CreationWiki:Coffeehouse

When CreationWiki goes Offline
For our computer, CreationWiki was not available on April 1. There may have been a cyber attack or simple maintenance. Is there another site we should go to that will have news about what is happening while CreationWiki is out? Since it is back up again today, that's good, but I couldn't find any explanation about what happened yesterday. Is there a special place to look to find out what happened? --John Baab 18:56, 2 April 2011 (PDT)
 * There is always nwcreation.net that is the parent site to this project. I am sure thats where you can find some news if something serious has happened. Other than that I am not to sure.--Tony 14:57, 3 April 2011 (PDT)


 * That is correct. If the site is down for maintenance, we will post updates on the index.html (homepage) of the NWCN website (http://nwcreation.net). If there is nothing to report - as is the current case - there will be none. Sometimes servers just crash, and are offfline for a little bit while tech support tries to debug..--Ashcraft - (talk) 09:23, 4 April 2011 (PDT)

Database Error
Tonight there was a database error on the Philistine page. I had never seen this before and wondered what caused it. Also it should be drawn to the attention of the administrators. --John Baab 19:28, 12 June 2011 (PDT)


 * Yeah I haven't been able to edit anything for a while. Any idea when the database will be fixed? Shinydarkrai94 23:36, 18 June 2011 (PDT).


 * On June 6th several database files apparently became corrupted that are related to the Semantic MediaWiki (SMW) addon. The actual cause of the corruption is unknown but coincided closely with an installation of the server control panel indicating a possible link. Other database files were also affected. I have disabled the SMW, which has cleared up the error that is generated when saving files and calling up pages that contain SMW data. Restoring the corrupted files will likely be accomplished with an installation of the latest MediaWiki software. FYI - although an error was generated when saving files, the edits were preserved.


 * Sorry for the delay in clearing up the issue. --Ashcraft - (talk) 19:46, 22 June 2011 (PDT)


 * Thanks for filling us in! ~ "Webster" Otley (talk) 18:49, 23 June 2011 (PDT)
 * Yea, thanks for fixing the database :). Shinydarkrai94 19:16, 23 June 2011 (PDT)
 * Right on, glad we are back in action...--Tony 20:50, 24 June 2011 (PDT)


 * I've been haveing for weeks now simaler probelms with vairous pages, espically Gether, I posted about it on my Talk page.--MithirandirOlorin 22:17, 24 June 2011 (PDT)


 * Sorry for the outage - totally my fault. I attempted a software upgrade and it caused a bit of trouble that I had difficulty reversing. The site should now be restored completely although a few edits from Friday (June 1st) were lost.


 * I have restored the Semantic MediaWiki tables which are currently being rebuilt. Hopefully once this is finished, the SMW properties will again be available. --Ashcraft - (talk) 09:59, 6 July 2011 (PDT)
 * cool, glad to hear we back in operation :)... cause you know I am all OCD about this site ;o.--Tony 14:36, 6 July 2011 (PDT)

Bad news. There is now a 'Database error' on the Nebula theory page. I hit it when I clicked on the Nebula Theory link in the Nebula page.--John Baab 10:19, 24 July 2011 (PDT)


 * That is the same error we were experiencing before and somewhat of a confirmation that the Semantic MediaWiki extension is causing trouble. I ran a database repair routine and that didnt clear up the problem, ultimately I had to remove the SMW code on the page to restore it. It was apparently (again) this SMW-related error that crashed the server yesterday due to "excess resource usage". I'm afraid that unless we can get the SMW back to proper function, it will need to be removed from the site. --Ashcraft - (talk) 11:02, 24 July 2011 (PDT)

Congratulations
I just wanted to say congratulations and God bless to Ashcraft and everybody else on this wiki helping make it one of the most substantial Christian wikis on the Internet today. We finally reached 5,000+ articles recently, and certainly that is a tremendous milestone... Here is to 5,000 more well-informed articles so that we may be an intellectual cornerstone for Christian apologetics and online outreach!--Tsommer (Tony) 14:01, 31 July 2011 (PDT)


