article "Christian wikis" and have since watched an explosion of links appear. That there are all these people wanting to be involved in spreading the gospel and knowledge of Jesus and Christianity through wikis is a wonderful thing. I especially respect those users and administrators who acknowledge other Christian wiki sites as well as their own. Every one of these wikis has some excellent points. Theopedia is full of academic articles; wikible is intelligently set out; biblewiki is commendable for its extensive linking; wikiChristian is admirable because of its attempt to cover all things Christian including be a directory for all the churches of the world; and I could go on and on about each wiki.

Despite all these wonderful qualities and the hearts behind them, I believe Christian wikis are failing in what I see as their two most important objectives in glorify God. Firstly, to be a body of knowledge where Christians actually come to learn about a topic, and to actively be involved in writing and updating articles; and secondly, to be a witness to non-Christians about what Christianity is all about. It is obvious to me that the wikis are not used by more than a couple people for each site, and that non-Christians are not reading them either. Why is this failure occurring?

I believe there is one very important overriding fact that is stifling the use and growth of all of these wikis. They are all essentially modelled closely on Wikipedia. Why is this a problem? Well, wikipedia is a great encyclopedia – a fantastic reference and very useable and helpful. So, if I want to know about say, the “Coptic Orthodox Church” why would I go anywhere else?! I would only go anywhere else if that anywhere else presenting the information differently and allowed me to easily see what I was most interested in. I might for example be interested in knowing about the persecution of the Coptic church in Egypt today. To learn about that, I am going to want read testimonies about peoples experiences living in Egypt. I might want to know about the formation of the Coptic church. To learn about this, I am going to want to firstly read an encylopedia style overview article about the council of Chalcedon and monophysitism, but then I going to want to read different peoples views on interpreting these topics – their opinions are important because I know that there are many interpretations – there is not perhaps one “Christian viewpoint” for this. However, I might want to find a local Coptic church to visit – and so I would need a list or index of Coptic churches – their addresses and service times and what language they were in. Now Wikipedia wouldn’t be a particularly useful source for some of what I want and certainly isn’t set out in a way that it is easy to find some of that information. No, the wiki I am looking for would be different, however, it just doesn’t exist currently.

There are also lots of other little factors that I believe stifle the growth of the various Christian wikis. These include

# The use of unhelpful usernames. Why can’t we all use our real names as our user names. It makes us less anonymous
# The complaints that seem to arise whenever someone writes an article in an essay style presenting his viewpoint, rather than in an encyclopedia style. Articles should be able to have sentences starting with “I think”. Now these are clearly individual opinion articles, and so need to be marked as such. But Christianity is a personal religion, and people have opinions which differ. “I think” is valid.
# Vandalism – but I don’t know what to do about that – perhaps the only way to stop it is to have a critical number of users
# The unwritten rule that an article about the local church down the road is not acceptable. What is wrong with writing an article about my church down the road and writing about its minister, congregation, teaching, music and service times? Nothing as far as I can see!
# The layout is never particularly logical.

There are I’m sure lots more issues that other people have thought of. And of course you may vehemently disagree with me on each or every point. I welcome comments. Please leave comments on WikiChristian's “Christian wikis” talk page (http://www.wikichristian.org/index.php/Talk:Christian_wikis) (so others can read them, or email me. I have been fiddling with ideas, templates and trialling out different formats for a Christian wiki that I believe would work – it would hopefully be acceptable to those who want an encyclopedia, those who want testimonies, those who want opinions and discussion, those who want stacks of information with directories of churches, lyrics of songs and public domain texts. Please take a look at [[Christianity]] for an example of what a template of one possible way this could be done.

Thanks for your time. I think those of us who want a Christian wiki need some discussion, and perhaps we need to put together a larger group of people to work on one encompassing wiki rather than dozens of small wikis.

Graham

(--[[User:Graham grove|Graham grove]] 21:55, 24 July 2006 (PDT))

