User talk:Sahab/Archive

Hi,

I'm a new editor, I wish to contribute my articles on Islamic miracle claims to this site. How do I get about doing this?

Nahar Varma (talk) 04:15, 10 December 2012 (PST)

Welcome to WikiIslam! Nice to have you here. If you want to work on an article from scratch, you can click this link: User:Nahar Varma/Sandbox. If you have an article already written, you can go to this page and enter the desired page title into the box, then press the "Create page" button. Be sure to add this template to the top of the page while it is formatted etc: {{Underconstruction}}. I will leave our welcome template on your user-talk page because it contains a lot of useful links to help you get the hang of wiki editing, but feel free to ask for additional assistance when needed.--Sahabah (talk) 04:29, 10 December 2012 (PST)

hi Nahar, good to see you here. I'm the person who responded to your email. Nahar had sent the following email (blog):

Hello,

I am interested in studying different religions, although personally I'm not religious; I am a Deist. 
I came across scientific miracle claims in the Qur'an in early 2011. I soon came across your website, 
and inspired by it, I have started my own blog refuting the claims of Islamic Bucailleists: www.debunkingbucailleism.blogspot.com

The articles refuting miracle claims are very good, but there are too few of them, hence I'd like to contribute. 

Sincerely,
Nahar Varma

Nahar, today I'll go over your site and then comment here.--Axius (talk) 05:25, 10 December 2012 (PST)

Ok, Nahar, I guess you will have to go over Islam and Science yourself and see if your arguments are already present there or in one of the sub-articles. You would start from your first article (written in September, when you started the blog). I liked what you had in this post Three Criteria for Scientific Foreknowledge. I see some of that has been covered in our Islam and Science introduction (we have 4 points and you have 3).

My suggestion: The steps for you would be to go over what we have on our site and get an idea of the types of pages we have and then go to your blog one by one and see where you can add your content. We may not have some topics that you have. Then for example after checking the articles for September, you see that some stuff should be added on our site, let us know what you think you should do. The language should of course be changed to 3rd person. Sorry I could not give a detailed/helpful analysis of what should be done but I'm pressed for time. --Axius (talk) 21:04, 11 December 2012 (PST)

FFI is slow right now. Where it says "actual" and there's two bullets: User:Axius/Sandbox2.

Do you know what variables you used in the "sample"?

So does this means we also want to change the way the publication date is displayed? Its going to take some time for to understand this template. So what you could do is tell me how you would use that in a page with that example under "sample". Also we need to somehow make it easy for people to use this template. Wikipedia has a popup that comes up with you click Cite or Ref in their edit toolbar.

This certain change is not an irreversible change because now the variables have been separated, so we can change the display later at any time even after its been used 1000's of times. We want to make sure that most of the variables we use usually, are displayed in the way we want. So for example the way you wanted it, is a better way for our site. Yea its simpler and looks better. --Axius (talk) 18:15, 10 December 2012 (PST)

Okay, I'm not sure if I understand what you're asking, so you'll have to forgive me if my responses are off. :)

"Do you know what variables you used in the "sample"?"

It's the author(s) name, article title, publisher name (website), date published, then archive details.

"So does this means we also want to change the way the publication date is displayed?"

Yes please. Like on our Honor Killing Index where you input numbers, but it comes out with the full month's name, then the day's number followed by the year.

"So what you could do is tell me how you would use that in a page with that example under "sample"."

Hmm. I'd just use it like we do on regular pages, such as the statistics pages, etc. although we would also need another template for references we cite in the actual quote boxes (e.g. our Persecution pages, Islam in the News pages, etc. It would also be nice to have an optional section after the date but before the archiving details. This is because some pages that we cite are not in English, but I link to an English translation with the text:

(English translation)

or in another case, the original article was gone from the net before I even cited it, so I did this:

"Gay police group's "anti-Christian" ad rapped", Reuters, October 18, 2006 (Original URL|Charles Johnson's commentary|Full text)

Another good optional thing to add would be a quote section right at the beginning, before the name of the author etc. --Sahabah (talk) 05:20, 11 December 2012 (PST)

Oops sorry in a hurry right now so I may have missed some of your points. I'll come back to the rest of what you wrote when I work on this, but say, for the News pages, we have:

Using the Ref archive template:

How Cite web would look like, if I fixed it:

So we have that additional archive link as you wanted it. The date will be there since the template requires "archive date" to be included if Archive URL is there (see #3 under 'Actual'). Or would you rather always hide the Archive date? So it would be like:

• Janet Levy, "Church Hosting Muslim Public Affairs Council Receives Emails ‘Dripping with Hate’", Family Security Matters, December 10, 2012 (archived)

(simply displayed as 'archived').

If deadlink =yes, the part in brackets would be: (archived from the original). I want to use the same Cite web any time we make an external link so the Dead link detector/archival bot later on can scan pages for dead links and archive links by itself.

In the last example you gave, we would just use the 1st (original) and 3rd link (archive), correct? So it would be:

"Gay police group's "anti-Christian" ad rapped", October 18, 2006 (archived from the original)

The 2nd link is not working. --Axius (talk) 21:30, 11 December 2012 (PST)

"Or would you rather always hide the Archive date? So it would be like:"

Yes, please! If that is okay with you, that would be cool.

"How Cite web would look like, if I fixed it:"

I'm thinking about how it would look for people who copy/paste our stuff on forums/text files, so I think having the archive link after the publication date would be better (just like the other normal reference used with the <ref></ref> template). Including speech marks would also be good so people can tell it's the title (I know I should have been doing this already, but I was new to wiki editing when I first started here). So it would look like this:

Three Birmingham men masterminded a suicide bombing campaign involving eight simultaneous explosions in crowded places, a court has heard.

"Birmingham Jihadists plotted to cause maximum carnage in name of Allah, court told"
Nick McCarthy, Birmingham Mail‎, October 23, 2012 (archived)

"The 2nd link is not working."

Oops! Just ignore that. The archive attempt at LGF must have failed there.

"In the last example you gave, we would just use the 1st (original) and 3rd link (archive), correct? So it would be:"

No. My point was that I read that news report on the LGF blog, but by the time I discovered the statistics quoted on that blog, the original Reuters article had completely disappeared from the net. The original news url was dead, so there was nothing there to archive. The third link I provide is not an archived copy, it's a copy/paste someone made on a Christian forum. We cannot link to a forum post as if it's the actual news story. Hence I referenced it like how some academic paper do (without the url), but then added the original url, blog commentary, and a copy/paste of the full text as additional supplementary proof that we didn't just make the story up. --Sahabah (talk) 02:46, 12 December 2012 (PST)

Hmm, I've been thinking about it, and maybe it would look better with the archive on top? Like this:

Three Birmingham men masterminded a suicide bombing campaign involving eight simultaneous explosions in crowded places, a court has heard.

"Birmingham Jihadists plotted to cause maximum carnage in name of Allah, court told" (archived)
Nick McCarthy, Birmingham Mail‎, October 23, 2012

Yeah. For our "Islam in the News", etc. this way of citing things looks much better. --Sahabah (talk) 03:49, 12 December 2012 (PST)

Currently I'm swamped and I'll try to do this. Until then the template can be used and when we change the implementation, it will change itself anywhere its used. The only problem is usage in quote boxes and for that, use the variable "linebreak=yes" and when its implemented, it will be fixed. Or you can continue to use the RefArchive.

I might try to re-write the template for our simple usage. --Axius (talk) 16:33, 13 December 2012 (PST)

Cool. I'll continue using the RefArchive for now, until the other one is ready. --Sahabah (talk) 17:38, 13 December 2012 (PST)

Respected Sir,

I was trying to enter a critical site of Islam without logging in. Why was my IP blocked and site deleted??

My apologies. It was a mistake. The IP is now unblocked and I have added the site to our list. You can view it here. Just had a quick browse and it looks great! --Sahabah (talk) 15:54, 21 December 2012 (PST)

I had meant to say this before. {{Page_title|Blah}} should be used instead of DISPLAY_Title because its a template that we can track usage for. --Axius (talk) 09:46, 22 December 2012 (PST)

Here it is: Special:Form/Essay-oped-submission. The editable stuff is here: WikiIslam:Form Submissions. Sample essay I just made using the form: Title_of_my_essay. I was testing and testing is complete for now. We can add/change fields. Maybe other sites could be checked to see if there's any fields they're showing for their opeds.

There's a URL field but there's no place right now where we're using something like that on the essay pages. I can remove that field and we can ask the author to include their website at the end if they have one. Then if everyone usually has a URL, we can put it in the form and maybe make an author box like the former Muslims (examples: name, topics of interest, URL, country of origin, current belief system, picture, favorite authors if any, favorite publications or websites they visit) - whatever you think will make that page interesting and being individualized. The reader basically would want to know more about the author, who they are and where they're coming from. All of it can be optional, except the name of course.

Thats why I think it would be a good idea to check out other sites and see how they present their essay/opeds. I might look around too. --Axius (talk) 19:44, 23 December 2012 (PST)

Op-eds are not like Testimonies, and we shouldn't make them alike. I don't think we should have any more info on the authors of op-eds other than their name and website/blog. With testimonies, who the author is, is what's important. In op-eds/essays, who the author is, is irrelevant. It's their opinions that matter. People shouldn't care what their favorite color is or whatever. In my opinion, the less we know about the authors, the better. If their essay/op-ed isn't interesting enough on its own, we shouldn't consider it to be good enough to have on WikiIslam.

If you look on other sites you'll notice two ways of doing it.

1) they only have their name (if you click on that name, it may go to a separate page with some details about them). [some examples: separate page [1] name and link only [2]]

2) they have a line or two at the bottom of the page. It usually says something like, "Blah is a professor at whatever university who has authored this many books and regularly blogs at www.somewhere.crap" [some examples: [3] [4]]

So if we do go down the route of including info about the author, I think we should keep the set-up how it is and add those lines on a separate page, i.e. their category page (which could also contain a link to their blog/website). --Sahabah (talk) 22:27, 23 December 2012 (PST)

Good points. Yea I think #1 is good enough, with any available info (URL of site or blog, etc) present on their category page. I looked around and yea there's just a link to the author's info. --Axius (talk) 07:15, 24 December 2012 (PST)

I see there's a summary and then a conclusion for Revelation of the Hijab. I bet the two can be merged (e.g. something like [5]).--Axius (talk) 08:27, 31 December 2012 (PST)

No, that's actually the second half of the "Reasoning on the hijab" section. So moving it to the conclusion would make the article not make any sense. I've changed the title of the sub-heading now so it doesn't confuse readers. --Sahabah (talk) 10:18, 31 December 2012 (PST)

Ok yea thats better, thanks for fixing it. I hadnt read the text but I saw there were two summary/conclusion sections. --Axius (talk) 13:10, 31 December 2012 (PST)

So I started this which I've thought of doing before [6]. If you capitalize all the initial letters, is there a reference manual for that? This page should list all the style rules that we follow. Personally I don't know which way is correct for headings: sentence case only, which is only first letter capital, or Title Case (all first letters capitalized). If they're both equally recommended and standardized, we should stick to what we currently have for most pages. I think that for the Title Case rule, the smaller words are not treated (of, the, a, etc). --Axius (talk) 20:37, 2 January 2013 (PST)

Yeah, we should stick to the Title Case rule. It looks best and almost all of our pages are like that ATM. Wikipedia chose the "sentence-style capitalization" because they say it's easier to link to from inline page text, but we already pick what is better over what is easier (e.g. Wikipedia uses brackets etc., in page titles/URLs, but we don't).

On another note, isn't WikiIslam:Standardization the same thing as WikiIslam:Manual of Style?--Sahabah (talk) 23:01, 2 January 2013 (PST)

Ok yea, I moved it to that existing page. Thanks for fixing/linking that testimony of freethought relay. --Axius (talk) 17:55, 3 January 2013 (PST)

We dont have an option for freethinker in the add form [7]. According to this [8] they're different terms. The more popular choice chosen will always be atheist but some might want any label/boxing and so they might want to choose free thinker. So I was thinking of adding it, and their category can remain "unknown/misc beliefs", as its a small number of people who will chose it. How's that. --Axius (talk) 08:56, 5 January 2013 (PST)

"Freethinker" isn't a belief or world-view. In fact that page basically states anyone (regardless of their belief) can be one. So it's a pointless descriptor. Someone may choose "Freethinker", and it would tell us nothing of their world-view, whether they're agnostic, atheist, Christian, Hindu and so on. It's the same as us having a choice for "pacifist" or "Communist" as a choice. --Sahabah (talk) 09:08, 5 January 2013 (PST)

If they don't want any labels, we should have an option stating, "Withheld", like we do for country of origin/residence. --Sahabah (talk) 09:10, 5 January 2013 (PST)

Hmm. Would also add the fact that so many assume only atheists can be freethinkers is kinda insulting to freethinking theists. --Sahabah (talk) 09:16, 5 January 2013 (PST)

Sounds good. I emailed him to choose between atheism and humanism, humanism. I'll add 'withheld' to the choices. --Axius (talk) 09:17, 5 January 2013 (PST)

Cool. Don't we have an option for both atheism and humanism? I thought we did. --Sahabah (talk) 09:22, 5 January 2013 (PST)

Yea we do, he'll say if he wants atheism or humanism (currently he had edited it to say free thinker). Also told him, no more changes in the box after this one. --Axius (talk) 09:27, 5 January 2013 (PST)

Hi. If there is a problem with a page, you discuss it on the talk page, not on edit summaries. Also, as I have already pointed out, we editors cannot edit published books that WikiIslam hosts in its online library. For example, there's plenty of thing I don't agree with in the Qur'an, but that doesn't mean it's okay for me to edit out parts of Yusuf Ali's translation and still call it a Qur'an. Your corrections of typos is greatly appreciated, but you will be blocked if you continue to try and rewrite someone else's book. --Sahabah (talk) 07:57, 28 January 2013 (PST)

Sorry, I thought that since this is a wiki it was editable. As you can see from my edits, all have been in good faith. I had no idea that this was supposed to be an exact reproduction of a published work.

That being the case, it would be expedient to insert a note stating that this is not the opinion of WikiIslam or something to that effect.

To give you a bit of context, due to the economic crisis I am between jobs (hopefully for a short while) and I can sketch you a picture of what welfare is like:

First, it's not a lot of money. Between rent, living expenses, transport fares and fixed expenses, as well as payback of debts incurred when I got fired, not much is left. But without it I would die.

When you first apply for welfare, you are sent to a work camp.

And later on, you're forced by the government to apply for jobs, even low chance or low pay vacancies.

At present, due to the economic crisis, about 8% of the population is dependent on welfare; most are not Islamists. If you tell us ‘you have to die to solve the Islam problem’ then frankly I say don't solve it. However there is no factual evidence that welfare exacerbates Islamisation.

