WikiChristian - User contributions [en]

Talk:Christian wikis

2006-08-15T20:49:47Z

RockOfVictory: /* Thoughts from JJ */ http://christianity.wikia.com/wiki/Christianity_Knowledge_Base:ChristianKM

[[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)

Template:Asv

2006-08-10T20:13:10Z

RockOfVictory: See also and External links headers

Talk:Christian wikis

2006-08-10T18:08:06Z

RockOfVictory: /* Addressing the issue of brackets for "(overview)" or "(user-name)" etc. */ Responses copied from CKB

[[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)

===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

2006-08-08T17:13:08Z

RockOfVictory: Still watching

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

----

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

----

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)

----

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)''

----

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]]

----

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

----

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

----

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)

----

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)

----

Found your picture on your website

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

----

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)

----

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

----

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)

----

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

----

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)

----

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.

----

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)

----

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

----

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)

----

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)

----

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!)

----

''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)

== vandalism in general ==

Hi, I am the creator of the new Bible encyclopedia wiki based in the United States called, [http://wikible.org Wikible]. I noticed that this site is getting hammered all the time with spam. I was just curious what kind of spam protection you are using? I am using the Bad Behavior mediawiki extension at my site. Also, I've noticed this site is using a very old version of MediaWiki. perhaps a upgrade to the latest stable version, 1.5.6 (as of this post), would help curb that somewhat. As you know, spammers will try to use vulnerabilities in software to their advantage, and it would probably help to upgrade. Have a good day, and keep serving the savior! --[[User:Ymmotrojam|Ymmotrojam]] 04:51, 22 Jan 2006 (EST)

== Shorter URLs ==

Hi there. I recently responded to your [[Talk:Christian wikis#Thoughts from JJ|"open letter"]]. I'm starting to dig a little deeper into WikiChristian; I had been spending most of my time on Wikible.org. May I recommend [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Eliminating_index.php_from_the_url this nifty tip] to help clean up the wikichristian URLs? (I've also added this [[User_talk:Prab#Shorter_URLs|to Prab's talk page]] since he seems to be more technically-oriented.) --[[User:RockOfVictory|J. J.]] 18:21, 26 July 2006 (PDT)

== Still watching ==

I got your comment on Wikipedia. Even though I'm not spending as much time here, I still check the "Recent changes" page frenquently to get a pulse on what's happening with the wiki. --[[User:RockOfVictory|J. J.]] 10:13, 8 August 2006 (PDT)

User:RockOfVictory

2006-08-08T13:06:31Z

RockOfVictory: consolidation link change

I've been exploring several MediaWiki-based resources lately and am trying to help the community [http://christianity.wikia.com/wiki/Christianity_Knowledge_Base:Community_Portal#An_open_letter_to_users_and_administrators_of_the_various_different_Christian_wikis consolidate information] so we're not doing a lot of redundant work with resources.

I keep shifting from one [[Christian wikis|Christian wiki]] site to another, mainly in an effort to glean the best aspects of each site and discuss how we can centralize the content more effectively. As of July 2006, my method is generally:
#'''Wikipedia''' ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:RockOfVictory user page]) content-editing since it has the largest audience and potential for me to be a [[witness]] to the masses.
#'''Refine the mechanics''' of Christian wikis. I've hesitated to contribute much content yet since I'm still exploring which sites can do what. I've focused a lot on '''Wikible''' ([http://www.wikible.org/en/User:RockOfVictory user page]) so far since Biblical studies is one of my main interests. Occasionally, I may add content to WikiChristian or other more specific Christian wikis if the material is not suitable for Wikipedia.

My personal website is ''[http://zepfanman.com/beta Zepfanman.com]: When you can't find it on Google''; boasts a gallery, hundreds of link resources, and a blog matching the wide variety of my interests, including a monthly Bible entry.

==Notice==
While I appreciated the openness of WikiChristian, the [[Special:Version|site software]] hasn't been updated in a while. [http://theopedia.com Theopedia] is based on a Reformed perspective, but as far as I'm concerned, this site is just as restrictive in its beliefs. I'm going to explore Theopedia a little more now since [[Special:Contributions/RockOfVictory|my efforts here]] in the past week haven't been very fruitful. --[[User:RockOfVictory|J. J.]] 13:53, 4 August 2006 (PDT)

User:RockOfVictory

2006-08-04T20:53:38Z

RockOfVictory: Farewell

I've been exploring several MediaWiki-based resources lately and am trying to help the community [[Talk:Christian_wikis#Thoughts_from_JJ|consolidate information]] so we're not doing a lot of redundant work with resources.

