Reading a page for BibleVerse

The two questions

Read the page on your tradition, then answer two questions, in as few or as many words as you like:

1. Is anything wrong? A date, a name, a belief described in words your tradition would not use, a number that is out of date, a paragraph that leaves out what matters.
2. Does it sound like us? Would a member of your congregation recognize their own tradition in it, and would a newcomer understand it without being asked to accept it?

Twenty minutes is usually enough. A reply to the email that reached you is the simplest way to answer; the form at the foot of this page is the other.

What happens with your answer

A correction that checks out against the tradition's own documents is made within a week and recorded, with the date, in the page's change history. If a change cannot be made as asked, you are told why: the page describes disagreements as disagreements rather than settling them, and it keeps the parts of a tradition's history that the tradition itself has spoken about. Where two readers from the same tradition disagree, the page says so and both are named.

The page's status line then changes. Every page now reads "Awaiting review by a member of the tradition"; after your reading it reads "Read by …", in whichever of the forms below you choose.

What the reader line looks like

The line sits at the foot of the page, in the section that gives the page's citation and its history. Four forms are on offer; the example is invented.

The same line, grouped by page, appears on How these pages were made, and in the site's open data file for the pages. A congregation named in form 1 or 2 is linked to its own website.

The rules that go with it

• It says who read the page. It does not say that you or your congregation endorse BibleVerse, agree with every word, or vouch for any other page on the site. The page, and its mistakes, remain the site's.
• You choose the form, and you approve the exact wording by email before it goes up.
• It comes off whenever you ask, without being asked why.
• Nothing is paid, traded or promised beyond the line itself and, if you want it, the directory entry below.
• You are named as you name yourself: the Rev., Fr., Rabbi, Elder, Pastor, Brother, or no title; your congregation as it writes its own name.

The directory, if you would like it

The site also keeps a directory of places of worship: congregations that asked to be listed, by tradition and by distance from the visitor, each named as it names itself and linked to its own website. A congregation that read a page for the site can have an entry there as well, with a line saying which page it read. That is a separate thing from the reader line, and you can have either without the other. Ask to be listed, or say so in your reply.

Pages still waiting for a reader

If your tradition is here and no one has written to you, you are welcome to read its page and answer the two questions below without being asked. That is how most of these will get done.

• Judaism: Conservative Judaism, Hasidic Judaism, Karaite Judaism, Orthodox Judaism, Rabbinic Judaism, Reconstructionist Judaism, Reform Judaism
• Eastern churches: Church of the East, Eastern Orthodox, Old Believers, Oriental Orthodox
• Catholic: Catholic Church, Eastern Catholic churches, Old Catholic Church
• Lutheran: Lutherans, Moravian Church, Pietism
• Reformed: Congregational (Puritan), Presbyterian, Quakers (Friends), Reformed (Zwingli, Calvin), Unitarian Universalist, Waldensians
• Anabaptist & Baptist: Amish, Anabaptist, Baptist, Church of the Brethren, Mennonite, National Baptist Convention, Southern Baptist Convention
• Anglican & Methodist: African Methodist Episcopal Church, Church of England (Anglican), Episcopal Church, Holiness movement, Methodist
• Pentecostal & evangelical: African Initiated Churches, Assemblies of God, Charismatic renewal, Church of God in Christ, Evangelical revivals, Non-denominational churches, Oneness Pentecostal, Pentecostal
• Restorationist & other movements: Christian Science, Jehovah's Witnesses, Latter-day Saints, Messianic Judaism, New Apostolic Church, Plymouth Brethren, Restoration Movement (Stone-Campbell), Seventh-day Adventist
• Shared roots: Israel and Judah: the First Temple, Second Temple Judaism, The early, undivided Church

Answer the two questions

Or simply reply to the email that reached you; either way the answers go to the same person.