Should we give up on welfare because some of it could be paid to Muslims? Should we abolish free speech because it allows the Imams to preach? Should we abolish freedom of the printing press because it allows Korans to be printed? And so on... the result would be an Islamic state in everything but name.

Please understand that WikiIslam has, no matter what you may say, a public relations aspect to it. You should be careful not to alienate your potential supporters.

Hi again. You'll have to excuse any typos of my own, since I'm using an annoying mobile device at the moment.

"Sorry, I thought that since this is a wiki it was editable. As you can see from my edits, all have been in good faith."

No problem. I apologize if I was a bit short with you. Yes, this is a wiki, but we're not like Wikipedia. I would say we're more like Wikipedia, Wikinews, Wikisource, and a whole lot more rolled into one. We're a complete resource. So while we have many encyclopedic articles that can improved, edited or completely rewritten (depending on what the situation calls for), we also have many things that would be at home on Wikipedia's sister-project, Wikisource. For example, if you tried to do anything other than fixing typos/formatting on their copy of History of the Saracens (1857) by Simon Ockley[9], it would be reverted

"I had no idea that this was supposed to be an exact reproduction of a published work."

Yes, it's written by Dr. Bill Warner, published by CSPI Publishing and can be bought at Amazon.com for $9.95. All the details and links are provided on the front page, and the authors name and link to his website are provided on every page above the table of contents.

"That being the case, it would be expedient to insert a note stating that this is not the opinion of WikiIslam or something to that effect."

We do make a note of this on our main library page, where it states, "material in the library do not necessarily reflect the views of WikiIslam". Other than that, we make it very clear on their main pages that they are reproductions of published work written by a particular author, so there isn't much need for additional disclaimers.

"To give you a bit of context, due to the economic crisis I am between jobs (hopefully for a short while) and I can sketch you a picture of what welfare is like .... "

I understand what you're saying. It's not a part of WikiIslam's mission to express opinions about such things. This site is not about politics. We wouldn't host written work if it was about welfare or immigration. Factual Persuasion is about refuting some of the myths and arguments used by apologist. It's unfortunate that politics creeps into it, but there is little we can do about.

"Please understand that WikiIslam has, no matter what you may say, a public relations aspect to it. You should be careful not to alienate your potential supporters."

Well, unlike other similiar site's that have an audience largely limited to the US or Europe, WikiIslam's readership is vast. If you take into consideration the hundreds of editors that have contributed to this site, we're a diverse group of people from all over the world, and we have policies in place to reflect that. We try to stay away from politics, we do not give one area of the globe more importance than another, we do not comment on other religions or worldviews, etc. It's not perfect, but we try our best even though it's impossible to please everyone all the time. --Sahabah (talk) 22:58, 28 January 2013 (PST)

Hello IP, in addition to the above, the author is not implying that all welfare should be abolished, as you have mentioned in your edit summary [10] and again in the comments above "Should we give up on welfare". That's an extreme interpretation of what the author meant. This is the problem he's talking about: "Muslims make up 5% of the population but receive 40% of social-welfare outlays." (for Denmark [11]). So what is your reference for the statement that "about 8% of the population is dependent on welfare; most are not Islamists"? I dont think it is true. You can look at the example of Denmark and its pretty much the same all over Europe I would guess. Just a simple search and I found this [12]. There's a lot of numbers about Welfare/Muslims that we dont have right now but they are there somewhere and the problem is there. So yes, IP, you just thought the author was attacking welfare in general but its *plainly* obvious that he's only talking about the welfare/Muslim problem for example the 5/40 numbers I mentioned. IP probably wont be coming back for a reply. --Axius (talk) 05:27, 29 January 2013 (PST)

Sorry, the PNG resize doesnt work on our current setup. Use JPG files. PNG can be converted to JPG, e.g. this could work [13]. --Axius (talk) 21:08, 2 February 2013 (PST)

Cool. Thanks! I will do that. I also wanted to change their size etc., but it's so fiddly without my PC. --Sahabah (talk) 21:14, 2 February 2013 (PST)

v.gra page. We might have to keep deleting this page. I dont know why it bypasses the 'security'. Its because that page is made using forms. I'll try to look into that some time. --Axius (talk) 18:28, 12 February 2013 (PST)

I don't know what I'm doing :P User:Al-Qaum (talk) 11:20, 17 February 2013 (PST)

LOL. No probs! I kinda guessed that :D Nothing to worry about though. You'll get the hang of it with practice. --Sahabah (talk) 11:23, 17 February 2013 (PST)

Sent you a PM. --Axius (talk) 15:39, 5 March 2013 (PST)

Even though it is in Indonesia, there it is considered an outlier to the rest of the country, so labeling it as Indonesia without qualifying that it's Aceh could lead to accusations of cherry picking and conflating a very religious area of the country with the rest. Aceh had rebellions against Indonesia and Indonesia gave Aceh autonomy so Aceh could establish Islamic law. When Aceh comes up you can accuse Indonesia of allowing such a "not so moderate" area to exist, and/or put it under an Aceh header. 76.31.48.157 07:50, 16 March 2013 (PDT)

It is a part of Indonesia. You can raise your concern only when it gets complete autonomy and gets a status as a new 'country'. Until then it falls under Indonesia, no matter what. The government of Indonesia is responsible for whatever goes on in Aceh. With things like this, it makes it even more important for people to remember that Aceh is part of Indonesia. If any moderate Muslims exist in Indonesia, they need to make sure that Aceh keeps itself under control. It should not be treated like a spoiled child who can do anything they like. You can start that initiative. --Axius (talk) 08:18, 16 March 2013 (PDT)

To Axius: Even if Aceh never existed, when you look at population and opinion stats, the IP's complaints are invalid. I'll explain how below.

To the IP: We're not the ones who are cherry picking. As Axius has already noted, Aceh is still a part of Indonesia and the government of Indonesia is responsible for whatever goes on there. Even you note this when you say, "conflating a very religious area of the country with the rest". i.e. it is you and anyone else who can claim Indonesia is "moderate" with a straight face who are guilty of cherry picking. Do you realize how stupid your complaint sounds? That's like claiming guns are banned in the US, except for every city that is not Chicago. What are people who live in Aceh if not Indonesians? You can't just exclude a massive chunk of the population just because they don't fit in with whatever point you're trying to make.

Besides, even if we were to exclude Indonesians who live in Aceh, and deny they were Indonesians, the country of Indonesia still wouldn't deserve the inaccurate title of a "Moderate Muslim country". Just take a look at some of the related statistics. 57.8% of Muslims in Indonesia oppose the building of non-Muslim places of worship, and 43.5% of Indonesian Muslims (approximately 87 million) ready to wage war for their faith[14][15]. Indonesia as a whole has a population of 237.5 million whilst Aceh only has a comparatively tiny population of 4.5 million. Clearly the problem of religious intolerance in Indonesia is not confined to one area, but is a country-wide problem. Face it, unless you've lived your entire life in Saudi Arabia or Iran, there is nothing "moderate" about Indonesia, and the media in general are waking up to this fact.

Additionally, I have no idea why you even bothered to raise this complaint on my talk page, because another editor has already removed the descriptor of "moderate" from all news titles concerning Indonesia.--Sahabah (talk) 09:05, 16 March 2013 (PDT)

Thanks for the welcome. What about names that are not on wikipedia? Such as famous Punjabi singer Mohd Sadiq etc, can I put them up myself or? Thetruth (talk) 08:09, 3 May 2013 (PDT)

Yes, go ahead, but please make sure his conversion is referenced to a reliable news source. --Sahabah (talk) 08:18, 3 May 2013 (PDT)

As a visitor of this site I appreciate your effort in supplying facts concerning Islam critics. There is a need for lighting out the truth into public sight. However I’m failing to understand the way of presentation of articles and how you treat editors. If I’m getting it right some materials are reproductions of other articles by external authors and are not meant for editing or discussion. If so why are they shown on public as editable and discussable, because they shouldn't be then. If I’m wrong please explain, cause it’s misleading as I said. What I’m talking about is my attempt of correcting inaccuracy of “Allahu Akbar” article on Russian talk page when all the arguments for editing were given in polite and meaningful way. However it was all deleted and even account blocked! If my explanation seemed wrong to you then why not leave a small comment on it and delete after a while or leave essential statements for everyone not to spawn repeats. After all it’s good for site being correct and not compromised by obviously false statements. Anyway good luck with your project. ~~Moonshine 21:06, 16 May 2013 (GMT +4)

Hi Moonshine, users on the RU site are free to administer their site in any way they like as long as it follows our core guidelines. You linked Wikipedia's block policy and this is not a branch of Wikipedia. We're a separate site. Back to the issue, go ahead and edit the English version of Allahu Akbar if you think the same issue lies there too and we can deal with it here. What was the point you were trying to make? We deal with a lot of edits which are vandalism or people trying to insert Muslim points of view, so frequently we don't have time for discussion and we simply revert and block to save ourselves time. This is probably what happened. But you can tell us if the same 'issue' (if any) exists with the english article and we'll go from here. --Axius (talk) 13:42, 16 May 2013 (PDT)

To Axius:

No, Muslims do not try to "insert Muslim points of view". In most cases, as in the "Allahu Akbar" article, it is WikiIslam that reflects the accurate mainstream Muslim point of view. They try to insert an apologetic point of view. The difference between those things is a massive one. You should remember that because what you said is inaccurate and doesn't sound too good.

To Moonshine:

"If I’m getting it right some materials are reproductions of other articles by external authors and are not meant for editing or discussion... If I’m wrong please explain"

You're wrong. Only some of the published content in our library is 'uneditable'. They are left open for edits because grammar and spelling fixes are welcome. The "Allahu Akbar" article is open for editing and has had several different users contribute material to it. If it has an author category on it, it is because that particular editor was the person who originally submitted it to the site.

"What I’m talking about is my attempt of correcting inaccuracy of “Allahu Akbar” article"

You mean your attempt at vandalizing the article. I have already explained why you are wrong.

"If my explanation seemed wrong to you then why not leave a small comment on it and delete after a while or leave essential statements for everyone not to spawn repeats."

Because your silly claim is ALREADY refuted in the article itself, so why would we want the same thing plastered over the talk page? The fact that you're behaving like it hasn't already been dealt with shows you are a time waster who hasn't even bothered reading the entire article. Plus you should have discussed it with other editors prior to making such a drastic change to the conclusion of the article. Anyhow, here's your chance. As Axius said, make the changes on the English version. I do not speak or read Russian, so it was hard for me to have a meaningful conversation. However, you write English very well, and so do I.--Sahabah (talk) 17:18, 16 May 2013 (PDT)

Right I mean they would try to insert stuff that is pro-Islamic/apologetic. Its clear what I meant. --Axius (talk) 17:30, 16 May 2013 (PDT)

It is clear to me and probably anyone with an IQ above 40. But since when has that stopped apologists from twisting words? :) --Sahabah (talk) 17:39, 16 May 2013 (PDT)

Which they would do in any case. --Axius (talk) 18:15, 16 May 2013 (PDT)

But because of your ill choice of words, they wouldn't need to lie or twist anything. What you wrote above, reads as an (incorrect) admission that WikiIslam reverts "people trying to insert Muslim points of view". Why give them the ammunition?--Sahabah (talk) 18:22, 16 May 2013 (PDT)

hi. are you admin of this site? if i want to build new article, can you help me ? Yahoo (talk) 08:01, 21 May 2013 (PDT)

So I'm getting around to trying to fix Cite web etc. This page, first two options are examples of the fixed Cite web template that I just fixed: User:Axius/Sandbox10. The 'archived' stuff is in small fonts.

With regards to a template, by input I mean how we enter the data (how we use variables in the wiki code). By output I mean how its rendered when the page is viewed. Its important to get the input right from the start. We can have the output in any we want because it can be changed later on a mass scale easily. So the important thing in these templates is that we need to make our inputs right (1) separate out the variables (2) make the input as close to Wikipedia as possible. They have some automated tools that we can then use for ourselves.

I wish I had looked at the Reference archive in the beginning but its ok. We can get it right from now on and leave Ref archived as it is. I'll try to make a bot at some point to fix the references if possible. I tried looking at our old comments here [16] but I didnt read all of them.

The Template:Cite web is ready for linking to websites. I thought we could have two archive links to make it even safer but thats too much trouble (making two archive links for each link) so one is ok.

We also need to standardize any other things that we reference although I dont think we have much of those (books, journals, left most column 'source' on this page [17]).

With regards to the output for Cite web, those changes were easy to make in this case. So thats that for Cite web, I think that's sorted. Or let me know if you want the output changed in any other way (oncer again its the first two options here: User:Axius/Sandbox10). Its just like what we talked about except I made that archived font smaller. Like you said you didnt like all that junk in the output so that should help even further. In the link title, I do see double quotes in Wikipedia template but thats not a problem as again, thats the output and we can change that to anything we like. The way Wikipedia does is usually some kind of universal citation method that they've spent time on deciding (time went into that decision) so as I said we should try to follow Wikipedia if possible unless it looks bad or doesn't make sense.

The 3rd example has an Author. Do we use that variable? If that shows up it shows the author in the beginning. This is probably APA citation style.

The 4th example has a Date field. Do we use that? Thats the variable that we want if we want to tell the author when the news link was written. The author and date are not displayed like how we have. If you want I can move those around but it'll be some trouble finding out. Best case is if we're not using those two in any case.

For the blue quote boxes: I'll use a separate template for that because it will be too much work trying to do both with one template.

So this is about the lines in the quote boxes whenever they contain links. Are the variables the same? For example see the 'New' one here in the Quote section: User:Axius/Sandbox10

Right now it has the same format as Wikipedia. Its all in one line but I can break that out like we have (in the Old section). There's the author first and the date in brackets and so on. Its different from what we have. But this is the output which I can change. We can have it like we do and have the link first.

So my questions are

• Is the format always author, publisher, date
• what are the variable fields that you use? For example we'll have link and title of course. Publisher, date and Author, does that cover all of them?

In the new way you wont be using commas to separate fields anymore but using the variables. For example old:

Dina al-Shibeeb, Al Arabiya, May 24, 2013

New would be something like

author = Dina al-Shibeeb | publisher= Al Arabiya|date= May 24, 2013

The use of variables helps us out later for replacing dead links and for changing output formats. Its best if variables you need or use area already exist on Wikipedia [18]. There's a lot of them available. In the end I can make new buttons for Cite web and this cite web quote. --Axius (talk) 17:11, 26 May 2013 (PDT)

The order for the regular citations are (1) author (2) title (3) publisher (4) date. So could it be made to look like how we discussed previously on my talk page? Something like this:

Nick McCarthy, "Birmingham Jihadists plotted to cause maximum carnage in name of Allah, court told," Birmingham Mail‎, October 23, 2012 (archived)

If you look at any page on the site, you'll see I always make sure to include an author name (if available) and date. Without those, it isn't much of a reference, and IMO is only a step above using naked URLs.