I keep shifting from one [[Christian wikis|Christian wiki]] site to another, mainly in an effort to glean the best aspects of each site and discuss how we can centralize the content more effectively. As of July 2006, my method is generally:
#'''Wikipedia''' ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:RockOfVictory user page]) content-editing since it has the largest audience and potential for me to be a [[witness]] to the masses.
#'''Refine the mechanics''' of Christian wikis. I've hesitated to contribute much content yet since I'm still exploring which sites can do what. I've focused a lot on '''Wikible''' ([http://www.wikible.org/en/User:RockOfVictory user page]) so far since Biblical studies is one of my main interests. Occasionally, I may add content to WikiChristian or other more specific Christian wikis if the material is not suitable for Wikipedia.

My personal website is ''[http://zepfanman.com/beta Zepfanman.com]: When you can't find it on Google''; boasts a gallery, hundreds of link resources, and a blog matching the wide variety of my interests, including a monthly Bible entry.

==Notice==
While I appreciated the openness of WikiChristian, the [[Special:Version|site software]] hasn't been updated in a while. [http://theopedia.com Theopedia] is based on a Reformed perspective, but as far as I'm concerned, this site is just as restrictive in its beliefs. I'm going to explore Theopedia a little more now since [[Special:Contributions/RockOfVictory|my efforts here]] in the past week haven't been very fruitful. --[[User:RockOfVictory|J. J.]] 13:53, 4 August 2006 (PDT)

Talk:Christian wikis

2006-08-03T18:10:01Z

RockOfVictory: /* Addressing the issue of brackets for "(overview)" or "(user-name)" etc. */

[[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)

===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)

WikiChristian talk:Topics

2006-08-03T18:09:00Z

RockOfVictory: Dev page from JJ

== Dev page from JJ ==

Within this section, please centralize discussion related to my [[Talk:Christianity/Dev]] page (and [[Template:Topic]]) as well as "prototype phase" ideas. --[[User:RockOfVictory|J. J.]] 11:09, 3 August 2006 (PDT)

Talk:Christianity/Dev

2006-08-03T18:05:18Z

RockOfVictory:

{{quote | text=For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life. [[John 3:16]]}} 

[[Image:Wooden_cross.jpg|left|60px]]
{{Topic/Summary | text='''Christianity''' is the world's most widely practiced [[religion]] and although it has many [[denomination]]s and great diversity, all Christians are united in [[Jesus Christ]]. At the heart of Christianity is a loving creator [[God]] who is also our redeemer.}}

{{Topic/Overview}}

[[Image:Mount sinai 170px.jpg|right|frame|Sunrise at [[Mount Sinai]] in [[Egypt]]. It was in this region that [[God]] revealed himself to [[Moses]] and showed his [[love]] and [[grace]] with the statement "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt and the slavery" in [[Exodus 20:2]].]]

{{Topic/Topics}}
{{main_topics}}

{{Topic/Opinions}}

{{Topic/Quotes}}

{{Topic/Also}}
* This is a test page. Please see discussion on [[Wikichristian talk:Topics]] to comment on this. A related [[Template:Topic]] has also been created.
* [[Sandbox]] | [[Unsure]] | [[To Do]]
* [[Stubs]] | [[Templates]]

{{Topic/Links}}
* [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity Wikipedia - Christianity]

Talk:Christianity/Dev

2006-08-03T17:58:15Z

RockOfVictory: removed quotes

{{quote | text=For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life. [[John 3:16]]}} 

[[Image:Wooden_cross.jpg|left|60px]]
{{Topic/Summary | text='''Christianity''' is the world's most widely practiced [[religion]] and although it has many [[denomination]]s and great diversity, all Christians are united in [[Jesus Christ]]. At the heart of Christianity is a loving creator [[God]] who is also our redeemer.}}

{{Topic/Overview}}

[[Image:Mount sinai 170px.jpg|right|frame|Sunrise at [[Mount Sinai]] in [[Egypt]]. It was in this region that [[God]] revealed himself to [[Moses]] and showed his [[love]] and [[grace]] with the statement "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt and the slavery" in [[Exodus 20:2]].]]