 * Per CreationWiki:About, any creationist perspective is welcome, not just Christian ones. But I won't quibble; it's primarily Christian.
 * Per Christian Wikis; there are two Christian wikis bigger than CreationWiki: Conservapedia itself, which has ~33,000 articles, and BibleWiki (160,000 pages, but most seem to be public domain imports of Bible verses). WikiChristian has over 250,000 pages, but only 3,300 are considered "content pages". So, "one of the most substantial" is clearly correct. ~ "Webster" Otley (talk) 21:40, 22 August 2011 (PDT)

policy for allowed content
Is there a policy addressing what types of pages should belong on this wiki? This relates to a recent discussion here. ⇔ ChristTrekker 06:28, 20 October 2011 (PDT)
 * There's the About CreationWiki page. I hope that helps a bit. The policy structure here is not as extensive as on Wikipedia. ~ "Webster" Otley (talk) 19:07, 22 October 2011 (PDT)

Finding Help Pages
The CreationWiki is doing well, and we may need to add to our help files a little bit. I needed to add a Greek word on one page, and couldn't find what the correct procedure was. I looked at our help files, and looked at the help category, but found nothing about Greek or foreign languages. I feel sure I have seen instructions about adding Greek somewhere, but I can't seem to find it now. It may be someplace obvious that I simply missed when I scanned through, but if not, perhaps we should expand the help index side bar to include some of the other help pages that are hard to find. This could be a help for new users, and (ahem) us longer term users who have forgotten something.

--John Baab 17:26, 22 November 2011 (PST)
 * Very true, I agree man!--Tsommer (Tony) 22:31, 22 November 2011 (PST)
 * Are you looking, maybe, for these templates?
 * As to your larger point, I don't see any downside to having a central index of help pages -- maybe Help:Help pages. :-) ~ "Webster" Otley (talk) 20:48, 8 December 2011 (PST)
 * The help index can be found using the link in the left margin panel that says "Help files". --Ashcraft - (talk) 06:28, 9 December 2011 (PST)


 * I appreciate Mdotley pointing out the template pages, but I still don't know how to find them if I need them (though I could come here to the coffeeshop if I needed to). Would it be possible to add three new headings to the left margin panel that says "Help files"? Probably we would add to the "Advanced Formatting" section three sections which would be "Hebrew Words", "Greek Words", and "Bible References".
 * --John Baab 10:40, 12 December 2011 (PST)


 * The link to the template help page can be found in the "Advanced Formatting" section of the help index. I added a second link there to help with navigation.


 * Feel free to create a help:language and help:Bible reference pages to assist users with those formatting issues, and then link to them from the help index page.--Ashcraft - (talk) 13:41, 13 December 2011 (PST)


 * I used Special:AllPagesto create the list linked above. Once there, I just used the existing options to narrow the results. ~ "Webster" Otley (talk) 22:13, 25 January 2012 (PST)


 * Not directly on-topic, but I added help:Unicode recently. Seems that in any project, writing the documentation is an afterthought! ☺ ⇔ ChristTrekker &#x1f4dd; 07:24, 13 December 2011 (PST)

Paragraph, ref formatting
It kind of bothers me that the page formatting seems off. My suggestions are as follows:

(1) I think there should be a bit more space between paragraphs to reflect blank lines, to improve readability. Paragraphs look "stuck together". (2) I think line height or ref height needs to be changed, as the use of refs throws off the look of paragraphs. The height of page lines using refs is noticeably different from those elsewhere in a paragraph.

I suppose both might indicate the line height needs to be increased slightly.

--Jzyehoshua 18:12, 21 April 2012 (PDT)


 * I just added line height template right now. Whenever the template is used in a paragraph with a height of 1, it changes the paragraph to single spacing. Right now there's some error that causes line height of lines with footnotes to change, seemingly to double space. And this line height fixes that. I would be nice though to figure out what's causing this and fix it. I think it must be in the footnote template somewhere. --Jzyehoshua 11:13, 16 July 2012 (PDT)


 * I tried adding some new templates relating to footnotes and refs but it didn't fix it. It must be an error in an existing template. I'm going to try and see if I can find it. It must be a very basic template, whatever it is. Something dealing with footnotes or paragraphs themselves I'm sure. --Jzyehoshua 11:48, 16 July 2012 (PDT)

Proposed category merge
Any reason to keep Category:Author and Category:Writer separate? ~ Webster (talk) 00:46, 4 September 2012 (PDT)


 * No - those should be merged to author. --Ashcraft - (talk) 12:52, 16 September 2012 (PDT)


 * My goodness, it's been a while since I checked this page. Thanks for the prompt reply, even though I didn't see it right away. ~ Webster (talk) 23:15, 25 May 2013 (EDT)

Debate section
I'm not sure if this has been brought up before, but maybe a Debates section would be a good idea. It would allow non-Creationists to discuss their concerns formally with Creationists and might create more involvement and interest in Creationwiki. Conservapedia has a debates section, and many of the arguments I used there I could use here. --Jzyehoshua 05:49, 6 September 2012 (PDT)


 * We have two email lists used for creation-related debate and discussion. See: CreationWiki:Discussion.