There are additional variables, depending on what is being referenced. There's probably many of them but it would be impossible to prepare for all of them. Certainly, there should be an extra variable after the publisher variable. So it would be (1) author (2) title (3) publisher (4) extra variable (5) date.

For example, this would be needed for citing fatwas or pages from MEMRI:

"Jordanian Journalist: The Jews And The American Right Are Behind Boston Bombing, Just As They Were Behind 9/11," MEMRI, Special Dispatch No.5278, April 18, 2013

--Sahabah (talk) 18:35, 26 May 2013 (PDT)

Ok, how's this: User:Axius/Sandbox10. I think I got it done. I see there's a 'series' variable that can be used for the MEMRI case http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Cite_web. The example is number 6 on the sample page. For our case it shows the series first and then the publisher, is that ok? I think its fine as it is, not too bad. The series is not used often or is it?

Also see #7 which has a quote variable. Wikipedia had the quote with no italics but I did it so its italics for us and stands out.

I havent thought about cases where we link to our own articles or a saved screenshot. We'll have to check those too. Or will this current Cite web cover all the cases?

If this one is OK I can work on the one for Quotation boxes. We want to keep the same input format (same variables) but the template will be different (like {{citewebquote ...}}) and will have a different output. --Axius (talk) 12:28, 8 June 2013 (PDT)

Hi Ax! Is there any way to make the 'series' come after the publication and the quotes to come before the reference? Either present order doesn't make sense to me. About the image etc., I have no idea. I think there are too many variables in how things are cited to have one template to cover everything. --Sahabah (talk) 22:50, 8 June 2013 (PDT)

Ok I got that fixed. We'll see with time if there's anything else that needs to be there. This template cite web is only for using refs when there's a link involved (external link) so I guess we'll see what else we need later. Let me know and I can add additional variables. I'm understanding the code of the template now. So that means we should start using cite web now. It will be nice to have the variables sorted and have a secondary link (original or the archive). Here's one example ([19]) where you added something after the cite web (see page 6):

{{cite web|author=John C. M. Calvert|url=http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/pdf/2007-6.pdf%7Ctitle=The Contexts of Religion and Violence|publisher=The Kripke Center|date=2007}}; see page 6

Comes out to be:

John C. M. Calvert, "The Contexts of Religion and Violence", The Kripke Center, 2007, http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/pdf/2007-6.pdf. ; see page 6

So something like that will also work for rare cases. But if you have to do anything more often I will create a new variable. More uses of the template here (let me know if you see any problems - I hope not): Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Citation/core

I'll work on the quote box template now.

So yea I had restored that story ([20]). A user might use a proxy which is why the IP might not match. --Axius (talk) 06:30, 9 June 2013 (PDT)

IP lookup says it's probably not[21]. I don't know why you be so lenient with testimonies. It'll only end with us getting egg on our faces.--Sahabah (talk) 07:44, 9 June 2013 (PDT)

We cant say anything about the IP. Proxies change all the time. I dont think there was any other problem (other than language). This one is fine. Its actually pretty good (he says he's a teacher and one from Saudi Arabia so thats even more important/interesting). Our disclaimer is there so its ok. Our criteria is whether it will help someone leave Islam or not, whether others can relate to it and so on. --Axius (talk) 08:09, 9 June 2013 (PDT)

Ok, I got the Quotebox cite web ready too: Template:Cite web quotebox. Its used just like the cite web and will put in a line break automatically. The line break was the only difference but it was enough to require its own template. I added two extra buttons in the toolbar in the end for Cite web and cite web quotebox (also in edit tools where you had the Ref archive template). I'll see if there's anything else that we should do. WebCite is down right now, maybe I did this just in time. It will probably be back soon, probably temporary downtime (hopefully).

When you use Web Cite or any other archivsite, you can paste in the complete URL of the archive and then the date of the archive (did a test). Although you dont need to put the archive date. It will put it itself if its today's day, so you just need the full archive URL. We'll see how this works or if it needs other changes/fixes. --Axius (talk) 11:42, 9 June 2013 (PDT)

Can we move the author somewhere after the URL? Then the template can be used in External links sections too e.g [22]. So it would look like: URL (archived), author, publisher, date. Considering that the link is the primary/main object in a cite web template and also the quote box shows the link first and the author is actually on the 2nd line. I dont see wikipedia having a template for making external links [23]. If we use the cite web in both the Ref tags, and the External links, this is probably better because (1) both these places will look consistent where a link is involved (2) we can also put in Archive links and Cite Web is flexible enough that if we only have the main link, or if we also had the archive link (examples 1 and 2 here) it would work well in both of those cases, as well as in cases where there's more information.

So in summary I think we need to think about how we want external links to look like in the External Links section, and how we can make it so links look the same whether they are used a Ref, or are present in the External links section. For the EL we have sometimes used:

Website Title - Publisher (Date)

But I dont think its a consistent method that we've used and we dont have to stick to that even if it was. The problem there is that there's no easy way of putting in an archive link. So if we use a template, we make it easy. Now if we use the same template for External links and Refs, we have made it easier for editors to deal with external links whether they are in the EL section or are used as Refs. --Axius (talk) 14:04, 9 June 2013 (PDT)

Sorry for the late reply. I'm a bit busy at the mo. I haven't taken it all in yet, but the two main ref templates look great. I don't know about the external links template. Author names almost always come before page titles. It would look really odd if it didn't. External links are nowhere near as uniform as references are. Sometimes it's just the page title, sometimes it's title and publication, and other times it's simply a description of what is linked to. What about another cite web template especially for external links that consists of two variable: (1) text on blue link (2) text after blue link?--Sahabah (talk) 00:08, 10 June 2013 (PDT)

Ok I'll see if I can make another template for external links. Tell me how you did this edit. When I use the same edit text, the archive date gets resolved. Could you do this small test for me in a sandbox: Click your link in the Edittools below which will produce the template (2nd link in 'Insert Quote). Use anything for the URL, title and archive URL. Thats all that you should use. Save the page and when you edit the code, you shouldnt see 'subst' in the date field but the actual date. I'll do this test right now:

This is the quote

"Google" (archived), http://www.google.com. 

End of test. If that doesnt work, could you clear your browser cache, just to be sure there's nothing odd anywhere, although that shouldnt matter for this. I'll be back later.

Test works for me. As you can see from the Edit's code, the archivedate gets filled in auto. --Axius (talk) 05:38, 10 June 2013 (PDT)

I did that edit and you're right. Not sure what happened last time.--Sahabah (talk) 05:48, 10 June 2013 (PDT)

I made another edit and the problem has returned. It doesn't happen on my sandbox pages.--Sahabah (talk) 06:11, 10 June 2013 (PDT)

What browser are you using? I'll do some tests myself too. --Axius (talk) 09:44, 10 June 2013 (PDT)

I'm using Chrome. Stopped using Opera a while ago because it would add random text to edits.--Sahabah (talk) 09:48, 10 June 2013 (PDT)

I found out. It says the Subst does not work inside a Ref tag. [24].

We actually dont use that variable (in our discussions we thought we did not want it displayed, to make it look cleaner). Wikipedia does by writing out "archived on YMD". So I fixed this by removing the requirement for this variable. I think that should be fine. Its secondary information and is not that important. So it can be used but its not a requirement and either way wont have any effect on the way we use it for the output. --Axius (talk) 17:34, 10 June 2013 (PDT)

External links is also ready. Examples at: User:Axius/Sandbox8. This helps too as we dont have to worry about formatting and now we also have the option of putting the archive link there as well. The output format matches for example, the links found here: Fake_Anti-Muslim_Hate_Crimes_and_Other_Lies#External_Links. So yea I guess I finally did this cite thing. Anywhere else where some kind of automatic formatted could be used? Cant think of any, I guess this is it for now.

Do you like the quotation marks for the URL. Thats how Wikipedia had it but we werent using those (for example[25]). That does imply that the URL title is shown as it is originally and was not modified so maybe thats a good thing to have the quotation marks in there. Its up to you (again this is a difference in the output so this can always be changed to go either way at any time in the future and affect all locations easily). --Axius (talk) 19:02, 10 June 2013 (PDT)

Thanks. Everything looks good. Yeah, I like the quotation marks. It will be useful for when reader copy/paste stuff on forums. If I think of anything else, I'll let you know.--Sahabah (talk) 19:13, 10 June 2013 (PDT)

Ok. --Axius (talk) 19:14, 10 June 2013 (PDT)

The Islam/U series was imported through donations [26]. Thanks for fixing that. --Axius (talk) 14:30, 13 June 2013 (PDT)

Okay. No probs. :) but i'm not finished yet :( --Sahabah (talk) 16:51, 13 June 2013 (PDT)

Here's a sample bot edit [27]. Still checking everything, doing tests and I'll make a backup before I do that for all pages. This fixes the URLs but its hard to get the publisher, author information as well (varied formatting). But if only the URL's are done as is done here, that too is ok. Basically the difference in appearance is that its adding quotation marks to the URL title as the new template does, and then there's an (archived) link. So the change is minimal but the template is new. Great if it all works out becuase there's about 700 pages using it. [28]. The bot edits will be marked bot by default. You know who started this, it was that IP (ha). I want to find what tool he/she was using so we can use that too, to switch the deadurl=yes if needed. --Axius (talk) 21:55, 16 June 2013 (PDT)

Okay, I understand now. But isn't there a way to put the archive link at the end like the other cite ref template?--Sahabah (talk) 22:15, 16 June 2013 (PDT)

Not with the current method. I'll check. --Axius (talk) 22:27, 16 June 2013 (PDT)

Thanks. The extra lines (-) that are being replaced by quotation marks shouldn't matter too much. I can manually edit them out. --Sahabah (talk) 22:34, 16 June 2013 (PDT)

I could get the bot to remove those dashes too, that would be too many to remove manually. But first I have to find if its possible to move the archived link at the end for these cases. I'll see. --Axius (talk) 04:57, 17 June 2013 (PDT)

Also wondering if any of this can be made easier. Would it be better, say, if only cite web had to be used and if it was used in the source (like cite web quotebox), we just say "usedinquotesource=yes". Just thinking. I'm thinking from a new user's point of view and make it easier. If its in the source, right now its cite web quotebox but that makes people think it could used anywhere inside the quotebox but thats not true actually since it can only be used in the source section. Cite web's normal usage stays as it is. Previously I had said I would not want to combine them because its a lot of work but I could try. The other idea is to rename cite web quotebox to 'cite web quotesource'. In my opinion it would be less confusing if we had one cite web, and we only do "usedinquotesource=yes" and then it switches to that mode when its used in the Source.

Let me know if you any suggestions about this or anything else, or any other bot work that could be done. Sorry, still not done with this cite ref thing but hopefully we will. Getting there. --Axius (talk) 05:31, 17 June 2013 (PDT)

If you could get the bots to remove the dashes, that would be awesome. About cite web, the output for both kinds is great now. They look real neat and easy to read. So as long as they remain looking the same, I think either of your ideas is fine. Renaming cite web quotebox to 'cite web quotesource' is obviously the easier option. On the other hand, we do also have the quote= option on the cite web template, so new users may confuse it with that.--Sahabah (talk) 16:57, 17 June 2013 (PDT)

In this code in this page [29], there's places where the empty comment code (<!-- -->) is found at the end of a ref:

<ref>Professor David J. Leaper - [{{Reference archive|1=http://web.archive.org/web/20071111074025/http://www.ewma.org/pdf/fall01/04-WoundClosure.pdf|2=2011-02-08}} Wound Closure Basic Techniques, Scientific paper presented at EWMA Stockholm 2000] - The European Wound Management Association<!-- --></ref>

I'm thinking I can take this out, or do you need it? I haven't checked other pages but is it used on other pages too? --Axius (talk) 12:58, 23 June 2013 (PDT)

Yeah, it's fine to remove them. --Sahabah (talk) 13:05, 23 June 2013 (PDT)

I think http://wikiislam.net/wiki/Parallelism_Between_the_Qur%27an_and_Judeo-Christian_Scriptures should go on the front page under Information on the Qur'an. Of the topics in the In Depth Studies category, it is the most obvious one that is not yet on the front page. There is some content here such as sanhedrin 37a that would leave a strong impression and is very interesting in its own right and there's nothing else on the front page directly about Quranic borrowing. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by ‎Lightyears (talk • contribs) on 17:57, 7 June 2013

Sure. I'll add it now. --Sahabah (talk) 18:06, 7 June 2013 (PDT)

Hi, I think here it is better to be capital (Б)..Български: Translations Azərbaycanca български Česky ..

Hi Sahabah,

please release new article QHS on dogs: http://wikiislam.net/wiki/Pes_a_isl%C3%A1m_(Kor%C3%A1n,_Prorok_Mohamed_a_isl%C3%A1m%C5%A1t%C3%AD_u%C4%8Denci_o_psech)

it´s only about dogs, because Czech republic is european Nr.1 in keeping dogs (10 mil Czechs have 1,5 mil. dogs) so it will be for Czech specifically very interresting topic.

Thank you, Animus (talk) 09:30, 6 July 2013 (PDT)

Sure, no problem. But I noticed there are a few empty sections at the bottom: http://wikiislam.net/wiki/Pes_a_isl%C3%A1m_(Kor%C3%A1n,_Prorok_Mohamed_a_isl%C3%A1m%C5%A1t%C3%AD_u%C4%8Denci_o_psech)#Chov_ps.C5.AF_jako_dom.C3.A1c.C3.ADch_mazl.C3.AD.C4.8Dk.C5.AF I'm not sure what they are. Do you want to finish them first?--Sahabah (talk) 09:56, 6 July 2013 (PDT)

Hi Sahabah,

please have a look on Google translation of czech mirror of "QHS: Women".

I tried to bring more clear and standartised structure. Please let me know, if I can also get the english original restructured like that.

Please don´t care about confusing Google translation, it is just for your understanding.

long translate link

Thank you A. Animus (talk) 12:23, 8 July 2013 (PDT)

Hi Animus. I had a quick look and it looks great. Yes, please do go ahead and restructure the English page. Thanks!--Sahabah (talk) 20:03, 8 July 2013 (PDT)

Hallo,

it did know I get no allert if ou answer here. I will check it from now.

Thank you :-) Animus (talk) 13:21, 9 July 2013 (PDT)

Hi Animus. I'm replying here as well, in case you miss it on my talk page. I had a quick look and it looks great. Yes, please do go ahead and restructure the English page. Thank you! Also, in the future, are you okay with me just replying on one talk page? This is normally how we do things here. We keep discussions on a single page (the talk page it was started on). --Sahabah (talk) 20:08, 8 July 2013 (PDT)

Animus, nice work on this page, makes more sense for example "Menstruation" was a main heading before. Thanks for fixing it. --Axius (talk) 07:06, 14 July 2013 (PDT)

Hi,

I ravised that, please check.

