Scripture Database planning

Likely you've come across this page because I asked you to help out with my website idea. Please take a look at the planning information below and e-mail me if you'd like to help make this a reality. I haven't sought any venture capital yet, but that may happen depending on people's interest.

Update: Instead of moving along with this project, I am concentrating on improving other wikis for now, particularly Wikipedia, BibleWiki, and Wikible—all linked below.

Overview

Tagline: A flexibly-searchable, user-edited Internet database of scriptural information. Since late 2004, I've been mulling over ways to launch a wiki-type (user-edited) website which organizes information about scriptures. People want to know how reliable a text is or what its history is; I think a Scripture Database (SDb) would fill this much-needed void in the WWW.

There are lots of sites that attempt to collect scriptural information, but none of them have a good database set up to allow complex searches (fields such as date, author, pages, language, region, and many more). Other sites include full texts of scriptures, but the SDb would serve as a starting point with links to sites such as these. Similarly, so as not to duplicate the efforts of the Wikipedia, most SDb pages would link to the corresponding Wikipedia page. I wish it were possible to organize something like the SDb on Wikipedia itself, but the database limitations fall short for those needing in-depth research on religious texts. My personal interest lies in Biblical translations, but this project is designed to include scriptures from religions across the globe.

Tasks

  1. Gather a team with web design and database skills.
  2. Determine how to poll the public on their SDb needs.
  3. Decide how project should be launched (venture capital, personal project, team of volunteers, etc.).

Concept sketches

Below are some drafts of the major page types (click on them for larger, more complete versions). I've marked ideas in red since I'm not sure how easy it would be to implement all of the tools laid out in the sketches. Web standards are an important part of the design strategy. I haven't included a sketch of the home page yet, but something like the following synopsis would be on it:

The Scripture Database is a flexibly-searchable, user-edited Internet database of scriptural information. The SDb is a powerful tool, but to benefit the most from it, please take a few moments and visit the Help section (link at the top of every page).

[In extended Help page, further explanation:] Full texts are not collected here, but a host of other data is continually being added to provide a better picture of scriptural development across the globe. An understanding of how categories and publications are organized is essential to getting the most out of the SDb. Categories are general concepts or source documents (e.g. KJV, study Bible, Muslim, Textus Receptus, Analects, Tripitaka). Publications are the physical copies of the sources, such as the New Cambridge Paragraph Bible. Ideally, each publication has several categories and each category has several publications.

SDb Research page
SDb Publication page
SDb Category-editing page

These are some helpful sites that compliment the Scripture Database.

Here are a few helpful web design sites to help structure the Scripture Database.

Page created '06June01. Updated June 23rd.

Navigation

You are currently in the Beliefs section of Zepfanman.com. Since the site is currently in beta, I haven't fleshed out these sidebars yet.

To help out with this project, add ideas to the SDb Wikipedia page, or e-mail me: his [at] megsnjj [dot com]