Peter Kirby

Many of you already know about Errancy Wiki.

The question is whether I and Joe Wallack should devote resources towards making a site in the same vein but much improved, expanded, and promoted--called Errancy Web.

The development would start by chucking MediaWiki and starting from scratch using the Drupal system as a framework along with custom programming.

Among things that would be easier (or indeed possible) are:

* Creating content that references more than one verse (i.e., a grouping of verses adjacent together, or a couple of verses here and there, etc.)

* Letting the category tags grow more dynamically than they do now (think del.icio.us)

* Letting users respond to the new content and give it a thumbs up or down, and highlighting the highly rated content (think digg)

* Make it easy to plug in verses in multiple languages and multiple editions when making content.

* Making it easy to locate all of the *commented* items in Exodus, for example, or even "all of the neutral-commented items in Exodus with a rating of at least 7." Give the option to make an advanced search for power users.

You might be able to think of more ways this feature wishlist could be expanded.

The other thing is, I was wondering whether a small ad campaign (such as getting a banner on IIDB? heh) might be in order to promote the new site.

I would like to use the poll thing to get a feel for where people stand generally on the idea of putting more resources into an Errancy collaborative work in general. For those who are lukewarm or positive about a better Errancy site (a "Web 2.0" site for Errancy?), please add to the feature wishlist or make any comments you have.

When I talk about devoting resources, I mainly mean spending my time and Joe's money. :angel:

Thanks in advance for your comments.

regards,
Peter Kirby

Peter Kirby

So far 3 people have participated in the poll and nobody has been motivated to comment.

Let me break down the features of Errancy Web that will make it rather unique, not just as a biblical phenomenon, but to an extent as a publishing phenomenon (if you know of an off-the-shelf solution that does all this, let me know and save me some time!).

"VerseLink"
VerseLink brings you to a dynamically created page with translations, original texts, links, Amazon books, possibly commentary, and a list of all the content items related to that verse or verses; as well as forward and back to browse adjacent verses and get context. The code [ John 4:16 ] will make a VerseLink. No VerseLink may exceed 50 verses or contain an entire biblical book. (This is to cooperate with the license for the electronic RSV and other modern copyright editions, which will be included.)

"Plug-In Verses"
The code [[ John 4:16 ]] will "plug in" the translation of John 4:16 along with VerseLink. This is not to exceed 10 verses, or the amount of 25% of the original words (not plugged-in) in the content item, whichever is greater, and in no case shall comprise an entire biblical book. To override the user's preferred Bible for display, use [[ John 4:16 | KJV ]].

"Comment-threading and Content Ownership"
Every content item will have threaded comments. The default is to make author-owned content to be discussed in comments and modified only by the owner.

"Collaborative Creation"
The alternative is to create a "collaborative" piece. This will get you exposure on the "collaborative" section of the homepage, but you relinquish control over the content. Collaborative sessions must be initially approved by an admin on criteria of worthiness, or they will be converted into regular owned content. (There is still comment-threading on collaborative creation items, and you always own your comments.)

"Content Digging"
If a user "digs" an item, it is a candidate for front-page placement. The items that have been "dug" the most over the preceding 7 days are displayed on the homepage. You can only "dig" any given content item once per user.

"Content Rating"
A user may rate any content on a scale of 1-10. These ratings will be adjusted along a percentile system, so rating high/low/middle evenly is the way to maximize your voting.

e.g., if you vote 10 times and you vote one of each of the 10 possible ratings, your votes will translate into 0.5, 1.5, 2.5 .. 9.5.

e.g., if you vote 5 times and you vote "1" twice and "10" three times, the tens represent the 40th percentile and will average out to 7's, while the 1's will average out to become 2's.

"Keyword Tagging"
Content is tagged with at least 2 keywords at creation. Keywords start life with a 0 relevancy rating, but they can be thumbs-upped or thumbs-downed, incrementing or decrementing the relevancy rating. The default search will ignore keywords with a relevancy of -3 or below, and may give greater weight to those with positive relevancy ratings.

Anyone can add keywords at any time, and they can only be thumbs-downed into obscurity, not deleted, except by administrators.

Example keywords: Contradiction, Interpolation, Error, History, Science, Morality

The more popular keywords will be shown to be browsed on the homepage, and all of them are accessible through search. (Search also takes advantage of full-text searching and keyword density, content ratings, dig history, inbound links, page views, click throughs, credit FICA score, and anything else it can get its hands on.)

"Bible-verse tagging"

This is the quantum-leap above ErrancyWiki, and it is deceptively simple. Any content item could be tagged with one verse, but it could also be tagged with a couple verses far away from each other, with a passage and a stray verse somewhere else, with three long passages from three different parts of the Bible, or whatever. These tags are carefully made at creation (it's about the most important part, although it is optional) and modified only by admins. Searches on Bible verses will try to bring you results that match you most exactly, then more specifically (if you didn't ask for a single verse), and lastly more broadly.