===Point-by-point responses from Tom===
I appreciate the comments. I don't really disagree with any of it. I think some of the similarity with Wikipedia is an effort not to re-invent the wheel. For example, in the area of organization of the Wiki. Of course there are other aspects than just organizational and logistical things. In addition, we also need to remember that there are many people in the world that haven't even heard of Wikipedia, so it shouldn't be too surprising that Christian wikis are lacking in editorial support. Here are some responses to your points... --[[User:Ymmotrojam|Tom]] 06:41, 25 July 2006 (PDT)
# The use of unhelpful usernames. Why can’t we all use our real names as our user names. It makes us less anonymous
#:Interesting idea, I think I like it. Especially for citing articles. --[[User:Ymmotrojam|Tom]] 06:41, 25 July 2006 (PDT)
#:Some people prefer to remain anonymous. I, for example, don't mind using my first name on my signature, but I'd rather not advertise my last name to, literally, the whole world. Also, most people like "unhelpful usernames" because they can use the same one across different websites. I also think it's a good brain excercise for all of us to make the effort at associating a username with a person's real name (if the user even chooses to give it to us in the firstplace). --[[User:RockOfVictory|J. J.]] 16:40, 25 July 2006 (PDT)
# The complaints that seem to arise whenever someone writes an article in an essay style presenting his viewpoint, rather than in an encyclopedia style. Articles should be able to have sentences starting with “I think”. Now these are clearly individual opinion articles, and so need to be marked as such. But Christianity is a personal religion, and people have opinions which differ. “I think” is valid.
#:I agree. "I" statements should be included somehow. If you think about it, every statement is an opinion, even encyclopedic writings are opinions from various points of view, although they may be more educated than the average person. The only trouble I see is in how to merge encyclopedia and user commentary. I'd love to see what others think about that! --[[User:Ymmotrojam|Tom]] 06:41, 25 July 2006 (PDT)
# Vandalism – but I don’t know what to do about that – perhaps the only way to stop it is to have a critical number of users
#:I pretty much haven't had any vandalism at Wikible for a few months now. I use keyword filters, captchas, a username registration blacklist, and a user creation log to keep track of who registers. And I still allow anonymous users to edit and add content, and all registered users are free to edit the Main Page. In fact, the only page thta no one can edit but me is the Copyright notice, which I think is self-explanatory why I did that. Other than that, almost anyone can edit it. --[[User:Ymmotrojam|Tom]] 06:41, 25 July 2006 (PDT)
# The unwritten rule that an article about the local church down the road is not acceptable. What is wrong with writing an article about my church down the road and writing about its minister, congregation, teaching, music and service times? Nothing as far as I can see!
#:I agree with that. --[[User:Ymmotrojam|Tom]] 06:41, 25 July 2006 (PDT)
#:Can you give some links to examples of where people have found this to be a problem? --[[User:RockOfVictory|J. J.]] 16:47, 25 July 2006 (PDT)
# The layout is never particularly logical.
#:Layout? What are you referring to? --[[User:Ymmotrojam|Tom]] 06:41, 25 July 2006 (PDT)

===Thoughts from JJ===
G. Grove, I've noticed your comments about inter-Christian wikis over the past several months,[http://www.wikible.org/en/index.php?title=Talk:Main_Page&oldid=15783#Joining_together] so I know that there are at least three of us with similar concerns. Tom had actually started a ChristianWikis site to address these concerns, although it kind of fell through the cracks. I have expressed similar concerns on both Wikible ([http://www.wikible.org/en/index.php?title=User_talk:Admin&oldid=15680#Wikipedia_and_Theopedia_collaboration Wikipedia and Theopedia collaboration]) and the BibleWiki ([http://bible.tmtm.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:Main_Page&oldid=226363#Differentiating_BibleWiki_from_Wikipedia Differentiating BibleWiki from Wikipedia]), although I haven't gotten a chance to elaborate on the Christian-point-of-view problems that I've noticed from the beginning. For now, I've been content with concentrating my efforts on BibleWiki and Wikible (see my Theopedia link above for reasons why, as well as the [http://www.wikible.org/en/Wikible:About Wikible:About] page), but particularly on Wikipedia for general articles since there is a larger audience there. While the splintering of the Christian community is frustrating, I think it's also encouraging to know that a lot of people are competing to create the "best" Christian wiki; everyone has different web design skills, so some of the Christian wikis have better features than others—survival of the fittest, if you will.

Therefore, in terms of content, I think we're doing well; community, though, is indeed a problem. I haven't explored the options very much at this point, but Tom's ChristianWikis site idea was a good one; a site that concentrates on collaboration and community but completely leaves out the encyclopedic content. This community site would also be helpful for people to standardize wiki codes of conduct and syntax rules, as well as direct visitors to the sites with the most developed articles on certain topics. In this way, content would continue to be developed on the individual wikis since they all have different focuses. Another option is to try to center the inter-wiki discussion on one of the existing wikis, but make a clearly defined statement about the community being separate from the site's own faith-biased content.

Please see my individual responses in Tom's section above, as well. --[[User:RockOfVictory|J. J.]] 16:34, 25 July 2006 (PDT)

I've been browsing around WikiChristian a little more, concentrating particularly on the site organization and layout. Graham, your ideas on this page present some major changes to WikiChristian! While I like your suggestions about making WikiChristian more '''testimony-oriented''', I think it presents a lot of challenges. To do this effectively, we really need to think carefully about how the site should be organized and make sure we have documentation on it. The current [[Wikichristian:Tutorial]] is very '''Wikipedia-oriented''', so people are going to need to understand that WikiChristian is very different from most neutral-point-of-view MediaWiki sites. Here are just a few initial things I've thought of. Please feel free to add commentary to them, similar to the way Tom has done it above.
#WikiChristian could learn a lot from Wikipedia/Wikimedia formatting guidelines. See particularly the Organizing links at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Contents#For_editors - Right now, it seems like there are just a bunch of links everywhere, but no organization; the overdose of nav links (world churchs, bible dictionaries, etc.) is distracting, too.
#Christian wikis are traditionally "Wikipedia-oriented" because it's hard to organize user-edited content if a lot of it is personal opinion/experience. We really need a good system of categories and/or list pages that would stay up-to-date as people add content.
#Your topics on the [[Christianity]] page seem to be more like Portals in the Wikipedia-sense. Using <code>(overview)</code> and <code>(G.G.)</code> at the end of article titles seems odd to me. Again, I guess I would put those kinds of details in categories.

