It has finally gone live.
http://wiki.pathfindersonline.org
This is a project I have been working on since June 2011. Well, unless you include the work I did at Wikibooks starting in October 2005.
There are still a few kinks to work out, but the wiki project I started back in 2005 has been adopted by the Youth Ministries department of the North American Division of Seventh-day Adventists. It started as an unofficial Answer Book, and now it is the Official Answer Book. It has been a long journey, and now it’s finally live.
To be sure, I didn’t do all the work represented at this site, but I did do an awful lot of it (much more than half). It has been and shall remain a community effort.
The impetus for moving this body of work to the NAD’s control was because Wikibooks has a neutral point of view (NPOV) policy. NPOV is not exactly compatible with religion in general, and Pathfinders is a religious organization. The Honors Answer Book was just on the neutral side of the NPOV line, but I wanted to expand it to include an Instructor’s Manual for teaching the new Pathfinder Investiture Achievement curricula. That would have put it well over the line. To this end, I proposed the idea to my friend Mark who serves as the NAD Youth Ministries webmaster. From there it went through several committees at the NAD, and once approved, we had to shepherd it through countless technical hurdles.
But tonight the last hurdle was cleared and it went live.
Last week a friend of mine described this project saying “It will probably be his legacy.” He might be right. If so, it’s a legacy I can be more than just a little happy with.
I am over the moon!
Jomegat's Weblog 
October 1, 2012 at 10:27 pm
Congratulations! Well deserved success!
October 1, 2012 at 10:31 pm
Thanks. It’s pretty exciting. I just hope it takes off.
October 2, 2012 at 6:23 am
Wow-that’s quite an undertaking. i looked at the flowers section and could see just that alone taking years. Congratulations!
October 2, 2012 at 7:19 am
I’d like to eventually rework the Flowers honor and make it more like another project I started at Wikibooks:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikijunior:Summer_Flowers_of_Northern_New_England
That one is still not finished either.
October 2, 2012 at 7:29 pm
You must like a challenge. Something like that could literally take a lifetime. But boy, won’t it be useful!
October 2, 2012 at 7:39 pm
By limiting the scope to Northern New England, and summer, I felt the problem was somewhat bounded. By directing it to young people, I thought I might be able to pull it off. Most of that is an outgrowth of a phenology project I worked on a couple or three years ago. I thought I could hit the most likely candidates. If I could just flesh out the rest of what was there, I would think it would be in a pretty decent state. After that it could be expanded to accommodate my patience and availability.
As for the Answer Book, I seriously doubt I ever would have started it had I known how much time I would end up pouring into it. It’s a good thing I didn’t. I worked on that project for 2-3 hours every evening for about three years.
October 2, 2012 at 8:52 pm
The only similar project that I would see as worthy of the time and effort would be lichens and liverworts. But wouldn’t that be painful!
October 2, 2012 at 6:24 am
Another congrats from Kentucky.for seeing it through to completion…….
October 2, 2012 at 7:20 am
Thanks Jim. It’s not exactly complete yet. For that, it will require community input.
October 2, 2012 at 10:14 am
Jim, I’m very proud of you and applaud your accomplishment. This will indeed be your “legacy” and one your church family will have to blessing to use for many years to come. Great job!!!
Cheryl
October 2, 2012 at 10:53 am
Thanks Cheryl. As you know, when you are enjoying a task, it hardly counts as work.
October 2, 2012 at 10:55 am
So true! Thanks for always being so generous with your talents 🙂