Question: Should these three stay where they are, or should be added into Menstruation now?

5.2.3 A Menstruating Woman Is Not Allowed to Recite the Qur’an 5.2.4 A Menstruating Woman is Not Allowed to Stay in the Mosque 5.2.5 Menstruating Women are Not Allowed to Perform Tawaf

Thanks Animus (talk) 09:24, 22 July 2013 (PDT)

hi Animus, the previous version looked better in my opinion so I reverted it. About Menstruation I was saying that before you made all those changes (the large number of edits you made before), Menstruation was a main heading for a lot of topics but you fixed that, so thanks for doing that and for improving this important QHS page. --Axius (talk) 09:30, 22 July 2013 (PDT)

I know of a lot more Fake Muslim hate crimes, but I can't be dealing with working out how to make them all work in your table. Please put them on: —The preceding unsigned comment was added by HateHoax (talk • contribs) on 10:05, 15 July 2013

Hi. I had a quick look through the list and most of them are either already on our list, not related/suitable, or are not proven hoaxes. I will take a closer look later. --Sahabah (talk) 12:32, 15 July 2013 (PDT)

Many muslims thinks that Kalki who was predicted in Bhavishya purana is actually muhammad. But it's wrong, see:-

www.answering-islam.org/Hoaxes/kalkiavatar.html

So you can mention it somewhere in this site. Capitals00 (talk) 02:35, 16 July 2013 (PDT)

Hi. It's already there as an external link.--Sahabah (talk) 02:37, 16 July 2013 (PDT)

I thought this template will help us know what/where the outstanding tasks are for each article. --Axius (talk) 04:55, 24 July 2013 (PDT)

Nice! That's an awesome idea. I'll link it to the relevant pages later on today.--Sahabah (talk) 04:59, 24 July 2013 (PDT)

Someone just emailed "I'd like to ask about a "random article" button. Please consider it. It appears on wikipedia.org, and could be an incredible hit for wikiislam. "

The link for that is: Special:Random. I've actually thought its not so useful in Wikipedia because for them it turns up random content which we may not be interested in but it does show people the variety of content that exists. If we add it, it could be the 5th link after Recent changes or the 4th, pushing it down, or in the 'Toolbox' where its not so bad because then it wont be pushing other more important things further down. --Axius (talk) 14:44, 28 July 2013 (PDT)

Adding it to the toolbox so it doesn't push other things down, like you said, sounds okay. If it's okay with you, I'll do it now (revert if you think it's not right - I don't really feel strongly about it either way). --Sahabah (talk) 16:14, 28 July 2013 (PDT)

Lol. I just checked MediaWiki:Sidebar and the toolbox is not there. I don't know how to edit that.--Sahabah (talk) 16:17, 28 July 2013 (PDT)

Yea there's no easy way to edit that, I checked. I guess we can leave it like that. I'll add a link on the Site map or somewhere else. --Axius (talk) 16:50, 28 July 2013 (PDT)

Here's a great idea on the RU site to have a handy section of links at the bottom that shows related articles very quickly [30]. Makes the links to related articles more accessible. I'm thinking we have stuff like that for some pages (maybe). A few days ago I was trying to get from QHS:Aisha to "refutations of pedophilia" and it took me a few clicks/some effort to get there. (I clicked Islam and Pedophilia in the Hub box and then I scrolled down to find Refutation_of_Modern_Muslim_Apologetics_Against_Aishas_Age). So yea, if something like this is done it can be a helpful navigational tool. Wikipedia sometimes has 2 or three boxes at the bottom (with show/hide options so they're not all on at the same time). --Axius (talk) 16:22, 29 July 2013 (PDT)

I don't like that idea at all :( I think it's a bit ugly and overkill when we have the categories, core and hub pages. The first word on the Qur'an, Hadith and Scholars:Aisha page has for years now linked to "Aisha". From there you can get to the "Refutation of Modern Muslim Apologetics Against Aisha's Age" without having to scroll at all.--Sahabah (talk) 01:45, 30 July 2013 (PDT)

Those navigational aids take an extra click. I've seen/used these kinds of boxes on Wikipedia. For example at the bottom here [31]. Advantages from Wikipedia. It doesnt take up much space for a smaller group of articles and it only has benefits in my opinion.

[32] says:

The success of navboxes can be seen in this (uncontrolled) study of this navbox, which has shown that in the month following its creation, readership of the articles contained within increased by 8.5% (an average of 406 views per article) and editing of these pages increased by 37% from the month prior to its creation.

So yea it could be nice. Not a high priority but I'll work on it sometime for a certain group of articles and we'll see how it looks. --Axius (talk) 04:24, 30 July 2013 (PDT)

The external link at WikiIslam:Web Usability says extra clicks do not put people off. Also none of the advantages mentioned by Wikipedia apply to WikiIslam.

We don't have any clutter because we have hub pages and a link to the core article in our "see also" section (rather than how Wikipedia often has a giant list under it).

Doesn't apply because we have hub pages and a link to the core article.

These two don't really apply to us because we don't have millions of articles about different subjects like Wikipedia. Hub pages link to directly related articles and the core link to less directly related articles.

This is not true for us. It will only make things harder for us by giving us another template to remember updating.

That is relative to who you ask. Many will not find it aesthetically pleasing.

Doesn't apply because we have hub pages and a link to the core article.

Doesn't apply because we have hub pages and a link to the core article.

The extra clicks is a good thing, but it's possible that it will effect us even less because every link that would be in those new nav boxes are already covered by our hub pages and link to core articles.

In the past we actually got rid of similar templates (i.e. the old "inconsistencies" table that was on the top right-hand side of some articles). --Sahabah (talk) 04:55, 30 July 2013 (PDT)

As I posted before, I think the numbers speak for themselves :):

The success of navboxes can be seen in this (uncontrolled) study of this navbox, which has shown that in the month following its creation, readership of the articles contained within increased by 8.5% (an average of 406 views per article) and editing of these pages increased by 37% from the month prior to its creation.

We'll continue the debate when I make a sample and see how it goes and then I'll respond to these points at that time. --Axius (talk) 09:31, 30 July 2013 (PDT)

"As I posted before, I think the numbers speak for themselves" I responded to this already. I don't think it's as simple as that. "We'll continue the debate when I make a sample and see how it goes". If you're going to go ahead and do it anyway, I don't see any need for further discussion. --Sahabah (talk) 10:08, 30 July 2013 (PDT)

I dont see a response to the statistics data or did I miss it? --Axius (talk) 10:13, 30 July 2013 (PDT)

I said:

The extra clicks is a good thing, but it's possible that it will effect us even less because every link that would be in those new nav boxes are already covered by our hub pages and link to core articles.

Thats not a response to the 8.5% more viewers and 37% more edits. It looks like the clicks dont matter (although personally I think they do). So the numbers in the study is what I'm talking about. --Axius (talk) 10:39, 30 July 2013 (PDT)

In that comment, I wasn't referring to the number of clicks needed to get from one page to another. I'm referring to the same 8.5% you are.--Sahabah (talk) 10:46, 30 July 2013 (PDT)

Oh ok now I see. So you're basically saying we wont get 8.5% extra viewers because we already have Hub links and Core article links and people are clicking there. First there's no proof that we wont get more views. Wikipedia has those kinds of links also (e.g. the USA article has a portal link at the left and they have sister project links).

Plus you have to think about usability. These are two different kinds of user experiences: You get to the bottom of the page and (1) you have to take your mouse over to the Hub page links or the Core articles (which should still exist - of course I'm not saying those should be taken away; they organize information in a different way which is also useful), they click and get to those new pages and then find out what other links exist. (2) The other user experience is seeing the related links right there visually at the bottom. Its a much easier user experience. Comparing the two is like taking away the template on the top-right of the QHS series and only having a Hub box at the bottom, or the categories at the bottom and so on. It makes the page very powerful and impressive when you show the breadth of available/related knowledge in that manner. This is what I mean by usability - having more links available, making it easier for people to find out what else exists

Where our eyes have to travel and the path of our mouse is important. Here's an interesting study about online webforms. They studied how much eyes have to travel and how much work people have to do while filling out forms online. This image (test 1) shows they have to work a lot, there's lots of movement and "figuring" out. So this web form is harder to fill out for people. Test 3 has another arrangement and it was the best and quickest.

So where our eyes have to move, where we move the mouse and so on matters. And when its just an extra inch or even one, there's more good than harm.

The first word on the Qur'an, Hadith and Scholars:Aisha page has for years now linked to "Aisha". From there you can get to the "Refutation of Modern Muslim Apologetics Against Aisha's Age" without having to scroll at all.

That user experience is: (1) On the QHS page I found a certain hadith which I wanted. Now I scroll back up (note, I have to be an established user to know this, because a new user will not know that the word Aisha at the top is linked to a page which has the link I need). Click on that Aisha link and then click on the Apologetics article. (2) I scroll down, see the box and the article I want and click directly on the apologetics article. Its easier. People always want to see related articles visually rather than click through them.

So again, the increase in 8.5% readership cannot be already accounted for because we dont know thats happening. And we still have 37% more editing - that's what the study says and its huge. If there's a potential for even 10% more editing, why not. It makes things easy for editors (asides from having to update when there's a new article and how often is that, and how easy it is to update the navbox). They can quickly see related articles at a glance and jump from article to article very easily.

This is not true for us. It will only make things harder for us by giving us another template to remember updating.

Those are easy updates and due to the 8.5 and 37%, they're worth it. Every addition on a template like that will make every page connected to it more impressive and powerful.

That is relative to who you ask. Many will not find it aesthetically pleasing.

What do you not like about it? Its only an extra inch or two at the bottom, a table of related links.

The fact that editing increased by 37% is enough evidence to show they can be a good idea. So I'll make some and see how it goes. --Axius (talk) 16:24, 30 July 2013 (PDT)

We had a long discussion on this. So you did miss the 37% more editing statistics, which was one of my main points. Is this discussion settled then? I need an answer to this. --Axius (talk) 19:10, 7 August 2013 (PDT)

What discussion and what answer? You are continually telling me you are going to do it anyway, so my opinion on this matter is clearly irrelevant to the outcome. That is not a discussion, and that is why I do not care to respond to your previous points. Do what you will.--Sahabah (talk) 19:56, 7 August 2013 (PDT)

Wow, ok. Alright then. --Axius (talk) 20:05, 7 August 2013 (PDT)

I started the bot to do that, yay. Special:Contributions/WIBot Works great. For example diff. I did some random checks and looks like it was ok. Its done with that now (that was about 300 edits). So if there's edits with a certain pattern to it, I can try to get the bot to do it.

I had to stop the work on the bot/Citeweb stuff for now because it wasnt doing it correctly and those are harder to fix, but I'll continue that again sometime. --Axius (talk) 05:30, 3 August 2013 (PDT)

Nice! If anything else like that comes up, I'll let you know. --Sahabah (talk) 08:52, 3 August 2013 (PDT)

One my is edits is still pending, or was there something wrong with it? The quote from the edit you mentioned on my talk page is at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/operation-of-police-powers-under-the-terrorism-act-2000-2012-to-2013/operation-of-police-powers-under-the-terrorism-act-2000-and-subsequent-legislation-arrests-outcomes-and-stop-and-searches-great-britain-2012-to-20 I tried to avoid using it due to the excessive length.

Also.. Sepember, Consistant, calender, the the human, tatooing, concieved, saleperson, traveled (2) may have be inserted by accident, have lead to, reasons we can not.--Lemming (talk) 05:20, 28 September 2013 (PDT)

LOL. I've been staring at the list of typos for a few minutes trying to figure out what it's meant to be. I get it now. Thanks for spotting them! I'll correct them now. I've now accepted that edit. I'll also look at that link you gave me. Thanks again! --Sahabah (talk) 05:30, 28 September 2013 (PDT)

Can I create Muslim veil use in Crime? It will discuss and show how it is widely used tool in crime across the world.--Lemming (talk) 06:02, 28 September 2013 (PDT)

Yeah, sure. That sounds great. I'll add an "under construction" template on the page once you create it, so it can be worked on. Thanks! --Sahabah (talk) 06:06, 28 September 2013 (PDT)

If you can help me on the page, we can look at doing a media gallery. I am still collating news reports, I still have a large sum of info to sort through and add. The citations & webcites will need to be fully complete.--Lemming (talk) 15:21, 31 October 2013 (PDT)

Sure. No problem. I'll sort the references and archive the links. --Sahabah (talk) 15:25, 31 October 2013 (PDT)

Hi do you think this go karting death can be added to Health Effects of Islamic Dress? - [33][34][35][36].--Lemming (talk) 15:38, 31 October 2013 (PDT)

That's an interesting news story, but it wouldn't fit there. For now, I'll add it to our news archive. --Sahabah (talk) 15:52, 31 October 2013 (PDT)

Thank you for checking my additions. To make things easier, just put the reason for removal or revert in the edit summary, if I disagree I will just leave you a message. This is why I don't mind pending changes protection.--Lemming (talk) 09:56, 3 November 2013 (PST)

I don't think the new page title is appropriate, Hijab does not cover the face so criminals tend not to use it, unlike the Burka and Niqab which most sources describe.--Lemming (talk) 14:35, 4 November 2013 (PST)

The term "hijab" covers both the burka and niqab because it's not a particular item of clothing, but the observance of Islamic "modesty". --Sahabah (talk) 15:18, 4 November 2013 (PST)

You changed my edits at Muslim Statistics - Health and Disability and took out that that nearly all British Pakistani's are Muslim. So this statement itself is no longer specifically about a religious group. It does not standalone like so many statements on this site. Yes, I know anyone researching in this area would know Pakistan is over 90% Muslim, but maybe not so with British Pakistani's.--Lemming (talk) 10:55, 4 October 2013 (PDT)

Okay, I've reinserted that now. Thanks. --Sahabah (talk) 12:18, 4 October 2013 (PDT)

Hi, can you add these to Muslim Statistics (Education and Employment)?

From [37]

Nearly 18 per cent of Muslims aged 16 to 24 were unemployed and nearly 14 per cent of those aged 25 and above. By contrast, for Hindus aged 16 to 24 and those aged 25 and over, the unemployment rates were, respectively, 7 per cent and 5 per cent.

Among males aged 25 and above in England, at 42 per cent, Muslims have the lowest proportion of men in the four white-collar major groups of the year 2000 Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) – in other words among managers and senior officials, professionals, associate professionals and technical occupations, and administrative and secretarial occupations. This compares with the overall England average of 50 per cent, while 63 per cent of Hindu males and 80 per cent of Jewish males are in these occupations. By contrast, 34 per cent of Muslim men in England work in semi-skilled and unskilled occupations compared with 18 per cent of Hindu men and 31 per cent of Sikh men. Weller, 2010: 908-09

ODPM report (Beckfordet al, 2006: 16) covering England and Wales, the main reason for Muslims’ low levels of economic activity was identified as being the very low level of participation by Muslim women. In Wales, just 33 per cent of Muslim women are economically active – less than half the female population.

