jwpedia:Introduction

Welcome to JWpedia! The purpose of this wiki project is to provide a place on the web where interested individuals can research Jehovah's Witnesses. Our goal is to provide an analysis of the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society literature (including books, magazines, tracts, etc), with a focus on providing alternative but balanced views to those presented by their publications. Beyond just their literature we also aim to document the history of the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, their core beliefs and doctrines, their involvement in legal disputes, etc.

Please consider contributing. We feel this could become a powerful resource for those looking for up-to-date details and counterpoints to the views expressed in the Watchtower publications.

How To Get Started

Getting started is easy, even if you've never contributed to a wiki project before. All you need to do is create an account, choose a topic to contribute to and simply add content to that topics page. Not sure how to do any of this? That's ok! Just take a look at our Newbie Guide for a short step-by-step guide for those who are new to editing wiki pages. This is a "basic training" guide that should help you get started relatively quickly.

If you're a more experienced wiki editor, you can find more detailed editing guidelines here: Editing Guidelines.

What To Contribute

You can start contributing immediately by simply creating a new page on whatever topic you'd like to cover. If you're not sure what topic you'd like to contribute to, please take a look at our To Do List for a list of various topics that are in need of content.

You can also look at our Literature Portal to find a list of Watchtower Bible and Tract Society publications we are working on. Simply pick a section of one of the books, magazines, or tracts listed and dive in!

How To Help The Project

Spread the word! Because this is a community driven project we need as many people on board as we can get. Posts have been made to /r/exjw on reddit about this project, but if you frequent other JW forums / sites, please feel free to spread the word about this project and its goals. Without community contributions and feedback the project cannot succeed.

We are still in the very early stages of building this Wiki, but right now we think it would be best to organize the information based on publication / issue, having a brief summary of articles within the publication, followed by inaccuracies, misquotes, contradictions, etc... Do not feel you need to provide a thoroughly detailed description of every article within a particular publication. You can start from literally anywhere and fill in what information you can, the idea is that as more and more people contribute the gaps will be filled in gradually as we go.

Where To Find Things

/r/exjw on reddit - Effectively the birthplace of this resource.

jwfacts.com - A powerful source of factual information regarding the Jehovah's Witnesses and Watchtower Society. This site tends to focus on broad topics, such as problems with the core JW beliefs and doctrine. There is less information here regarding specific magazine publications, but it can still be a great place to start when looking for information on core JW beliefs or specific articles in recent JW publications.

jehovahs-witness.net - A forum for ex-Jehovah's Witnesses. This site has a great wealth of information, much of which covers the very topics we seek to cover here on this Wiki, so it can be a strong resource to help build this Wiki. However, because of the nature of forums in general, much of the information is poorly organized and difficult to sort through.

RationalWiki - A wiki devoted as a response to Conservapedia. This site contains some rational debunking of the Bible and other JW beliefs.