7,280
edits
Changes
→Inspirational Reading: User Contribution Stats
But what about the undiscerning, lost sheep who can't tell black from white and would walk off a cliff if you let them? What about those who just might find some inadvertent error, or some opinion by a rather non-Orthodox person? They might be corrupted! They might never find the faith!
Is this any different, I ask you, than walking into any Orthodox church and talking to the people there? We are, regrettably, sinful people who must rely upon God's providence and mercy to make up for our shortcomings. Any panic on the part of blind sheep not only betrays an opinion that is probably patronizing to those sheep. Is there anyone truly incapable of judgement or without friends that are incapable of judgement? Give them some respect.
-- Rdr. Patrick
::Thanks for your words, Rdr. Patrick. I wanted to share another criticism we received on the site, this one from [[User:Colin]]:
:::''"I think this orthodoxwiki should demand that people give their real names, their real emails and the name of their Orthodox Priest before they are permitted to post or edit anything. That way, if they behave like this, they can be referred to their bishop. I admit to being shocked that an Orthodox Priest would run this site on any other lines."''
::Does anyone want respond to this? [[User:FrJohn|Fr. John]] 22:47, 3 November 2005 (CST)
:::A small response, perhaps.
:::Even if Fr John were to request real names, real emails and the names of real Orthodox priests, it is entirely impossible to verify whether these are, in fact, real names or priests. Fr John is a priest in the [[OCA]], in (if I'm not mistaken) the USA. A delightful country, of course; but there is virtually no chance that he can check the real name of anybody, much less the name of their Orthodox priest. Even in the USA, a random 'Fr James' can belong to, I imagine, dozens of priests from over a dozen different ruling churches, archdioceses, metropolis' and dioceses.
:::And that's just in the USA. Once the [[Wikipedia:Antipodal point|Antipodeans]] start being part of OrthodoxWiki, we get into all sorts of difficults: the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese is, without any doubt, the largest Orthodox Archdiocese in Australia; however, on their website, they have no listing of priests, and the only listing that I am aware of is in book form and in Greek. How is Fr John, or any other sysop, supposed to verify that Fr Amphilochios can speak for me? Or, indeed, that he will? Unless I'm referring to [[Metropolitan]] [[Amphilochios (Tsoukos) of New Zealand|Amphilochios]], of course, verification can't happen.
:::We must remember that this is the internet. It is virtually impossible for a person with an external full-time career to verify a person's identity on the off-chance that they might like to post. And moreover, any person who would comply with this puts themself in danger of their name and exact location being found. And no editing is worth that. -- [[User:Pistevo|oea]] 06:21, 4 November 2005 (CST).
::Thanks for your words Pistevo. Here's a brief response from me:
::About OrthodoxWiki, I can assure you that these kinds of abuses are rare. The kind of requirements you are suggesting are not tenable for us -- they would present too much overhead and quench the site. The sysops do monitor articles to make sure there are not gross theological inaccuracies or personal attacks. Thankfully, these are usually dealt with within a few hours. [[User:FrJohn|Fr. John]] 10:50, 4 November 2005 (CST)
== Interesting discussion of the whole WikiPedia concept ==
I think it's a good time to think big and brainstorm about possibilities for the future, e.g. what effect might semantic technologies have on Orthodox KM? I'd love to hear other people's thoughts on this (here or at [http://orthodoxweb.org OrthodoxWeb Dev]). <br /> [[User:FrJohn|FrJohn]]
:To resurrect this discussion, first let me ask what ''was'' OrthodoxWeb Dev? On to the point: I've mentioned some Christian wiki collaboration ideas on my user page. It includes ideas mainly about sharing common resources and information across the Christian "wikiverse". We all have different beliefs about God, but I think that we can at least create a central community to discuss ''how'' we can improve each of our wikis and share the information that we do agree on. --[[User:RockOfVictory|RockOfVictory]] 14:54, August 10, 2006 (CDT)
::More discussion at [[ckb:Christianity_Knowledge_Base:ChristianKM]]
===See also===
* [http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/ Semantic Web Overview]
* [http://wwwkmwiki.voghtwikispaces.com/cgi-bin/pywiki?KmWiki KM Wiki]
* [http://rhizome.liminalzone.org/ Rhizome] - "a Wiki-like content management and delivery system that exposes the entire site -- content, structure, and metadata as editable RDF. This means that instead of just creating a site with URLs that correspond to a page of HTML, with Rhizome you can create URLs that represent just about anything..."
==Inspirational Reading==
* [http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.03/wiki.html The Book Stops Here] - A history of Wikipedia, ''Wired'' 13:03 (March 2005)
:From page 2:
::"What makes the model work is not only the collective knowledge and effort of a far-flung labor force, but also the willingness to abide by two core principles. The first: neutrality. All articles should be written without bias. Wikipedians are directed not to take a stand on controversial subjects like abortion or global warming but to fairly represent all sides. The second principle is good faith. All work should be approached with the assumption that the author is trying to help the project, not harm it.
::"Wikipedia represents a belief in the supremacy of reason and the goodness of others. In the Wikipedia ideal, people of goodwill sometimes disagree. But from the respectful clash of opposing viewpoints and the combined wisdom of the many, something resembling the truth will emerge. Most of the time.''
:Of course, not all of this applies here. We have our own interpretation of neutrality and the role of reason, but it's worth noting the basic similarities between our project and Wikipedia. [[User:FrJohn|Fr. John]]
* [[w:Readings to put you in the Wikipedia spirit]] - Some are more applicable to our project than others.
==User Contribution Stats==
* [http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/whowriteswikipedia Who writes Wikipedia?] - An article worth reading on user contributions to Wikipedia that also seems to apply pretty well to OrthodoxWiki
[[Category:OrthodoxWiki]]