WikiIslam:Renovations: Difference between revisions

A number of transformative steps have been undertaken as part of an ongoing effort to ‎improve the content, professionalism, and reliability of WikiIslam. Raising the wiki’s ‎standards and expectations will serve both to attract higher quality contributors and ‎contributions and to spark a positive-feedback loop conducive to WikiIslam’s continued ‎enhancement.‎

Key changes include:‎

A new mission statement

‎“To provide accurate and accessible information from traditional and critical ‎perspectives on the beliefs, practices, and development of Islam”‎

A stricter, more academic scope

The scope of the wiki has been changed in a number of important ways. Whereas the ‎wiki once stretched to comprise anything having to do with Muslims, Muslim-majority ‎nations, and Islam throughout history, the scope is now more narrowly confined to ‎topics related particularly to the “beliefs, practices, and development of Islam”. On the ‎other hand, whereas the wiki once limited itself to referencing primary Islamic sources, ‎the wiki now aims to complement these primary sources with the growing body of ‎modern, historical-critical scholarship on the origins of Islam. Finally, implicit in this ‎second major transition is a broadening of the wiki’s focus from merely the criticism of ‎Islam to Islam in general – that is, whereas WikiIslam may once have been concerned ‎only with Aisha’s age, it is now interested in Aisha herself.‎

A zero-tolerance policy on hateful, misleading, unencyclopedic, and polemical ‎content

WikiIslam no longer tolerates any amount of hateful, misleading, unencyclopedic, or ‎polemical content. Whereas there were once a great deal of such unhelpful and even ‎hurtful articles and language on the wiki, these are no longer. And whereas the wiki once ‎actively participated in and contributed to everlasting online religious polemics, the wiki ‎now limits itself to documentary role in simply observing and addressing those ‎polemical and apologetic currents which have risen to comprise mainstream Islamic ‎discourse. Likewise, in encyclopedic spirit, articles are no longer permitted to maintain ‎any point of view, be it political or religious – facts, straightforwardly described, are for ‎the reader alone to judge.‎

The cleansing, re-conception, renaming, merging, archival, and deletion of several ‎hundred articles

In a major stride towards realizing the wiki’s renewed standards and objectives, several ‎hundred articles on the wiki have been reviewed, renovated, or removed. Salvageable ‎articles have seen their very worst infractions expunged, sometimes being transformed ‎in the process, while those articles deemed irrelevant or irredeemable have been exiled ‎to the WikiIslam archive. And while a number of these purely polemical, testimonial, and ‎statistical articles may in the future be hosted elsewhere, they do not belong on ‎WikiIslam.‎

An open invitation to sober and serious contributors, Muslim, non-Muslim, or ‎otherwise

WikiIslam is once again accepting editors and translators. While IP edits have been ‎indefinitely disabled due to the persistent and futile efforts of pitiful vandals, sober and ‎serious contributors who request an account will be readily provided one. Due to the ‎new, adamantly neutral demeanor of the wiki, contributors’ background and religious ‎persuasion are utterly irrelevant. Indeed, the devout Muslim moved to write about the ‎intelligent piety of Abu Bakr, scholar hoping to outline potential Aramaic readings of the ‎Qur’an, atheist roused to documenting the seemingly-absurd injunctions of Islamic law, ‎and curious by-passer simply hoping to correct grammar as they browse are all equally ‎welcome and encouraged to join the WikiIslam team.‎

As always, the wiki is a work in progress. Serious feedback and infraction-reports are ‎welcome.‎