Christianity Knowledge Base:Community Portal

Welcome to the CKB Community Portal!

Current News
A new template has been created to facilitate the current status of the CKB:



Check also the recent changes to see other templates and special pages being created, such as the template.

To-Do List

 * add more versions of the bible, crosslinked to one another. Having a complete bible (or set of bibles) online would be a great seed to the rest of the knowledgebase. nsandwich 05:19, 24 March 2006 (UTC)


 * If we want to have a CPOV, we also need a tag that says: This opinion does not necessarily represent x denomination's view or Christian Knowledge Base's. It is only the opinion of the author. "eg. Catholicism is great!" This opinion does not represent the Catholicism denomination's view or Christian Knowledge Base's. It is only the opinion of the author.  Make a template please! Inkybutton 03:17, 26 March 2006 (UTC) User_talk:inkybutton|User:inkybutton


 * We certainly need more Catholics! For example, I imported the article on Sacramental Union, but we also need an article on transubstantiation. Also check confession: it's definitely not from a Catholic POV! BTW I think Avery is our template master. Archola 03:30, 26 March 2006 (UTC)


 * For those interested in geography, I think it would be great to have a page for each country. This could include stats about religious affiliation. What proportion of the population is Catholic, Protestant, Other denominations, etc. Additionally, the page could have interesting information about laws, practices, etc. relevant to Christianity in that country. For example, a page on Ireland might explain that divorce was illegal until 1990(?) in that country primarily because of the religious views of a large Roman Catholic population. I think that would be a great addition to the CKB that would also help set us apart from other more general encyclopedias. There is already a Template:Geography to use on these pages. -- nsandwich 02:26, 27 March 2006 (UTC)


 * The templates a red link, but I already created the Category:Geography. Archola 03:32, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Three new templates:

Template:Wikispoon for articles that are less than informative.

Template:CPOV-General for articles that reflect NPOV rather than CPOV

Template:CPOV-Specific for articles that reflect the theologies of some, but not all, Christian denominations.

What do you think?

Archola 09:19, 26 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Archie, good idea. Not so sure about the first one since it could probably be achieved with the Stub template, but no biggie. I think the latter two, however, are quite useful. They are a big step in the direction of resolving the CPOV controversy. Certainly they will help in the interim until the CPOV is more adequately fleshed out. -- nsandwich 02:26, 27 March 2006 (UTC)


 * The Wikispoon tag is for articles that are longer than stubs but still need some info. A good example is the original Trinity article, which BTW I moved to 3 in 1. Archola 03:30, 27 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I don't think making templates about asking for every denominations view would really be appropriate until we actually get done defining Christianity first.... Homestarmy 03:34, 27 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I think we need some sort of censorship policy, something along the lines of "Not only is this knowladge base censored for minors, but pr0n will be deleted with great prejudice! BWAHAHAHAHAH!" :D Homestarmy 18:37, 27 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Copy the ref and note templates from wikipedia and use them (eg. Islamic view of Jesus attempts to use a "ref" HTML tag). Gracefool 00:30, 28 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I tried, but there seems to be a problem with the FULLPAGENAME variables. Someone should look them over. Archola 00:58, 28 March 2006 (UTC)


 * We also need a substitute for Template:Bibleverse and Template:NIV that points to our online bible (Bible, World English). Archola 00:58, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

New templates


 * Template:Theopedia for articles copied from Theopedia (Calvinism/Reform POV). Template created by me.
 * Template:Catholic for articles copied, directly or indirectly, from the public domain Catholic Encyclopedia (Wikipedia uses this a lot!). Template created by me.
 * Template:OrthodoxWiki for articles copied from OrthodoxWiki (Eastern Christianity POV). This one was created by Nsandwich.

Archola 10:42, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Source Texts
I think it would be great to have more original source texts on here. You are welcome to add whichever ones you think would be useful. However, please ENSURE that they are in the public domain first. For example, quite shockingly, the King James Bible is not! So you have to be careful and double check and not simply assume that a source text is PD. That being said, you may add as many as you like. Try to stick to the following format: "Title of work (text)" when titling the article. If it is a huge source text and there are multiple chapters, it can be broken down like this:

"Title of work (text)"

"Title of work (text)/chapter X"

"Title of work (text)/chapter Y"

"Title of work (text)/chapter Z/Section 1"

"Title of work (text)/chapter Z/Section 2"

"Title of work (text)/chapter Z/Section 3"

As necessary. Also be sure to add the proper "Category:Religious texts" category to each article, including the chapters and subsections if applicable.

