User:VenusFeuerFalle





Status
Losing hope in people's reading-comprehension.

Why do we even make edit-summaries when no one reads them anyways?

Goal
That Wikipedia can be used for matters of religion and philosophy as much as it can be used for science.

If you are new...
We frequently find new and ambitious Users, those edits might not be helpful at first. When they edits get reverted, this causes frustrtion especially if the reason is not clear. I decided to make a list below for introduction. Furthermore, I recommand to have a look at the Wikipedia's assistance system. Despite my New-User friendly layout, it is your job to ensure the quality of your edits. I am quick and strict on reverting edits if they have no encyclopedic value.

Maybe helpful definitions for beginners on Religion and Philosophy
I observed some common reoccuring misconceptions. Therefore, I decided to make a quick glossar: 1) Belief Systems with one supreme deity:
 * Monotheism: One transcendent deity intervening with the world
 * Deism: One transcendent deity but not intervening with the world
 * Panentheism: One transcendent deity intervening with the world through immanence
 * Pantheism: One immanent deity intervening with the world

2) Monotheistic systems:
 * Monism: One universal principle.
 * Mitigated Dualism: Two principles, but one is believed to derive from the superior one. It is usually the Devil who derives from God, thus allowing a distinction between two fundamental principles (often to excuse God from unwanted attributes), while securing the superiority of one principle.
 * Absolute Dualism: Two different principles.
 * Henotheism: A term used for the belief in several supernatural powers while venerating only one God or the belief in One God while the existence of other spirits or deities who are neither a coutner-principle (devil) nor another creator (polytheism) is acknowledged.

3) Belief Systems with multiple deities:
 * Polytheism: Multiple personal gods interfering with the World. Sometimes the deities are "too far away" and only influence the world indirectly.
 * Animism: The belief that material is always animated or contains spirits. Since some systems denote every spiritual being a deity, this is sometimes thought to be a form of polytheism. Some argue that the spiritual engeries lack personality, thus they do not qualify as (personal) deities.

4) Other terms
 * paganism: a term to denote non-Biblical tradition. Originally used for polytheistic Greeks, then Norse belief-systems. Later, also applied to every non Judeo-Christian tradition. In the last century, Islam was usually no longer considered "pagan", thus denoting "the three Abrahamic religions", since then. Not every pagan religion is polytheistic, some forms of Buddhism are atheistic.

Advises for beginners

 * Lead sections: The Leadsection is "an introduction to an article and a summary of its most important contents." If you add further information, it is a good advise to start within the body of the text, not the leadsection. The leadsection will follow lead after the content of the article has changed. Especially minor notes do not belong to the lead.
 * Original Research: Wikipedia gathers researched information together, but does not do research itself. Doing research yourself (Original Research) is a great thing in science, but not in writing an encyclopedia. Remember what the project is about creating an encyclopedia, not a promoting your research findings.
 * Verify your content: Sources also proof notablity of a topic. A new article, a new section, or a new reference to something is only needed if it has drawn scholarly attention to a subject. This is also true for analysing Holy Scripture. If your favorite interpretation of the Bible, Quran, or Bhagavad Gita, is not mentioned by any reliable source, it has not reached recognition beyond personal beliefs.
 * Implicit Original Research: Wikipedia is strictly against publishing your own work of research. This is not limited to avoiding coming up to a conclusion by doing original research, but also by synthesis of reliable sources. A good example is, you find a source stating "Abrahamic religions are religions featuring Abraham; Judaism, Christianity, Islam". Then you find another reliable source speaking about Abraham in Manichaeism, and you conclude that the efigure of Abraham exists elsewhere and decide to include it in the category of Abrahamic religions. This would be your own research done.
 * Not a form of Original Reserach: Allowed are all forms of "translation" of one statement. In the above examples you use deductive reasoning to combine two (or more statements). In the cases of translations or transscriptions and simple calculations do not add or substract anything to the available statements. They are allowed. For example, you have a certain numbers of adherences to a religion, it is fine to write them in percent (if all relevent numbers are mentioned in the source). Some translations might be Original Research, if there is no clear translation for something (such as Jinn to Demon), here a source might be useful or at least point at some sources using translations and show the reasoning of these scholars for their prefered translation.

General overview about what Wikipedia is
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. It is often confused with an attempted Almanach or a dictionary.
 * Not an Almanach: While Wikipedia tries its best to contain only "what is true", not "everything true is on Wikipedia". You might have noticed above that Wikipedia is limited by only promoting knowledge from scientific experts (or in political matters, also as independent as possible media) for the sake of quality over quantity.
 * Not a dictionary: The difference between a dictionary and an encyclopedia is the broadly that, a dictionary is about the term itself, while the encyclopedia is about the meaning of term or the concept expressed by the term. For example, about the term Satan, a dictionary provides various meanings of the term. It explans how this term can be used for "an adversary", "to curse someone", a "theological concept", "a literary figure", or "the embodiment of evil". The encyclopedia goes with one concept and explores it in greater detail. The concept of "Adversary" is limited and might be covered in the Etymology section of the article to give a quick introduction. The current article focuses on Satan as literary figure then. For the theological concept (which is equal in meaning with "embodiment of Evil") is explored in the article Devil. In an encyclopedia, both are different concepts, whereas in a dictionary, both things have the same meaning and can be considered synonyms, since both terms can be applied to both concepts. However, there is a tendency to use Satan more frequently as a figure in academic sources, thus the distinction. Alternatively, if there are no alternative terms available, there will be something like "Satan (Theological concept)".
 * Not a Fandom: Wikipedia is not the right place to promote favorite ideas or putting too much emphazis from within a certain group. Wikipedia takes the outside stand observing different phenomena. For example, while in many Muslim spaces, there are no images shown due to sensitivy of certain Muslim sects considering images forbidden, even Islam-related articles do not confirm to Muslim community standards. Same goes for the Christian perspective on matters and any other community. A community or group-related article does not confirm to the rules of the community or group in question. Similarly, not every popular theory needs to be mentioned. Not every show mentioning the name "Asmodeus" needs to be listed under trivia.
 * Not a how-to: Related to the topic above, Wikipedia is not about promoting current views. If, for example, all Christians today were to agree that Isaiah does not refer to an angel and the Lucifer is not mentioned in the Bible, it does not change the fact that there is a long history of an angel called Lucifer as the devil in Christian tradition. An encyclopedia does not change the article based on contemporary consensus of the opinion of a community. In fact, that some people believe to be consensus of a religious community or what the right beliefs are, can be merely a personal opinion, promoted as universally representative on Wikipedia, but not reflect reality. In fact, if there is such groundbreaking change, it will not go unnoticed by scientists and researchers, and soon there will be a reliable source be published about that matter.