{{Topic/Topics}}
{{main_topics}}

{{Topic/Opinions}}

{{Topic/Quotes}}

{{Topic/Also}}
* [[Sandbox]] | [[Unsure]] | [[To Do]]
* [[Stubs]] | [[Templates]]

{{Topic/Links}}
* [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity Wikipedia - Christianity]

WikiChristian:Topics

2006-08-03T17:57:18Z

RockOfVictory:

WikiChristian is organized differently from most MediaWiki-based encyclopedias. We are working on developing a '''topic-based system''', similar to using [[:Category:Categories|categories]], but one which is more flexible and useful for looking up Christian content. Please contribute to [[Talk:Christian wikis]] to learn more about this system.

[[Category:WikiChristian help]]

Template:Topic

2006-08-03T17:32:33Z

RockOfVictory:

{{quote | text=Fill in this box with a quote or verse relevant to {{PAGENAME}}, or delete this quote section altogether.}} 

{{Topic/Summary | text=An initial left-justified image may be inserted just before this paragraph (it is recommended not to insert images above this first image). Follow it up with a one-or-two-sentence introduction to '''{{PAGENAME}}'''.}}

{{Topic/Overview}}

{{Topic/Topics}}
* Begin listing sub-topics here

{{Topic/Opinions}}

{{Topic/Quotes}}

{{Topic/Also}}
* Other relevant articles can be placed here.

{{Topic/Links}}
* Insert external links here, such as the Wikipedia article on [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/{{PAGENAME}} {{PAGENAME}}].

{{Topic/Returnto}}
For navigation purposes, include any parent articles. If there are more than one, separate them with the vertical bar character. E.g. [[Christian movies]] | [[News]]

[[Category:Topic pages]]

Category:Topics

2006-08-03T14:44:23Z

RockOfVictory:

[[Category:Categories]]

Category:Administration

2006-08-03T14:43:42Z

RockOfVictory:

[[Category:Categories]]

Category:Categories

2006-08-03T14:42:48Z

RockOfVictory:

This is the highest level of the WikiChristian category system.

Template:Topic

2006-08-03T14:40:40Z

RockOfVictory: Category:Topic pages

{{quote | text=Fill in this box with a quote or verse relevant to this topic, or delete this quote section altogether.}} 

{{Topic/Summary | text=An initial left-justified image may be inserted just before this paragraph (it is recommended not to insert images above this first image). Follow it up with a one-or-two-sentence introduction to the topic.}}

{{Topic/Overview}}

{{Topic/Topics}}
* Begin listing sub-topics here

{{Topic/Opinions}}

{{Topic/Quotes}}

{{Topic/Also}}
* Other relevant articles can be placed here.

{{Topic/Links}}
* Insert external links here, such as the Wikipedia article on this topic.

{{Topic/Returnto}}
For navigation purposes, include any parent articles. If there are more than one, separate with the vertical bar character. E.g. [[Main Page]] | [[News]]

[[Category:Topic pages]]

Talk:Christianity/Dev

2006-08-03T14:38:36Z

RockOfVictory: more templates applied

{{quote | text=For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life. [[John 3:16]]}} 

[[Image:Wooden_cross.jpg|left|60px]]
{{Topic/Summary | text="'''Christianity''' is the world's most widely practiced [[religion]] and although it has many [[denomination]]s and great diversity, all Christians are united in [[Jesus Christ]]. At the heart of Christianity is a loving creator [[God]] who is also our redeemer."}}

{{Topic/Overview}}

[[Image:Mount sinai 170px.jpg|right|frame|Sunrise at [[Mount Sinai]] in [[Egypt]]. It was in this region that [[God]] revealed himself to [[Moses]] and showed his [[love]] and [[grace]] with the statement "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt and the slavery" in [[Exodus 20:2]].]]

