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Contents 1 bahai9.com

[edit] bahai9.com

Howdy David and all!

After a long hiatus, our wiki at http://bahai9.com was able to go back online to public editing.

I've already started directing people to your site for those who like to read or create articles in encyclopedic format.

Since you have taken the approach of using familiar Wikipedia-like terminology such as "sister projects", "Commons", etc., maybe our site would fit as a kind of "Baha'i Quote", since that is similar to what the purpose of our site has been (though we try to add more rich quotation summaries than at WikiQuote, ala Lights of Guidance, and also allow lists or bulleted Research-Department style linked summaries leading to quotations--i.e., basically basing everything on quotations. We also allow links to study guides, other wiki pages such as yours or Wikipedia, etc.--anything which will be potentially useful but not detract from those who wish to focus primarily on the original Creative Word itself.

Another self-centered request would be to consider inviting BahaikiText users to submit any content we don't have yet to http://bahai-library.com where original texts can also be in a form which is not editable by others (though having the texts in wiki format, I know, also allows for correction of errata) and can be categorized in a structured format.

Basically, I see our sites as complementary, rather than competitive or duplicative, so I hope we can work together and cross-reference, etc, though I'm open to your perspective and/or possibly adjusting a little!

I might have jumped the gun in switching a few days ago to Creative Commons Attribute-Share Alike (which is incompatible with GNU FDL), as I saw Wikipedia may be doing it, and a lot of blogs, etc. use it, but at this point both Wikipedia and your site are using GNU FDL. But at bahai9.com , to this point almost all of the content was my own (not many people were familiar with wikis when I started it), so it'd still be easy for me to do a site-wide change to another license if you can convince me. What do you think of a license switch?

Btw, as I see you have a spam blocker, I might suggest using a special technique we could talk about (brettz9 at the Yahoo site) which should block all automated spam without needing to use captchas (though the technique effectively requires registration).

Best wishes, Brettz9 02:09, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

Hi Brett,

I'm glad to see that Bahai9 is back and you're working on it again. I was never very clear on the goal of Bahai9 and so I appreciate finding out now. Would it be fair to think of it like a Baha'i WikiQuote? It always seemed like there were other goals also?

Yes, pretty close to WikiQuote, but some other goals, yes. See my 3rd paragraph above.

I've been thinking lately about the idea of duplication of effort that is mentioned briefly here and again on Bahai9. While it's obviously critical to avoid when running a business I think in the context that we're working in it's a quite a necessary and positive thing.

I think there are Writings about how with our limited resources, we really should not duplicate. However, the good news is that our sites are not duplicating each other at all. Of course, the content will be duplicated, but not the form. But, my suggestion was whether you would consider linking to our site as your sister project for "BahaikiQuote", since our site seems to fit into that kind of mold, I think. Of course, if you feel like you would want to take a different approach than our site, than by all means, don't feel obligated to do that. As the House says, not everyone can do the same thing... Whatever your decision about that, I still invite you to cross-link with us in some manner.

Unfortunately there isn't a community behind Bahaikitext right now so there is no one to ask. But it's purpose can be seen not in it's ability to categorize text or (possibly) correct errors but take a look at the 2006 Ridvan message as compared to the one on Bahai-library. The biggest problem when reading the Writings without an understanding of the terminology used in the Faith is knowing what in the world we're talking about. That's the problem we're trying to solve on Bahaikitext. Also, each paragraph is a URL and the block at the top easily directs you to other content on the site.

Ahh, I see. Yes, that should be quite useful, though maybe even more so if it linked to a BahaikiDictionary which could answer the questions more quickly and refer to the encyclopedic articles for more info; I've seen a number of people lament about the "Basic Baha'i Dictionary" not being online, for example, so that might well be quite useful for some. (That's not to say, encyclopedic articles are not useful in that context too, just offering an idea.) My own interest has really been to be able to display the Writings alongside the texts, allowing for a little bit more rationale for the links (e.g., the paragraph might not have a word that can be used to link directly to another page about the concept it is discussing) and avoiding the need to click to visit a new page. But, doing this, especially with JavaScript to allow independent back-and-forward links in each window, though doable, is a bit technically complicated and my own attempt at this needs some fixing, and I think both approaches, even together, could be useful, especially I think, if the links on the text were dictionary links (which could even be made into popup links). Just my opinion though...

Let me know of your thoughts and how we can work together from here. I look forward to hearing from you.

By the way, while this idea is not so much about collaboration (and I'm sure I should many many of those), since you all seem active in speaking to a wider audience (as opposed to our site which is more limited to deeper study of quotations or reference), I was wondering whether it would be in your interest to help foster, as per the Six Year Plan (whose goals, our Writings mention, continued into successive plans), "Produce, where required for translations into vernacular languages, simplified versions of the Sacred Scriptures, the writings of the Guardian and the statements of the Universal House of Justice." I think it would be very interesting to see this, not only for less literate readers, but also as a kind of study guide, e.g., for those who wanted to survey let's say the prayer book or Gleanings quickly to see what topics were covered. I haven't seen this done even by publishers, have you? I started something a bit similar at http://bahai9.com/wiki/Selections_from_the_Writings_of_%27Abdu%27l-Bah%C3%A1 . And in a similar but different vein, maybe a separate subdomain could be added here for Basic English, as at Wikipedia? Not sure if there'd be maintainers, but just offering the idea.

One other idea, not directly related to the wiki necessarily, is getting a proofread version of Star of the West online. There's already a CD-ROM, but we don't have any good source for all those English quotations (the only major translated work not available online, as far as I can tell). I've finished volume 1 and part of 2, though obviously, it'd be nice to share the load, as there's quite a bit more to do! The more texts online, the more complete can be the categorized wiki pages...

Let me know, if you would, please about my questions above on the license and spam blocking.

By the way, it's really very exciting to be in communication with you about this all again. I've been aching to get back into this, so it's really wonderful to be able to do so again. Brettz9 03:04, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Oh, and one other idea--maybe we could get the software to even cross link to the other site automatically--e.g., "View this page on Bahaikipedia". At one point I had worked on some code for http://bahai-library.com to automatically color links wiki-style depending on whether they had been created yet (e.g., as we have done manually with the Writings pages at http://bahai-library.com , which link back to the corresponding wiki page), though that ideally would depend on direct read access to the other database to color the links differently if the page hadn't been created yet.

David 10:19, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Hi David, any reply? ;) Brettz9 03:13, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Hi Brett,

I haven't had much free time lately. I like your ideas and think that eventually all these sites can be woven together in useful ways. Right now I don't have the time to help build another project, and even Bahaikipedia is going to require a lot of attention to make it a useful resource. I'm hoping that more people will join in the development of these projects as time passes. On the issue of spam blocking, I don't have enough of a problem with spam to seek a different solution to it. On licensing, to be honest I don't know. I haven't read the text of the new license and couldn't tell you which one was better. I'll see how the Wikipedia community goes.

Warm regards,

David 16:22, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Ok. How about the question about adding a link then to bahai9.com as your "Baha'i Quote" sister project? Or do you think you might want to have your own to do things differently with it for some reason? That's my main question for now... Thanks, Brettz9 22:43, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Hi Brett. There is a project that I'm working on that might fill that gap so for now let me say no, but I'll leave the door open for the future in case what I'm working on doesn't pan out. Hope all is well. David 18:52, 8 May 2009 (UTC)