Wikipedia:WikiProject Christianity/Outreach/August 2012

 Membership report The parent Christianity WikiProject currently has 341 active members. We would like to welcome our newest members, User:David_FLXD, User:Alexsbecker, User:Penguin 236, User:Gugi001, User:John D. Rockerduck, and User:Margaret9mary. Thank you all for your interest in this effort. If any members, new or not, wish any assistance, they should feel free to leave a message at the Christianity noticeboard or with me or other individual editors to request it.

From the Editor Ichthus is one of the ways that the WikiProject Christianity’s Outreach department helps update our members. We have recently added some new sections to the newsletter. Please let us know if there are changes you would like to see in the format, or if there are any particular things you would like to see included. And if you have anything you would personally like to add, by all means let us know. The talk page of the current issue is probably the best place to post such comments. With that, I wish you all happy reading!

P.S. Please [ click here] to add the new Christianity noticeboard to your watchlist to follow the latest discussions relevant to WikiProject Christianity and subprojects.

By John Carter

Church of the month by User:Diliff Frauenkirche (Church of Our Blessed Lady) in Munich, taken from the tower of St. Peter's Church

Contest of the month We currently have a remarkable lack of Wikipedia-Books. Right now, Category:Wikipedia books on Christianity contains only 12 books. We certainly could have at least one book on each major grouping within Christianity. One of the challenges for this month, then, is working to put together books on relevant topics. For this month, one contest is for editors to assemble the basic Wikipedia books for each of the main topics of the extant related projects. When finished, they should their creation of the books at the main Christianity noticeboard, and at the end of the month the project will award barnstars to those who have made a significant efforts in developing this underdeveloped content.

Also this month, we are going to have have a challenge to create and improve some of our more important missing or low-quality articles. As biographies are often a bit easier, this month we are choosing two biographies: Karl Behm, which has yet to be started, and the currently Stub-class article Nerses IV the Gracious. A barnstar will be awarded to any editor who can get these articles up to DYK quality level and ultimately selected for the DYK section of the main page.

Calendar Thie coming month (mid-August through mid-September) includes feasts dedicated to the honor of Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Bartholomew the Apostle, Nativity of Mary, and the Exaltation of the Cross.

Featured content and GA report Since the last report, William de Chesney (sheriff), Knights of Columbus, and  Angelus Silesius were promoted to GA level. Our thanks and congratulations to all those involved.

Wikimedia Foundation report Wikinews is our sister site for developing news stories. Several events relating to Christianity, like the installation of bishops for instance, do not necessarily merit extensive coverage in wikipedia encyclopedic articles, but can and easily could be covered at greater length in a news article format. Given the number of significant news events that relate to religion, including claims of miracles, assignment of bishops and other religious leaders, church conferences, and other events, this site provides an excellent opportunity to provide in-depth coverage of current events at greater length than wikipedia.

Christian art

Christ Crucified by Diego Velazquez.

Spotlight One of our newer editors, User:David_FLXD, has recently gone through much of our content related to Methodism and assessed it. We are very grateful for his efforts, and that of all the editors who have had a role in developing that content. We have every reason to believe that this will make it significantly easier for the Methodism work group to create and develop content relevant to Methodism. To help that along, we certainly encourage everyone to do what they can to help David and the other Methodism editors to bring the content relevant to their tradition to the highest possible level of quality.

I believe ... in the Holy Trinity, the sacraments of Baptism and Holy Communion, the Arminian conception of free will through God's prevenient grace, and the regular renewal of the individual's covenant with God. I am a Methodist.

- Help requests Please let us know if there are any particular areas, either individual articles or topics, which you believe would benefit from outside help from a variety of other editors. We will try to include such requests in future issues.

Ichthus is the newsletter of Christianity on Wikipedia &bull; It is published by WikiProject Christianity For submissions contact the Newsroom &bull; To unsubscribe add yourself to the list here EdwardsBot (talk) ~