{{Topic/Topics}}
{{main_topics}}

{{Topic/Opinions}}

{{Topic/Quotes}}

{{Topic/Also}}
* [[Sandbox]] | [[Unsure]] | [[To Do]]
* [[Stubs]] | [[Templates]]

{{Topic/Links}}
* [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity Wikipedia - Christianity]

Template:Topic

2006-08-03T14:35:32Z

RockOfVictory:

Template:Topic

2006-08-03T14:02:51Z

RockOfVictory: e.g. in returnto and nav added to summary

{{quote | text=Fill in this box with a quote or verse relevant to this topic, or delete this quote section altogether.}} 

{{Topic/Summary | text=An initial left-justified image may be inserted here (it is recommended not to insert images above this point). Follow it up with a one-or-two-sentence introduction to the topic.}}

{{Topic/Overview}}

{{Topic/Topics}}
* Begin listing sub-topics here

{{Topic/Opinions}}

{{Topic/Quotes}}

{{Topic/Also}}
* Other relevant articles can be placed here.

{{Topic/Links}}
* Insert external links here, such as the Wikipedia article on this topic.

{{Topic/Returnto}}
For navigation purposes, include any parent articles. If there are more than one, separate with the vertical bar character. E.g. [[Main Page]] | [[News]]

Template:Topic/Summary

2006-08-03T14:00:49Z

RockOfVictory: Added nav box

{| style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; margin-bottom: 1ex; padding: 0.3em; width: 15em; border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); background-color: #f9f9f9; clear: right"
|-
! [[Wikichristian:Topics]]
|-
| This is a topic page. WikiChristian is structured by the following main topics:
{{main_topics}}
|}

{{{text}}}

Template:Main topics

2006-08-03T13:59:55Z

RockOfVictory:

Template:Topic/Returnto

2006-08-03T13:54:31Z

RockOfVictory:

==Parent(s)==

Template:Topic/Links

2006-08-03T13:53:52Z

RockOfVictory:

==External links==

Template:Topic/Also

2006-08-03T13:53:17Z

RockOfVictory:

==See also==

Template:Topic/Topics

2006-08-03T13:52:24Z

RockOfVictory:

==Topics==

Template:Topic/Summary

2006-08-03T13:51:50Z

RockOfVictory:

{{{text}}}

Christian movies

2006-08-02T20:44:29Z

RockOfVictory: Jesus films

{{summary | text=Some of the most well-known movies have strong [[Christian]] themes. One of the earliest Christian movies was [[The Ten Commandments (movie)|The Ten Commandments]] by [[Cecil B. DeMill]]. In 2004, [[The Passion of the Christ]], describing the night of [[Jesus]]' death was a film that made a world-wide impact. In 2005, the movie [[The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe]] was released based on the famous book by [[C.S. Lewis]].}}

{{overview}}

{{topics}}
* [[Christian Movies Index]]
* [[Directors of Christian Movies Index]]
* [[Actors and Actresses in Christian Movies Index]]
* Genres - [[Silent Cinema]] | [[Animated films]] | [[Epics]] | [[Jesus films]]
* [[Free christian videos and webcasts]]

{{opinions}}

{{quotes}}

{{returnto}} [[Christian literature, art, music and media]]

Template:Topic

2006-08-02T20:30:40Z

RockOfVictory:

{{quote | text=Fill in this box with a quote or verse relevant to this topic, or delete this quote section altogether.}} 

{| style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; margin-bottom: 1ex; padding: 0.3em; width: 15em; border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); background-color: #f9f9f9; clear: right"
|-
! [[Wikichristian:Topics]]
|-
| This is a topic page. WikiChristian is structured by the following main topics:
* [[God]] | [[Jesus Christ]] | [[Essence of Christianity]]
* [[Bible]] | [[Christian literature, art, music and media]]
* [[Church]] | [[Church history]] | [[Denominations]]
* [[Famous Christians]]
* [[Christian doctrine and debates]] | [[Grace]] | [[Love]]
* [[Current issues]] | News
* [[Cults and other religions]]
* [[Places]] | [[Mission]] | [[World-wide church directory]]
|}

An initial left-justified image may be inserted here (it is recommended not to insert images above this point). Follow it up with a one-or-two-sentence introduction to the topic.

{{Topic/Overview}}

==Topics==
* Begin listing sub-topics here

{{Topic/Opinions}}

{{Topic/Quotes}}

==See also==
* Other relevant articles can be placed here.

==External links==
* Insert external links here, such as the Wikipedia article on this topic.