The following may fit somewhere too...

...religion itself does not entail significant levels of reported discrimination... It is ethnicity – rather (or more) than religion – which acts as a visible and ready conduit for disadvantage and perceived discrimination. (Li et al., 2008: 67).

--Lemming (talk) 04:47, 5 October 2013 (PDT)

No problem. I'll take a look at those soon. Thanks. --Sahabah (talk) 04:49, 5 October 2013 (PDT)

Do you think List_of_Genuine_Islamic_Inventions_Innovations_Records_and_Firsts should be added to the family of Template:Muslim Statistics articles? Maybe next to Misc as "Notable Milestones/Records" or something along those lines? I think such a great pages needs more pages linking to it.--Lemming (talk) 14:52, 11 October 2013 (PDT)

I also think it's a great page, but it's not a part of the Statistics series. However, I've just added the Statistics category to it. So that should help. --Sahabah (talk) 15:18, 11 October 2013 (PDT)

Please, delete Yass Yer va Quron (grammar error in title). The proper page is Yassi Yer va Quron (Flat Earth and the Qur'an). Shrimp (talk) 01:23, 10 October 2013 (PDT)

Done. --Sahabah (talk) 03:42, 10 October 2013 (PDT)

Hi, have the statistics of http://www.pewglobal.org/2013/09/10/muslim-publics-share-concerns-about-extremist-groups/ and other media reports been added to their respective articles?--Lemming (talk) 11:22, 12 October 2013 (PDT)

I've just had a quick look over it. I don't think we have, but I don't really see anything interesting there. We don't add every stat we come across (it would become impossibly long and boring). --Sahabah (talk) 11:37, 12 October 2013 (PDT)

Hi ,Sahabah. You are very welcome!:

and:

and:

and:

P.S.I respond here because I do not know where else —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Damaskin (talk • contribs) on 05:04, 16 October 2013‎

Thanks Damaskin! Yeah, here is fine. --Sahabah (talk) 11:05, 16 October 2013 (PDT)

I've moved the conversion to: User_talk:Damaskin#Translating series

Some ideas for List of Genuine Islamic Inventions, Innovations, Records and Firsts

1. Worlds leading producer of opium, the ingredient used to produce the illegal drug heroin.[38] In 2007, 92% of all non-medical opium produced originated from Afghanistan.[39]
2. Responsible for deliberately creating the world’s worst oil spill in history.[40]

.--Lemming (talk) 07:52, 3 November 2013 (PST)

Thanks. I'll add them in a moment. --Sahabah (talk) 07:54, 3 November 2013 (PST)

Hi is Hijab and Crime completed now? I would like to complete it then continue to develop it.--Lemming (talk) 03:37, 8 November 2013 (PST)

Hi Lemming. TBH it is not substantial enough as it is, nor does it read like a completed article. There is no rush or deadline, so I would suggest to continue developing it.--Sahabah (talk) 13:33, 8 November 2013 (PST)

What else is needed for it to be completed? It is quite a narrow topic.--Lemming (talk) 10:13, 10 November 2013 (PST)

I'm not sure. That Daniel Pipes article mentions a few historical cases, so, for example, a "History" section would fit well. I'll try to come up with some ideas and write some things. --Sahabah (talk) 10:19, 10 November 2013 (PST)

More stuff

I want to add [41] at a page, but not sure which one? From this source, we can say

During a United Nations vote, whether "sexual orientation" is part of a resolution condemning extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions. 93 countries supported it, none which were Muslim majority. But of the 55 that opposed it, 35 of them were were Muslim-majority. 44 other countries abstained or didn't vote. Majorities according to Pew Report 2010

Which page and section could this go to? One in Category:Islam and Homosexuality? Or is another source and more context needed first?--Lemming (talk) 06:50, 23 November 2013 (PST)

Okay. Thanks. I'll find a place to add it. --Sahabah (talk) 12:24, 23 November 2013 (PST)

At the List of Genuine Islamic Inventions... page, under the Terrorism section, I think there is enough there to combine the 'first suicide bombings' into a single sentence of:

The first ever suicide bombings to occur inside the countries of Bulgaria, Kazakhstan, Mauritania, Nigeria, Pakistan, Somalia, Sweden, Tunisia and the United Kingdom, were all carried out by Muslims.

The details of the bombings themselves seem a little outside the coverage of what the article is trying to achieve.--Lemming (talk) 12:58, 24 November 2013 (PST)

The reason why I provide the info that I do, is to show Islam was the motivation behind them. Otherwise, most of those entries would be pointless. Kazakhstan, Mauritania, Pakistan, Somalia, and Tunisia are all Muslim majority countries. If the suicide bombings were carried out for a reason other than religion, it would hardly be anything to write home about. It would only be common sense that the "firsts" were Muslim, since most of the population are Muslim. --Sahabah (talk) 13:27, 24 November 2013 (PST)

Good, context is always important. With the images, would you agree or disagree that placing images on the right side of text is better than a gallery at the end?--Lemming (talk) 14:28, 29 November 2013 (PST)

Hi. We try to avoid over-cluttering articles with illustrative images, limiting them to just one at the top-right of the page. Even if we did dot pictures around the article, it wouldn't exceed more than a handful. However, the gallery allows many more images to be placed in the page. Also, wherever appropriate, we would skip the gallery altogether and create a stand-alone image page. --Sahabah (talk) 19:14, 29 November 2013 (PST)

Hi Sahabah,

I've wrapped up my article about the Qur'an and a "universe from smoke". It's in my sandbox User:Atheistig/Sandbox2. I was thinking about adding it to the Islam and Science page down near the bottom with the other refutations of Apologist claims in section 5 : Science in the Qur'an. Sound good to you?

Hi Atheistig! Great. I'll take a look at it soon and move it to my sandbox for formatting fixes etc. Concerning the new articles you're working on;

1. The "Unreliability of the Hadith" article is not something that would be accepted. Admins have had a long discussion about this a while ago. The problem with it is the fact that such arguments are used by apologists to basically deny every bit of valid criticism aimed at Islam or Muhammad. And the truth is, the Qur'an is historically just as unreliable as the hadith. Our criticism of Islam is based on its own sources. All mainstream forms of Islam (Sunni-Shi'ite, i.e. about 99% of all Muslims) accept hadith. So, as far as we're concerned, hadith are a valid religious source and the historicity doesn't concern us.
2. The "Historicity of Muhammad" article could probably be accepted as an essay attributed to you (we have quite a few essays, not many that are high quality. So a well-written essay from you would be appreciated). But not as a mainspace article. This is because such forms of higher criticism can be viewed sort of like "original research". There are lots of theories and claims but nothing set in stone. We, (as in "WikiIslam") wouldn't really like to comment definitively in support of one or the other. --Sahabah (talk) 15:51, 14 December 2013 (PST)

Oh ok, that's interesting. Let me tell you a bit about where I was planning to go with the Historicity article and you can let me know if you think it might fit as a mainspace article or as an essay. I was thinking of taking the reader through some of the evidence (or lack there of) from the first 2-centuries of Islam. Basically showing non-Muslim references, archaeological findings (i.e. coins, inscriptions, etc.), and then early Muslim references (hadith, sura, etc.) and talk about what we really know about Muhammad and how we know it. That's where the idea for the "hadith are unreliable" came from; mainly talking about how they are poor historical documents because they come late and even the most conservative muslims have to agree that 99% of all hadith from the 8th-9th century were considered forgeries or "not-authentic". I was thinking of being PVN on whether Muhammad actually existed or if he was a myth invented by later Muslims. Basically, showing the evidence and then talking about how each camp interprets that evidence. Personally, I'm convinced that Muhammad was a real person, as is the mainstream view among non-muslim historians. But, I've been reading a few books about Muhammad as a myth and there's some interesting hypothesis in there. Appreciate any thoughts you might have. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Atheistig (talk • contribs) on 11:12, 15 December 2013

Okay. If it's simply documenting the available facts and remains neutral concerning any conclusions about Muhammad (basically letting the readers make up their own minds) it may fit in the mainspace. But obviously we'd have to make a decision once the article is nearing completion. I'm not well versed on this subject, but AFAIK the Qur'an is in a similar situation as the hadith literature with little evidence for its existence early on. So it would be great if that is covered sufficiently. Also, the fact that Muslims agree that there were a lot of forgeries may deserve a mention but it should not be given undue weight (since the article is covering the subject from a historical perspective, what Muslims believe is really not that relevant). --Sahabah (talk) 16:18, 15 December 2013 (PST)

Hi why are my edits taking so long to approve, is there something wrong with them?--Lemming (talk) 12:11, 17 December 2013 (PST)

I've now approved them all. --Sahabah (talk) 03:55, 18 December 2013 (PST)

Hi can you put this on the correct page Persecution or Prejudice?

{{Quote|2013|"'''In 13 countries around the world, all of them Muslim, people who openly espouse atheism or reject the official state religion of Islam face execution under the law...'''" A first survey of 60 countries last year showed just seven where death, often by public beheading, is the punishment for either blasphemy or apostasy - renouncing belief or switching to another religion which is also protected under U.N. accords. But this year's more comprehensive study showed six more, bringing the full list to Afghanistan, Iran, Malaysia, Maldives, Mauritania, Nigeria, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, United Arab Emirates and Yemen.<ref>{{cite web|url= http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/10/us-religion-atheists-idUSBRE9B900G20131210|title= Atheists face death in 13 countries, global discrimination: study|publisher= Reuters|author= Robert Evans|date= December 9, 2013|archiveurl= http://www.webcitation.org/query?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.reuters.com%2Farticle%2F2013%2F12%2F10%2Fus-religion-atheists-idUSBRE9B900G20131210&date=2013-12-14|deadurl=no}}</ref>}}

--Lemming (talk) 16:29, 20 December 2013 (PST)

Hi. That's already been added on the Shari'ah page. --Sahabah (talk) 16:36, 20 December 2013 (PST)

Hi, is there a suitable page for the graph from Ruud Koopmans, "Fundamentalism and out-group hostility", WZB Mitteilungen, pp. 2, December 2013, http://www.wzb.eu/sites/default/files/u6/koopmans_englisch_ed.pdf.  to be placed? A common argument is followers of Islam are equally bad as followers of Christianity. But this shows that isn't the case.

I am waiting for one my edits to @ Science Statistics to be approved, any chance of getting publishing rights? Most of my incorrect edits is information already placed elsewhere.--Lemming (talk) 10:56, 21 December 2013 (PST)

Unfortunately no. But I've approved the stats now. Concerning the graph; because of their use of a ridiculous definition for "fundamentalist", the graph actually works against the point you want it to make. As has been pointed out by many people, if you asked those same three questions (about their level of belief) to Christians in the Americas, Asia or Africa, the difference between Muslims and Christians would be negligible. The problem with the graph is that, when referring to Christian fundamentalism most people mean Biblical literalists who think the Bible is inerrant or that the world was created in 6 days, but when referring to Islamic fundamentalism most people mean Qur'anic literalists who think gays, adulterers and apostates should be executed etc. That study obviously doesn't take this into consideration. --Sahabah (talk) 13:55, 21 December 2013 (PST)

I am planning following articles: Arabcentrism in quran, resurrection, quran hadith n scholars: jinn. Can i go ahead?? is there something like requested articles? Saggy (talk) 11:55, 28 December 2013 (PST)

Welcome! You can work on articles in a sandbox (e.g. User:Saggy/Sandbox, User:Saggy/Sandbox2, User:Saggy/Sandbox3, User:Saggy/Sandbox4). --Sahabah (talk) 11:58, 28 December 2013 (PST)

and yu will pass them afterwards??Saggy (talk) 12:24, 28 December 2013 (PST)

Depends on many things. It may be accepted or it may not be accepted. Obviously we can only make a decision after we've read whatever it is you plan to write. You may find it useful to read through our guidelines and help pages[42]. --Sahabah (talk) 12:30, 28 December 2013 (PST)

What was wrong in my recent edits? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Saggy (talk • contribs) on 13:36, 28 December 2013

Not strong or interesting questions. --Sahabah (talk) 13:54, 28 December 2013 (PST)

But r they answerable? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Saggy (talk • contribs) on 14:00, 28 December 2013

Refer to my previous answer. Please also sign your comments with 4 tides.--Sahabah (talk) 14:23, 28 December 2013 (PST)

Are you ok with the last editor's username in the footer? For example:

This page was last modified 16:23, 28 December 2013 by WikiIslam user Sahabah.

I think its a good thing mainly because it increases the chances of new people becoming editors. I remember going on a certain wiki which had this and I liked it. I felt more encouraged to be an editor. Lets try it for some time and see if it does anything for us. --Axius (talk) 07:56, 2 January 2014 (PST)

It might be worth giving it a try. But I don't think the same editor's name being at the end of most pages looks very good for the wiki.--Sahabah (talk) 10:47, 2 January 2014 (PST)

Yea it doesnt look at good as not having the text. Lets see if it helps in editing. We can try it for two months or so. --Axius (talk) 13:41, 2 January 2014 (PST)

Sad that some of that editor's work had to be removed. I made this change in the 'welcome creation' page[43]. Hopefully now they'll talk to us first before starting any translation work. Tweak as you like. --Axius (talk) 10:27, 13 January 2014 (PST)

Cool, Will do. Yeah, it's too bad. But I don't understand why new translators go straight to the core articles. It's common sense that small paragraph summaries are useless without the full articles. It's also a shame that some of them feel the need to alter the original articles without keeping us informed. That comment he added about the "90%" completely undermines the entire article. --Sahabah (talk) 15:20, 13 January 2014 (PST)

Yea those changes/additions aren't good. Thanks for watching out for that.

What do you think about task 2 [44] (the one about new Overview articles which are all sourced). The last line of that task is about core articles. Some initial thoughts: This could mean that the current Core articles would have the "Articles/Article summaries" sections re-written so they are all referenced/sourced, and then we can still use the {{main|}} template to link those articles. They can then translate these Core articles and the {{main templates can just be removed from the text. What do you think. I'll think more about this. What we want is an sourced overview that is a stand alone article, and thats what people see when they click those links. The next issue is, what do we do with the article summaries. Article summaries could be moved further down on that page. Or they could be merged and we could only have them linked with the "main" template and they wont lose their visibility. This should help prevent more direct translations of these articles. We can leave notes like that for people who edit. We should still think about these overview articles though. They will also be great as first translations. I'll post here if I get any good ideas. --Axius (talk) 17:13, 13 January 2014 (PST)

The core articles were always meant to be an easy-to-read starting point for each topic, guiding readers to more information (basically hub pages with a lot more information). That was always the point, and they work brilliantly for that. They were not meant as stand-alone articles. So the problem is the summaries on the core articles are very brief and many aren't even summaries; they're introductions explaining what the full articles are about. To make them stand-alone articles, most of it would have to be rewritten and expanded. So they would no longer be short or easy-to-read. They would be long, complicated sections that are basically repeating already existing information and making our real articles a little pointless (since the info on those pages will already be on the core pages). --Sahabah (talk) 17:40, 13 January 2014 (PST)

"What we want is an sourced overview that is a stand alone article, and thats what people see when they click those links."

