Theosophy Wiki:Community portal

Important information

Video: "Introducing the Theosophy Wiki".
About Theosophy Wiki
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Contacting administrators

Please contact our administrators if you want to become a Theosophy Wiki editor or to make suggestions.

Help topics

These are short articles providing information that should help users, particularly editors, in using the wiki. Before starting editing please make sure you read the Policies for Theosophy Wiki articles.

Administrators
Block quotes
Browsers and technical issues
Categories of Theosophy Wiki articles
Columns in Theosophy Wiki articles
Deleting Theosophy Wiki articles

Discussion pages
Editing Theosophy Wiki articles
Footnotes and references
Images
Links
Italics in Theosophy Wiki article title

Creating Theosophy Wiki articles
Redirecting to another Theosophy Wiki article
Sandboxes for testing
Searching Theosophy Wiki
Terminology used in Mediawiki
Watchlist to follow changes

Plans and announcements

In this section, we will announce changes to the Theosophy Wiki and plans for the future. If you have suggestions, please add them to the Discussion associated with this page (see Discussion pages ), or contact the administrators.

Update on April 8, 2013:

The search engine that originally came with MediaWiki has been replaced by a much more powerful piece of software. Now the search results are useful and complete. Images have been added for the Mahatma Letters through ML 118 (chronological numbering), and notes have been added to a substantial number of letters. Links to audio and video materials have been added.

Update on May 21, 2013:

We have created a video tour called "Introducing the Theosophy Wiki". Please take a look!

Update on October 23 2014:

The URL was changed to take advantage of the new .wiki extension. www.tswiki.net became www.theosophy.wiki. Thanks to Chris Bolger for drawing this opportunity to our attention, and Patrick Layden for putting it into place.

Update on September 8, 2015:

The wiki data was migrated from SQLite to the more robust MySQL.

Update on December 19, 2015:

The wiki was expanded to have editions in French, Spanish, and Russian languages, with interlanguage links between articles. Thanks go to Pavel Malakhov and Patrick Layden for all their technical efforts, and to Harry Binford for the new entry page, logos, and welcome banners.

Update on May 31, 2017:

An Italian language edition of the wiki was established.

Update on June 14, 2018

Major software upgrades were installed, taking us to MediaWiki 1.30.0. We reverted to using MediaWiki's superior new search engine rather than SphinxSearch. The new search groups results into those that have the search term in the titles of articles, and those that mention it in the text. Wiki was tested in four browsers: Chrome, Edge, Opera, and Firefox.

Major upgrade on October 25, 2023

Major software upgrades were made by Jeff O'Fallon with major assistance from Paval Malakhov:

Mediawiki 1.39.4 replaced 1.30.0

PHP 8.0.30 (fpm-fcgi) replaced 7.2.34 (fpm-fcgi)

MariaDB 10.5.22-MariaDB remained the same

ICU 69.1 was installed

LUA 5.1.5 remained the same

Pygments 2.11.2 was installed

The extension Semantic Mediawiki was installed, and used to create a replacement for the extension HPBQuote.

The Infobox MLbox was updated.

Note that the search does not present its findings in the same sequence as in the previous version, but apart from this disappointing change in presentation, the search results are the same.

How you can participate

Here are some areas where you could contribute:

• New Theosophy Wiki articles:
  • To create a new article read:
    • Policies for Theosophy Wiki articles
    • New articles
    • Editing articles.

• Existing Theosophy Wiki articles:
  • Add information on the topic of any given article (make sure to use quotes and references when necessary). Read Help:Editing.
  • Add photographs and scans of documents that would add interest to articles.
  • Add links to websites and related online resources in the sections "Further Reading" or "Additional Resources" you will find at the end of the articles. We especially want to include links to the appropriate entry of the Theosophical Encyclopedia available at the Theosophy World website, so that more readers will find these scholarly entries.
  • Add links to websites and related online resources to the article Blavatsky resources.
  • Start to build content for articles that are now just stubs. You will find a list of these in Category:Articles need expansion.
  • Take a book on Theosophical history and use its content to add to wiki articles. Some examples (from the Adyar tradition) are:
    • Henry Steel Olcott's Old Diary Leaves
    • Josephine Ransom's A Short History of the Theosophical Society
    • Joy Mills' 100 Years of Theosophy: A History of The Theosophical Society in America
    • Curuppumullage Jinarājadāsa's The Golden Book of the Theosophical Society: A Brief History of the Society's Growth from 1875-1925

(Note: Let us start by working on non-controversial facts. We want this site to be a constructive influence where members from any organization of the Theosophical movement can work together in harmony for the spreading of Theosophy. The controversial facts will be handled with special care and respect, and the participation of the different parts involved, when possible.)

• Calendar:
  • Add dates to help us build a picture of what happened each day - births, deaths, holidays, and significant events. (You can skim through Theosophical histories and periodicals for dates of interest). See example.

• Periodicals:
  • Skim through a Theosophical periodical for information to add to the wiki.
  • Use the Union Index to Theosophical Periodicals to improve the lists of additional resources for topical wiki articles and bibliographies in biographical articles.

• Mahatma Letters:
  • Add "Notes" (on the right-hand column) to the individual letters that will help understand the event, place, or person the correspondant is referring to. See example.
  • Add content to sections such as "Context and background", "Commentary about this letter", etc. Make sure to document your contribution with the necessary references.
  • Create internal links to existing Theosophy Wiki articles for technical terms, places, or personalities mentioned in the letters. See example.
  • Create new Theosophy Wiki articles for technical terms, places, or personalities mentioned in a letter and link them to it.

• Projects: This is a list of topics needing work.