Talkpage advises
People can have the same goal, but still different ways on how to approach it. Some edits are controversial, not because they are "hard to swallow" but simply due to a lack of being rather unknown to others. When you see that your edit cannot be summarized in the edit sumary, or reverts start a discussion in the edit-summary, use the talkpage.


 * Source your claims: The more extraordinary claims are, the more likely they are to be removed: If you do not cite your sources, it can happen that they are just removed. If you information got tagged with citationneeded, try to hurry and verify your claims. Check the sources you used, maybe your claim is in one of the sources but you forgot to add the citation. If not, the claim might be removed soon. Alternatively, you could go to the talkpage and explain your reasoning, but do not expect, unsupported claims to remain on Wikipedia for long.


 * Not a forum: It is great when you want to discuss a certain matter, but the Wikipedia talkpage is not the right place to do so. You found certain claims about Samael interesting or objectable? You are free to discuss your opinion... somewhere else.


 * Do not try to investigate the motivations: Related and one of the lesser great experiences here, it is not helpful to attack the person. It doe snot help you. Even if you achieve a "GOTCH'YA"-moment, it is no use, since noone cares as long as the information is accurate. Some Evangelical anti-Islam User promotes sources about Evangelicals claiming that Islam is from the Devil? When he did this by social studies about 2010th Internet propaganda, he will get away with it (as long as he puts it into proper context). A reasonable person removes this claim by saying " This is mean, you should not do this you Islam-hating mean guy!", his edits will be reverted according to the guidlines. This is not because Wikipedia has a bias towards mean people, but towards neutral viewpoints.


 * Context is key: which leads to the next question. If you understand the rules, it is easier to abuse them, unfortunately. However, there are guidlines for that and most people are reasonable persons. Most people are aware of context. If some Evangelical User points out a source about the atrocities of Muslims actions, but uses a relaible source dedicatd to war-crimes, of course the focus will be on violance and about more sophisticated concepts of Islamic theology and Jurisprudence. This would belong to an extra section about war-crimes not in the Islam main article, for example. And no, the main article does not need to cover this source at all. Not everything needs to be squished into one article.


 * Neutrality still belongs here: To remain as netural as possible, try to follow protocol then examing flaws in the article. If you are unsure or both parties cannot find an agreement, you can always consult a third opinion.

Advanced advises

 * Fix not revert: In general, try to fix edits, not to revert them, except they fail the guidlines. However, Original research or clearly biased edits can and should be removed and are not protected by this guidline.


 * Participate in GA reviews: GAs are some sort of quality seal on Wikipedia and everyone is excited about getting their articles reviewed. The more people are ready to take on this responsibility, the faster it goes. Feel already confident enough? Then check out some basic guidlines for a review.


 * List of sources judged by their reliablity: While your first edits might have been some basic books published by famous scholars, the more you edit, the more specific they (probably) become and you might need less known sources. Here is a list to learn the validity of a lot of sources.

Overview of the meaning o primary sources, secondary sources, and tertiary sources
Primary source is the source subject to study itself. In case of religion, if can be the Bible, the Quran, a Talisman, or an ancient grave. Although probably the most interesting subject for researchers, this is a no-no for Wikipedians. To properly understand the primary source, qualifications gained by excessive (unfortunately often expansive) studies are required. In your private life, you are free to interprete these sources as you want, and maybe you will even gain quite a few followers. A lot of Charismatic Christians and Salafis did it this way. But numbers do not equal quality. It has no authencity on Wikipedia. Secondary sources are written by qualified and reliable scholars, often published by peer-reviwed publishers and reviewed by more than one independent anonymous researcher of the field. Thefore, they are the most trusted then it comes to the interpretation of primary material. These sources are a direct analysis of the primary source. Tertiary sources gather the statements of secondary sources and present them in a coherent manner. On Wikipedia, you do it for free and for everyone to use it freely. A lot of online encyclopedias charge payment, Wikipedia does not and does not pay the editors. It does not develope primary sources nor does it an analysis of them (secondary sources). This is what Wikipedians are doing.

Support
If you feel you need support for Wikipedia-related articles, feel free to ask kindly on the talkpage. When I have time, I help you gladly. I cannot promise to have time on a regular basis of course. I limited myself to articles I have edited in the past, though. Regard my offer as advising to find into the matter from someone who did extensive research on that for almost a decade and probably outstands a lot of professionals.

Languages
I speak/read German, English, Turkish, and basic Arabic. I prefer English here, since I want everyone to participate and udnerstand discussions going on.