Monday, July 23, 2007

the TalkIslam FAQ

I am pleased to announce the launch of the Talk Islam FAQ project. In a nutshell, TalkIslam is a Frequently Asked Questions database about Islam and muslims, loosely inspired after the TalkOrigins FAQ which is such an invaluable resource against Creationist arguments. The idea is that we address common questions (and tropes) about Islam preemptively and do so in an organized fashion so that anyone involved in a debate about Islam may simply refer to TalkIslam FAQ rather than reinvent the wheel.

The site is organized as follows. I've integrated BBpress (a bulletin board system) and Wordpress so that talkislam.info main page shows you the latest forum topics on top and the blog posts below. The forum is the FAQ; if you go to talkislam.info/faq you will see the forum immediately. User accounts on the blog also work on the forum and vice versa. The forum format allows us to define and nest topics of interest and then devote a thread to a given question for ongoing editing and refinement over time.

This project is analogous to a wiki in that it invites colloboration between all of us to a greater good. The advantage of the forum format is that we can refine and strengthen the answers over time, evolving the site to become more and more useful. I believe that the depth of talent in the Islamsphere is such that this project can attain a very high informational value in a very short time, even if all we do is recycle old posts from our blogs at the outset.

Please do visit talkislam.info, and register for a user acct! Let's make this happen.

No comments:

Post a Comment