"Devotee" from e-Sangha says hello to everyone!

[Devotee]

Hello everyone!

E-Sangha was a daily dose of Dharma for me. I thought that I could wait for it to re-open. But I cannot wait and sit silent, while the respected members of e-Sangha (among them, Andres Honore, Ven, Huifeng, and others) are all moving on. Impermanence, I guess...

I know that a thread on e-Sangha at this point may be redundant, but please indulge me, with a few silly questions:

1. Is Dharmawheel intended to be a "genie of the ring", meant to temporarily substitute e-Sangha, or is it e-Sangha's replacement altogether?
2. Would it be possible to get all other e-Sangha moderators and members on board? I'm talking about people such as Bro. Henry, and the other poster (name escapes me now) who did an extensive post on the Ten Daily Mantras of Chinese Buddhism, as well as other people like Vincent Ng, Ven. Hong Yang Shi, etc. These people, I feel, have contributed to e-Sangha so much, and would be assets to Dharmawheel too.
3. Would it be possible to reproduce relatively important threads from e-Sangha here? Has anyone by any chance copied or saved them? The translation forums in e-Sangha were a blessing for me.

If these questions have been asked before, please pardon my ignorance. This is my very first post and I am looking forward to hear from all of you!

Thank you!

Devotee

[ronnewmexico]

Hello

I can't speak for anyone here as I am new here as well, but not from esanga, I stopped posting there quite some time ago. While though I had corrosponded with Leo and asked if he needed some specific help I could offer, when I heard of his problem, and I think he did his damnest to run a good show over there, it had its bumps and bruises as well. A perfect product it was not. As such, I find this show as good if not better and see no reason to bring what was there, here. That is my personal opinion. If that was a perfect product sure....by my take it was not, and no offense to all the great examples of altruistic action, the moderators, (certainly all moderators everywhere are deserving of our thanks for a thankless task)...they were not perfect issues as well. The moderators here by my take are equal if not superior.

So I would not favor such things.

But hello and welcome aboard anyway.

I particularly find no adds, a proper way of conducting a dharma internet vehicle. I know the arguments for adds well, but find they generally take away from the idea of service the incipient movers of such internet sites adhere to.

So this site I find in some regards, superior. No offense to Leo, he seems very nice and spiritual as well.

[retrofuturist]

Greetings Devotee,

1. Is Dharmawheel intended to be a "genie of the ring", meant to temporarily substitute e-Sangha, or is it e-Sangha's replacement altogether?

Dharma Wheel was established in about April 2009, several months before the crashing of E-Sangha as an offering to Mahayana and Vajrayana practitioners who enjoyed the Theravada discussion forum Dhamma Wheel (as linked to in my signature).

2. Would it be possible to get all other e-Sangha moderators and members on board? I'm talking about people such as Bro. Henry, and the other poster (name escapes me now) who did an extensive post on the Ten Daily Mantras of Chinese Buddhism, as well as other people like Vincent Ng, Ven. Hong Yang Shi, etc. These people, I feel, have contributed to e-Sangha so much, and would be assets to Dharmawheel too.

We have asked a few ex E-Sangha moderators and members if they'd be keen to take a leadership role, but at this stage I'm the only one who was at some point a moderator at E-Sangha. I suspect some may still be holding out for a return of E-Sangha in some form, which is fair enough.

3. Would it be possible to reproduce relatively important threads from e-Sangha here? Has anyone by any chance copied or saved them? The translation forums in e-Sangha were a blessing for me.

If anyone does have any E-Sangha discussions or content that they may have stored "locally" or are able to retrieve via some form of Internet archive, then we'd be happy for people to post them here as long as they source the original locations (via URL if viable).

And after all that...........

Welcome to Dharma Wheel!



Metta,
Retro.

[Luke]

Welcome to Dharma Wheel, Devotee!

My opinions don't matter much, but I'll mention them anyway.

I think Mr. Snyder has set up both Dhamma Wheel and Dharma Wheel in a very clever way. They are both friendly Buddhist forums which allow a great deal of freedom of expression while being moderated just enough to keep things civil. I think he is on the right track.

While there is nothing wrong with imitating the best parts of E-Sangha, I think it would be a mistake for this forum to try to exactly duplicate E-Sangha because an exact copy of E-Sangha would inherit all of its problems as well.

I can't speak for other people, but for me at least, this forum (and it's sister site Dhamma Wheel) is a replacement for E-Sangha. I like it here, and I have no intention of ever going back to E-Sangha.

[Devotee]

Thank you, I think I now understand where some are coming from.

I think, however, that e-Sangha, despite its flaws, have had good, informative threads that would still be helpful now, even on this site, and yes, like Retrofuturist says, it would be good if some people had stored some threads there locally, to be reproduced here. (I am talking about some of the academic/historical information, such as the historical sources of the Sutras, the meaning of mantras, the history of schools etc.)

That being said, I now no longer doubt that Dharmawheel can be just as informative, and helpful. I now look forward even more to hearing from fellow practitioners, and I am now certain that useful and relevant exchanges of ideas can be had on this site.

Here's to Dharmawheel!

[Tara]

Hi Devotee

Welcome to Dharma Wheel

regards,

rt

[KeithBC]

Welcome, Devotee.

There is an amazing Web archive service at http://www.archive.org. Its goal is to archive basically the entire web, and they come close to achieving it. As a web developer, it has saved my butt more than once when I accidentally deleted something I shouldn't have.

They last looked at e-Sangha in 2008. You could start at: http://web.archive.org/web/20080720021858/http://www.lioncity.net/buddhism/. Some links will work, and some won't. In some cases, you may have to copy a link, go back to their search page and search for it. However, you should be able to find some of your favourite threads there, if they are not really recent.

Be warned that it is quite slow, as you would expect considering the insanely huge volume of data that they have to index.

[EDIT:] On second thought, it may not be as useful as I thought. It happened that the first post I clicked on worked, but it seems that the vast majority are not in the archive. Pity.

Om mani padme hum
Keith

[MJH]

There is an amazing Web archive service at http://www.archive.org. Its goal is to archive basically the entire web, and they come close to achieving it..............

They last looked at e-Sangha in 2008. You could start at: http://web.archive.org/web/20080720021858/http://www.lioncity.net/buddhism/. Some links will work, and some won't.

Thank you Keith! While it may be from 2008 there is still a huge wealth of information on the site. Even if most of the links don't work, I've found a few that do. Especially among the pinned topics.

[kirtu]

Hello everyone!

Hi There! How you doing?

Kirt

[David N. Snyder]

Welcome to Dharma Wheel!

[Devotee]

Thank you so much for your warm welcome! I posted a question/topic in the Vajrayana forum. As it involves Chinese Buddhism too, I don't know if I should repost it on another thread.

Thank you!