Wiki

A wiki is a website that allows visitors to collaboratively add, remove, and otherwise edit and change content, typically without the need for registration. Wikis were first conceived in 1995, inspired by Apple's HyperCard software and Vannevar Bush's description of the "memex", a theoretical "memory extension" device meant to help improve human productivity by storing quickly retrievable information. One of the most well-known wikis is Wikipedia, an online, generalistic encyclopedia that can be edited by anyone. Changes made by individual Wikipedia editors may then be checked, built upon, or reverted by other editors, ideally making the project resilient to errors and bias.

Though collaborative use of the Internet to promote the Bahá’í Faith can be traced back much earlier, the first actual wiki page about the religion is assumed to be the Wikipedia article on the Bahá’í Faith, which was created in 2001. The first wikis operated and owned by Bahá’ís soon followed in 2003. The oldest Bahá’í wikis that are still accessible include Bahai9 (established in 2004) and Bahaipedia (established in 2007 as "Bahaikipedia"). These have since been joined by other, related wikis such as Bahai.media (a media repository), Bahai.works (for cataloguing Bahá’í publications), Bahaidata (a data repository), and Bahai.quest (a concordance of the Bahá’í Writings).

Early collaborations

The first known collaborative web article on the Bahá'í Faith is one dated November 13, 1999, created by user "under_score" on Everything2, a website that collects informative "writeups" on a wide variety of topics. Data was transferred from an earlier incarnation of the site (which started as early as March 1998), so it is possible the article was created earlier. Though the site resembles a forum more than a wiki, it offered an early glimpse of the collaborative writing capabilities that characterize wikis.

The first actual wiki article about the Bahá’í Faith is thought to be the one on Wikipedia, created on November 15, 2001 by user "Fragrant". The earliest revision of that article appears to be based on an earlier file in the FTP site for the USENET newsgroup soc.religion.bahai. The English version of this page became a "featured article" after a nomination in December 2004; other language versions of the page also received this distinction at different times.

Bahá'í wikis

Early experiments

On March 7, 2003, the services of http://netunify.com were employed to set up the first known dedicated Bahá'í wiki website (at http://bahai.netunify.com ). Brett Zamir set up and was the first to use this site. The original page, was at http://bahai.netunify.com/1.versions.2 , though is no longer accessible.

On November 5, 2003, Jonah Winters (from http://bahai-library.com/ ) installed the first Bahá'í-hosted wiki website at https://bahai-library.com/wiki with Brett Zamir editing the first page at the site and overseeing its contents. (See one 2004 version of the Home Page.)

Bahai9

Main article: Bahai9.com

On August 17 (or 19th? see oldest pages), 2004, Jonah Winters again assisted in the installation of a Bahá'í-hosted wiki website (again at his server), this time accessible from its own dedicated domain name, at bahai9.com. Brett Zamir added the first page and is overseeing its contents to date (first mostly migrating pages from the previous web site). The original page (merely a test) is at http://bahai9.com/index.php?title=Main_Page&oldid=2413 . Some time later, the site was disabled to editing for some time, but remained open to viewing until it was eventually reopened to editing.

The wiki at http://bahai9.com went back online to editing on April 22, 2009 and on October 12, 2015, hosting of Bahai9 was moved to Bahaikipedia's servers in order to take advantage of his configuration allowing for ready updating of the site software and sharing of extensions.

Bahaipedia

Main article: Bahaipedia

In March 2007, a Baha'i-themed wiki called Bahaikipedia was created by David Haslip. The site would later be renamed to "Bahaipedia". Patterned after Wikipedia, the goal of the site was to make information about the Bahá’í Faith easily accessible. The site attracted interest and grew considerably in its first year. In that year, a wiki-based media repository (bahai.media) and document archive (bahai.works) were also created. Also in the same year, several more versions of Bahaipedia were created in different languages, including Chinese, French, German, and Russian. More language versions were created in the years to come, including Portuguese, Farsi, Vietnamese and Spanish.

Similar projects

Around the same time Bahaipedia was formed, other Bahá'í wikis were created in other languages, although these are not currently online:

• Farsi
  • bahaipedia.com (archived link: 2009, with a page history going back at least to May 2007)
• Spanish
  • es.bahaipedia.com (archived link: October 2007) with a page history going back at least to May 2007)
  • wiki.bahaidream.com (archived link: July 2007, with no page history available)--apparently a mirror of es.bahaipedia.com.
  • bahaipedia-es.com (archived link: 2011, with a page history going back at least to June 2009).

Presentations

On September 4, 2004, Brett Zamir presented "Creating the Ultimate Bahá’í Wayfarer's “Guide to the Galaxy", a presentation on wikis in general and Bahá'í wikis specifically at an Association for Bahá'í Studies Conference.

David Haslip presented background and some history on Bahaipedia, Bahai.works, and Bahai.media in a talk on February 13, 2022 as part of "The Reference Desk" series. This was followed up several more talks:

• February 20th: Steven Kolins on speaking on editing work and newspaper clipping usage on Bahaipedia and Wikipedia;
• May 2nd: Dan Jones on wiki-based categorization at Bahai.media;
• June 5th: Brett Zamir on the Bahai9 project.