Talk:Christian wikis

Combining our efforts?

It appears that there are multiple, slightly different, but similar wikis to do with different Christian aspects. They include WikiChristian, WikiBible, Wikible, Theopedia, Carmpedia, Compass and so on. A reasonably full list with links can be found at About Christian Wikis.

It seems to me that each wiki has 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 dedicated users, which isn't really that many. If there was some way we could all agree to become involved in one Chrisitan wiki, either by all joining forces and working on one of the above listed wikis, or by restarting and creating a new wiki, then perhaps we could create a really comprehensive and useful and most importantly, a used wiki for Christianity. What do you think? If you wish to comment, post your comments here. --Graham grove 10:29, 27 Dec 2005 (EST)

Theopedia contacted CARMpedia (when it began) about combining efforts since there seemed to be considerable commonality in perspective. There was no interest from CARMpedia in doing so at that time. Theopedia has a significant amount of content and invites participation -- however, a preference for the Protestant (Reformed) perspective will likely keep Theopedia as a separate wiki. Respectfully, Gomarus at Theopedia, 65.168.235.36 20:44, 2 Jan 2006 (EST)

Good point. A way around that however would be to have wiki that can cover all view points, however individual articles within it could be specific to a particular perspective - for example, you could write an article on Salvation (Reformed view) under the main article Salvation. --203.26.206.130 06:55, 18 February 2006 (EST)

I have found that there are quite a few differences between the Orthodox Church and both "baseline" Western Protestantism (the presumption for "Christian" in most English-speaking forums) and Evangelical Protestantism. A merge would require so many caveats and exceptions as to be unwieldy. —unsigned comment by 134.68.153.37 (talk • contribs)

What about interlinking instead?

I understand the thought, but one must also realize that not all these Wikis are for exactly the same purpose. I wouldn't necessarily combine them all together, but rather figure out what category each one fits into... For example, some are more leaning towards information about just Christianity itself, while Wikible and BibleWiki are more about the Bible itself. Some disadvantages of one wiki are... 1) If that site goes down, there's no other resource out there. 2) having more than one wiki furthers creativity because each wiki can have unique aspects of it's own.

What I think would be better is that if all the mentioned wikis would interlink between each other. Moving all the content to a single Wiki at this point would be a huge undertaking! atleast with interlinks, each site can grow in their specific areas. --Ymmotrojam 15:29, 30 December 2005 (GMT)

One of the problems I see with interlinking between different wikis, is that once you link out of a wiki (say WikiChrisitan into Wikible) then all the new links are in the new wiki (Wikible in this case, and not WikiChristian). --203.26.206.130 06:52, 18 February 2006 (EST)

I'm not sure I completely follow you. The whole point would be to have different wikis interlinked... WikiChristian could link to Theopedia and Wikible for example, and Theopedia and Wikible could link back to WikiChristian. --Ymmotrojam 09:47, 19 February 2006 (EST)

Common licensing

I think one thing that each site could consider doing the same, would be a common licensing schema. I, the creator of Wikible, personally prefer the GNU Free Documentation License. I do know though that other sites use different licenses or no license at all. My thinking about spiritual matters is that it should be free, and should remain free (free as in freedom), thus the reason why I like the GNU/FDL. --Ymmotrojam 01:14, 3 Jan 2006 (EST)

Just to add to the above, using the GNU/FDL allows content to be copied from other Wikis with the same license. It would be a violation of the GNU/FDL to copy from say Wikipedia, to a Wiki that had no license or a different one... --Ymmotrojam 01:18, 3 Jan 2006 (EST)