Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Oriental Orthodoxy/Archive 2

Regarding project banner
I have noted how several articles relevant to Christianity have only the banner of more focused projects, several Christianity banners, or no banners at all on the talk pages. This makes it rather difficult for the Christianity WikiProject to keep track of all articles, as well as potentially reducing the number of editors who might be willing to work on the article, if only the more focused banner is in place. If I were to adjust the existing ChristianityWikiProject to include separate individual assessment information for each relevant Christianity project, and display the projects which deal with it, like perhaps the WikiProject Australia does, would the members of this project object to having that banner ulimately used in place of this project's one? It might help reduce the banner clutter, as well. John Carter (talk) 18:17, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Advice needed: should st-takla.org be blacklisted?
One editor,, has added dozens of these links to the English-language Wikipedia over the last several years. A few links have also been added by others, but Wise mike has added the preponderance. We now have 89 of these links:
 * Special:Linksearch/*.st-takla.org -- list of articles with these links

Apparently someone has also spammed dozens of them to the Arabic Wikipedia as well and there has now been a request on Meta-wiki to blacklist that domain across all Wikimedia projects:
 * meta:Talk:Spam blacklist

I need to make a decision as to what to do with this request and I need your help. Are these useful links here? How badly do we want them on the English language Wikipedia?

Thanks, -- A. B. (talk) 16:40, 13 February 2008 (UTC)


 * My own impression is that it might stay. This page says it's been described as the best Coptic Orthodox site on the net, and it does have some very useful links. I'm not saying that it might not be overused, but I think it probably is useful to at least some degree. John Carter (talk) 17:06, 13 February 2008 (UTC)


 * As you have noted, that I am not the only one adding this link, as it is not spam or anything, they are really useful links to many of that website's visitors, and were added by the time, and not suddenly spam. Also you can check the pages yourself to see if they have a rich and original content or not..  Another thing is that you can easily compare that website to any related Coptic sites (using Alexa.com or any Site statistics service) and see its top ranking and how is it growing through the years more than any related site or not..  It is even rated No. 6 in the Top visited sites in Egypt in Alexa's Egypt Category.


 * I mainly haven't added except a couple of links to Wikipedia in the last couple of years, one of them when the Patriarch of Ethiopia visited the St. Takla's Church. Many of the related Coptic & general websites add that site to favorite links, and even add comments about it as a very nice and useful site (i.e. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)..  And many Coptic sites also copy full pages of its contents as those articles are useful, original and show the true Coptic Orthodox faith.


 * One last thing, you can ask some of those who edit these sections or are related to Coptic articles about whether it is not useful or not. If you noticed some of the links inappropriate in any way, for sure it should be removed, but just because there are many useful articles on the website, doesn't mean it is spam or should be removed.  I have mainly added related links to English and Arabic Wikipedias, and haven't touched anything else!  Those added in other languages were added by their publishers and translators, because they might have found them useful, and not added by me in any way.  And some of those articles, especially in Arabic, are built around and are original articles from that website, and not added by me.  Even publishers at Arabic Wikisource took the Arabic Bible from that website!


