Talk:Main Page

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Multilingual mirrors

QUESTION: Is Bahaikipedia going to be mirrowed in other languages? I am from Sweden myself. And do you know if there are any objections aginst a Bahaikipedia? And one last question: How can I make suggestions of subcategories to the articles suggested on the main page? / caspiax 13 juni 2006 kl.15.25 (CEST)

Hi Caspiax. There are a few other individual initiatives like bahaikipedia in other languages, see the bottom of the main page for links to the Spanish and Persian wiki's. As for Bahaikipedia, yes I can see it evolving in that direction but there have been no requests for that yet. As for subcategories to the articles, how do you mean? Under quickfind did you mean a category system like that? There is also Category:Articles and a article category tree can go there. But feel free to just set it up how you would like, we're adopting wikipedia's B:BOLD. --David 15:09, 5 July 2007 (MDT)

jazz up main page?

the main page is a little boring. Can't we do something to jazz it up a little? might pique people's interest to see new stuff. --Dragfyre 11:12, 26 July 2007 (MDT)

Hi Dragfyre, Great to have you with us :-D The main page was much more fun when I lived in the states, as you can see from this revision: http://bahaikipedia.org/index.php?title=Main_Page&oldid=4392 But I reverted it to a static page because I would no longer be able to keep it updated once I began traveling. You are more then free to change the main page as you see fit however, using that revision, or creating something completely new, and more useful to the people who would visit the site. Again, welcome and glad you're here :-) --David 08:47, 27 July 2007 (MDT)

bahistory - a complementary project

hi everyone :)

i would like to draw your attention to the existence (and current development) of www.bahistory.net - a project which is, in my understanding, complementary to bahaikipedia. it is being created mainly by a youth from Sweden.

i think it would be beneficial if both projects were to be developed while noting the existence of the other project, so as to fully utilize the potentialities of both projects.

for this reason, i'd just like to suggest that everyone visits www.bahistory.net and checks out its extraordinary margin of progression :)

Ahh yes, I checked out this website before, good initiative, I hope it is successful :) David 20:16, 14 August 2007 (MDT)

Policies and general direction

I have some questions / suggestions regarding policy and other general issues:

1. What is the relationship between bahaikipedia.org / bahaipedia.com / bahaidream.com and other online Bahá'í encyclopaedia projects? The ideal situation would seem to be to have a single domain with a number of subdomains for each language version (like Wikipedia). Is there a realistic possibility of that happening?
2. Images currently seem to be dealt with as in Wikipedia, with some in Commons and some in the English and other language wikis. Perhaps it would be better to move _all_ images to Commons, and set up the wiki so that all images are uploaded there by default. That way all images would be accessible to all wikis, and issues such as copyright / removal of inappropriate images could be more easily dealt with.
3. User policy is currently the same as Wikipedia, but maybe it would be prudent to consider modifying this. I would feel more comfortable if I could be reasonably confident all contributors (now and in future) had the best interests of the Faith at heart.
4. What rôle will Bahá'í institutions play in this project?
5. I feel that we will need a policy regarding Persian and Arabic names. Will we use common spellings of names like Tehran, or the orthographical conventions developed by Shoghi Effendi? Would a spelling like Ṭihrán appear correctly in most browsers?

--Chamdarae 03:44, 21 October 2007 (MDT)

Hi Chamdarae, good to have you here :)

1. There is no formal relationship between the projects, but we have all been in communication with each other and provide support for the projects by linking between them. Also, bahaikipedia has subdomains for chinese, malay, german, and french, but the difficulty is to get people to continue those projects, not starting them, haha.
2. For images, commons came up sometime after the main projects so we're trying to move most images there. I was unsure whether or not to move all images there or not because I would like images there to be of very high quality if possible, poorer images could be uploaded to the local languages, but not sure.
3. The user policy and many others will need to be modified from wikipedia but we haven't had the time yet. We will eventually haha.
4. Baha'i institutions at this time play no role, this project is run by individuals like us.
5. For the names, to be honest I have no idea, I think it would make sense to use the model developed by shoghi effendi, but so far I have been copying whatever wikipedia used. But pages can easily be moved.

