WikiIslam:Contribute: Difference between revisions

WikiIslam aims to provide accurate and accessible information from traditional and critical perspectives on the beliefs, practices, and development of Islam.

A lot of hard work has been done by editors who are passionate about compiling factual information on Islam and, as a result, WikiIslam has grown over time. An average of 250,000 people visit the site every month to read 978 articles, generating approximately 500,000 page views. As of September 2014, Alexa.com placed WikiIslam within the top 70,000 most visited websites.

One of WikiIslam's highest priorities is to develop a more active editor community and to encourage more people to edit the site while keeping in line with guidelines and quality standards. If you have any suggestions for how this can be achieved or are interested in becoming a regular editor, please contact site administrators, and you will gladly be provided an account.

Ways To Help

Help can come in various forms, including:

1. New ideas: We need ideas in the following two areas:
   • How to attract more editors, increase editing activity and create an active vibrant community.
   • Bold and creative ideas on how to improve this site. WikiIslam has developed certain ways of doing things but is always open to suggestions, improvements and changes.
2. Content-writing: Help WikiIslam complete existing tasks which either involve writing new articles, or improving existing ones. WikiIslam attempts to provide helpful hints on how to complete a certain task (the help page is under construction).
3. Data scanning and collection: There exist large collections of Hadiths and Islamic scholarly works which need to be scanned and read so they can be added to the wiki's Qur'an, Hadith and Scholars collection.
4. Translations: Native speakers of languages are needed to translate articles. All languages are welcome, especially those spoken by a large number of Muslims, such as Indonesian, Urdu, Bengali and Arabic. WikiIslam already hosts completed translations in various languages and has even opened dedicated sub-domains for Russian and Bulgarian articles.
5. Copy-editing: This involves improving wiki-formatting, grammar, layout, merging or splitting topics and linking other relevant articles.
6. Marketing: If you own a blog or website, linking to us or creating a blog post to let your readers know is a quick and easy way to help. If you frequent forums then you could add our URL to your signature. If you see a place on the Internet where you think this site should be linked, you could contact the owner and ask if they would link to us.
7. Donations: Donations will be used for hosting and domain fees. See the donation section for details.

Content-Writing

In the case of content writing, you are a good candidate for being an editor if:

• you are passionate about Islam, whether from an irreligious or religious perspective
• you are familiar with Islamic scriptures and practices
• you pay attention to detail
• you are good at researching information through search engines and other information sources and aware of some of the primary Islamic reference texts
• you can differentiate between valid and invalid criticism within the context of "mainstream" Islam (e.g. the concept of 72 virgins is valid, while the claim that 666 is holy is not).

You will spend your time reading, gathering and verifying facts about Islam and writing them into the website. See this page for details on some projects: WikiIslam:Tasks/Article Notes.

Book Summaries

If you have read any scholarly, reliable books about Islam, why not submit a summary of its major points? Some examples of what we are aiming for can be viewed here and here. WikiIslam has a library/catalogue of books on Islam which may serve as a useful guide. If you are not familiar with how to format a wiki page, just post the text and another editor will add the formatting and cover image for you.

Donations

WikiIslam is currently managed by Ex-Muslims of North America, who accept donations here.

Explore the Site

• WikiIslam:Site Map (navigate the entire site from one page)
• Recent Changes (this shows the most recent edits on the site)
• New Articles List (50 of the most recent main space articles)
• Active Users (an automatically generated list of users who performed an action in the last 30 days. If you want to look at who is doing what, this is a good place to start at. You can click on the Contribs link for each user to see their edits)
• Discussions (discussions between editors. Drop in and say hello. There is also a separate page for Visitor inquiries)
• Statistics (some system-generated statistics for the site)

Further Reading

• WikiIslam:Message to New Users (if you have been directed to this page by a site administrator, this is not optional, but a requirement)
• WikiIslam:Required Reading for Editors (read the "Initial Reading" section to familiarize yourself with the kind of site we are)

Contact Information

If you have any comments, questions or concerns for us, or if you are interested in joining the WikiIslam team, contact us and you will gladly be provided an account.