My apologies for all the criticism. I'm just wanting to get the wiki well-oiled so visitors don't take test drives and end up crashing, if you know what I mean. Blessings to you... --[[User:RockOfVictory|J. J.]] 20:22, 26 July 2006 (PDT)

Since the Christianity Knowledge Base is open for anyone to edit, I've started a collaboration page to focus on these ideas. Graham, I'm not sure if this is what you're interested in, but it's worth mentioning: http://christianity.wikia.com/wiki/Christianity_Knowledge_Base:ChristianKM --[[User:RockOfVictory|J. J.]] 13:49, 15 August 2006 (PDT)

===Addressing the issue of brackets for "(overview)" or "(user-name)" etc.===

Thanks J.J. for your comments. All your criticisms are welcome. Your points are good ones. I suppose my feeling is that portals and categories don't actually work that well. At least, I never really browse for my information by clicking through category or portal listings. Also, they are confusing to new users - at least they were to me when I first discovered wikis. I agree it is odd putting "(overview)" or "(G.G.)" after a title. The reason I've been doing that though is to make the article clear. If it has "(G.G.)" after it, then I mean that it is my original work and is an opinion. If it has "(overview)" after it then it means it is an encyclopedia, neutral point of view article. Also then that leaves room for "(quotes)" for any topic etc. For example, if you look at [[Church]] you'll see the main page is "Church" which has a brief summary and then the sub-links which incluide [[Church (overview)]] which hopefully would become the large encyclopedia style article but then there are also links for sub-topics and links for opinion articles such as [[What is the Church? (G.G.)]] and [[The Church (justforcatholics.org)]] as well as links for quotes about the church at [[Church (quotes)]] and a link for brief forum-style discussion about the church [[Church (discussion)]]. So although it is a little odd, I still think ultimately it allows for growth and personal articles. Let me know what you think. --[[User:Graham grove|Graham grove]] 21:42, 26 July 2006 (PDT)

:One of the problems with the parenthesis in the title is that there are other non-topic pages that don't have parenthesis; I think it would get confusing as to what's a topic and what's an article/opinion.

:How about a Topic: namespace instead of Portal? Also, instead of [[Template:Overview]] showing ''An overview of ''[[Church (overview)|Church]], it would probably be less confusing if it showed the actual link, like ''See [[Church (overview)]] for a more detailed article.'' [[Template:Opinions]] and [[Template:Quotes]] would be changed similarly.

:I think this may work out well if we have a good how-to guide on making topic pages, maybe even using a [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Substitution subst] template to start from. I may make my own prototype at [[Talk:Christianity/Dev]] (with closer adherence to [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Contents#For_editors Wikimedia formatting standards]) if you think that would be helpful. --[[User:RockOfVictory|J. J.]] 19:11, 27 July 2006 (PDT)

::Please centralize discussion related to my dev page at [[Wikichristian talk:Topics]]. --[[User:RockOfVictory|J. J.]] 11:10, 3 August 2006 (PDT)

===Thoughts from Ben (CKB)===
''I'm copying this from the Christianity Knowledge Base since it brings up some more collaboration ideas. --[[User:RockOfVictory|J. J.]] 11:08, 10 August 2006 (PDT)''

Here's another problem with Christian wikis: They're hosted on private sites, therefore there is no "centrality" to them. I think ''this'' wiki, since it's hosted by [[Wikipedia:Wikia|Wikia Inc.]], is more "central". I think it might be good for this wiki to specialize in apologetics.

What we could do is perhaps form some sort of ChristianWiki Foundation (sort of like the [[Wikipedia:MediaWiki Foundation|MediaWiki Foundation]]) and, under that heading, have a "Christian Meta Wiki", which would work like [http://meta.wikimedia.org/ Meta-Wiki], and under that heading have different projects: One for encyclopedic articles, one for general Christian apologetics that links to wikis of different denominations to show what they think on different topics, one for an international church directory, one for Christian music of all kinds, and perhaps some other projects as well. New projects and/or the joining of existing projects would be discussed at the "Meta-Wiki". If it was done this way, we wouldn't be modeled after Wikipedia, but after the foundation that started Wikipedia - so we'd have all of the advantages without the drawbacks, you see? --[http://rlds.wikia.com/wiki/User:BenMcLean BenMcLean] 13:54, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

:I attempted to respond to this same letter and work with Graham at WikiChristian, but I wasn't getting any interest there; plus, the MediaWiki version there is grossly outdated, making it hard to work on. '''Ben''', I like your thoughts about a Christian Meta, but I think CKB could probably serve as this central hub. It is already on Wikia, providing a reliable server location. We could redesign this Community Portal (CP) (maybe even the Welcome page) to emphasize a "Collaboration" page (or set of pages, maybe featuring the Forum namespace). I don't think we would need a whole, separate, site just for collaboration purposes. This CP could also emphasize a separate CKB-only CP. I like your IRC idea below, too.

