WikiIslam talk:Policies and Guidelines

From WikiIslam

[edit] Wikipedia articles

Hello Whale and Fribble,
I apologise for deleting so many of your (Fribble's) copy and paste articles without first initializing a discussing, but I feel that the articles should remain deleted. There are simply too many drawbacks to dumping Wikipedia articles onto WikiIslam:

• When an article is dumped, many of the templates and images are not copied along side it, resulting in an article whose quality is worse than the original Wikipedia article.
• Many of the articles will become out-of-date by the next day; it makes more sense to link directly to the Wikipedia article.
• Allowing WikiIslam to become a dump for out-dated Wikipedia articles greatly decreases the quality of WikiIslam.
• WikiIslam should focus more on the quality of our articles rather than on the quantity of our articles. Dumping Wikipedia article increases quantity at the expense of quality.
• It does not serve your purpose to dump a Wikipedia article if you just want to add a few statements to it, since in that case, the reader will just get lost in a sea of Wikipedia statements, most likely not even reading your edit.
• From what I've seen, you haven't even fully read most of the articles that you've dumped, so what makes you think that a causal visitor would read them? No visitor would read them.
• Do not forget the main purpose of WikiIslam, as a project of FFI, is to help Muslims leave Islam and to eventually destroy Islam. In the long run, these articles do not help WikiIslam accomplish its goals in any way.

There are alternatives to dumping Wikipedia articles, such as creating a page dedicated to Wikipedia links or using the [[W;Article|Article]] feature as explained above.
If you want to dump a Wikipedia article here because you are not allowed to edit it on Wikipedia then I would agree to the dump. What I strongly disapprove of is dumping articles here just for the sake of having them on WikiIslam, without doing any substantial edits to them, and of dumping articles here just to do a few edits done to them, since better alternatives exist.
And as for your "Veil Fetish" page, it should not even be on WikiIslam; this is not a sex related website. That article contibuted nothing of value to this site and the fact that you classified a picture of an enslaved nude female under the "Veil Fetish" page was disgusting and very inappropriate. selfworm 08:30, 20 June 2007 (PDT)

Hi selfworm, you made some really good points that I agree with. We have to create a well defined policy on this so this doesnt become an issue again. I knew sooner or later we would have to decide on what to do about this. Fribble, you can be sure that whatever the decision is, it will be the best us and for our purpose to criticize Islam and expose for what it is. I spent a couple of hours too working on that content converter but in the end we'll do what is best for us. I'll look over everyone's points and your diffs and links before making possibly refining/detailing the policy that Selfworm started on the guidelines page. --Whale ^talk contribs 08:58, 20 June 2007 (PDT)

The nude female slave was in the Ottoman Caliphate. Of course, you might wan't to deny it because and say it was the Ottoman "Empire" because they didn't practice sufficient Islamic depravity.--Fribble 09:18, 20 June 2007 (PDT)

It was a Muslim slave, ofcourse. I agree. The article says that. Anyway, forgetting for a moment that you (and I) had brought in these articles from Wikipedia, you'll probably agree with all of Selfworm's points above. I think they're very nicely communicated and I agree with them. Lets make this site something different than Wikipedia - thats the bottomline I hope you'll agree with. Thats where our value lies. If there's something that is being deleted from Wikipedia like you pointed out on a couple of diffs, thats what we are here for. If you see people committing POV vandalism there and trying to hide the truth by political correctness, bring that content here. I'll refine the Wikipedia related policies later so they're more clear. Ah, if I had created some discussion before, it wouldnt have come to this point but anyway, as long as we just deleted copies of Wikipedia articles, nothing has been lost. --Whale ^talk contribs 10:56, 20 June 2007 (PDT)

There are also many arguments for having articles (initially) based on wikipedia.

• As is well known, Wikipedia articles on Islam are frequently censored, vandalized and mutilated. Much of this goes unchecked without anybody reverting it. References to scholars critical of Islam are also regularly deleted on wikipedia. If a non-vandalized version of an article is copied to Wikiislam, then Wikiislam has not only the better article version than wikipedia, but also a guarantee that the article will not be further mutilated. Then of course it will also be easier after some time to copy back from a non-mutilated WIkiislam article to the mutilated Wikipedia article.
• If Wikiislam has a decent collection of articles, sites and blogs like Jihadwatch can directly link to a Wikiislam article instead of having the inline link point to a Wikipedia article. Google indexing would also work better because more internal links that link to each other means better Google ranking.
• If Wikiislam has a decent number of relevant articles, it will be easier to modify them over time and to use internal links between articles than to have to create an entirely new article each time. Other wikis have also copied core articles to their wiki as a starting block. I was very surprised that just a short while ago Wikiislam had no articles on figures like Spencer or Warraq. I think it rather discourages new readers and editors if core articles like these are missing. I'd rather see a copied article that can be modified than no article at all.
• I also strongly suggest that for controversial deletions of articles on this site a notice is put on the article for 10 days before deleting it, like they do on wikipedia with WP:PROD. --Ritzz 14:29, 21 June 2007 (PDT)

