Expansion of Content

When I wrote "P.S. I have ideas..." in the "It's a Sham" thread earlier today I didn't realize you had this suggestions item already. So I'll just share my ideas here.

During an immersive week on this site I read not only several documents (Ingalls, Rutledge, etc.) but also several threads of comments.

This site has a ton of information, and it's important information that can't be found anywhere else, but one problem is that it's not that approachable for an "outsider" (which I mean someone not already familiar to the goings-on of the Local Church). For example, a concerned parent of a college kid now gung-ho for the Recovery; the parent may or may not be a Christian and may not have ever heard of LC, WL, etc.

There's a whole lot of basic knowledge one needs before they can even read any of the documents here. Things like what's meant by "Lord's Recovery" or "Local Church", or lingo like "touch your spirit". Those of us who were/are in the LC already know these things and take them for granted. So we can jump right in...

Well, can we though? Now you need some more specific knowledge of people and places. Who's Minoru Chen or John So or any of the other dozens of names that are mentioned in these accounts. What's the significance of Anaheim or Taiwan in a given decade of history? Elden hall, what's that?

So one idea is to add more reference info to this site. I'm thinking something Wikipedia-style with articles like "List of LC Leaders" which could then have brief bios (even 2 or 3 sentences) for all of the names that occur in the accounts. Likewise a "List of prominent places". There also could be "List of LC jargon" for "touch your spirit" and such.

Another problem is where to begin for the "outsider". It'd be helpful to have some sticky intro materials like maybe an FAQ (not the brief forum technical one) with questions like "Is LC a cult?" or "What's the forum consensus on X" where X can be "WL's ministry" or "Is it okay for Christians to sue one another".

I purposely listed those FAQ items because they are the very ones on the LC FAQ site:
http://www.localchurchesfaq.org/
Seriously, check it out. They did a great job. Each question is clearly and succinctly answered, and the presentation looks very professional. So that's what this site is competing with.

I also mentioned Wikipedia earlier for two reasons. First, I read all of the articles there on WL, LC, LSM, etc. and they're all pretty good quality, and have no hint whatsoever of the skeletons in the closet contained at this site.

The second reason is I wonder if this site could add an actual wiki. There are free software frameworks for it, including the one for Wikipedia itself which many other wikis on the web use. The great things about a wiki are:
1) pages can be tagged with multiple categories (as opposed to static forum hierarchy)
2) text on the pages can hyperlink to any other page (e.g. reading about WL on wikipedia can link to LC article)
3) cleaner presentation than forum and better save/print options (see wikipedia left column Print/export options)
4) each page retains entire edit history allowing for comparisons of any 2 versions, revert to older version, etc.

Obviously there's technical setup of a wiki and issues like can forum user accounts also be used for wiki. I don't know the details well enough but am a computer professional so am willing to help figure it out if this is an option you want to pursue.

Even if adding a wiki is not desirable or feasible, new forum(s) could be added for the above reference items.