Talk:Christianity/Dev

2006-08-02T20:23:11Z

RockOfVictory: First draft

{{quote | text=For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life. [[John 3:16]]}} 

{| style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; margin-bottom: 1ex; padding: 0.3em; width: 15em; border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); background-color: #f9f9f9; clear: right"
|-
! [[Wikichristian:Topics]]
|-
| This is a topic page. WikiChristian is structured by the following main topics:
* [[God]] | [[Jesus Christ]] | [[Essence of Christianity]]
* [[Bible]] | [[Christian literature, art, music and media]]
* [[Church]] | [[Church history]] | [[Denominations]]
* [[Famous Christians]]
* [[Christian doctrine and debates]] | [[Grace]] | [[Love]]
* [[Current issues]] | News
* [[Cults and other religions]]
* [[Places]] | [[Mission]] | [[World-wide church directory]]
|}

[[Image:Wooden_cross.jpg|left|60px]]
'''Christianity''' is the world's most widely practiced [[religion]] and although it has many [[denomination]]s and great diversity, all Christians are united in [[Jesus Christ]]. At the heart of Christianity is a loving creator [[God]] who is also our redeemer.

{{Topic/Overview}}

[[Image:Mount sinai 170px.jpg|right|frame|Sunrise at [[Mount Sinai]] in [[Egypt]]. It was in this region that [[God]] revealed himself to [[Moses]] and showed his [[love]] and [[grace]] with the statement "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt and the slavery" in [[Exodus 20:2]].]]

==Topics==
* [[God]] | [[Jesus Christ]] | [[Essence of Christianity]]
* [[Bible]] | [[Christian literature, art, music and media]]
* [[Church]] | [[Church history]] | [[Denominations]]
* [[Famous Christians]]
* [[Christian doctrine and debates]] | [[Grace]] | [[Love]]
* [[Current issues]] | News
* [[Cults and other religions]]
* [[Places]] | [[Mission]] | [[World-wide church directory]]

{{Topic/Opinions}}

{{Topic/Quotes}}

==See also==
* [[Sandbox]] | [[Unsure]] | [[To Do]]
* [[Stubs]] | [[Templates]]

==External links==
* [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity Wikipedia - Christianity]

Template:Topic/Quotes

2006-08-02T20:19:00Z

RockOfVictory:

==Quotes==
* Sound bites: [[{{PAGENAME}} (quotes)]]

Template:Topic/Opinions

2006-08-02T20:13:44Z

RockOfVictory:

==Discussion and opinions==
* Short comments and opinions: [[{{PAGENAME}} (discussion)]]

Template:Topic/Overview

2006-08-02T20:03:18Z

RockOfVictory: noinclude category

:''See [[{{PAGENAME}} (overview)]] for a more detailed article.''
<noinclude>[[Category:Topic templates]]</noinclude>

Template:Topic/Overview

2006-08-02T20:02:55Z

RockOfVictory:

:''See [[{{PAGENAME}} (overview)]] for a more detailed article.''
[[Category:Topic templates]]

Template talk:Doctl

2006-08-02T19:12:32Z

RockOfVictory: No Template:Lts

{{compactDocToc}}
=Documentation=

Talk pages of templates are unique because they include regular "Discussion" as well as official documentation for the template itself. For this reason, <code>{{{{PAGENAME}}}}</code> sets up level-one headers (<nowiki>=Documentation= and =Discussion=</nowiki>) in order to allow a logical use of the "+" tab at the top of the page. Ideally, all template talk pages should use the doctl template.

== Usage ==


<code>{{{{PAGENAME}}}}</code> does not have any parameters. It should be the first thing added to an empty template talk page using [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Substitution substitution], i.e. <code><nowiki>{{subst:doctl}}</nowiki></code>. Everything in the Documentation section should then be filled out.

== Example ==
This talk page is an example of how it works.

Use the talk page of the [[Wikichristian:Sandbox]] to check the unedited output of <code><nowiki>{{subst:doctl}}</nowiki></code>.

