Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Latter Day Saint movement/Archive 9

Edit war in Polygamy article

There is a dispute in progress in the Polygamy article (see this diff) over whether certain material should or should not be added to the "Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and Mormon fundamentalists" subsection of the "Patterns of occurrence across religions" section. We need input from more people in order to break the current game of edit-war ping-pong. Any comments? Richwales (talk) 21:22, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

I will comment on the relevant talk page when I get there. Right now, I am going through the items on my watchlist and trying to catch up with WP happenings. I'll be commenting within a few minutes. Thank you for drawing this to my attention. --Jgstokes-We can disagree without being disagreeable (talk) 18:45, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. The current consensus is that this is a case of a newbie IP editor who has been trying repeatedly to insert a piece of material about early, public LDS statements against polygamy. After ignoring requests to take it to the talk page, honour WP:3RR, be respectful in edit summaries, etc., he's currently blocked for a week. As for whether the material he's been proposing is worthwhile — either in the Polygamy article or in one of the LDS-specific article — that may still be an open question. Richwales (talk) 19:07, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Award

FYI, I have created Template:Morning Star Award as an award for contributions to articles about the LDS Church. It might be nice to affiliate with this WikiProject, but whether or not it is doesn't really matter to me. I thought it was about time to have an award for these edits, and I like this idea because its discrete (i.e., it's not called The Mormon Award), has some inside meaning, and gives a more precise and cross-free alternative to Template:The Christianity Barnstar ;) Best regards --Eustress (talk) 17:17, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Criticism of the Latter Day Saint movement

Criticism of the Latter Day Saint movement has been deemed too long, and has had Criticism of Mormon sacred texts and Criticism of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints split out from it by User:Richardshusr. -- 208.81.184.4 (talk) 15:37, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Project reorganization?

I hope not offend anyone in my suggestions that follow, as they are meant to help spur the improvement of Wikipedia.
Since the different denominations of the LDS movement are quite different now despite their roots, I feel they would benefit from more differentiation with regards to social organization on Wikipedia. I feel it might make sense to do one of the following:

• (a) Move this project to WikiProject LDS Church (or something named along those lines) and dissolve the other LDS movements into WikiProject Christianity or their own WikiProjects, or
• (b) Create WikiProject LDS Church within WikiProject Latter Day Saint movement.

Thoughts? --Eustress (talk) 07:38, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

I think the scope of the current wiki project is larger than the LDS church--particularly the history related articles. --dbolton (talk) 14:04, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

I agree, which is why such history articles are categorized accordingly, but a WikiProject is not concerned so much with categorization as it is with collaboration. A WikiProject "is fundamentally a social construct; its success depends on its ability to function as a cohesive group of editors working towards a common goal" (see WP:COUNCIL/G). There are a lot of articles and topics about the LDS Church in particular (see Portal:Latter-day_Saints), and I think it might make most sense to have some differentiation to help the respective church topics to grow. --Eustress (talk) 16:11, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

I've done some investigating, and maybe it would be easiest to create work groups within this wikiproject, similar to what is done at Wikipedia:WikiProject Christianity. --Eustress (talk) 01:28, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Update

I have created the work group (see here) and posted a work groups section on the project main. I'd be happy to help create work groups for other LDSM denominations if requested, but the preponderance of articles pertain to the LDS Church. —Eustress ^talk 01:29, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Hi, I have a question for you here at he LDS section. Why is the LDS found under categories like "Christianity"? It should stand alone or under "religion" Mhusoy (talk) 14:36, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Because it is considered a Christian denomination. Shereth 15:11, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Utah Boys Ranch

Can someone from this project take a look at Utah Boys Ranch. I smell some POV issues. Thanks. -R. fiend (talk) 07:40, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads-up. —Eustress ^talk 07:57, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Religion policy

Project participants may be interested in contributing to the proposed policy Wikipedia:Religion. —Eustress ^talk 18:00, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Coordinators' working group

Hi! I'd like to draw your attention to the new WikiProject coordinators' working group, an effort to bring both official and unofficial WikiProject coordinators together so that the projects can more easily develop consensus and collaborate. This group has been created after discussion regarding possible changes to the A-Class review system, and that may be one of the first things discussed by interested coordinators.

All designated project coordinators are invited to join this working group. If your project hasn't formally designated any editors as coordinators, but you are someone who regularly deals with coordination tasks in the project, please feel free to join as well. — Delievered by §hepBot (Disable) on behalf of the WikiProject coordinators' working group at 05:49, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

comparison of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the Community of Christ

This is now at my user area if it's useful to anybody.