:Also, in working on a [http://www.wikible.org/en/Wikible:Christian_wikis Christian wikis] chart over at Wikible, I noticed that CKB and ChristWiki have very different page counts (528 vs. 11911). Why would ChristWiki have so many more considering that it's a fork of CKB? Does Wikia calculate it differently? See my chart and footnote for more details. --[[User:RockOfVictory|J. J.]] 20:39, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

User talk:Graham grove/Archive 1

2006-11-15T04:59:53Z

MediaWiki spam cleanup: Reverting to last version not containing links to wikible.org

Hi Graham,

How are you? I am wondering if we should try to change our domain name to WikiChristian.org and forward the wikichristian.com to that domain since it makes more sense since we want to keep it a non-commercial project. We can also consider registering a [[not for profit organization]] as we grow. Please share your thoughts on this. We already have both the domains with us. Thanks.

-Prab

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Hi Prab,

Sure. I don't really know what the difference between .com and .org is - but if you think there is a good reason for the change, go for it.

Graham

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Hi Graham.

I'm glad you're working here. This idea of a Christian wiki has a lot of potential.

--[[User:DavidCary|DavidCary]] 22:15, 8 Mar 2005 (PST)

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Thanks David

Graham

''You're welcome. Yes, I would like to [http://theconnexion.net/compass/index.php/User_talk:DavidCary contribute]. I'm glad WikiChristian and the Compass wiki are [http://theconnexion.net/compass/index.php/User_talk:WikiSysop getting along so well]. --[[User:DavidCary|DavidCary]] 18:00, 22 Mar 2005 (PST)''

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Hi Graham,

Thank you for the wonderful work you are doing with all the lyrics. In order to better organize the information in the wiki, it is a good idea to categorize the pages so that the system automatically creates alphabetical lists. All we have to do is to type [[Category:type]] at the bottom of the page. For example, the songs category pages should have <nowiki>[[category:songs]]</nowiki>. Also, there are some dead end pages that do not have any link and the best way to avoid creating dead end pages is by categories and templates. To create a new template, just type <nowiki>{{template name}}</nowiki> and edit the template page with the link created. Thanks for the understanding.

[[User:Prab]]

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Hi Prab,

Yep - it's a good idea to use templates and categories. Makes sense to me. However, I still like to have the index and contents pages under the control of the users rather than at the mercy of an automated system.

Thanks

Graham

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Hi Graham,

Thanks for the message in my user page. I think we can do both. Actually, the system does a good job in organizing the info alphabetically but giving the control to the users as well makes sense and we will continue both.

Thanks.

-Prab

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Hello, Graham. Thank you for the warm welcome to WikiChristian. As a United Methodist, I suspect I'll be making lots of Wesleyan-type edits but hope to add significantly to the encyclopedia in a number of categories. Good to be a part of the community! Shalom! [[User:KHM03|KHM03]] 15:05, 22 Mar 2005 (PST)

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Song Styleguide

I'd like to draw your attention to this talk page, Graham, [[WikiChristian talk:Song styleguide]]. I've made a pretty signigicant change to the titles of the songs and lyrics and hope to promote a single style for the titles. --[[User:Mustaphile|Mustaphile]] 11:06, 8 May 2005 (PDT)

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Found your picture on your website

Good to put a face to the name. {{smile}} --[[User:Mustaphile|Mustaphile]] 20:57, 22 May 2005 (PDT)

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Hi Graham (my name also happens to be Graham), I was just reading through some of the articles and I notice that frequently in the articles you write you use first person voice liberally. Not that I object to this in general, it's definitely a great tool for communicating Christian truth. However, since this is an Encyclopedia, perhaps we should consider using a more objective (third person) voice as much as possible? In articles and opinions, of course, first person is entirely acceptable. But in the more historical and factual entries, I wonder whether the first person voice comes off as scholarly or merely as "preachy," thus turning off potential believers and causing WikiChristian to be viewed as "just another evangelist website." Again, not that I object to your writing style in general, I think you're doing a great thing by devoting so much of your time to this project! [[User:Avertist|Avertist]] 09:07, 23 Apr 2005 (PDT)

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Hi Avertis. I've really enjoyed learning from your articles. You're doing a great job.