 * Join CreationTalk &mdash; Creationist only discussion
 * Join OriginsTalk &mdash; Creation vs. Evolution debate --Ashcraft - (talk) 13:02, 16 September 2012 (PDT)

Creationist philosophy
I request for the website to be grounded on a more generic creationist philosophy.

The philosophy underlaying creationism is very simple, and very useful. It is based on dualism, two categories which comprise all of reality.

category 1: what chooses, spiritual domain, subjectively identified resulting in opinions

category 2: what is chosen, material domain, objectively measured resulting in facts

In organizing all things you know about, you should ask yourself, does it belong in the box of things that choose, or does it belong in the box of things that are chosen? Love, hate, God, fear, pleasure, pain etc. would all belong in the box of things that do the job of choosing. They are all things which take care of it that in the moment a decision turns out A instead of B, or viceversa.

All things in this box can only be known to exist by choosing they are there. So if you want to find out if somebody has love in their heart or not, then you provide for yourself the alternatives that this person has love, and doesn't have love, and then in the moment you choose an alternative. For this choosing to be meaningful it has to be somewhat sophisticated. What you cannot do is reach a conclusion about the spiritual domain based on evidence. That is because evidence forces you to a conclusion, destroying the freedom neccessary to form an opinion.

Instead evidence applies to the material domain, it applies to what is chosen. We can certainly imagine that the earth might have turned out differently than it did. Which means that there were alternative futures available, and it was chosen. Even we might imagine that there could have been only nothing, as in zero, which means that everything there is now has been chosen to be, instead of alternatively there being nothing. That is the definition of information. A bit is either 0 or 1 alternatively. And like bits, everything also exists of chosen alternatives.

When we are evidencing something to exist, then we are in essence rewriting information. We are copying / transferring information from nature, which results in a model of the thing we are evidencing. For example when you look at the moon, then the moon sends information by medium of light, through your eyes, into your brain, resulting in a picture of the moon in your mind. Basically the moon caused the picture to exist as an effect. Where subjectivity works by freedom, objectivity works by force.

Subjectivity creates information from nothing, it creates the information which way the choice turns out. As we can see that choosing requires at least 2 alternatives available, we must then also say that there are at least 2 logically correct answers to any question about what is in the spiritual domain. For example the answer might be love or hate alternatively. It could not be just 1 answer, because then there would be nothing to choose, and the answer would then be forced, while force only applies to the material domain. But that logically there have to be 2 answers available, does not mean that every alternative answer is morally upright, or that any alternative answer is morally upright.

Who you are as the owner of your choices is called your soul, or spirit. As the soul therefore belongs in the category of things that choose, the existence of it can only be established by choosing it is there. So there is no evidence whatsoever for the existence of you as the owner of your choices. We can see in the brain that in the moment it can turn out A or B in freedom, but we can see nothing at all which is doing this.

What scientists are doing in society, and this is very bad, is that they are promoting the idea to objectively look at people to reach a conclusion whether they are loving or hateful, and they are surpressing the idea to subjectively look into the soul of somebody. The scientists only refer to the results of your choices, refer to the way your brain turned out, they do not subjectively acknowledge you as the owner of your choices. And this is very, very, very awful, it is the most coldhearted, dehumanizing crime to withold from subjectively acknowledging people as the owner of their choices. By reasonable judgement it feels very bad not to be acknowledged this subjective way and to only be measured.

On this forum many people still advocate implicitly, and somewhat explicitely, this vicious line of thinking where all subjectivity is held to be wrong, merely because subjectivity is not objectivity.

