this is test text for a fake article. 

I am tired and not sure what to write. I kind of like writing without looking at the keyboard though, so that is nice. 

But not that challenging in this day and age. 

Adding some more content to see how it updates. 

more content
 

input new here: In a recent online seminar („webinar“) the idea, as well as tools and practices of Open Peer Review were discussed as part of the Wikimedia Fellowship „Freies Wissen“. The up to now „normal“ procedure is that academic peers review anonymously articles for scholarly publications — anonymity already being one of the illusions of this procedure, since in many specialized fields, one knows the 3, 4, 5 others working on that topic are well known to the author.
In the webinar, speakers seemed to be focused on papers for journals. And in fact, many tools seem to mirror a journal based way of thinking and working. This does reflect scholarly life in natural sciences, not so in humanities where papers are absolutely still being written as contributions to books, too (author’s note: an entry on the differences between natural sciences and humanities, between working qualitatively and quantitatively, between x and y when it comes to Open Science has to be written at some point). However, the standard review procedure with the aim of guaranteeing quality is the same.
Thoughts on the problematic character of that very course of review had appeared to me earlier, especially during my work as an assistant in editing a collected volume. Apart from the already mentioned quasi non-anonymity in many cases, the tone chosen by the critic is sometimes not what I would call productive. But I didn’t come up with the idea of a new procedure, something like Open Peer Review. My idea rather was, that I would like a more concrete feedback on my work — more than „I liked you article“, I was looking for „This very point, I found inspiring/problematic/worth exploring more. Let me tell you my ideas“. What contributed its share, is the fact that chances for debates going into argument and wording details become rare as soon as not being part of seminar life anymore. There are not many opportunities for researchers (I dare to generalize) to interactively and intensely engage with good or bad academic writing. Conferences, which I long time believed to be the place for that often are a disappointment. Where is the space to revive debates on texts as I know them from philosophy, Islamic studies or grad school classes? And once writing has left student level behind — most likely after the painful path of dissertation writing — and one has developed an own style, attitude, approach, this would be useful even more. I admit that I have a clear preference for the real life, personal way of debating text. I want to see and hear the person. And I also believe that the direct and repeated interaction between two minds can reach a quality over time that no Open Science tool can beat. Still, since this is not always possible, I wish to explore other ways (note: what about opening a two-people-personal-debate-culture just like postum published letter exchanges between researchers?). Other ways will open new, unknown chances and manners of matching minds, I am sure.

What has all this to do with this very website you are on? The webinar made me think in how far „Hawass“ will be part of the Open Peer Review experiment going on right now, once users will be able to contribute their remarks, ideas and completions here. On Hawass 2.0, there will be two ways to engage with the existing content. First, users will have the chance to write comments as we know it from many websites. The comment function holds the danger of non productive critic tending towards offenses as can be seen on youtube as well as on high end journalism sites. And which is just part of the critic on non-open review processes. In that case, I will be the one to decide what to allow or not in order not to hurt rules of good debate or feelings or even get into legal problems. This process will be demanding probably and needs to be  as transparent as possible, I realized after the webinar. The second possibility to engage with existing content on Hawass will be for users to write articles themselves, not necessarily as a direct response but in connection to existing texts and images. All articles will be tagged and visualized in their connection to each other. And by this, the concept says, new knowledge will be generated in a constructive and collaborative way. I am very much looking forward to this experiment, since it might be a way to open deep debates and bring together people with similar ways of thinking, similar interests, who would not have met otherwise.

Hello, 

THis is some text. 

and here is another one. 

With the initial concept for Hawass, I intended a bilingual website, perfectly mirrored. The idea behind being that was to make this website about a topic clearly related to Muslim culture and society accessible to those most familiar with the Arabic language. Although „hawass“ includes examples from non-Arabic speaking countries, Arabic is the main language of reference when it comes to #ContemporaryIslamicAesthetics, since in many instances a relation to the sources per se, Qur’an and Sunna, is of some importance.

Besides questions of accessibility, my aim was — and still is — to create also a platform for writing about the website topic in Arabic, in order encourage knowledge production on a topic deeply related to the Arabic language in Arabic. Of course, there are many forums and media formats that allow for this already, but not on the specific topic: On aesthetic phenomena with a connection to Islamic theology and tradition, Muslim religiosity and culture but not from a religious perspective.
Why that? Besides, one of the problems that appear in research on Islamic Art and Islamic aesthetics is a language problem. Arabic terms are not sufficiently taken notice of or explained in their distinctiveness. For example, there is no original Arabic term for „aesthetics“. Translations such as „science of beauty“, as in the Encyclopaedia of Islam, do not cover the whole spectrum of what „aesthetics“ mean. But this does not mean that there are not concepts that combine beauty and perception, such as „aesthetics“ does. The ideas are just spread in different conceptual boxes.
Using Arabic terms more frequently means to open new perspectives. For example: Islamic Calligraphy is a big thing in Islamic Art history, for Arabic language is sacred and depictions especially of human and animals, i.e. „creatures“, are restricted. So calligraphy with its close relation to ornamentation and floral patterns became central for beautification especially of religious environment. But until now it was barely recognized that the Arabic term denoting calligraphy is not about beauty (Greek: kalos) but about the basic graphic element constituting Arabic script, the line — „fann al-khatt“, فن الـخـط , means „the art of the line“. (My article „ Reading between the Lines: Arabic Script, Islamic Calligraphy, and the Question of Legibility“, exploring Islamic calligraphy from the perspective of the line is forthcoming, please get in contact for more information or a fruitful debate).
What made me change the plan then?
Testusers advised me to rethink the initial plan, since their experience with bilingual sites is that they are almost never up to date on both language levels. And they are right. At the moment, I would not be capable of guaranteeing a proper bilingual site. Plus, most of those visitors to „hawass“ with Arabic as a first language will have knowledge of the English language to some point anyway. So I decided to rather support the more important part: Encouraging Arabic writing on aspects of Contemporary Islamic Aesthetics in the form of proper article entries. I will do my best to have proper translations for this selected content then in order to enrich the general debate with an Arabic terms perspective. This content will be get a special button and tag in order to make it available easily.
Please get in contact with me for any feedback on this!

The initial idea behind Hawass in 2010 was to share knowledge and to open up personal archives, which is in the end sharing data. Just because there was not enough writing on contemporary phenomena of Islamic symbolism, and Islamic material culture. This made Hawass to a project within the increasingly important discourse of Open Science. In the academic year of 2017/18, Hawass is a project within the Wikimedia Fellowship programme "Freies Wissen". Being part of this stimulatingly heterogenous programme means not only the receive support in various ways, it also brings with it the obligation to actually openly document the project and research process, my research and process. I emphasize "my" because this now is putting theory of an ideal open knowledge and science world into my personal practise and I realize it is a quite demanding way. Showing the users and readers, you, images and insights collected in my fieldwork to me is rather close to the usual academic publishing, compared to making transparent my stream of ideas, and worries. To show laziness and frustration, unsolved problems and supposedly half finished thoughts. On the other hand, this is a chance to actually practise doing reserach, qualitative research, differently. Why emphasizing the qualitative part? Because this will be a topic of some concern in regard to Open Science and Digital Humanities, which is still guided by big data thinking. But we will come to that. Thank you for sharing your attention.

Soon articles can be written, tagged, and commented upon!