== See also ==


= Discussion =
__TOC__ 
''Add issues below as you see fit, sign with'' ~<nowiki>~~</nowiki>~

Template talk:Doctl

2006-08-02T19:05:40Z

RockOfVictory: /* Documentation */ [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Substitution substitution] and Wikichristian:Sandbox

{{compactDocToc}}
=Documentation=

Talk pages of templates are unique because they include regular "Discussion" as well as official documentation for the template itself. For this reason, <code>{{{{PAGENAME}}}}</code> sets up level-one headers (<nowiki>=Documentation= and =Discussion=</nowiki>) in order to allow a logical use of the "+" tab at the top of the page. Ideally, all template talk pages should use the doctl template.

== Usage ==


<code>{{{{PAGENAME}}}}</code> does not have any parameters. It should be the first thing added to an empty template talk page using [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Substitution substitution], i.e. <code><nowiki>{{subst:doctl}}</nowiki></code>. Everything in the Documentation section should then be filled out.

== Example ==
This talk page is an example of how it works.

Use the talk page of the [[Wikichristian:Sandbox]] to check the unedited output of <code><nowiki>{{subst:doctl}}</nowiki></code>.

== See also ==


* {{Lts|{{PAGENAME}}}}


= Discussion =
__TOC__ 
''Add issues below as you see fit, sign with'' ~<nowiki>~~</nowiki>~

Template talk:Doctl

2006-08-02T19:03:16Z

RockOfVictory:

{{compactDocToc}}
=Documentation=

Talk pages of templates are unique because they include regular "Discussion" as well as official documentation for the template itself. For this reason, <code>{{{{PAGENAME}}}}</code> sets up level-one headers (<nowiki>=Documentation= and =Discussion=</nowiki>) in order to allow a logical use of the "+" tab at the top of the page. Ideally, all template talk pages should use the doctl template.

== Usage ==


<code>{{{{PAGENAME}}}}</code> does not have any parameters. It should be the first thing added to an empty template talk page using [[meta:Help:Substitution|substitution]], i.e. <code><nowiki>{{subst:doctl}}</nowiki></code>. Everything in the Documentation section should then be filled out.

== Example ==
This talk page is an example of how it works.

Use the talk page of the [[Wikible:Sandbox]] to check the unedited output of <code><nowiki>{{subst:doctl}}</nowiki></code>.

== See also ==


* {{Lts|{{PAGENAME}}}}


= Discussion =
__TOC__ 
''Add issues below as you see fit, sign with'' ~<nowiki>~~</nowiki>~

Template:CompactDocToc

2006-08-02T19:01:46Z

RockOfVictory:

{| id="toc" class="toc" summary="Contents"
! {{MediaWiki:Toc}}
|-
| align="center" |
[[#Documentation|Documentation]] - [[#Discussion|Discussion]]
|}<noinclude>[[Category:TOC templates|{{PAGENAME}}]]
[[Category:Template templates|{{PAGENAME}}]]</noinclude>

Barnes New Testament Notes

2006-08-01T17:42:11Z

RockOfVictory: CCEL

==External links==
[http://www.ccel.org/ccel/barnes/ntnotes.toc.html Barnes New Testament Notes] full text on [[Christian_Classics_Ethereal_Library|CCEL]].

Easton's Bible Dictionary

2006-08-01T17:41:51Z

RockOfVictory: full text

{{summary | text=Easton's Bible Dictionary refers to the Illustrated Bible Dictionary, Third Edition, by [[Matthew George Easton]] M.A., D.D. (1823-1894), published three years after Easton's death in 1897 by Thomas Nelson. Using the most recent information in that day, Easton presented a concise volume that has aided both layman and scholar in their study of God's word.}}

{{overview}}

{{topics}}
* {{bible_dictionaries}}
* [[Matthew George Easton]]

{{opinions}}

{{quotes}}

{{links}}
* [http://www.ccel.org/ccel/easton/ebd2.toc.html Easton's Bible Dictionary] full text on [[Christian_Classics_Ethereal_Library|CCEL]].

{{returnto}} [[Bible]]

Easton's Bible Dictionary

2006-08-01T16:26:39Z

RockOfVictory: Changed to CCEL link

{{summary | text=Easton's Bible Dictionary refers to the Illustrated Bible Dictionary, Third Edition, by [[Matthew George Easton]] M.A., D.D. (1823-1894), published three years after Easton's death in 1897 by Thomas Nelson. Using the most recent information in that day, Easton presented a concise volume that has aided both layman and scholar in their study of God's word.}}

{{overview}}

{{topics}}
* {{bible_dictionaries}}
* [[Matthew George Easton]]

{{opinions}}

{{quotes}}

{{links}}
* [http://www.ccel.org/ccel/easton/ebd2.toc.html Easton's Bible Dictionary] on [[Christian_Classics_Ethereal_Library|CCEL]].

