Anabaptistwiki:Stories
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 the character of specific groups 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 a specific Anabaptist-related group or congregation but does not fit in the basic encyclopedic article about the 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, but individuals should feel free to contribute any information that adds insight into the life of the community.
How Do I Contribute Stories?
On each page about a specific group there is a section entitled stories. To avoid clutter, individuals should create links to stories under the "story" heading on a specific group's page instead of inserting the story directly into the group's page. To create a story simply create a link under the "Story" heading by inserting the following code: [[Story Title]]. This will create a red link (meaning the new page does not exist yet). Follow this link to the new page and write your story. For example, if a member of the Jesus Village Church in South Korea wants to write about an annual church conference he or she could create a new article describing that conference by inserting a link under the "Story" heading using the following code [[Name of Conference, Year]]. He or she could then follow that link and write a story about the conference. Make sure the story's title includes information that adequately describes the story's content.
After writing a story insert the following code at the bottom of the page [[Category:Stories]]. This will create a link to the 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.
Where Can I Find Stories?
To read personal stories from Anabaptist-groups around the world you can browse through the links under the "Stories" heading on Anabaptist-related groups' pages, or you can look through random stories on the "stories" category page. Click on the links below to search through the stories category pages.