When has this ever been what we wanted? Every other article on the site is a stand-alone article, so why would we want the same for the core articles linked on the side? The whole reason we started those core articles was to provide a single page that would branch out to all the other important articles. Why would we want to put normal stand-alone articles on the side-bar? --Sahabah (talk) 17:47, 13 January 2014 (PST)

Ok well, you're not seeing it the way I'm seeing it. I would explain further but since I dont see myself working on this any time soon I'll just let it pass. If I work on such a sample sourced page I'll talk about this again. --Axius (talk) 18:07, 13 January 2014 (PST)

I don't see any harm in discussing it now. Besides, more core articles are on our tasks page. This means I'll possibly be creating more and it would be nice to know if that would be a waste of my time or not. So, to start, just tell me specifically what benefits do you think we will gain by whatever it is you're suggesting?

Also, answering your original question about task 2, I think we should stick to making it similar to the Wikipedia equivalent (i.e. a long but single page). Splitting topics and spreading it over multiple pages would involve too much work. I doubt any editor would finish a project like that, and even if they did, it would probably turn out less than satisfactory. It would also be repeating a lot of information for no apparent reason. Maybe you're thinking translators would benefit (which is what you seem to be saying). But I don't think that's the case. Translator would probably never finish translating it. Rather than translating a few normal articles, they'll start doing that for a few days then stop; leaving us with a lot of unfinished and useless pages. --Sahabah (talk) 18:26, 13 January 2014 (PST)

It would be too much work for me to try to make my point more clear without showing you an actual example of it. If you dont agree with that task, you can move it to my user page. Its ok with me. I can move it back if I get to it again. You can also save these comments in that task's description (hidden comment). --Axius (talk) 18:49, 13 January 2014 (PST)

We could get rid of the news section (Main_Page) or get the old RSS stuff back in but I dont know if it will be good since we dont control the auto generation. I tried to find the code we had before but I cant find it. --Axius (talk) 17:44, 16 January 2014 (PST)

Al-Q has some issues that he's dealing with at the mo, but will be back soon to regularly update the news. He should also be creating news pages for the few months he missed.--Sahabah (talk) 06:01, 17 January 2014 (PST)

Oh ok, cool. Good to know. --Axius (talk) 06:07, 17 January 2014 (PST)

Hi Sahabah, I've finished to translate an article in italian: "the timeline of Muhammad".

I've also noted that you have translated "Women are deficient in intelligence and religion". With some little (very little) errors =) =). Can I help?

Hi Hood4. Of course. Your help would be greatly appreciated! Feel free to correct any errors you see. And thank you for the new translation. I will add it now to the front page. --Sahabah (talk) 14:42, 26 January 2014 (PST)

thats a strange legend- lightning and resurection . what was wrong in adding it? Saggy (talk) 03:09, 9 February 2014 (PST)

It's already a stretch having a section on miracles in an errors page. I think that new addition was weak and the page is better without it. --Sahabah (talk) 03:18, 9 February 2014 (PST)

How about dis- Pharoh doing crucifixion(anachronism)? or the sun or earth being the cause of shadows (i have details on this one because this eror depend on translations but error is there). which of the two do u like?Saggy (talk) 04:28, 9 February 2014 (PST)

Both of those sound great. Please make sure that they're not already on there somewhere (it's a long page so it is easy to accidentally add duplicates). --Sahabah (talk) 04:32, 9 February 2014 (PST)

I wanto start a logical errors article (diferent from contradictions and sc errors). How to put put sections in it?chapterwise?Saggy (talk) 01:25, 12 February 2014 (PST)

You can work on articles in a sandbox (e.g. User:Saggy/Sandbox, User:Saggy/Sandbox 2, User:Saggy/Sandbox 3). For chapters and other formatting, you can press the edit button at the top of any page and see it. For the main chapter headings it would be: ==chapter heading here== For a sub-heading it would be ===sub-heading here=== And so on. You should also take a look through the help pages. --Sahabah (talk) 03:58, 12 February 2014 (PST)

Theres a very common error ; rain brings trees of a dead land to life therefore people will be also brought back to life. Is it scintific or logical? Looking for more errors whcih are only logical. U have any? I listed some in my sandbox.--Saggy (talk) 03:47, 16 February 2014 (PST)

What verse is that? If I think of any I'll let you know. --Sahabah (talk) 05:39, 16 February 2014 (PST)

Here 7:57, 35:9,43:11,50:11,30:19 30:50.--Saggy (talk) 08:33, 16 February 2014 (PST)

okey its non-sequitur logical fallacy.--Saggy (talk) 09:17, 17 February 2014 (PST)

I have good numbers of verses. Shall I still make the article in sandbox or I make it as an article and use undercontruction template?--Saggy (talk) 11:59, 18 February 2014 (PST)

Hi. It's probably best to keep working on it in your sandbox. --Sahabah (talk) 13:59, 18 February 2014 (PST)

On second thoughts, a better idea would probably be to move your article to the main Sandbox URL like: WikiIslam:Sandbox/Name of your article here (e.g. WikiIslam:Sandbox/All about Islam. --Sahabah (talk) 15:57, 18 February 2014 (PST)

What after that?--Saggy (talk) 07:48, 20 February 2014 (PST)

Obviously it will stay there until it is completed. If it meets our quality standards and we think it is suitable for this site, then it will be moved to the mainspace. If it doesn't meet quality standards and/or is not suitable for this site, then it will stay there until it does or be deleted (depending on whether it shows potential). --Sahabah (talk) 08:27, 20 February 2014 (PST)

whats your opinion on this thing?[45] Cleanup and lead still left.--Saggy (talk) 01:25, 21 February 2014 (PST)

Good work in starting that article but I think it needs many more errors than just 5 or 6, before we can call it "logical errors in the Quran". The Skeptics Quran may be of help. They have categories like Absurdities, Contradictions (these should be checked against our list of contradictions, by the way). --Axius (talk) 05:09, 21 February 2014 (PST)

Yeah, I would say it's not very substantial ATM. I also think not all of them are very solid logical errors. The first error doesn't conclusively show Allah had to be "reminded by Jesus". To me that's clearly the author trying to make a point (i.e. Allah knows everything), and Allah's questioning is just theatrics. It doesn't necessarily indicate that Allah has bad memory.

Concerning the SAQ, I'd say it's a decent place to get a few ideas, but even critics have commented on how crappy that site is, taking things out of context etc. I'm not saying I agree with them, but our Science Errors page is in such a mess because an editor simply lifted everything from another site (i.e. AnsweringIslam). The last thing we want is to have history repeat itself and open us up to more criticism. --Sahabah (talk) 06:11, 21 February 2014 (PST)

Yes everything from other sites would have to be verified/evaluated carefully instead of being copy pasted straight away. We cant trust other sites and they're only additional sources of information to check.

Saggy, please make sure the claims are strong and cannot be questioned or interpreted in any other way (see Sahab's response). This isnt easy but it will be very worth it in the end if you work hard on every claim and get it right. So take your time, there's no hurry. These error pages are often linked from outside so its important to get them as strong as possible. Sahab is giving you advice here but if you need my help also in any way let me know. --Axius (talk) 09:51, 21 February 2014 (PST)

Yes d site is crappy. The translations thingo, most errors i got are mistranslated to try and hide them. For my article, can u both think of a better name so that we will not sit around wondering whether they are logical?--Saggy (talk) 13:27, 21 February 2014 (PST)

Oh, I forgot another q. Where to explain why a claim is strong? In my single article itself?--Saggy (talk) 13:31, 21 February 2014 (PST)

Yeah, a quick few lines or a paragraph should be fine in the page itself. About mistranslations; only those 3 main translations are to be used in our Errors pages. If the errors are not apparent in any of them, then that's too bad. Do not include those verses as errors. --Sahab (talk) 16:16, 21 February 2014 (PST)

1 more I started. Theres lots u can put here Im busy.--Saggy (talk) 08:09, 24 February 2014 (PST)

I echo Axius' reply to the same message when I say that I too am busy. We all have our own things to do already. --Sahab (talk) 11:50, 24 February 2014 (PST)

The new 'emoticons' dropdown next to Help is just a test (also, the new Info tab). I'm checking it out to see whats possible. The examples worked so thats good. I'll be back here after I find out more - lots of possibilities. I'd like to try to move all the stuff at the bottom to the top (so its in one place) and see if thats better than what we have right now. Although there's so much that can fit in this new toolbar, the bad side in my opinion is the extra clicks it takes to get to the item we want, but I guess there's no alternative. We just have to make sure the most often accessed stuff is reachable in the easiest/shortest way (the buttons for example, we can change those). I'll think about it. We can also make new icons for existing text stuff at the bottom. I'll have to look into this more and see.

Also noticed that around 1 out of 10 or 15 times, the new buttons wont show up in the toolbar. Good thing it doesnt happen often and we just need to click the 'edit' links again to reload the toolbar and then the new buttons usually show up. --Axius (talk) 19:17, 25 February 2014 (PST)

Nice. Looks good. The new edit toolbar you made yesterday is also cool. Much neater than the last one. --Sahab (talk) 08:16, 26 February 2014 (PST)

this is militia groups, which kills student and infidel. can i build an article (english) for this group?--Mudul (talk) 10:44, 26 February 2014 (PST)

Yes, you can work on articles in a user sandbox (e.g. User:Mudul/Sandbox, User:Mudul/Sandbox 2, User:Mudul/Sandbox 3), or in a WikiIslam sandbox like: WikiIslam:Sandbox/Name of your article here (e.g. WikiIslam:Sandbox/Boko Haram). --Sahab (talk) 14:49, 26 February 2014 (PST)

This is a related article: Qur'an Only Islam: Why it is Not Possible there. I think it should be linked. Dont we link related articles in See Also? See also doesnt only have to contain the "main" top-level topics. --Axius (talk) 07:01, 1 March 2014 (PST)

Oh wait. Is the [46] mainly about the 5 pillars? It doesnt look like it is. Its about the general difficult of being Quran-only so yes I think it should be linked. --Axius (talk) 07:08, 1 March 2014 (PST)

I wrongly thought it was mostly about the 5 pillar. I still have reservations about linking that article because it's in a terrible state, but I'll put it back if that's what you want. The five pillars section shouldn't be there though. It's at odds with the approach Saggy is taking (quoting the verse then explaining why it is insufficient), and they should each be separate. I think Saggy's actually started putting them in individually (the first section on that page is "Charity"). I also don't think the conclusion is needed. This page is like the Errors/Contradictions pages. The conclusions are a little pointless. --Sahab (talk) 07:26, 1 March 2014 (PST)

Ok. If you think its in bad shape and shouldnt be linked that fine, yea we can leave it not linked. I'll take the conclusion out. --Axius (talk) 08:31, 1 March 2014 (PST)

Cool. Thanks. --Sahab (talk) 08:43, 1 March 2014 (PST)

We really dont have a lot of discussions to have a need for making separate forum pages for Help and Inquiries, Ideas and Suggestions and then a 3rd General discussion page (WikiIslam:Forum, which had not being used in a long time). So we should keep the Translation page, and move all the contents of other two (Help/inquiries and Ideas/suggestions) into General discussions and a third for Announcements (this 3rd is up to you).

The "Discussions" link in MediaWiki:Sidebar was going to WikiIslam:Forum/Ideas and Suggestions which isnt the best because if someone doesnt have an idea or suggestion they'll feel they've landed on the wrong page, so I changed that to the main forum page (WikiIslam:Forum). The General category is where people usually want to post stuff anyway (people dont want to think too hard about where they should post).

Another thing, we can probably delete or move old discussions into 'WikiIslam:Forum/Archives', so nothing too stale is there or it wont look good and encouraging. Thats all I have for now on this. --Axius (talk) 16:15, 5 March 2014 (PST)

Having the Help and Inquiries page makes it easy for new users to find answers to questions that have already been asked. That's why I created it. And I don't agree with the idea that users will feel like they've landed on the wrong page. That discussion page is linked under "Help Needed". It made sense when it linked to the Help and Inquiries page, but not now. --Sahab (talk) 16:30, 5 March 2014 (PST)

H/I isnt being used often [47] (last edit 6 months ago) enough to make it the primary link for Discussions. But ok, valid point that Discussions now doesnt make sense for Help needed. Lets move it below Editing Help. Saggy made a number of sections recently on your talk page that should instead be on some kind of "current discussions' page so everyone can respond and they're not really messages specific to only you. Lawrence made that recent topic [48] on another page (getting to it requires an extra click and eye-scanning). Again we want to make it easy for people to use the Discussion pages and we dont have too many ongoing discussions to need separate pages for these things.

Sorry, forgot to respond to "for new users to find answers to questions that have already been asked". If new users ask a question, we can give them a link to the H/I page. Right now we should see what we can do to make an easily accessible discussions page for current users. We can keep the H/I page if you want, but not link it to discussions. --Axius (talk) 16:41, 5 March 2014 (PST)

Okay. Yeah, I want to still keep that page. I've moved the discussion link up between the site map and recent changes. It's a more prominent position anyhow --Sahab (talk) 16:59, 5 March 2014 (PST)

Ok, even better location then. Wasnt that where it was earlier? lol. I cant remember. I think it was. Anyway. So I'll do that all: move Announcements to a new announcements page (otherwise its like a stick that gets in the way like on forums), move old comments to one single 'archive' page, Ideas/suggestions moved to General discussions (old entries moved to archive). I think that was it. And then I might move Saggy's "Logical errors' section on your page to the General discussions page. --Axius (talk) 17:26, 5 March 2014 (PST)

I thought you just said we could keep the Ideas/suggestions page, so I have no idea what you are saying here. --Sahab (talk) 18:01, 5 March 2014 (PST)

Oh, sorry, I'm getting mixed up with what you're saying. Maybe you should just do it and I can see what it is? --Sahab (talk) 18:03, 5 March 2014 (PST)

Ok I'm done. So the big thing again is that we have one easily accessible Discussions link for active discussions for current editors. --Axius (talk) 18:43, 5 March 2014 (PST)

Still not satisfied but its a better situation than before. I'll check again later to see if anything else should be done. --Axius (talk) 18:54, 5 March 2014 (PST)

You should just go ahead and get rid of the Help & Inquiries page and go ahead with the General discussion/project & task related pages. As long as we still have our Translation Project page it doesn't bother me now. --Sahab (talk) 14:28, 6 March 2014 (PST)

Ok. --Axius (talk) 18:05, 6 March 2014 (PST)

In the same attempt for making things easier/simpler for editors, I'm investigating this new version of the menu (you can see the comparison in that link easily). All the links useful for editors are in one place.