It's quite true that I do write opinions often. I try to make it clear that it is an opinion - which is why I write my name next to the article - so that a user can skip stuff I write if they don't want to read opinions, or so they can click on my name and read my background and understand my biases. You're also right in saying that using the first person doesn't always come off as scholarly. But when discussing Christianity, does it always have to be scholarly? Can experience or a testimony or even just a gut feeling be as worthwhile?

I guess I disagree with you on one point. You say that this is an Encyclopedia. My hope is that this is not only an encyclopedia - if it were only an encyclopedia then why not just write in Wikipedia? I hope this is a place where people can write their views and opinions including their understanding of history. The way I am going to write about about the Reformation is probably going to be quite different than the way a Roman Catholic would write about the Reformation, or again different from the way an atheist would write about it. Although there are historical facts involved, I think there will usually be a slant in one direction or another. I think it is best to allow multiple articles on the history of the reformation (or any other topic). Perhaps there should be the main article that is dry and factual only, but I think it is fine also for there to be lots of other articles which tend to have a slant in one way or another. Sometimes that will be "preachy" but hopefully at least it will be open for dialogue, discussion and rebuttal. I also don't think making this a purely factual Encyclopedia is likely to help brng people to Christ. Maybe I'm wrong - I'd be interested to know if anyone has been significantly drawn to Jesus by looking up information about Christianity on wikipedia.

If you look at the [[baptism]] page you'll see that I've written an article there which is clearly my own opinion. Obviously there will be people who have different opinions on this topic. I think it would be great if other people add links for new articles where they can explain their alternate views. Even the writer of Easton's Bible Dictionary is pretty biased (and this is supposed to be a dictionary which I would imagine shouldn't be biased). If you read [[Bible Dictionary: Baptism]] you'll see that there is clearly a particular point being pushed.

What you say is important though. I shouldn't be writing things that turn people away from Christ - I guess what I want to do is write things that say what I believe and challenge people to think about what they believe - be it the same or different from my belief. Sometimes I fail at that task. If you let me know which comments I make in which articles that are specifically preachy and that you think would really offend people, let me know and I'll try and fix them up.

Your brother in Christ,

Graham Grove

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Hi Graham, I worry that I may have overstated the problem in my first post. In the vast majority of your articles I don't see anything to worry about. But take, for instance, in the conclusion section of [[An overview of the main denominations and the history of the Christian Church (By G.G.)]]. The rest of the article is mostly factual, but the conclusion is definitely composed mostly of opinion. It's an opinion I share completely, so I'm not objecting to the content of it, but it seems to me that the best place for that section would be in a separate article discussing your opinion on the unity of the Church, etc. And though it does not sound particularly preachy to me, I can almost guarantee you that some of my atheist/agnostic friends would read it as trying to "explain away" the "fact" that Christianity just "can't figure itself out," or something to that effect. Would minor reorganizations like this actually convert them? Probably not, but it would remove that small objection they may have.

I completely agree that Wikichristian should be much more than a dry encyclopedia; my concern is that the division between fact and opinion might become blurred if we are not careful about this. [[User:Avertist|Avertist]] 00:26, 24 Apr 2005 (PDT)

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Thanks Avertis. I think you were quite right - that was out of place in an article that probably should have remained neutral and factual. I've moved my conclusion into a separate article. Thanks for the advice. Graham Grove, 24 April

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Hi Graham, I'm glad we agreed on this :). On a semi-related note, I thought more about what you said about wikipedia being the place for a "dry encyclopedia" and I thought that perhaps just to save time and effort, we could import articles en masse to wikichristian on historical and factual matters. Since wikipedia articles are generally pretty reliable, this way we'll be able to concentrate more of our efforts on dialogue and writing opinion articles (which I agree should be the core of wikichristian). Since you're one of the "main guys" here, I figured I'd ask your thoughts before I started doing it a bunch. But just so you can get an idea of what I mean, I imported the [[Arianism]] article from wikipedia on top of my old entry. As helpful as it is to me to write up my own short explanations of things, I think this would probably be more efficient and beneficial to wikichristian as a whole. I'm interested to know your thoughts. [[User:Avertist|Avertist]] 09:39, 24 Apr 2005 (PDT)

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G'day Avertist. Go for it, transfer any articles you think a worth transferring. I've noticed sometimes that I've got to have my thinking hat on when reading articles from Wikipedia. For instance, in the article on Christianity, it has a list of famous Christians, one of whom is Joseph Smith. He's the founder of the Mormon religion, so I don't think it is accurate to say he is a famous Christian. Certainly he was a very influential man and a famous religious leader who has had a major impact in history, but I think most Christians would agree that he should be left off a list of famous Christians. In general though, like you've suggested, Wikipedia is pretty reliable and thorough, so go for it and transfer away.