-- nsandwich 06:47, 26 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I'd also like to get the Augsburg Confession, apology of same, Large and Small Catechisms and, well, the whole bloody Book of Concord! I'm sure other traditions have similar documents they'd like to add. BTW, parts of the Book of Mormon are still missing. Archola 03:30, 26 March 2006 (UTC)


 * UPDATE: The full text of the World English Bible is now up.
 * For the sake of vandalism, the entire thing needs to be protected. It's not the type of article that invites outside input, after all. --Avery W. Krouse 14:49, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
 * I think we could upload other versions of Bible text (eg. New World Translation, King James edition etc) so people can compare the differences between translations. Inkybutton 02:32, 26 March 2006 (UTC) User_talk:inkybutton|User:inkybutton
 * There might be copyright issues. Also, while the religious texts don't invite outside output, it might be nice to annotate them (such as linking a reference to Jesus to the Jesus article). Of course, admins can do that. I've been clicking "random page" a lot, so I haven't been working my way though the texts systematically. ;) Archola 03:30, 26 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I added the category Category:Religious texts, but I haven't had time to add them all in yet. BTW there is a navigation template missing from the Book of Mormon, which means that portions of the Book of Mormon are blank. Archola 09:01, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Technical and Administrative
The following is a list of potential technical and administrative goals:
 * Article creation
 * Help page
 * Templates
 * Standards
 * Administrative needs
 * CPOV policy
 * Administration policy and Administrator's Noticeboard
 * Administrators, please visit this page and sign in. Place it on your watchlist. CKB:AN
 * Vandalism policy and requests for administrator attention
 * Users, please use this page to request administrator assistance. Administrators, please place it on your watchlist. CKB:RAA

Copyrights
Please use when copying pages from Wikipedia since the GFDL requires attribution to the original authors. Angela (talk) 14:51, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

I think I tagged everything I copied. Do we have a similar tag for Theopedia? I think they're GFDL as well. Archola 01:34, 25 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Angela made that one for us. Not sure how to make them but you would probably have to make your own for Theopedia.


 * They seem to be having bandwith problems on the moment. Too bad. Their article on Biblical Critcism is better than Wikipedia's. Archola 03:33, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Some fundamental questions
To be a successful CPOV encyclopedia/knowledge base, we need:


 * To develop a style of editing.

Tons to be said here but here is a question: How are we presenting the different opinions of different denominations? Should we state the opinions in a different area or should we integrate them into the article? eg. Alcohol is a substance people drink with alcoholic drinks. ....     If presenting in different area. '' Alcohol is a substance people drink with alcoholic drinks. ....     Catholic: alcohol is bad. Protestant: alcohol is the best substance God has given to us (just to illustrate!) ''

Integrate into article '' Alcohol is consider to be bad by the Catholics, but good by the Protestants. ''

The latter saves time, but the first one gives space for people to write what they think!

I know it's going to take long but if we keep on copying Wikipedia wouldn't we be end up with an exact copy of wikipedia, except opinionated? If we are going to be an opinionated wikipedia, we might as well put our opinion on the talk pages! (unsigned)
 * Copy Wikipedia or establish own research?

It's been a mixed approach. I've imported quite a few articles about important Christian topics from Wikipedia. I've also created a few articles here. Some of these, such as Roman Empire, are only peripherally about Christianity; however, others, such as Simon Peter, are more directly about Christianity.

Some articles created here, such as Trinity and, well, Simon Peter, need some work. We're a new and still small project, and it will take some time to have enough users to develop good articles on our own. As Nsandwhich stated, the Wikipedia articles are seeds.

Our styles vary, and we don't really have a standard tone yet. Archola 09:29, 26 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Just to clarify, the main difference between us and Wikipedia is that our articles are explicitly from a CPOV (which I'll admit hasn't fully been explained yet, and is still open to discussion). For example, an article on wikipedia about Roman History that might mention Christianity once or twice should look quite different on CKB.


 * It should grow to the point where Roman history is described in terms of its relation to Christianity. In CKB's article about Roman History, persecution of Christians, the crucifixion, and Emperor Constantine would play a much more central role than Julius Caesar. That's the way I see it in my head anyway :) -- nsandwich 02:33, 27 March 2006 (UTC)


 * That's pretty much what I tried to do with Roman Empire. Haven't yet written an article on Constatine, though. 03:28, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Theopedia
Just so you know, Theopedia is back up and running. Like Wikipedia, they use the same GFDL license we do, so we should be able to use their text under the same condtions. Unlike Wikipedia, Theopedia has a CPOV (that is, if you don't mind Calvinism ;) Here's their perspective Archola 01:32, 28 March 2006 (UTC)


 * PS: However, we need a Theopedia template similar to Template:Wikipedia. Archola 02:05, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Update Template:Theopedia created. Archola 10:36, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Just so it's out in the open....
I didn't see any links to it on the main page or here, so I thought we should put into the open that we're still debating the "who's POV is a Christian POV" question here: linky if the discussion gets stagant I have a bad feeling it'll come back to haunt us. Homestarmy 01:50, 28 March 2006 (UTC)