Currently all of the Editor related links are scattered. 1 link for Discussions at the top | 4 links in Help needed | 2 links in About. These are all links primarily relevant for editors. For starters, the Editing guide should not be in the About section. Its more useful in an area which Editors access. The same goes for policies. Policies are applicable/relevant only if someone is an Editor. The About section then is only 'about us'. The audience type is Reader and Editor and we keep these separate. When a reader is interesting in checking more information about being an editor they look at the Editor section and see all the relevant links, including the Policies link.

We've tried the "Help needed, Join our team" and it didnt help in a huge way, so lets try this Editors/Readers audience separation. I could have moved 'Recent changes' to the editors section too but we've always wanted that link in that area. Although it wouldnt be too bad if we moved it down. In any case, for now the big thing is this new section 'Links for Editors'. Other section names: Editors, Editing, Contributing to WikiIslam, Contributing, Contribute, etc. 'Editing' is good. We are making it easy for Editors to find the links that would be of interest to them and I think it brings editors together closer. Do you have any points that support the current version being superior over all as compared to the one I'm suggesting? --Axius (talk) 19:29, 5 March 2014 (PST)

Nope. Sounds good to me. I would also go with "Editing" as the section heading. What about the Core Principles when the are completed? Maybe that can go in the About section? It's policies I know but I think pages like Wikipedia's Five Pillars are of interest to everyone. We could always move it to somewhere else if we think it looks wrong. --Sahab (talk) 13:52, 6 March 2014 (PST)

Ok. Yea that could go in the About but I'll have a better idea when the page is ready. --Axius (talk) 18:05, 6 March 2014 (PST)

I hadnt even looked at that page WikiIslam:Core Principles (I was waiting for myself to finish that other community guidelines). Looks pretty good. I should try to create and finish that other page. --Axius (talk) 19:22, 7 March 2014 (PST)

Thanks. Yeah, I'm very pleased with how it's shaping up. It was really good luck for us that the Core Principles ended up as ten shared equally between the two sides (5 for content and 5 for community). It would have looked odd if it was not. As it is, that page should make a very positive impression on people and will allow them to get a good feel of what type of site we are with the minimal amount of text. Because this is about the core, there is no need to be in-depth/off-putting like how some of the other pages may be. It doesn't deal with anything in detail, just the bare necessities. --Sahab (talk) 19:40, 7 March 2014 (PST)

Yea that 5/5 looks good. Do you think the icon should be something else other than the atom because thats similar to the atheism symbol [49] (though I am one myself as you know but the site is neutral to other views). It could be a simple triangular bullet or anything else. --Axius (talk) 07:57, 9 March 2014 (PDT)

I never realized that. Yeah. I like that symbol a lot, but I have no objection to changing it. I'll try to come up with something different. --Sahab (talk) 08:07, 9 March 2014 (PDT)

Other options, it could be a little hammer icon [50], scroll icon, hand, justice, book etc. or some kind of bullet or shape. --Axius (talk) 10:06, 9 March 2014 (PDT)

Yea that looks good now. --Axius (talk) 10:09, 9 March 2014 (PDT)

How about making some templates for common messages e.g. content move [51]. The message would be left for the person who was working on the page. Inputs would be old and new page.

"I thought I would let you know that a page or section which you created or were involved in has been moved from [[---]] to [[---]]. Please note the new location of this page. Thank you."

The template name can be "talkmessage-moved". Any other messages that are commonly left for users should be templated (subst'd, actually, like the 'unsigned' template ) so we dont have to write them every time and its easy to leave the message. It might be that he choose the user page because it was an easy click on the top left. This software should have an easy click link for Sandboxes too.--Axius (talk) 17:27, 9 March 2014 (PDT)

[52] Long list of similiar messages at wikipedia to look at as examples. --Axius (talk) 17:39, 9 March 2014 (PDT)

Yeah, definitely. That would make life so much easier for us on the wiki. If they are not too technical for me, I will try to create some. --Sahab (talk) 17:43, 9 March 2014 (PDT)

They look easy so far. Use the format of un- (user-notice) as names of the templates instead of uw- (which is user warning; notice is more inclusive). They have these view pages also which allow us to see the templates: multi level, single level. Doesnt look like we should have a lot so thats good and we can make more as we see the need. We can link these in the Edit toolbar/sections for easy access. --Axius (talk) 18:28, 9 March 2014 (PDT)

Easiest to first make a list of the kind of messages that would be used: content or page moved (same template?). Your article has been finalized and linked. Article was moved to the Sandbox namespace. Article deleted. Edit reverted (used only for existing users), uses 3 parameters: target article, username and reason for revert. Obvious vandalism (no messages needed for that). User renamed (may not be useful since they wont know what the new username is, but ok).

Thats all I can think of for now that could be useful for us. Most of what they have wouldnt be used here. --Axius (talk) 19:23, 9 March 2014 (PDT)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘Oh. Those messages look very serious. I was thinking more in the line of the example you gave and integrating similar messages into our own.

For example, say a new user make a decent edit, but doesn't format it properly. We could leave a message like (I have no idea how the real template would be formatted so I've taken liberties):

{{talkpage-welcome|username}}((talkpage-issues|article|formatting|~~~~))

Which would produce something like:

Hi Ahmad and welcome to WikiIslam, the online resource on Islam. Our policies and guidelines can be viewed here. If you need any further clarification on an issue, let me or one of the administrators know. I noticed your additions to Islam were not formatted correctly. Please read WikiIslam:Formatting for help with how to format wiki pages. Thanks --Sahab (talk) 20:17, 9 March 2014 (PDT)

This way, it would ensure that everyone is greeted with a short but polite and to the point message. We could mix and match these templates for common messages to new users. What do you think? --Sahab (talk) 20:17, 9 March 2014 (PDT)

Yea thats fine, for new users and also for existing (a page was moved, etc) . --Axius (talk) 20:39, 9 March 2014 (PDT)

Cool. Thanks. --Sahab (talk) 22:02, 9 March 2014 (PDT)

Created a template as a test, Template:Utalk-content-moved entered by: {{subst:Utalk-content-moved|old page|new page}}. Tested at: User:Axius/Sandbox48. It also addressed the username successfully. --Axius (talk) 11:25, 10 March 2014 (PDT)

Okay. Thanks for that. It should help me understand how these thing work. --Sahab (talk) 14:27, 10 March 2014 (PDT)

Since I can't really see any relevant sub-sections to divide this list into, I've arranged them all in alphabetical order. This way there is at least some method behind its order. however, I've noticed another issue.

This article deals with the lack of detail and clarity in the Qur'an. So for example, Abu Lahab and Blowing on Knots is fine. The Qur'an mentions these things and fails to clarify issues directly related to them (i.e. mentioning "those who blow on knots" but leaving readers without a clue concerning their identity). But there are other subjects that cannot be blamed directly on the Qur'an. For instance, the Five Pillars (in general) and (in part) Ablution. The Qur'an never mentions the Five Pillars, so the lack of detail concerning them in the Qur'an is not a defect of the Qur'an but Islam. Similarly, ablution is described very well in the Qur'an. The fact that hadith add more to the Qur'an's instructions is not a defect/lack of detail in the Qur'an (although the second criticism i.e. "The purpose of this excessive (ritual) cleanliness is omitted" is perfectly valid). The same problem exists in the fasting section where some of the criticism is valid but others are not.

So these two things may be related, but they are distinct. How should we deal with this? --Sahab (talk) 17:31, 25 March 2014 (PDT)

Saggy any thoughts? --Axius (talk | contribs) 18:28, 25 March 2014 (PDT)

What do you guys think of this addition? It explains the difference and also justifies the Five Pillars section not follow the usual "quote a verse" format. Five Pillar is an important thing so I think that section being included is fine, but can you imagine how many thousands of rules there are in Islam that are never mentioned in the Qur'an? It would be silly to allow minor things to creep into that article, because then there is no logical reason to not include thousands of others. Major issues that are not in the Qur'an seem reasonable. Maybe if we can come up with a few more we could give it its own sub-section in the article? Worth a thought. --Sahab (talk) 06:52, 27 March 2014 (PDT)

I was thinking we can also use the headline "Practices and Rituals in Islam" for that section or something like that and keep the "five pillars" in the text narrative. I agree, the major things in Islam should be mentioned in that article and the smaller stuff can be left out because that would be a lot. I dont know what to do with Ablution. How about Hajj or Zakat, I bet that too is not described in detail. I dont know though. --Axius (talk | contribs) 10:04, 27 March 2014 (PDT)

Which is why all 5 pillars did not go in here. . But I still would have preferred if you keep those subsections in five pillars. fasting before 5 pillars? That looks wiyerd. Like that we could go on having lots of verseless sections to put more blames. Order? Not sure if alphabetical is the best. I followed numerical order so that there is no chance of duplication for users when they expand anywhere.Saggy (talk) 11:54, 27 March 2014 (PDT)

The criticism about "the certain number of days" is a valid criticism concerning a lack of detail in the Qur'an, so it's fine that "Fasting" is listed separately from the "Five Pillars" section which is dealing with another distinct problem within the Qur'an. I did suggest grouping the other type of error in a separate list on the same page (this would eliminate the problem of it looking weird).

Following the numerical order would not help other users in the slightest. This old revision is in numerical order. If an editor wanted to add a verse from surah 90, how would they know where to look? They wouldn't. They'd have to look through the entire list until they find it. Even if they could find it easily, some issues are covered in more than 1 surah, making a numerical order meaningless. At least with an alphabetical order, it looks a lot better and both editors and readers could find errors based on their subject matter a lot easier (obviously if they're looking for "Ablution", they'd know to look near the beginning etc.).

As a side note; there are some extremely obvious subjects missing, such as Jizyah and Muhammad himself. I will try to add these. --Sahab (talk) 14:36, 27 March 2014 (PDT)

[53] contains a quote:“If one was to insist upon the literal meaning (the translation favoured by the critics), one would still find that the Quran is 100% correct literally, too. The seminal vesicles are anterior to the sacrum and coccyx (lower back, loin) and the ribs are anterior to the seminal vesicles. If one was to draw a line from the tip of the coccyx, to the upper portion of the seminal vesicle _ either one of the two_ and extend the line forward it will catch the ribcage.The seminal vesicles from which the semen spurts out during coitus, lies between the ribs and the coccyx (backbone)!” Ther'es a diagram against the claim[54]. Then shall we add a section in this article?[55] --Saggy (talk) 04:37, 15 March 2014 (PDT)

When making edits to articles, your additions should not be made in a vacuum. The article as a whole needs to be considered. Most times, editors add material that do not go with what is already on the page and the article ends up like a patchwork, reading terribly. If a new section is added, I'd have to make some changes to the whole article. A "Miscellaneous" section or maybe a "Responses to Apologetics" section could be added at the end for dealing with these obscure sort of claims from non-notable people. But that diagram can't be put into the page (nobody wants to see a picture of a penis in the middle of the page. Plus, that diagram doesn't explain anything). It could be linked to in a ref tag. So go ahead if you want to write a response, but make sure the response is conveyed clearly through words. Explain in words why that claim is wrong. --Sahab (talk) 11:21, 15 March 2014 (PDT)

This case i non-notable. What title to give: "Responses to other claims", "Miscellaneous claims"? So far there is only 1 such claim to respond.--Saggy (talk) 11:32, 15 March 2014 (PDT)

There is a second non-notable apologetic[56] Now is it enough to add?--Saggy (talk) 11:51, 15 March 2014 (PDT)

I already said it's okay to add, only that the way it is added and what is added needs to be considered. They could be added under one section like this (just press the right edit but in that link). --Sahab (talk) 11:53, 15 March 2014 (PDT)

Good job on that. Those were well written responses.--Sahab (talk) 15:33, 15 March 2014 (PDT)

Why do u remove the claim links? How would anybody even know that such claims have been made? We need the claimer's name atleast if not the link.--Saggy (talk) 08:28, 16 March 2014 (PDT)

I noticed that too but if you see, the other quotes dont have references (quotes which are being rebutted). The existing material should have had URL's but it was taken from the FFI forum and I guess it did not have those references there. I would be fine either way although I'm partial towards keeping the links since they might change their website and claim they hadnt written it.

I've looked at this section and it looks fine to me although I dont have enough medical knowledge to evaluate the rebuttal. I feel it can be improved. Is it possible to add medical references for the rebuttal? For example wikipedia may have some information about the cause of ejaculation or anything else that supports the rebuttal.

Also this comment section should be moved to the talk page of the article. --Axius (talk | contribs) 09:20, 16 March 2014 (PDT)

Those websites are unlikely to change. this is the ref for the rebuttal. No need of medic- you can evaluate second one from an image i linked at start of this thread. It has no ribs but imagine ribs at a good height above the image; then imagine a line drawn from the bottom backbone.--Saggy (talk) 11:42, 16 March 2014 (PDT)

Thats a big wikipedia article and cant be used for a ref. I know the other responses arent using many refs but if you used some it would make that section "rebuttal" proof. --Axius (talk | contribs) 12:01, 16 March 2014 (PDT)

I vote for this response to be deferred to the tasks page until there can be more references and a stronger response. I dont know enough to evaluate it. One way to refine these kinds of responses is to debate them on forums and see the responses and then adjust the rebuttal as needed. Anyway its up to you and Sahab. --Axius (talk | contribs) 14:36, 16 March 2014 (PDT)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘I agree with Axius' suggestion for this response to be deferred to the tasks page. If that route is taken we could always keep the material that is already there in a hidden comment. The problem I now see with the response is that it's pretty hard to understand.

Concerning the references for claims made by apologists; Axius is right that most of them were missing. But the reason why I removed those last two links from the "Miscellaneous" section was because (as I've advised other users) we're not an "interfaith" or "dialogue" site, so unless it's someone very notable, we do not respond to specific apologists. Instead we respond to the general arguments raised, if those arguments merit a response at all. The last thing we want is to get drawn into a slagging match with some insignificant guy on a blog. Ideally their claims wouldn't even be quoted; they would be presented in our own words. Take for example, "Responses to Apologetics: Muhammad and Aisha". I refuted most of those claims after I encountered them from apologists, but I did not quote or reference a single apologist. Every claim is summarized in my own words, and this actually makes the page stronger because my words are a lot more concise and easier to understand than the words of illiterate apologists. Now what way is more universal and professional; refuting the arguments as a whole or refuting only individual, obscure internet apologists? So, no, I would say we do not need the claimer's name at all. In fact, aiming the response at a specific non-notable guy would unnecessarily weaken the page because it would then necessitate proof that (quoting Saggy's words) "such claims have been made". With my approach, it wouldn't make a difference if an individual removed a claim they made, because we are dealing with the argument, not the person who is making them. Besides, that particular claim would not be limited to that one particular person. Many others would be using it too on forums, blogs etc. Take argument number 23 as an example. That same Osama guy uses that argument. But why should we direct our response to one individual when thousands of people make the same claim? --Sahab (talk) 16:42, 16 March 2014 (PDT)

Yea. I think its a good idea to have a response thats 'generic' and doesnt name or quote specific mini blog sites. That way it can be used against any site that makes such claims, not just one. It makes it tougher to deal with the rebuttal because we need to generalize the claims being made but its a better way in the long run and I agree, it makes the site look better. And yea thats the way we've tried to go in the past. So I guess ideally the other claims would also be generic first and then name certain people (unless notable).