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I have noticed that you have some users who are constantly editing the articles to say nasty things. They switch words, screw up spelling so that links do not work, and seem to be somewhat of an annoyance. Is there any way to stop this? It may be that this is the downside to a website like this where users can freely edit each other's work. [[User:JordanBarrett|JordanBarrett]] 13:42, 28 July 2005 (PDT)

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Yep, that tends to happen a lot. When Prab initially set up the site, that happened a lot and so we protected most of the pages so that only sysops could edit them. Then the vandalism stopped for a time and we unprotected most the pages. It seems to occur periodically again - and it only seems to be coming from one person. There probably is some way of stopping it, but I'm not an expert at wikis so I'm unfamiliar with how to stop it. I know the set up for [[Theopedia]] is that only people with user names can edit pages - perhaps that is the best way around the problem. You could talk to [[User:Prab|Prab]] about the problems if you want. Graham

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Hello Graham! I saw your message to check out this site and decided to do so. I went ahead and signed up as a user and added some churches that I know of in West Virginia. Thanks for the invitation! I will check out the pages you indicated as time permits! Thanks again!

[[User:Phatcat68|Phatcat68]] 20:59, 29 Sep 2005 (EDT)

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G'day and welcome Phatcat68

Thanks for adding to the directory of churches. Feel free to create and edit other articles if you want to. A while back we had a lot of trouble with vandalism (and the only way we could stop it and make the vandals go away was to protect all the pages). Hopefully most pages have now been unprotected and if we haven't unprotected them all it is only because of forgetfulness. If you find one that is protected, give me a yell, and I'll unprotect it.

--[[User:Graham grove|Graham grove]] 22:28, 29 Sep 2005 (EDT)

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Hi there Graham, Im SWD316. I created an account and user page! Thanks for the invintation here! I didn't see it until today. You put it in an archive on my Wikipedia page, coincidentally it was an archive of coversations I had with Phatcat68! Wierd. Anyways thanks for the invite! [[User:SWD316|SWD316]] (yes I have a user page; it just looks like a red link!)

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''Add comment here''

== Invitation ==

Dear Graham,

I'd like to invite you to join the RWiki Yahoo Group at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/rwiki/.

Here's my preliminary description of the group:

This group is an informal association of administrators of
religiously-based wikis. Most of us are using MediaWiki, but administrators of other wiki engines are also invited to join.

We envision this as a low-volume list where administrators of religiously rooted wiki communities can trade tips and ideas, work together to fight spambots and vandals, and so on.

RWiki is sponsored by OrthodoxWiki (http://www.orthodoxwiki.org). It is open to wikis based in all "recognized" religious communities. This generally does not include NRMs or groups commonly described as "cults."

The archives of this list are kept private, and membership is restricted to those who genuinely qualify for this kind of group. Please apply with the name and URL of your wiki, as well as a description of your role in managing it.

Yours in Christ

John S. (User:FrJohn at http://orthodoxwiki.org)

Prab

2006-11-15T04:59:52Z

MediaWiki spam cleanup: Reverting to last version not containing links to wikible.org

Welcome to WikiChristian. My name is Prab R. Tumpati. I am a full gospel Christian believer by faith and a medical doctor by profession living in the United States. I was born and brought up in a Hindu family in India who converted to Christianity due to a great healing [[miracle]] by [[God]] in our family. I grew up in a Christian missions base called [http://www.moseschoudary.org Maranatha Visvasa Samajam], started by pastor Moses Choudary, who was called to work among high caste Hindu's.

I consider myself a technology enthusiast as I taught myself a lot of computer softwares in my free time. I have started successful websites like [http://www.Residentscafe.com Residentscafe], a popular website for residents and residency applicants and [http://www.believerscafe.com Believerscafe] with over 35,000 pages for christians. I felt a strong need for building a website that would let people to edit and add on content collaboratively would be of great help. I them came across the concept of wiki's and felt that it would be great tool for building an Encyclopedia for all Christians. Having seen the phenomenal growth of some wiki's like [http://www.wikipedia.org Wikipedia], I thought why not have a dedicated christian encyclopedia!
While there are many wiki's for secular information, we felt a need a for a dedicated Christian wiki that will not only serve as a wiki community, but also serves as a source for information and an encyclopedia on Christianity. I strongly believe that there is strength in togetherness/unity and as a group, we can help build a free Christian Encyclopedia that represents the contemporary concepts in Christian Theology and Faith.

[[Wikichristian]] was started in January of 2005 by me, along with some friends like [[User:Graham grove|Graham grove]] from Australia, in order to build an [[open source]] Christian [[Encyclopedia]]. While I did all the technical stuff in setting up the wiki and posted a lot of public domain content, [[User:Gram grove|Graham]] and many others contributed greatly in building the site up to make it one of the fastest growing wikis. In fact, the website grew to over 115 MB as of August, 2005 and was utilizing upto 95% of the server resources. It lead to temporary problems with the webhost due to high CPU usage in a shared hosting. We had finally decided to get a dedicated server to help facilitate the growth of wikichristian. Our vision is to build a free Christian Encyclopedia, public domain wiki and [[Bible]] resource and a wiki Christian community representing the contemporary church thinking and philosophy.