Creationist philosophy doesn't mandate belief in the holy spirit, neither does it mandate belief in the human spirit, the philosophy solely provides the freedom to believe or not. It supports freedom of opinion, democracy, and also it supports science, objectivity. Creationist philosophy underlies most all what is good about the Western world. --Syamsu 03:41, 6 March 2013 (PST)

Broken links in non-reference sections
Broken (external) links are always a problem on web-sites, not least where they provide a reference to support a claim in an article. In many cases, a broken link can be replaced to one on an archive site, such as the the Wayback Machine. However, what about other links, such as links for further information? Should they be replaced with archive links or simply deleted? I raise the question because of at least two links in the External rebuttals section of the Talk.Origin Archive article are broken. I've found one on the Wayback Machine (and another archive), but for such a section (as opposed to a reference section) I'm not sure that it's appropriate to have archive links and think perhaps the broken links should simply be removed.

What do others think?

Philip J. Rayment 04:16, 4 January 2014 (EST)


 * Hi! I guess if we have the archive links it is fine to replace. In other case delete. God bless you! Luiz Alexandre Silva 08:06, 6 January 2014 (EST)


 * I would base it on importance - and only use archived links for very important links - otherwise I'd delete them. --Ashcraft - (talk) 10:14, 6 January 2014 (EST)


 * Okay, as a rule of thumb then references are important, but other links are not. Of course someone can always judge a particular link to be important, and removed ones can always be replaced by others if they disagree.  Philip J. Rayment 19:02, 7 January 2014 (EST)

A history portal
We have several portals, mainly devoted to the evolution vs. creationism controversy, but may I propose we create a history portal? I would love to contribute to making one. I looked into it and as far as I know we don't really have won.

Markusabernathy1998 19:22, 5 January 2014 (EST)


 * We already have one: history portal. You can improve it! God bless, Luiz Alexandre Silva 08:04, 6 January 2014 (EST)

Oh, thanks. However, I noticed it doesn't show up on our portals page. http://creationwiki.org/CreationWiki:Portal There is a little bar on the main page that shows all the different portals, most of them are science related. So, is it possible to add it in there or would it be inconvenient? :) But I will definitely work on it regardless. Markusabernathy1998 17:24, 8 January 2014 (EST)

Another proposal
Also, another proposal. Take a gander at CreationWiki with the vector skin applied. Go to Special:Preferences, click on appearance and then select the vector skin. It looks really good! M a  r  k  u  s | My Talk  18:08, 8 January 2014 (EST)
 * What exactly is the proposal? That we make Vector the default skin for CW? ⇔ ChristTrekker &#x1f4dd; 16:12, 26 March 2014 (EDT)

A Biblical Model of the Universe
Moved content to user:JeTSpice. This page is reserved for discussion about the "Creation Wiki" website. --Ashcraft - (talk) 15:57, 31 January 2014 (EST)

Award of Certification
I propose that at our creationwiki there should be a scheme for award of certification to its worker/editor/supporter/donor, as a token of appreciation and good service in order to evolve a competitive enthusiasm. Opinion of others is requested.Nannadeem 13:41, 8 February 2014 (EST)
 * I like that idea! Perhaps I could have one, to add to my accolades on my userpage! :) [[image:COA_2.png|10px]] M a  r  k  u  s | My Talk [[image:COA_2.png|10px]] 16:46, 8 February 2014 (EST)
 * I like it too, u mean like badges or something? --Tsommer 19:18, 8 February 2014 (EST)
 * Wikipedia has the barnstars. Are you thinking something like that? We do have thankyou. I came across it while standardizing some templates recently. I don't know that we want to directly rehash WP (with big themed images) but I'd happily whip up a "badge" template. Something like that could easily be extensible via parameters. ⇔ ChristTrekker &#x1f4dd; 12:44, 26 March 2014 (EDT)
 * The purpose is to promote further creative environment, especially for our young/student creationists and to have editors of our wiki at par with en-WP style of edit promo. Receiving a barnstars or any kind of certificate is a token of recognition and a cause of pleasure.  Your (User:ChristTrekker)  suggestions and services should be availed.Nannadeem 08:28, 31 March 2014 (EDT)
 * I've started Editor recognition policy page. Please discuss further specifics there. ⇔ ChristTrekker &#x1f4dd; 09:55, 31 March 2014 (EDT)

line-height
The main.css file (apparently) is making the line-height 150% across all skins, AFAICT. This seems overly large to me, making the pages here appear loose and gappy. A developer reference page at Mozilla states that desktop browsers default to something closer to 120%. Could we split the difference and change this to 135% or so? ⇔ ChristTrekker &#x1f4dd; 16:50, 26 March 2014 (EDT)

Fred Hoyle Problem
I chose a "Help Wanted" article to work on about Fred Hoyle, the astronomer and originator of the steady state theory.

