FreeThought Wiki NOW ONLINE - Help Us Populate It.
Offline Hey everybody...
For those of you who aren't aware, there's a new site called:
that I've set up for the purpose of compiling a central repository of well-written arguments, information and other resources for the Freethought movement. This is a modified version of the same software Wikipedia is running on, but it has a little more flexibility -- you can even embed YouTube and other videos.
I'm encouraging everyone to register and help contribute to the site, making it a "must visit" resource for information on debate and issues. Let me know what you think.
I don't anticipate FreeThoughtPedia.com being any kind of substitute for forums or existing sites. We'll continue to discuss and debate and post info in all the regular places, but think of FTWiki as a place where, after you've debated an issue and come up with a solid argument on a particular theological question or claim, this is the place to make it available so others can find it so we're not continually re-inventing the wheel, and at the same time honing our arguments to be as concise and effective as possible.
- Login to post comments
Love the idea. I hope it takes off.
Oh, this is so cool! I don't know how much time I'll have to contribute, but I did sign up!
Neat. I like that idea. I look around at some of the logical fallacies and different argumements theists use. Those I find helpful, because they're meantioned a lot in the RRS, but I haven't really looking into what they really mean.
JESUS SAVES!!! .... and takes only half damage!
It's been a great exercise for me and others to fine-tune our arguments and learn more about the specifics of certain areas. What I'll often do is pick a particular topic and try to have a new article up on that topic. Other people for example, have been adding to the logical fallacies page in order to familiarize themselves with these issues.
The site is broken down into a few basic areas:
Common Theist Arguments - This is the section where we outline the most common arguments theists have that "prove" god or otherwise make a claim for the superiority of religion. We outline their claim, then refute it. We've even broken the claims down into different areas and we have a "hall of fame" for stuff like Ray Comfort's banana story.
Theological Criticisms - This section is for Freethinker essays and perspectives on religion. The first section is defense/debunking. This section is the counter-attack, providing more critique of religious doctrine and philosophy. If you have any essays you've written which you feel make a good case against religion, they'd go here.
Theists Gone Wild - This is probably going to be a popular area, with news and information on the crazy and illegal things perpetrated by "men of the cloth", as well as a collection of videos demonstrating the benevolent, all-loving, all-forgiving nature of christians that we're all familiar with.
There are other sections too, including details on definitions of religions and atheism, as well as lists of atheist groups, resources and more. And we're just getting started. So feel free to sign up and add your best arguments here! There are a lot of areas that need some assistance. You can surf around the site and find quite a few articles that are empty and need to be filled.
I'm torn...
I want to promote the shit out of it, but I know, the more I promote the more the entries will get trolled, wreaking havoc on the new editors of your site. Have you figured out a way to outsmart what usually makes wikipedia a horrible resource?
Vote for Democrats to save us all from the anti-American Republican party!
Please become a Patron of Brian Sapient
Kelly just suggested allowing only certain people to edit the wiki. Good idea?
Vote for Democrats to save us all from the anti-American Republican party!
Please become a Patron of Brian Sapient
Is the freethought wiki terribly different than the Iron Chariots wiki?
Kind of similar to this site:
http://www.zimbio.com/Free-thinking+humanists?IsNewZine=1
Which I started a short while ago
"The World is my country, science my religion" - Christiaan Huygens
I'm aware of this and it is a concern. However I haven't had any issues yet and I've already installed a sophisticated blacklisting feature. Plus Wiki is designed so that any vandalism can be easily reverted.
To be honest with you, my main concern wouldn't be theists vandalizing the system, but spammers. But I've got systems in place already to address this.
I also think Kelly is right... restricting access may be the thing to do, but I'd lock down the system later after we have a lot more content and we start to see vandalization. I've already set it up so specific pages can be protected from editing so even with it open, we can restrict areas that might invite inappropriate editing.
I didn't know about that site. It's neat, but it seems more like a news portal than what I'm working on, which is a carefully crafted resource for addressing theological claims and issues.
I'm all for restricting access, if that's what you need to do to keep a quality site, but doesn't that go against the idea of Wikis?
How about a 'peer review' system where a submission has to be approved by a substantial number of users before one of a dozen or so editors adds it?
"This is the real world, stupid." - Charlie Brooker
"It is necessary to be bold. Some people can be reasoned into sense, and others must be shocked into it. Say a bold thing that will stagger them, and they will begin to think." - Thomas Paine
Yes it does. And Wiki isn't designed for that purpose so you have to hack the core code to employ more control. I have added some extra code and hacked a few things in anticipation of abuse. There's now an elaborate blacklist sytem incorporated to also address spammers.
That's an interesting idea. At the least there could be a peer-reviewed section with restricted articles that are peer-reviewed.
The nice thing about the system is we can restrict any individual page (and cascading pages) to sysop-only status, so it won't be difficult to lock down the site in the case of abuse. We flag anyone who wants to pariticipate and is responsible as a sysop and then restricted editing to anonymous or non-sysop users. It can be easily done.
However, I haven't seen any vandalism yet, and remember, this system tracks all changes. If anyone does edit the content inappropriately, you can restore it with a single click of the mouse. Anyone trying to vandalize the system will also be exposed in terms of their IP address and agenda, which could come back to haunt them later (see: http://www.bsalert.com/news/2001/Fox_News_Caught_Hacking_Wikipedia_Entries.html for a good example).
At the present time, I see no advantage in locking down the system. On the other hand, if anyone wants to contribute and they're concerned that they might spend a lot of time working on content only to have it deleted by some fundy, rest-assured that isn't an issue. However, I have no reservations about doing what is necessary to protect the integrity of the system. But for the time being I see no problem with keeping it open, and even seeing how bad it could be with vandalism. It might be a situation where it's more amusing than anything else.
If Theists want to add content to the site, I'm even open to this, but it would be in a way where the FT's get the last word -- if there's that much interest, we can add sections to the site where we publish responses from theists to our arguments.
Ok, so it doesn't take long before some RRS people attract the vandals I see.. unless this was just a test:
http://www.freethoughtpedia.com/wiki/Special:Contributions/70.152.148.202
http://www.freethoughtpedia.com/index.php?title=Rook_Hawkins&diff=prev&oldid=566
Here's how I intend to deal with this stuff initially:
http://www.freethoughtpedia.com/wiki/Vandals
So someone modified Rook's page and vandalized it? Ok, well it's easy to lock the page and note the IP address. In this case, I wouldn't be surprised if this is one of the people in the community that did this - they'll find out in quick order they can't hide once we have their IP address.
Pile, I have a possible future suggestion which I think would ultimately benefit both FTPedia and the RRS at the same time. If RRS changed their forums so that you could include a FTW wiki link in a post or reply, such as "Hey you just committed [[ad vericundiam]]!", then they could have the website render it as a link to FTPedia like this:
"Hey you just committed ad vericundiam!"
That would seriously make the RRS website very powerful and at the same time boost the popularity of FTPedia. I would use such links all the time in these forums. Right now it's just a little tedious to connect the two; too much HTML/whatever involved.
Wonderist on Facebook — Support the idea of wonderism by 'liking' the Wonderism page — or join the open Wonderism group to take part in the discussion!
Gnu Atheism Facebook group — All gnu-friendly RRS members welcome (including Luminon!) — Try something gnu!
Great idea, but I'm not sure how amenable they'd be towards modifying the core code. Maybe it's already been heavily modified, but basically, what you're talking about won't be difficult simply using the existing (url) tokens... Plus we're going to polish up the sections like the logical fallacy index making it easy to find what you're looking to reference.