Maverick Philosopher

Kevin,

I opened Bill's paper without any trouble on my PC, using the Acrobat Reader 7.0. The Baggaley paper on the ontological argument gave me a password-protected message, so that doesn't seem to be a problem with your setup.

One of the proprietors, John Sabatino, responds by e-mail:

When it comes to seeing your paper, it sounds like Kevin just needs to check for updates on his Adobe Acrobat reader or get the latest version. There are no problems with the formatting on your paper.

The problem both Kevin and Tim are having with other articles is that they are clicking on the author’s name. What they need to do is click on the link *below* each of the abstracts. The link reads “Read Article (External Site)”.

Now – why, on some papers, is the author’s name a hyperlink that does not open up the file as well? And why does it ask for a password? This feature leads to a cached backup of every article that only the site administrator is allowed to view. It is sort of like how Google has a cached version of everything they link to. We can’t give access to that link because it is a copy that our site hosts as a backup on the web-designer’s computer. There could be issues with copyright. We cannot host someone’s article on our server without permission. As author’s give us permission to host their articles however, we take off the password protection and, as is the case with your article, both the hyperlinked name and the “Read Article” link can be accessed – and they both lead to the same paper.

This may seem a bit confusing. We’re looking into how to simplify this. The bottom line is that every article on the page is accessible to the general public. If the “Read Article” link does not work, its because the site we are linking to is down -- like FaithQuest which hosts great articles but is notorious for crashing. What we are doing is trying to get permission to host every article we have in the manner that you have allowed us to. That way we don’t have to rely on someone else’s waning interest, inability to pay hosting fees, vulnerability to hacking or faulty server. It is our goal to have permanence for every piece we host. We’re trying to create a reliable research tool, not a link-graveyard like many other philosophy of religion sites on the web.

Also - the “subscribe” feature that Kevin mentions is for a “virtual classroom” project we are working on where NT scholars and philosophers will be giving us audio and video recordings of entire lessons.

Bill,

Thanks for clearing that up!

I like John Sabatino's description of his plans for the site. It sounds like an ambitious and worthy project.

Tim