When I went to the tab where I sent the link, I saw this warning message:

Fatal error: Undefined class constant 'MARKER_PREFIX' in /home/jcreatio/public_html/extensions/Cite/Cite_body.php on line 587

I would be glad to try to fix it, but I have no idea what to do or where to go. Can someone help?--John Baab (talk) 13:53, 10 February 2016 (EST)
 * I see nothing happened about this (it's still a problem). The error is being thrown in the php code that does the references, although it would be something on the Hoyle page that's triggering the problem.  In fact, the history works (http://creationwiki.org/index.php?title=Fred_Hoyle&action=history), and by comparing differences you'll see that every version is okay except the last.
 * It will almost certainly require Chris Ashcraft or someone with access to the back end to fix it. I suggest that you tell Chris about it on his talk page.
 * Philip J. Rayment (talk) 22:27, 24 April 2016 (EDT)


 * Good Point, thanks for suggesting it.--John Baab (talk) 21:28, 30 April 2016 (EDT)

Proposal
Good evening. I am a Romanian Orthodox Christian. I have a proposal. Can you create please a Romanian Creation Wiki and make me the admin of it? I will traslate on it articles from English Creation Wiki and the policies, and probably, I will create my own articles. I have experience of editing on Romanian Wikipedia and Romanian Orthodox Wiki.--Vorav200 (talk) 21:54, 23 October 2017 (EDT)

Updating the software
Have been reading this wiki for ages, maybe a decade. One depressing thing have been that it felt outdated from the tech perspective. The current version of the MediaWiki is 1.25.1 which was released on 26 May 2015. Ive heard that there are better wiki softwares like Wiki.js (https://js.wiki). It might be a too big effort switching depending on the tech knowledge and the time. However, the minimum i hope is that the MediaWiki version would be updated. High chance the have been security fixes in the last 6 years and more features which makes editing and updating faster and easier (like WYSIWYG = a visual editor). Anyway, hopefully this will take CreationWiki forward and inspire more people to learn and get involved! God bless! The current version can be found here: http://creationwiki.org/Special:Version Karjala 2021-10-13

British/Nordic Israelism?
It seems that a number of articles on this site, including Shem and Human Y-chromosome DNA Haplogroups seem to denote the notion that Shem's descendants are modern-day Europeans, but particularly the Germanic peoples. Essentially, this article endorses the notions of British and Nordic Israelism. Hear me out: British/Nordic Israelism is not true; it is not even a theory because it is literally supported by no evidence. There is a plethora of evidence which refutes British (and Nordic) Israelism; this video being an example. (And yes, he is right in that the "theory" is just racist/extremist/white-supremacist propaganda.) However, this article makes the claim that all modern European peoples are Shem's descendants, which is plain-up wrong. Europeans are clearly Japheth's descendants.

On the other hand, I believe that the Germanic peoples are still descended from Shem; not from Arpachshad, but through his son Lud. This source identifies Shem as the progenitor of Haplogroup IJ; Lud is the progenitor of Haplogroup I, which is common in northern Europe, while Shem's other sons are the progenitors of the J haplogroups. The J haplogroups are common in the middle east, which the Bible explicitly states to be populated by Shem's descendants. On the other hand, the other Europeans have the R haplogroups, clearly identified with Japheth (whose descendants populated southern Europe).

My best friend and his father were both born in England. Although they are obviously part Japhethite and have Japhethite names, and nor do I know their haplogroup, I believe them to be more from Shem through his son Lud. Their overall appearance and complexion are very similar to Shem as he is depicted in James Tissot's paintings (the guy with blond hair in the purple robe).

TL;DR: Southern Europeans are from Japheth. Northern Europeans are from Shem through his son Lud, not Arpachshad. The source I cited above for Shem's identification with Haplogroup IJ is much better for uniting the Biblical narrative with modern-day genetics.

Joseph D. Pelobello (Daniel William &#34;Danny&#34; Wilson) (talk) 14:24, 13 November 2021 (EST)

On a different note, I've found the date of creation to be approximately 4146 BC and the date of the flood to be 2515 BC... what do you think?