How about putting these tips in the Style Content Guide, in a section called "Writing Responses to Apologetic Claims" (or 'for Apologists'). --Axius (talk | contribs) 19:48, 16 March 2014 (PDT)

Cool. I'll add those tips to that page. --Sahab (talk) 19:53, 16 March 2014 (PDT)

Thanks. I reverted the changes and added the task to the tasks list at #6 in this section. [57] so it can be re-evaluated in the future. --Axius (talk | contribs) 20:17, 17 March 2014 (PDT)

I edited some of it, but can we expect a generic argument? Is this backbone-ribs a hot topic recently? Anyway, the claims looks slimmer now. Soures are not even needed. Its all obvious in an image search whether it is vesicles or anything else. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Saggy (talk • contribs) 04:36, 21 March 2014 (Remember to sign your comments)

Well, when we say "generic", we don't really mean the argument, but the wording of the argument, so that it could be made by a generic (i.e. any) apologist. You've edited those claims but in essence they're still the same arguments, so that's fine. About sources; do you know the origin of that diagram you linked to? Was it from a medical journal or site? If we knew that, we could just link to that in a ref tag. It would also be good to have a source for the % of semen. --Sahab (talk) 06:52, 21 March 2014 (PDT)

i got nother[58]. 4th pic from top. Saggy (talk) 09:31, 21 March 2014 (PDT)

Thanks, I'll cite that now. --Sahab (talk) 22:10, 21 March 2014 (PDT)

I got one notable claim.--Saggy (talk) 06:14, 22 March 2014 (PDT)

Cool. Can you reword it so it is not asking questions? See #6 [59] . --Sahab (talk) 06:17, 22 March 2014 (PDT)

Check the saved text now. hows it?Saggy (talk) 12:50, 28 March 2014 (PDT)

It's better. However, both of these two additional individuals are not making scientific arguments but claiming it either as a metaphor or a euphemism. So I think they would be better suited in a simplified form under a "Responses to Apologetics" section after the conclusion (e.g. see 72 Virgins). I will try to edit and show you what I mean. --Sahab (talk) 13:23, 28 March 2014 (PDT)

Actually scrap that thought. Yusuf Ali does try to throw around a lot of "scientific sounding" jargon, so that would probably be okay, but I think Muhammad Ali's claim can be merged into the third response to Amjad. --Sahab (talk) 13:28, 28 March 2014 (PDT)

Now go ahead?Saggy (talk) 08:25, 30 March 2014 (PDT)

I'll take a proper look at when I can. --Sahab (talk) 18:55, 30 March 2014 (PDT)

I've had a look at it, and your response doesn't make sense, or at least it is not worded clearly enough for it to be apparent. You mention that Yusuf Ali "does not explain what he means by seed: Sperm, semen, ovum or zygote". But then fail to expand on that by explaining how or why it matters. Then you say "But he does not say what a rib is, metaphorically." However, Yusuf Ali is not claiming the rib is anything metaphorically. I don't think we even need to respond to Yusuf Ali's metaphor claim, but if we do it, then the response should be clear and decisive. I don't think this is either. You can ask Axius to comment here if you want a second opinion. --Sahab (talk) 10:58, 31 March 2014 (PDT)

Fixed.Saggy (talk) 11:57, 31 March 2014 (PDT)

I thought it would be nice to have some of questions still answered by MyMagic like (#1 in particular):

1. What are the news stories about in the image posted under Yuvraj Hans' Facebook post? Are they claiming Hans converted or not?
2. Are Navraj and Yuvraj, Hans Raj Hans' only children?
3. You wrote that Hans Raj Hans rejected the claims of a conversion on February 21, but there are news reports available (including one you yourself use as a reference) that are dated February 20. Am I missing something here or was that an error on your part?

Great to have this page. 200K results for "hands raj" Islam so it will help everyone involved. Nice work in finalizing it. --Axius (talk | contribs) 00:55, 30 March 2014 (PDT)

Cool. I've left a message for him asking those questions and pointing out the differences between what he submitted and what we have now with the Hans Raj page. As I said to MyMagics, not a single word remains from the original. The differences between the two is actually quite shocking. Maybe being shown something like this is a good way to show editors what we expect? It was actually worse when the Sunita Williams page was created. If I remember correctly, there was no article there because his scant bit of analysis was faulty and almost all of the research behind that was done by myself. I don't get it. It seems when we get editors they almost never put any effort into it (this obviously does not include rare editors like Atheistig who are great). These editors are obviously drawn to us through our reputation and existing high-quality content, then start creating pages that are lower quality and more rushed than the average blog post (and I am not using hyperbole when I say that). How do they think we could ever maintain our quality with such submissions; by using a wiki fairy maybe? lol. I think the problem is expectations (contradictory ones at that). They expect others to do the legwork, additional research, cleaning up etc. while at the same time expect us to accept anything as a new article irrelevant of its quality. I suppose this is imparted on editors by Wikipedia's silly approach to certain things (but look at the terrible state of the majority of their content). Yeah, so this has made me think that we desperately need some way to inspire editors into putting more effort into their contributions and try to be more self reliant (as opposed to expecting there to always be someone there to bring things up to standard). --Sahab (talk) 04:10, 30 March 2014 (PDT)

Oh yea I see now, that version was nothing when he submitted it and he didnt do anything significant after that. I dont know how to make others do it like we do. That would be tough and people sadly arent interested in putting in the effort. Most visitors dont bother at all and make no edits and most of the people who do make edits just do the basics (we are grateful for whatever we get). Its sad but its the way things are. Do you think two new pages could be made that are copies of these versions to show people what needs to be done? And maybe a list of checkpoints of things they need to learn (things that you had to do, researching stuff, formatting it correctly etc). They still might not be bothered but we can try. How to create a good Article. --Axius (talk | contribs) 06:40, 30 March 2014 (PDT)

Yeah, most visitors don't make edits but that is perfectly normal. They are here making use of the information available, which is fantastic. Same with editors who do basic things, such as typos or small corrections. I think those small things are just as important in the long run and appreciate it a lot when I see IP editors making such edits. It's not really the amount editors contribute that is important, but the quality of what they contribute.

Keeping copies of those pages and making the article you suggested may be useful. We'll probably need more examples though. I suppose more of those will come in time. --Sahab (talk) 18:47, 30 March 2014 (PDT)

Agreed. Ok sounds good. --Axius (talk | contribs) 19:17, 31 March 2014 (PDT)

I had actually checked this [60]. 1844 is linked on that page (in 'see also' somewhere) but not quoted and mentions "snake". Thats why I had left it in. --Axius (talk | contribs) 16:01, 31 March 2014 (PDT)

Abu dawud 10:1844 mentions the snake, scorpion, rat, crow, dog and the kite so if we were going to keep it, it should not have been under a sub-section named "Snake". Only a few sections above it we have a sub-section called "Killing Crows, Kites, Mice, Scorpions and Dogs" where we quote a sahih hadith that says they all must be killed. Abu dawud 10:1844 says the crow must NOT be killed and contradicts the sahih hadith. You could move that hadith up to there if you want, but I fail to see what we'll gain by adding that there and confusing readers. --Sahab (talk) 20:54, 31 March 2014 (PDT)

Ok looks good with them expanded now. --Axius (talk | contribs) 17:52, 1 April 2014 (PDT)

I feel there is a lot of good content in Template:Pictorial-Islam-options and it needs more exposure (a lot of work went into writing it up). How about also making a page called "WikiIslam:Featured Articles", putting all the stuff in (as is, no random function - just a long list, categorizing it if possible) and then linking it on the left (maybe below Site map). And then renaming the "Pictorial Islam" on the main page as "Featured Articles" (and then see more Featured articles). Like how Rational wiki has a "best of RW" link at the left. [61]. Or some other way to give those articles more exposure. --Axius (talk | contribs) 07:27, 5 April 2014 (PDT)

I don't know. The "Pictorial Islam" template also links to library content, and to other things which are high quality, but I don't think would be right in a "Featured Articles" list (e.g. Universal Declaration of Human Rights). I'm not saying I'm against the idea, only that we can't really use that template to decide what should be "featured". I think we discussed this a while ago and commented on how hard it would be to choose what articles would go there. I still feel the same. I could easily point out articles that are crap (luckily they are only a few), but picking articles that I think are good would result in me picking practically everything we have. --Sahab (talk) 07:40, 5 April 2014 (PDT)

The thing with RationalWiki and other similar wikis, I would assume, is that they're a lot more lenient towards what they allow on there (just imagine some of the material here that have been deleted or moved out of the mainspace). So they have a lot more scope when putting together such a page. With us, most of the content, especially the new stuff, can be regarded as "featured content" simply because it's hosted on the site. --Sahab (talk) 07:57, 5 April 2014 (PDT)

Come to think of it, it would be slightly redundant when you consider our main page is basically a "Featured Articles" page in itself (although I would take a few off if it was a "Featured Articles" page ). --Sahab (talk) 08:05, 5 April 2014 (PDT)

Oh, yea I remember now we had talked about this before. Alright then. If I have time I might put it in a sandbox page just to see what such a collection looks like if laid out on the page. Agreed that it would be hard to choose featured articles because they're all or (most of them) "featured" since they're approved to be in the main space. --Axius (talk | contribs) 08:26, 5 April 2014 (PDT)

I thought you finished the prose. What more is left to do? Saggy (talk) 12:47, 5 April 2014 (PDT)

Yeah, it's ready. It can be created now if you really want, but now that those conversion pages are done, I was hoping to spend a good day or so on it to see what else I could find. --Sahab (talk) 12:59, 5 April 2014 (PDT)

Make it. Later we'll see if theres something to add. I don't think there is much left : could be 5 or 6 more.Saggy (talk) 13:56, 5 April 2014 (PDT)

""And among His Signs, He shows you the lightning, by way both of fear and of hope, and He sends down rain""(Q 30:24) Sc. error? Lightning is not explained, just atributed to him. And it is used as a fear.Saggy (talk) 04:40, 10 April 2014 (PDT)

I would disagree. Lightening does cause emotions (fear, or awe [62]). Lack of the explanation doesnt mean an error. It can be explained by the apologist. So probably not too strong. Again you can still move any verses to your own sandbox for later evaluation and any notes. --Axius (talk |

contribs) 06:04, 10 April 2014 (PDT)

You left?Saggy (talk) 04:07, 15 April 2014 (PDT)

Not sure what happened. Hopefully he's just taking a break. In my opinion minor disagreements should not cause anyone to become upset like he apparently did. One issue was the Quran/hadith topic which could be argued both ways as our discussion[63] showed. The other issue was me asking you to use forum page and not his talk pages for general issues. He himself had moved a discussion from his talk page to the forum page. Although I believe it was nothing to get upset about I did apologize to him and said I would mention it at another time.

I've been concerned with the community environment and how to preserve it. Me and him have worked hard on creating WikiIslam:Talk Pages and WikiIslam:Core Principles. These guidelines must to be followed at all times if teamwork on this site is to be preserved.

I'm trying to think of ways we can reach out to people and grow our community further. --Axius (talk | contribs) 05:25, 15 April 2014 (PDT)

Yeah, I was taking a break and reevaluating things (see number 10 on the Core Principles). Can't an editor do that without having it made into an issue on his talk page? Saggy simply asked if I had left. Your first two sentences in the reply would have sufficed, rather than you spreading stuff onto here and taking a dig at a long-term user who may not return to provide a reply. FYI if you think there was nothing for me to get upset about, then there is not much I can say to that. It's hard to believe and I'm pretty sure most people would disagree with you. I also do not appreciate you putting strikethroughs over my text. If something is not acceptable, then it should be removed, not altered. The fact that you would do that shows a lot of disrespect. Our own talk page guidelines says this is not acceptable. So does Wikipedia's:

"Never edit or move someone's comment to change its meaning, even on your own talk page. Striking text constitutes a change in meaning, and should only be done by the user who wrote it or someone acting at their explicit request." --Sahab (talk) 17:57, 23 April 2014 (PDT)

Ok I removed the comments instead of the strike through. Yea I see now that strike through should be done by the editor themselves. --Axius (talk | contribs) 18:57, 23 April 2014 (PDT)

Now that we have talk page guidelines and the Core principles in place, we will need to start enforcing them strictly. I feel that this is crucial going forward if we are to expect our site to grow (just like there are rules that everyone in a work environment must follow to keep chaos at bay and if those rules aren't enforced, they aren't any good). If I say anything that goes against these rules, you or anyone else can remove my comments anytime. If there are problems with any policies, we can address those with discussion. --Axius (talk | contribs) 19:48, 16 April 2014 (PDT)

If you remember once it happened that 4 hours had passed between the time an anonymous user on the RU site made an edit and the time you blocked or deleted/removed that comment. I had talked to you about this at that time and mentioned that we should not be interfering in the administration of the RU site. I had then left a message on their talk page letting them know they can administer their site in any way they like.

So as per: [64]

Once launched, they are free to evolve separately to the English site in style and content as long as the core principles are followed i.e. no politics, no promotion or criticism of other religions/worldviews and no opinions, only referenced facts concerning Islam.

Please dont make edits/deletes/blocks/moves on the RU site unless its an emergency or unless its non-administrative like making an inter-wiki link or any edit or action you know which will not be contested. There are administrators and users there who prefer to handle the site in whatever way they think is appropriate.

Previously they have replied to comments on talk pages so nothing should be done to interrupt the way they administer the site.

Does the current policy need to be more clear? --Axius (talk | contribs) 16:03, 24 April 2014 (PDT)

Nope. I'll avoid visiting the RU site in the future. --Sahab (talk) 18:15, 24 April 2014 (PDT)

I didn't say we have to completely avoid it. Just keep an eye out as to whats going on (if you want) and you can make non-administrative edits (interwiki links, anything else that cannot be contested). Just leave the administration stuff to them. --Axius (talk | contribs) 18:19, 24 April 2014 (PDT)

My browser is playing up and making my edits behave strangely. I'll come back later when it's sorted. --Sahab (talk) 12:16, 30 July 2014 (PDT)