Anabaptistwiki:Stories

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In addition to providing a place for different Anabaptist-related groups to share encyclopedic information about themselves, the Global Anabaptist Wiki allows Anabaptist communities around the world to share personal stories.

Why Stories?

One reason that personalized stories are an important part of the Global Anabaptist Wiki is that resources like the Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online (GAMEO) provide basic encyclopedic information about many Anabaptist-related groups around the world and are accessible for anyone with internet access. The Global Anabaptist Wiki does include encyclopedic articles so that Anabaptist-related groups around the world can edit and update basic information about themselves in a way that they are unable to on GAMEO, but the Global Anabaptist Wiki also is a forum for sharing personal stories so that it does not merely duplicate online encyclopedic resources like GAMEO.

Additionally, personal stories about a congregation or conference highlight what it means for individuals to be Anabaptists in those particular areas in a way that encyclopedic articles do not. While there are many places to deposit personal stories online (blogs, web-pages, etc.) the Global Anabaptist Wiki hopes to provide a centralized location where individuals can contribute stories about the life of their group, access other groups' stories, and link to specific groups' web pages. By providing a place to share these stories the Global Anabaptist Wiki hopes to help Anabaptists around the world process what it means to be part of the global Anabaptist church.

What Counts as a Story?

Any story that relates to your life in a specific Anabaptist-related group or congregation but does not fit in the basic encyclopedic article about your group or congregation should be included in the Global Anabaptist Wiki as a story. These stories might be interviews with church members, descriptions of church events, or commentary about issues are relevant to the life of the conference or congregation, or a statement about what your Anabaptist faith means to you. These are just a few suggestions, however, and you should feel free to contribute any information that adds insight into the life of your community.

How Do I Contribute Stories?

You can contribute stories in a variety of ways. The primary way to create stories is to create a page for your story by creating a link to your story on the Stories page. To create a story, go to the Stories page and insert a link to your story under the section for your region using the following code: [[Your Story Title]] (Story titles should adequately convey the story's content, and you should include your country of origin in parenthesis at the end of your title). This will create a red link (meaning the article does not exist yet). Follow this link to a new page and begin writing your story.

You may also want to link your story to your regional conference's or congregation's page. Each conference or congregational page will include a section called "Stories." After writing your story you can insert a link to your story under the "Stories" section on your conference's or congregation's page by using the same code that you used to create your article. If you have already written your article, this code will now appear in blue or purple text.

After writing a story be sure to insert the following code at the bottom of the page [[Category:Stories]]. This will create a link to your story on the stories category page.

If you are writing the story in a language other than English you will have to add a language code to the end of the category code to create a link to your story in the appropriate stories category language page. For example, if you write a story in Spanish, you should insert the following code at the bottom of the page [[Category:Stories/es]]. This will create a link to your story on the category page for all stories written in Spanish. Click on the following link for more information about the Global Anabaptist Wiki's language policy.

Also, please read the Global Anabaptist Wiki's language policy to learn more about creating a story in a language other than English. Regardless of what language stories are initially written they should be translated into as many languages as possible.

Credit

Since the stories you contribute will often have a distinct personal bias or perspective (this is GOOD), include your name as the author.

*Since stories are attributed to specific authors they should be protected so that the authors' words will not be distorted by future editing*

Where Can I Find Stories?

You can find personal stories in a variety of different places. To start you should browse through the Stories page. If you'd rather you can browse through stories under the "Stories" heading on Anabaptist-related groups' pages. Also, you can check out the stories category page to see a list of all the stories on the Global Anabaptist Wiki. At the top of this category page there will be links to category pages for stories in English, French, German, and Spanish.