OKAY! So... are you excited yet people!? Any questions? Concerns? Offers to help? (I could use a graphic artist, or even someone who wants to tinker on Drupal with me.)

thanks,
Peter Kirby

jjramsey

One request I have of ErrancyWeb: Don't let it become a "Skeptic's" Annotated Bible (SAB) writ large. There are already plenty of atheist sites, including the online SAB, that list Biblical flaws but do it sloppily, and it would be nice to see a web site on errancy that wouldn't merit an eye roll from a biblical scholar or even an educated amateur.

I've seen you tap into some good Biblical scholarship, and I hope to see more of that from you.

gstafleu

I'm pretty dumb, I know, so bear with me. But what exactly are you trying to achieve with ErrancyWiki/Web?

Just to wrap my mind about it I picked a random place in the bible, Col 3:1
How do I argue if there is an error here or not, what is my perspective? From the Jewish perspective this is probably wrong: the Messiah has not yet come. From the Pauline perspective it is probably correct. From the scientific perspective it is so far out in left field that right or wrong do not even apply.

Don't you have a problem of ex falso sequitur quodlibet here? From any modernistic perspective the bible is, if you take it as an attempted model of the world, a bunch of nonsense so severe that you can read anything into (or out of) it, as has been done for millennia: it is well beyond right or wrong, error or correct.

If you take it as myth or fiction, you have to judge it by its own standards. Errancy then occupies itself with internal inconsistencies, much like some Harry Potter websites like to point out in the books about their hero.

To bring it back to the bible, have a look at my "contribution" to the Paul=Cephas? thread. How serious a discussion is that? Or rather, on how much loose sand of probably irrelevant presuppositions is it built?

Maybe I'm just betraying my interests here, but wouldn't a site that addresses the etiology of the various passages, rather than their (in)correctness be a more fruitful exercise? Isn't it more useful to show "how the trick was done" instead of denouncing it as a trick?

Gerard (utterly confused) Stafleu

Peter Kirby

J. J. Ramsey: The problem with the Wiki is that all the content on the Wiki is on a level in representing the site. One rotten apple ruins the bunch. I expressed this to Joe Wallack by saying that you can't build a million dollar home surrounded on four sides by a ghetto; you have to have a way to cordon off the truly representative "good content" and let the rest be a wild wild west. You have to have both an Irvine and a Santa Ana (the premier planned community and ghetto of Orange County, respectively).

So there will be warning signs that you are entering "bad neighborhoods" of the Errancy Web. Content ratings will be low. Comments will be negative or nonexistent. Content will have limited exposure--never on the front page, and seldom at the tops of lists or search queries. Furthermore, the owner of the content might be identifiable as having made several of these pages, and people on the Errancy Web may have stopped giving him the time of day. (Users will themselves acquire ratings based on the quality of their content in the past.)

Contrariwise, for the upscale content: Visibility will be high; it will have been dug up for the homepage at least once, and it may appear at the top of the cross-listing of keywords and biblical verse tags. The content rating will be above average. It may even be a collaborative project, and these are only started when there is a solid base and an expectation of enough interest for active participation in editing by the entire Web community (this would be the only Wiki-like part left over of the Wiki concept--generally people mind their business, but ocassionally they build great monuments for the community).

I am even thinking that there will be a designated "good" portion of the Errancy Web, such as good.errancyweb.com, where you see only the top quartile of content from the main web (determined by computer). And then that content would be worked over by staff to become book.errancyweb.com, the same general concepts worked over into a publishable format (and probably actually sold also as a book on Lulu.com or other publisher). So if someone wanted something citeable, they would go to book.errancyweb.com; if they wanted something interesting and valuable generally, they would go to good.errancyweb.com; and if they wanted to dig in and contribute, they would stay on www.errancyweb.com.

Personally I think this is the best way to treat the huge issue of errancy, rather than leaving it all in the hands of one domain expert.

regards,
Peter Kirby

Peter Kirby

Gerard Stafleu: the great advantage of the new Errancy Web is that you can slice the Bible any way you want, and put it on any foundation you desire, before presenting your content.

For example, I predict that a really popular keyword tag will be "Historicity of Jesus" or "Did Jesus Exist" (or just historicity+jesus, existence+jesus). The non-existence of Jesus kind of renders the details of the Gospels a moot point.

I also predict that a really popular keyword tag will be "Contradictions" as found in the Gospels, and stuff of the nature that Jesus couldn't have done or didn't do particular things said of him, perhaps even with content that assumes the historicity of Jesus.

