Linking Sutta Discussions from DhammaWheel.com

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Dear All,

Since the sutta-linking system has been installed many useful essays and talks have now been liked to suttas. However, at present there is little discussion.

I’ve been considering using this facility to link the sutta discussions that we have, primarily, in the Study Group section of Dhammawheel.com: http://dhammawheel.com/viewforum.php?f=25

I’ve discussed this with @sujato, who is supportive of the idea as a way to create more synergy between the sites. However, I wanted to run the idea past other members, to get any ideas about how best to do it.

I think the Discussion section would be the correct place for the posts. I would propose going through making posts like:

(title) SN12.15 Kaccānagotta Sutta Discussion

(body) SN12.15 Kaccānagotta Sutta Discussion from DhammaWheel: http://www.dhammawheel.com/viewtopic.php?t=11269

This would then show up as a link for anyone reading SN12.15, which would lead back to the thread, and therefore to the DhammaWheel discussion.

That particular example collects comments from a number of modern and ancient
commentators, including Venerables Bodhi, Amaro, Passano, Nanananda, and
Nagarjuna, as well as opinions from DhammaWheel members. It would be
wonderful to see some of those discussions continued with new
participants, and it would also be great if more of the DhammaWheel members
came over here for such discussions.

Currently, we lock the Dhamma Wheel Sutta Study threads after a couple of weeks, to keep them in order. With proper indexing, this is not such an issue. However, I think that a nice effect of that would be that any further discussion could, at present, only occur on SuttaCentral.

I’d be very pleased to hear ideas (positive or negative!) about this suggestion. I don’t want to sit down to create several hundred threads without doing some planning… :memo:

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I think this is a really interesting idea, Mike. We definitely should encourage more discussion with other Buddhism forums, and Dhamma Wheel is an excellent place for that. My only concern would be that it might grow quite tiresome jumping from Discourse to Dhamma Wheel and vice versa.

I’d also be interested to know what people at Dhamma Wheel think of this idea.

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Thanks, I’m discussing it with the Dhamma Wheel moderating team.

Certainly jumping back and forth would not be ideal, but we have a resource of over five years of roughly weekly sutta discussions. Some of the discussion is quite brief, but some, like the one I linked to above, gather together a lot of interesting discussion points, and having them indexed to the suttas on Sutta Central would make them much more accessible. My hope would be that, having created a thread as described above, others would add to it with other resources on that particular sutta.

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OK, I went ahead and created a post in Discussion, to see how it might look:

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I’m still having trouble with the linking back from the suttas.

I just posted this:

And it doesn’t seem to link back from the suttas, despite putting in the MN19 in the title and tagging MN19.

I’d like some feedback on the format. Is what I just posted a reasonable format?
I.e.

SC code: MN19
Pali title: Madhupiṇḍika
English title: Two kinds of thought.
Comment: Discussion from Dhamma Wheel:
Link: http://dhammawheel.com/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=1558#p20055

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This is all fine. Don’t worry about the linking back, we’ll fix this as we go. @blake is still tweaking the code, it will take a little while to get right.

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OK, it looks like SN12.15 has linked back, but MN19 still has not. I’m sure it will work out in the end…

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Yes, this problem seems to have been fixed. It might still take a little while for the post to be indexed and picked up for SC, but it will get there.

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Great news! I’m working through the process. I think the format is OK, and it’s not too difficult. I’m using the Pali titles from SC and the title of the SC English translation, if available.

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OK, I have now put in links the suttas that we discussed over on Dhamma Wheel following Bhikkhu Bodhi’s lecture series:
A Systematic Study of the Majjhima Nikaya
http://dhammawheel.com/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=19951

Next there is much of the Sutta Nipata, then thematic series from the SN and the AN, based, again on Bhikkhu Bodhi’s suggestions:
SN: http://dhammawheel.com/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=345#p88300
AN: http://dhammawheel.com/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=19931
These have been alternating and are also interspersed with other bits and pieces.

It will take a while do do all that, but I’ve now got a procedure that is reasonably simple and quick.

It’s interesting to see these old discussions, and I’m pleased to have a way of indexing them to the suttas.

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OK, I’m up to the SN/AN part. It’s really interesting for me to revisit these discussions from several years ago. There’s so much interesting detail once one starts analysing suttas such as the following, and it’s great that the link from the Sutta Central post to the sutta itself, and to a parallel, are so seamless.

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It appears that the indexing hasn’t worked for the past few days. If it’s being worked on, that’s fine, good things take time! But I thought I should point this out, in case something is broken.

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I’m getting even the last ones you have posted, so it seems to work for me. What exactly is not happening?

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Hmm, strange. Here’s four examples. Am I looking in the wrong place?

http://suttacentral.net/pi/sn41.8

http://suttacentral.net/en/sn35.246

http://suttacentral.net/pi/mn113

http://suttacentral.net/en/dn31

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Wheras this one links back fine:

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Again, I am not clear what the problem is. All these look fine to me. And I am even getting results from this thread itself!

Can you specify exactly what you are looking at and what you are not seeing.

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OK, I go to:


click on the three bars (what’s that called?),
click on Discuss and Discover
and see nothing.

this is on Firefox ESR 38.0 on Linux

There’s other things that are odd…
I then tried Chrome Version 42.0.2311.152 (64-bit) on Linux
and I don’t get the three bars!

So I went to my Window7 virtual machine.
Neither Firefox nor Chrome nor IE display properly. It’s just a vertical list of stuff…

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The three bars? “Menu icon” AKA “Hamburger”. Perhaps we should use “Tofu burger”?

I can confirm that I’m not seeing anything on SN 35.246.

Not getting the menu at all on Chrome is bad, @blake can you investigate this. Normally we use Chrome for development so it is the last thing we expect to find problems with.

As for Windows 7 VM, hard to say, if we get confirmation that this happens on actual Windows 7 it might be worth looking into.

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OK, it’s failing on a real Windows7 machine in both Firefox 38 and Chrome 42 (i.e. the latest updates).

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OK, to be clear the menus are working fine in Discourse on my Linux Chrome. It’s on Sutta Central that they are not working.