I declare that I do not have any commercial interest in this project and would keep the website not-for-profit. We may latter register it as a not for profit organization, as we grow. If you would like to share your views on improving this project, please drop me a line at my email id above or leave the message in the talk page here. If you are a committed Christian interested in becoming a wiki sysop, you may contact us for information on how to become a sysop.

I strongly believe that Christians have to rise up and stand for the important issues in the society in a day and age where truth is blurred and falsehood and sin are exaulted. WikiChristian would serve as a forum to represent the current concepts and trends in Christian Community the world over and will serve as a source of information, fellowship and inspiration. As this is a collaborative effort, it can only be made possible by participation from users like you! Remember that "when you cast your bread on the waters with faith, it will return one day back to you with butter on top of it".

May God Bless you richly! Prab R Tumpati, MD

You can reach me at prab at residentscafe dot com or tumpati at hotmail dot com

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Retrieved from "http://wikichristian.org/index.php?title=Wikichristian.org:About"

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Prab, just wanted to let you know that I really enjoy Wikichristian and I think it's a great site. I'm looking forward to contributing and working together on this project. [[User:Cpark|Cpark]] 18:46, 8 Feb 2005 (PST)

== Statistics? ==

Hi Prab, I just had a quick question about something before I head off and start a paper (For Dan-Rev...yay!). Anyway, my question was were are our statistics? Most wiki's have a statistics link right on front page (Currently working on xxxxx articles) and you can click on the number and see some statistics. I know we're using media wiki so the functionality must be there. Is there a reason we don't currently have a link to statistics?

Nevermind...I found it. Guess I just need to actually look before I ask. :) [[User:Cpark|Cpark]] 07:33, 12 Mar 2005 (PST)

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Hi Cpark,
It has been a pleasure for me too and I appreciate the wonderful spirit you have and the innovative ideas you bring in. You and Graham have been wonderful friends.

As per the statistics, we just did not want to have them on the mainpage as yet since we would like to grow to a reasonable number of articles before we can have them on the front page.

Just a note on the vision -

Let us keep the vision of wikichristian broad, to be a meta christian resource linking and reviewing everything christian on the planet and creating content where there is none. We do not have to or want to "reinvent the wheel", if the work has already been done somewhere on the internet, we will just review and link it.

-[[User:Prab|Prab]]

Prab, agreed about the vision. I think that the only time we need to "reinvent" the wheel is if something isn't being maintained (ie, Easton's Bible Dictionary is 100 years old and we can help to update it in a wiki environment...some with the KJV, though WEB is doing something like that, just not in a wiki environment. I view our stuff with the KJV to be more like making a study bible). Have I done something that doens't line up with keeping the vision broad? My idea with the goals is just to give us something to shoot for, not to limit what we can do. But kindda to set priorities...could I word something differently to not limit us? Or were you just giving a general statement? [[User:Cpark|Cpark]] 05:01, 13 Mar 2005 (PST)

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Hi Cpark,
I was just making a general statement and do not mean to comment on any of the things you are doing. I think we are in complete agreement here regarding the vision. As you are aware, we are still in the formative stage and we would like to have people with a vision, passion and commitment with strong leadership abilities to take this project to where we would like it to be. I am turning etnoy into a sysop and hope he would be a valuable addition to the team. God bless!

[[User:Prab|Prab]], March 13, 2005.

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Hi Graham,
Thank you for the wonderful work you are doing with all the lyrics. In order to better organize the information in the wiki, it is a good idea to categorize the pages so that the system automatically creates alphabetical lists. All we have to do is to type [[Category:type]] at the bottom of the page. For example, the songs category pages should have <nowiki>[[category:songs]]</nowiki>. Also, there are some dead end pages that do not have any link and the best way to avoid creating dead end pages is by categories and templates. To create a new template, just type <nowiki>{{template name}}</nowiki> and edit the template page with the link created. Thanks for the understanding.

[[User:Prab]]
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Hi Prab,

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== Categories ==

Hi Prab,

Yep - it's a good idea to use templates and categories. Makes sense to me. However, I still like to have the index and contents pages under the control of the users rather than at the mercy of an automated system.

Thanks

Graham

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Hi Graham,

I think we can do both. Actually, the system does a good job in organizing the info alphabetically but giving the control to the users as well makes sense and we will continue both.

Thanks.