{{returnto}} [[Bible]]

WikiChristian talk:Community Portal

2006-07-31T20:11:06Z

RockOfVictory: Moved to Village pump

Please make general WikiChristian comments on the main page of the [[Wikichristian:Village pump|Village pump]]. '''Use this talk page only for comments specific to how the Community Portal should be operated.'''

Talk:Christian wikis

2006-07-28T02:11:43Z

RockOfVictory: /* Addressing the issue of brackets for "(overview)" or "(user-name)" etc. */ My own template ideas

[[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)

===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)

User:RockOfVictory

2006-07-27T03:45:36Z

RockOfVictory: updated method of editing

Talk:Christian wikis

2006-07-27T03:22:24Z

RockOfVictory: /* Thoughts from JJ */ expanded philosophy for the site

User talk:Graham grove/Archive 1

2006-07-27T01:52:04Z

RockOfVictory: /* Shorter URLs */ Prab link

User talk:Prab

2006-07-27T01:50:22Z

RockOfVictory: Shorter URLs

I had some spare time and the inclination today to do some editing. :) Is there any way you are able to remove the error from the .htm files that are being used as a source for those pages? The error with the mispelled ''Mathew'' exist in these files too, so in their current state they are going to be adding to the workload in terms of editing out the spelling error before pasting the content into the articles. This is more of a 'spurt' of activity for me, so there is no real rush for any of this to occur. --[[User:Mustaphile|Mustaphile]] 18:23, 20 April 2006 (EDT)

Hi Mustaphile,

Yes, it is possible to search replace. I went ahead and changed it in all the pages along with some other changes that may help. However, there may still be a few things such as removing the space below Mathew Henry link etc. to make it appear the way we want may still have to be done manually. I will keep trying to see if we could do that in an easier way. I uploaded the new updated files.

[[User:Prab|Prab]]

==I've noticed something strange==
The Talk:Main Page was moved by Willy on Wheels and then moved back and then it shows me as moving Talk:Main Page to Bitch. I never visited the page on the 11th of May, nor did I move the Talk:Main Page, so I'm curious how the edit history comes to show me as making the move. It's a mystery. I thought perhaps someone might have cracked my account, but my password is definitely not a weak password. It's most disconcerting.

# (cur) (last) 03:04, 11 May 2006 MustaphiIe m (Talk:Main Page moved to Bitch)
# (cur) (last) 18:58, 19 April 2006 Muser m (Talk:Main Page on Wheels moved to Talk:Main Page)
# (cur) (last) 03:47, 19 April 2006 Willy on Wheels m (Talk:Main Page moved to Talk:Main Page on

-edit-

Ah I see now. I think it is someone who has signed up with my name but is using a capital 'I' for Idiot, instead of an lower case 'l' for larry. I noticed this as I was editing this message. :)
--[[User:Mustaphile|Mustaphile]] 02:17, 12 May 2006 (PDT)

== Thanks ==

Thanks for sorting out the Birmingham page i was really tired so i went to bed before finishing it... I live in Birmingham so if you think of anything that you cannot find out easily that i could ask the archbishop myself or somehting else jsut say :-)

God bless
Anton.

== Happy to Help ==

I am happy to help in this worthy project. I would sure think of you when I am in Birmingham and you are welcome to visit us when in Philadelphia. God Bless.