Ritzz, I have nothing against having articles which are based on Wikipedia articles, but here's the thing: If you're creating an article on a topic that already exists on Wikipedia, the last thing you want the visitor to remind them of is that its the same article/content in Wikipedia. It has to be something different. As for us not having articles on important Islam topics like Robert Spencer, well we are growing. I think the problem is that at this point e.g. we dont know how our Robert Spencer could be different than the one in Wikipedia. But all thats needed is a drive to create a unique working article, something thats not there in Wikipedia. The editor has to have the frame of mind that they're posting WikiIslam and not Wikipedia. The only solution is that editors create articles on topics that interest them, one by one and not copy pastes. It must have been a bummer for Fribble to see some of his articles deleted and more are planned to be deleted and I wish I had seen this coming before so I could have stopped them but its okay. This is the best direction for us to follow. I spent hours on that tool myself but Selfworm's points are convincing and correct. For your other points, again only people will create those articles to be linked to. Someone has to do it and it makes it easier if a person works in their area of interest. People will just have to wait before they find all the content they're looking for. For the last one point, yes, we have to create some deletion policies and procedures. I will do so sometime soon. --Whale ^talk contribs 17:46, 21 June 2007 (PDT)

Ok, for now I put {{Wikipedia}} templates in all articles. Atleast for now the reader can be aware that its an article from Wikipedia. There's a lot of mess right now that I dont have the time to deal with right now but in time we'll get to shape. I'll say that the best way to start an existing article of Wikipedia is to pretend that they dont have an article on that topic. That makes sure you'll end up with something unique. --Whale ^talk contribs 18:43, 21 June 2007 (PDT)

This discussion is a little hard to follow. Prehaps we are better off discussing it a WikiIslam talk:Policies and guidelines--Wanderer 23:45, 21 June 2007 (PDT)

Another important point is that articles critical of Islam on wikipedia are not only mutilated, but also frequently deleted by WP:AFD or WP:PROD. Just a few days ago an article on a book critical of Islam was deleted on wikipedia. For articles that could potentially be deleted on wikipedia, it makes sense to have a copy on this site. Ritzz 09:37, 22 June 2007 (PDT)

I've included now an exception to the rule where a copy paste is allowed if an article was deleted from Wikipedia. --Whale ^talk contribs 10:54, 22 June 2007 (PDT)

In response to selfworm's comment that it is better to be unique, in the long run, that will probably happen with the wikipedia articles copy pasted here. In the short run, probably not. One good example of a wikipedia article copied here that improved into something unique is Muhammad. Given time, this will happen. But in the short run, it is probably better to have something, even if it is just a copy-paste from wikipedia, than to have nothing at all. What good is a wiki critical of Islam if there isn't hardly any content? What will make wikiislam bigger and more popular is if there is content. Uniqueness will come with time, but there has to be something for viewers and future critics to start with and improve or this project will never grow.--Wanderer 20:25, 22 June 2007 (PDT)

Wanderer, sorry for the late reply. You wrote:

in the short run, it is probably better to have something, even if it is just a copy-paste from wikipedia, than to have nothing at all.

I disagree. Not having an article encourages a person to create an article. Having an already existing copy of the Wikipedia article will not only spoil the impression of the website, it will also discourage the visitor to create our own unique article on it. Its ok if we dont have content on some articles. That encourages people to create content. We're growing with time. WikiIslam will not be popular if people notice that it has copies of Wikipedia content. Also, here's the thing: a topic on a certain subject which has a common name in comparison to Wikipedia, should only be made if it can have significantly different content, otherwise its better to just have a WP link if we want to link to the term. You're thinking from your own eyes. You want the articles here. Think from an outside visitor's eyes. They come here and if they see a copied Wikipedia article, that creates a bad impression on the visitor, does it not? That is worse than not having an article on it. You really have to deal with the problem of an article not being updated. See, all the 73 articles that were copied are now not up to date anymore. Thats going to be an ongoing problem with copies. Before copies were made, all the previous 250 or so articles were unique to WikiIslam. If we continue like this, this is what we want to be known for. I might see if I can edit the search results to give a link to the Wikipedia article. I'll propose the deletion of the rest of those 73 copies sometime. Selfworm has listed all the points pretty well that explain pretty well why its not a good idea to keep copies. Sorry you guys had to work on these copies but in the long run, this is going to be a good decision for the website. The only disadvantage here is, they wont find the content? Well, we'll get there eventually. --Whale ^(talk/contribs) 20:09, 27 June 2007 (PDT)