-Prab

== Reference Scriptures ==

Prab

If it's all the same to you, I'd like to leave the reference scriptures as they were. it is easier to link to specific scripures and them alone if they do exist and exist alone. Instead of having people search through an entire book directing to the isolated scripures at are specifically referenced to seems a better idea.

cb31989

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Hi,
The CamelCase type of linking text was the original wiki idea that was eventually replaced with the square bracket for wiki links in this wiki engine. One reason the CamelCase is not so good is because search engines do not recognize the two words as separate and so the page may not be ranked accordingly. Another problem is that it is a bit unnatural to not have space in between words.
So, may I request you to try to use the square brackets and spaces in between words for the above reasons. Thanks for the understanding.

-Prab

== Referance Scriptures ==

I think it would be a good idea to do referance scriptures buy chapters alone then use templates for the full book. As referance scriptures for all the variations would take a long time and people do want to read the book or print the books of the Bible beging to end to.

== World English Bible updates ==

Is it your intention that the WEB stayes up to date with the offical versions of the WEB? Or do you want the users of wikiChristian modify it so that it becomes the wiki translation. Then there should also be an offical version as well on WikiChristian. Thanks [[User:M_loewen]]

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Hi,

I think we would do well utilizing the interlinking and other possibilities the wiki offers in enhancing the usefulness and understanding of the Bible. For example, John 3:16 can be

For [[God]] so [[love|loved]] the world, that he gave his only begotten [[Son]], that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have [[eternal life]]... John 3:16

By using the [[wiki]] links, we can amplify the Bible and make it very useful for the users. The idea of A [[Free Bible Dictionary]] was to have each biblical word explained in the wiki and those words can be used for the Bible versions or anywhere in the wiki just by wiki linking them. If you have other ideas, please feel free to put them forward.

I just wanted to say that I like the work you do at wikichristian and if you would be interested, we would very much like to have you as one of the sysops! Please let me know by leaving a message here or by dropping me a line at prab@residentscafedotcom.

[[User:Prab|Prab]]

== Organization of the Free Bible Dictionary ==

Hi Prab, I've been talking with [[User:Cb31989|Cb31989]] a bit about the organization of the Free Bible Dictionary, and we agree that we should coordinate our efforts to use the same title page format for the pages being imported. Right now some pages are "Easton's Bible Dictionary: XXXXX," others are "Free Bible Dictionary: XXXXX," others are "Bible Dictionary: XXXXX" and still others are just "XXXXX." I've moved a few over to "Bible Dictionary: XXXXX" now but I thought it would be wise to get other admins' opinions on what the format should be. I thought about "XXXXX (EBD)" but Cb31989 correctly pointed out that this would make it more difficult for search engines. What are your thoughts? [[User:Avertist|Avertist]] 15:42, 26 Apr 2005 (PDT)

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Hi Avertist,

I think the idea of having all the important words in the bible defined and explained in the wiki just by enclosing the word in square parenthesis(wiki links). If we make it complicated in the url, it becomes hard to link it and I think we should leave the vast majority of words that do not have a separate article directly as they are. For example, Aaron would remain [[Aaron]] instead of [[Free Bible Dictionary: Aaron]]. If there is a top level article on the topic, we should move the dictionary part to [[Free Bible Dictionary: XYZ]]. The word "Free" would help for searches as people tend to use the word free a lot in the searches and that is what we intend to do - create a free Bible Dictionary. [[user:Prab]]

== Invitation ==

Dear Prab,

I'd like to invite you to join the RWiki Yahoo Group at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/rwiki/.

Here's my preliminary description of the group:

This group is an informal association of administrators of
religiously-based wikis. Most of us are using MediaWiki, but administrators of other wiki engines are also invited to join.

We envision this as a low-volume list where administrators of religiously rooted wiki communities can trade tips and ideas, work together to fight spambots and vandals, and so on.

RWiki is sponsored by OrthodoxWiki (http://www.orthodoxwiki.org). It is open to wikis based in all "recognized" religious communities. This generally does not include NRMs or groups commonly described as "cults."

The archives of this list are kept private, and membership is restricted to those who genuinely qualify for this kind of group. Please apply with the name and URL of your wiki, as well as a description of your role in managing it.

Yours in Christ

John S. (User:FrJohn at http://orthodoxwiki.org)

== Vandalism ==

Sir,

I did what I could to correct the huge amount of vandalism that had occurred in the last 24 hours. I do ask that you ban the user's ip if you can, as his vandalism was quite vulgar at times. I wish I could be of more assistance but I did what I could.

Merry Christmas and God Bless,

+Anthony
:I've banned his ip for 10 years. --[[User:Mustaphile|Mustaphile]] 07:16, 23 Dec 2005 (EST)

==New Logo==

I love the new logo. It adds a touch of class to the site overall. Very good job! --[[User:Patriarchanthony|Patriarchanthony]] 05:47, 8 Jan 2006 (EST)

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Thank you for the encouraging comments. That makes all the hours spent trying different options before coming up with the final alternative worthwhile! I believe that the message on the top - God Loves You - touches some peoples hearts! That is exactly the point of this website! God bless!

--[[User:Prab|Prab]] 06:33, 8 Jan 2006 (EST)