Furthermore, I predict that at least one voice will have the "Piso" tag and another voice will use the "medieval forgery" tag to push even more radical ideas than the average mythicist.

People pushing along these kind of paths will be able to see their neighbors most immediately: the medieval forgery guys will cross swords with the mythicists, the mythicists will cross swords with the errantist historicists, and this last will cross swords with Christian conservatives and inerrantists. These arguments can coexist in the same web of information, without any administrative push to define the argument to only fall along a certain battlefront.

In reality, in the culture wars of the Bible, there are many battlefronts, and even more possible battle tactics. All of them will be represented on the ErrancyWeb.

Besides allowing people to get rid of the restriction of posting only on one verse, I am also getting rid of the restriction of posting as "Pro" or "Con" or "Neutral". You own your content and you choose your enemies, all in real time.

Considering all of this, I would say that the Errancy Web combines the best attributes of forum, blog, wiki, and good old fashioned static high quality website. It's conversational like a forum, it's a soapbox like a blog, it's a community effort like a wiki, and it's going to be harvested into a refined and distilled book of Errancy.

regards,
Peter Kirby

youngalexander

I have looked at ErrancyWiki on occasions - particularly after a JW post and just now. Always seems somewhat amorphous, cannot seem to find any real meat, except for Carrier's article.
Perhaps I am insufficiently motivated, or resourced, or just dumb, but I tend to give up on it fairly quickly. Typical webusers syndrome - find it quick or move on.

Now you are proposing a NEW, IMPROVED MODEL! I might relate to that.

TheBibleWars.com

Jack the Bodiless

I'm for it.
One big advantage that an ErrancyWiki-type project has over the SAB is the space that can be devoted to each point. Admittedly, it isn't always used, but some of the articles there can be quite long, exploring the appropriate issue in depth and addressing likely apologetic responses.

JoeWallack

JW:
Hi Peter. It would appear that The Evil Emperor has found new Ways to Motivate you. I hereby Surname you "Simon".

I cast 1,000 votes for "ErrancyWeb".

I see ErrancyWeb as still primarily a Skeptic product. The higher functioning Christians will Avoid it, not help build it. Appeal to Skeptics is that generally they are entertained by scholarship that is better than their own. As the Skeptics here are high level the opinion here is skewed towards demand for high quality Errancy. The general public will find value though in lesser Errancy.

I see two levels of EW (maybe the TV version could be "Errancy Weekly", hah, beat you to it Spin), Professional and Public. The rating system can help guide users to their level.

Professional will be largely solicitation of known Skeptics (not that many) such as Carrier, Kirby, Till, Tobin, Price and dare I say, "Ehrrorman"? to write some base feature Errancy articles such as Carrier's "Birth" to get things started.

Public will be a Wiki type effort to allow and encourage interaction.

The Long-Term goal of EW is Communication of Errancy. Errancy has to be built first though. EW will than be a valuable reference tool for Errancy and gradually more effort will be put in communicating error than documenting error.

There's tremendous potential for Education of the American public as the majority of Americans right now probably just assume that there are no Significant errors in the Christian Bible and when informed of potential significant errors initially assume that they can be easily explained away by Christian Bible scholars. Christians Bible scholars will be offered the opportunity to defend against claimed error at EW, but when they don't that is what the Public will observe. Some of the public than will inevitably conclude that it's because there is no defense.

Regarding the potential of the new software Peter, for example, say that I want to illustrate that "Matthew"/"Luke" had a primary theme of rehabilitating "Mark's" disciples in their Editing. How will the new software assist me in showing that?

I tell you the Truth, I feel just like Bill Murray in the classic Holy Ghostbusters when he's asked what they are going to do now as he slugs down Jack Daniels outside the library and says, "I don't know but I'm excited!"
(perhaps another feature of the new SW would be to turn on/off what at least I think is entertaining/colorful commentary?).



Joseph

http://www.errancywiki.com/index.php/Main_Page

Peter Kirby

Well Joe, first you'd go to create new content and you'd title it "Matthew and Luke rehabilitate Mark's disciples".

Then you'd write your content article, plugging in some Bible verses and linking to others.

Then you'd select some of the verse-spans linked or plugged in to be the verses for which your content is "tagged"--that is, when people are browsing these parts of the Bible or looking at other articles about the same Bible verses, they will see the cross-link to your article.

You might also select some "backlinks" to existing content items that are related to yours. The advantage of doing this is that the user gets to see more related content (and will find your article on the backlinked pages as "Forward Links").

You'd choose a few keywords such as "disciples" and "redaction" and "gospels".

Then you'd release this content, and hope that it becomes highly rated and hits the homepage.

regards,
Peter Kirby