Regards, David 05:11, 23 October 2007 (MDT)

Disclaimer tags

I'm aware that the disclaimer tags are already available.

However, according to the laws that are present in my country, I need to have them "shown" (means it has to be displayed first) before every single translation.

I'm aware that this law is not applicable in other countries, and since this is a .org, therefore it will not be bound in jurisdiction of the law. However, since the Malay language is only applicable for states such as Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia (and to a small extent Phillipines, Thailand, Myammar, & Cambodia) therefore I think its also important to the rules to be adhered to as the cyber laws (as far as I'm aware, only Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore have a really extensive one) that applies to the country.

Hope to hear from you, David.

Hi m8,

That's an interesting law, disclaimer at the top? In any case I usually do what wikipedia does: [1]. There's a random article, can you check it out and see how they handle it? We should be exempt from it because we're based out of the United States, like wikipedia and you won't get in trouble for making edits to it because you don't own and operate the site. Here is the GD from ms.wikipedia.org [2] that can be copied over for our uses. Let me know your thoughts. David 09:28, 24 February 2008 (MST)

Slight editing needed to article on Yankee Leong

I love the format and the content of this website. I hope there will be lots of contributions from all around the world. I don't want to discourage any writers by what follows, but I think we need to be vigilant about the grammatical and syntactical content of Baha'i publications, whether on paper or screen:

I just wanted to point out that the nice article about this remarkable early Baha'i is suffering from some rather glaring typos! The second sentence has this phrase: "and had an took an intense interest" and there is the expression: "declared in the Baha'i Faith". The whole sentence should read: "He was born to a poor family in Malaya, on the Malaysian Peninsula and took an intense interest in religion and his studies. Yankee declared his belief in the Bahá'í Faith on December 19, 1953 in Seremban." The next sentence has this interesting statement: "After his deceleration he made it his priority..." the word should be "declaration", it doesn't sound as if Yankee did much slowing down!

These word processors really can encourage a lot of goof ups - I know all too well from my own experience!

Hope to see many more articles about Malaysia and Indonesia! Are there any pictures available of Yankee Leong? Is there a more extensive discussion of his life history elsewhere?

Dave Lea, Fish Creek, Wisconsin, USA

Hi Dave, I think mistakes like this are common unfortunately and I rely on people like yourself who are more knowledgeable in English to fix them. You should be able to edit Yankee Leong, if not let me know on my talk page. There are several pictures of him available in the book: Jewel Among Nations, as well as perhaps some Baha'i world volumes from around the time of his declaration, though I haven't checked. Best, David 06:16, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

New section

Hi everyone :)

I'm one of the reader of Bahaikipedia. I humbly would like to suggest one thing here:

As virtues are the content of human character, the elements of the human spirit, which are so important to be acquired and to be practiced by everyone in daily life, so as for human to know that the purpose of life is to have a life of purpose, may we create another column of Today's featured virtues in the main page?

Perhaps we can just put the info of what is it, and why practice it? in this column. For example:

Today's featured virtue is caring. What is caring? Caring is giving love and attention to people and things that matter to you. When you... Why practice it? Without caring,...

Or maybe we can just put what is it? in this column.

What say you? :)

Best, Lim

Hi Lim,
This is a great idea. First though we'll need articles to link people to like Character, Human spirit, Caring and so on. Is this something you'd be willing to do?
Best, David 14:40, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Hi David, :)

How much I wish to contribute to this site, but my knowledge in this area is just about 0.1 %, I think :p, which is posted my suggestion here only.

Actually my thought here is simple, where I saw you always updated the Today's featured quote,individual,book; you may just add in another column of Today's featured virtue. Things like need articles to link people to like Character, Human spirit, Caring and so on, I have no idea at all. Sorry for that.