--[[User:Prab|Prab]] 15:39, 15 May 2006 (PDT)

==Added new sysop==
I've added user Ymmotrojam to the list of sysops. I assume thats ok to do. --[[User:Mustaphile|Mustaphile]] 22:50, 19 May 2006 (PDT)

== user permissions ==

Prab, just thought I'd make note of the conversation on [[Talk:Main Page]] about restricting the ability to move pages to only sysops and higher. --[[User:Ymmotrojam|Tom]] 23:07, 19 May 2006 (PDT)
:I'd be supportive of this restriction. The latest vandalism would be resolved quite effectively with this one measure. --[[User:Mustaphile|Mustaphile]] 01:39, 1 June 2006 (PDT)

::As a fellow wiki admin, I'd almost want to make wikichristian over again from scratch, starting off with the latest version of mediawiki, and the latest spam protection measures... I can't imagine how junked up the database must be with all the spam it has gotten, and I'm not entirely surprised that the site has had corruption errors in the past. You could even save the 'user' table in the database so that people don't have to re-register. That's just me though... {{smile}} --[[User:Ymmotrojam|Tom]] 02:08, 1 June 2006 (PDT)

:: I agree that we should restrict the ability of the users to move the pages. The mediawiki version we are using is pretty recent and we do use spam protection measures such as wordpress. However, it is a constant process and we will have to keep upto date with the latest antispam features.

--[[User:Prab|Prab]] 03:05, 14 June 2006 (PDT)

:::I've been distracted for a couple of weeks now, as I am on vacation in the U.S.. I've popped back in to see how things are going and the 'move pages' problem is still there. I don't have the time to go through it all in detail at the moment, so I hope someone else can pick up the slack and fix the latest vandalism. I'll be more active when I get back from my vacation. --[[User:Mustaphile|Mustaphile]] 20:14, 23 June 2006 (PDT)

Hi Mustaphile,

I am wondering if you know how to restrict the move. I know it could be done and there must be a wikipedia page somewhere detailing the process. Please let me know if you find it.

--[[User:Prab|Prab]] 06:20, 2 July 2006 (PDT)
:Checkout the Main Talk page. It'll say there how to do it. --[[User:Ymmotrojam|Tom]] 16:58, 13 July 2006 (PDT)

Thanks Tom, I went ahead and changed the settings so that the move is restricted. --[[User:Prab|Prab]] 20:32, 13 July 2006 (PDT)

== username blacklist ==

I would highly recommend that you install the [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Username_Blacklist username blacklist] extension and the user creation log etension. Sorry, can't remember where I got the latter from, just google it. The user creation log shows in Special:Recentchanges when someone registers, and the username blacklist can help stop repeat spammers from registring that use a certain pattern in their username. --[[User:Ymmotrojam|Tom]] 07:57, 15 July 2006 (PDT)

== Shorter URLs ==

I've made this same [[Talk:Graham_Llewellyn_Grove#Shorter URLs|comment over at Graham's talk page]], but I just realized that you're probably the more technically-able person to suggest this to: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Eliminating_index.php_from_the_url --[[User:RockOfVictory|J. J.]] 18:50, 26 July 2006 (PDT)

User talk:Graham grove/Archive 1

2006-07-27T01:21:28Z

RockOfVictory: Shorter URLs

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)

== vandalism in general ==

Hi, I am the creator of the new Bible encyclopedia wiki based in the United States called, [http://wikible.org Wikible]. I noticed that this site is getting hammered all the time with spam. I was just curious what kind of spam protection you are using? I am using the Bad Behavior mediawiki extension at my site. Also, I've noticed this site is using a very old version of MediaWiki. perhaps a upgrade to the latest stable version, 1.5.6 (as of this post), would help curb that somewhat. As you know, spammers will try to use vulnerabilities in software to their advantage, and it would probably help to upgrade. Have a good day, and keep serving the savior! --[[User:Ymmotrojam|Ymmotrojam]] 04:51, 22 Jan 2006 (EST)

== Shorter URLs ==

Hi there. I recently responded to your [[Talk:Christian wikis#Thoughts from JJ|"open letter"]]. I'm starting to dig a little deeper into WikiChristian; I had been spending most of my time on Wikible.org. May I recommend [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Eliminating_index.php_from_the_url this nifty tip] to help clean up the wikichristian URLs? --[[User:RockOfVictory|J. J.]] 18:21, 26 July 2006 (PDT)

Talk:Christian wikis

2006-07-25T23:47:50Z

RockOfVictory: /* Point-by-point responses from Tom */ church-down-the-road links needed

Talk:Christian wikis

2006-07-25T23:42:36Z

RockOfVictory: /* Thoughts from JJ */ Wikible:About

Talk:Christian wikis

2006-07-25T23:40:50Z

RockOfVictory: /* Point-by-point responses from Tom */ people like anonymity on the Internet