 * And Again, as I have said in my Talk page, I am ready not to add any more links if it is making an issue, later I can just suggest a link to any of the moderators or users, and they determine if it is beneficial or not. Tell me what you think.. Thanks. Wise_mike (talk) 17 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Fine by me. If you would want to maybe make those requests here, it would be as good a place as any. John Carter (talk) 14:02, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Bishoy Kamel up for deletion.
This fellow, Bishoy Kamel, who appears to be a contemporary Coptic Orthodox saint, has been listen on afd Articles for deletion/Bishoy Kamel. --Pgagnon999 (talk) 22:08, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
 * It looks like the nominator just withdrew the afd. Still, the article needs a lot of cleanup work; perhaps someone here can take it under their wing.--Pgagnon999 (talk) 23:08, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up. -- SECisek (talk) 07:50, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Glad to help. --Pgagnon999 (talk) 03:17, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Coordinators for the Christianity projects
I have recently started a discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Christianity regarding the possibility of the various Christianity projects somewhat integrating, in the style of the Military history project, for the purposes of providing better coordination of project activities. Any parties interested in the idea, or perhaps willing to offer their services as one of the potential coordinators, is more than welcome to make any comments there. Thank you. John Carter (talk) 20:59, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Coordinator?
It has probably been noticed by most of the editors who frequent this page that there is often a pronounced degree of overlap between the various projects relating to Christianity. Given that overlap, and the rather large amount of content we have related to the subject of Christianity, it has been proposed that the various Christianity projects select a group of coordinators who would help ensure the cooperation of the various projects as well as help manage some project related activities, such as review, assessment, portal management, and the like. Preferably, we would like to consider the possibility of having one party from each of the major Christianity projects included, given the degree of specialization which some of the articles contain. We now are accepting nominations for the coordinators positions at WikiProject Christianity/Coordinators/Election 1. Any parties interested in helping performing some of the management duties of the various Christianity projects is encouraged to nominate themselves there. Thank you. John Carter (talk) 17:34, 31 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Er, the whole idea of having "central coordinators" to "coordinate" everything, is utterly antithetical to some religions; while it seems to be openly embraced by others. Are you sure this is a good idea, and what is the ultimate goal? Til Eulenspiegel (talk) 18:06, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
 * The goal is basically to ensure that assessment, maintenance of portals, peer review, etc., for the various groups get accomplished. That's basically about it. In effect, these people will help to maintain the projects by volunteering to perform the various directly project-related activities. No particular additional powers beyond that are anticipated, nor do they exist in any of the other projects which have such coordinators. Generally, though, people who win election tend to be fairly respectable editors, so there word might in some cases be held to be somewhat reliable, but that's about it. John Carter (talk) 18:10, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
 * In this case, the Oriental Orthodox churches are more like a League of churches that agree with each other; ie. they don't have a sole coordinator on the ground, but each has its own head. To avoid people voting in blocs here, maybe we should have a team of representative coordinators in this case or something? Til Eulenspiegel (talk) 18:21, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
 * True. But this project is a single project. Personally, I would like to see several candidates, if possible one specializing in as many churches as possible. I have personally left the total number of coordinators blank, figuring we might start off like the Films Project did with three, although I would be more than willing to see more if there are enough candidates to make that a reasonable option. And, again, this really doesn't have anything to do with anything other than the directly project related activities. Granted, many of the Christianity projects are all named "WikiProject", but in essence they are, for good or ill, like the Australia project and all covering the same basic content, if from different perspectives. The coordinators' job would have nothing to do with determining content, just ensuring that the activities of the projects are maintained. John Carter (talk) 21:13, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Much to my surprise, the period for the factual elections of the new coordinators has started a bit earlier than I expected. For what it's worth, as the "instigator" of the proposed coordinators, the purpose of having them is not to try to impose any sort of "discipline" on the various projects relating to Christianity, but just to ensure that things like assessment, peer review, portal maintainance, and other similar directly project-related functions get peformed for all the various projects relating to Christianity. If there are any individuals with this project who are already doing such activities for the project, and who want to take on the role more formally, I think nominations are being held open until the end of the elections themselves. And, for the purposes of this election, any member in good standing of any of the Christianity projects can either be nominated or express their votes at WikiProject Christianity/Coordinators/Election 1. Thank you for your attention. John Carter (talk) 00:30, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Changes to the WP:1.0 assessment scheme
As you may have heard, we at the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial Team recently made some changes to the assessment scale, including the addition of a new level. The new description is available at WP:ASSESS.
 * The new C-Class represents articles that are beyond the basic Start-Class, but which need additional references or cleanup to meet the standards for B-Class.
 * The criteria for B-Class have been tightened up with the addition of a rubric, and are now more in line with the stricter standards already used at some projects.
 * A-Class article reviews will now need more than one person, as described here.

Each WikiProject should already have a new C-Class category at Category:C-Class_articles. If your project elects not to use the new level, you can simply delete your WikiProject's C-Class category and clarify any amendments on your project's assessment/discussion pages. The bot is already finding and listing C-Class articles.

Please leave a message with us if you have any queries regarding the introduction of the revised scheme. This scheme should allow the team to start producing offline selections for your project and the wider community within the next year. Thanks for using the Wikipedia 1.0 scheme! For the 1.0 Editorial Team, §hepBot  ( Disable )  21:12, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Articles flagged for cleanup
Currently, 725 articles are assigned to this project, of which 126, or 17.4%, are flagged for cleanup of some sort. (Data as of 2008-07-14.) Are you interested in finding out more? I am offering to generate cleanup to-do lists on a project or work group level. See User:B. Wolterding/Cleanup listings for details. More than 150 projects and work groups have already subscribed, and adding a subscription for yours is easy - just place the following template on your project page:



If you want to respond to this canned message, please do so at my user talk page; I'm not watching this page. --B. Wolterding (talk) 16:38, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia 0.7 articles have been selected for Oriental Orthodoxy
Wikipedia 0.7 is a collection of English Wikipedia articles due to be released on DVD, and available for free download, later this year. The Version 1.0 Editorial Team has made an automated selection of articles for Version 0.7.

We would like to ask you to review the articles selected from this project. These were chosen from the articles with this project's talk page tag, based on the rated importance and quality. If there are any specific articles that should be removed, please let us know at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.7. You can also nominate additional articles for release, following the procedure at Release Version Nominations.

A list of selected articles with cleanup tags, sorted by project, is available. The list is automatically updated each hour when it is loaded. Please try to fix any urgent problems in the selected articles. A team of copyeditors has agreed to help with copyediting requests, although you should try to fix simple issues on your own if possible.

We would also appreciate your help in identifying the version of each article that you think we should use, to help avoid vandalism or POV issues. These versions can be recorded at this project's subpage of User:SelectionBot/0.7. We are planning to release the selection for the holiday season, so we ask you to select the revisions before October 20. At that time, we will use an automatic process to identify which version of each article to release, if no version has been manually selected. Thanks! For the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial team, SelectionBot 22:55, 15 September 2008 (UTC)