The Today's featured quote is the added attraction for me to browse through this site. So I think the virtue section will be another added attraction to the reader. As a reader, I personally would much like to browse through a site where I can read not only just about info, fact or history, but also things like quote and virtue, which is the and will be an added attraction for me, as it inspires my though, I can learn and practice it in my day to day life.

Perhaps you may want to browse through the website 'virtuesproject' for more information about the virtue. By clicking into the virtue of the week there, you may see what I mean to be put in the Today's featured virtue column. Just that I suggest another info to be put inside is why practice it.

My friend has this book 'The Virtues Project - Educator's Guide' from the company above. There are 52 virtues inside, the reason of practicing it and so on. I have a concern here, copyright! I'm not sure whether one can copy the meaning of the virtue and the reason of practicing it, as these are quite a definite definition.

Shall you think this may be a new section to be developed, and shall you think there is anything that I can help, please do let me know and I'm much willing to do. :) Best, Lim

Hi Lim
I like your suggestions but I don't feel like I have the time to take that on. I've just recently added the featured quote and since the main page was just redone I have to make minor corrections to all the featured content every day, and I've created a daily featured picture on Commons which I have to update every day also. Bahaikipedia runs on the same software as wikipedia not so that I can do this all myself but so others join and work on it, but unfortunately it's a slow process. Of course your suggestions will stay here for anyone else to read also :)
Best,David 09:13, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Hi David,

Ahh, I'm not a good reader! I just noticed one can learn to contribute to this site through Help Desk. Ok, shall you think the new section of virtue can be developed, I'm learning and shall start contributing once I understand how it works. I may need a lot of guidance and encouragement then. As my English is also just average, I'm afraid I'll stop half way. heh.. Best, Lim :)

Hi Lim
Yes it would be great if you could contribute some, especially since it helps others to get involved too. Also, what is your native language?
Best, David 09:20, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Hi David, :)

I'm a Chinese who speaks Mandarin. ;) Lim

Hi Lim
If you'd be willing to undertake a bit of a project, we have a Chinese version of Bahaikipedia that is closed to editing due to spam, but if you'd be willing to create some articles there I could reopen it. It's quite easy in the beginning because you can copy how Wikipedia in Chinese has done it as a way to learn, which is how I learned all this. Let me know :)
Best, David 05:19, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

complementary in wikis

I don't know where else to have this discussion so I thought I'd broach it here. So we have the wikipedia-Bahaipedia dynamic but I know at least one other - Wikitree off the top of my head of recent research. Scratching on that theme i recall another I ran across… um… shetlopedia… though now I see it has closed down, and then I remembered localwiki.org which I've taken the occasional stab at. A couple things come up… one is the portability of articles, another is multiple avenues of authentic development especially light of local policies and that sense of community that should exist in each circumstance. Then there are things like Bahai9 and others, blogs of various names and backgrounds, which have their own situations… plus things like bahaiteachings.org. It's a complex topic tied to things like copyright permissions, goals of the website as maintained in policies and local culture… there's a lot out there and the interface between here and the "there"s remain to be explored, eh? Smkolins (talk) 05:17, 8 April 2019 (PDT)

It looks like www.bahistory.net, which I missed all about mentioned above, has gone under… Smkolins (talk) 05:18, 8 April 2019 (PDT)

bahaipedia and wikipedia

Complexities and details aside, I was happily surprised when I copied the Thomas Breakwell article to Bahaipedia and discovered the pictures from there surivived here just by the pasting which I take to mean the linkages to wiki commons to work from bahaipedia. One wonders then if the reverse happens. Per the discussion of Thomas' picture on that talk page. But there are many tasks needing doing and I keep trying to advance the australian newspaper survey among all the topics that jump in front of me… Smkolins (talk) 06:30, 8 April 2019 (PDT)

Check out instantcommons: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/InstantCommons David (talk) 08:26, 14 April 2019 (PDT)