• User:Hawstom/LDSvsCofC

Tom Haws (talk) 18:28, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Does anyone here speak Georgian (ქართული)?

Does anyone here speak Georgian, or know someone who does? It would be nice if we could get something in the Georgian Wikipedia. I have some interest in the country, but I speak barely enough Georgian to fill a thimble. Richwales (talk) 03:23, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Discussion regarding project organization

Any comments regarding the structure and function of Christianity related material are welcome at Wikipedia:WikiProject Christianity/General Forum#Project organization. Be prepared for some rather lengthy comments, though. There is a lot of material to cover there. John Carter (talk) 17:44, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Article alerts

This is a notice to let you know about Article alerts, a fully-automated subscription-based news delivery system designed to notify WikiProjects and Taskforces when articles are entering Articles for deletion, Requests for comment, Peer review and other workflows (full list). The reports are updated on a daily basis, and provide brief summaries of what happened, with relevant links to discussion or results when possible. A certain degree of customization is available; WikiProjects and Taskforces can choose which workflows to include, have individual reports generated for each workflow, have deletion discussion transcluded on the reports, and so on. An example of a customized report can be found here.

If you are already subscribed to Article Alerts, it is now easier to report bugs and request new features. We are also in the process of implementing a "news system", which would let projects know about ongoing discussions on a wikipedia-wide level, and other things of interest. The developers also note that some subscribing WikiProjects and Taskforces use the display=none parameter, but forget to give a link to their alert page. Your alert page should be located at "Wikipedia:PROJECT-OR-TASKFORCE-HOMEPAGE/Article alerts". Questions and feedback should be left at Wikipedia talk:Article alerts.

Message sent by User:Addbot to all active wiki projects per request, Comments on the message and bot are welcome here.

Thanks. — Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 09:20, 15 March, 2009 (UTC)

Eilley Bowers

Is someone familiar with the LDS movement in the 19th century able to have a very quick skim through the article I've just (re)written on Eilley Bowers? As a prominent female Mormon in the early colonization of the west, it's obviously a key element to her story; however, I know little about LDS practices and terminology, so it really needs someone familiar to have a skim through for inaccuracies. (In particular, am I correct in stating that her – very well documented – scrying was an accepted practice amongst Mormons in this area during this period?) Many thanks! – iridescent 01:49, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Category:Mormonism at Wikisource

wikisource:Category:Mormonism is listed under wikisource:Category:New religious movements, which is very inconsistent, since it is not so categorized that way here in WP, in Commons, Wikiquote, Wiktionary, nor even in Wikinews. An unsuccessful attempt has already been made to remove wikisource:Category:Mormonism from wikisource:Category:New religious movements. Is anyone interested and available to discuss this categorization issue at wikisource:Category talk:Mormonism? -- 208.81.184.4 (talk) 22:38, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

This has been resolved. -- 208.81.184.4 (talk) 15:15, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

"Latter-Day Saint" at Wiktionary

Is anyone on this project also active at Wiktionary? The entry Wiktionary:Latter-Day Saint is incorrect in the use of the both the hyphen and the upper-case on "Day" instead of the proper usage Latter-day Saint for members of the LDS Church and Latter Day Saint for adherents to the broader Latter Day Saint movement. This has been identified on the talk page, but no action has been taken as of yet. -- 208.81.184.4 (talk) 23:26, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

I'd also like to see this fixed. This is true with many Categories found in Wikipedia as well. ~Araignee (talk • contribs) 00:37, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

I moved the page over there to indicate the proper spelling. There should also be a page for the non-hyphenated-capital-D term, but there isn't... I'll create that later if I get around to it. – jaksmata 14:34, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Wiktionary:Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints also has a similar problem; the "The" is actually part of the proper noun that is the official name: i.e. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. -- 208.81.184.4 (talk) 20:13, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Navigation template?

Right now, I can't seem to find a template which allows for easy movement from one of the most important articles regarding the movement to another. Many other churches have such template, like Template:Roman Catholicism2, and it does allow for quicker movement from one of those main articles to another. It can also be useful in helping the group focus on its more important articles, as, I think kind of obviously, the articles on the template are more likely to be seen than many of the others. Unfortunately, my knowledge of this particular subject is a lot less than I would like. Would anyone here be interested in either helping develop such a template, or, alternately, helping me decide which articles to link to on it? John Carter (talk) 19:03, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Mormon Corridor

A discussion regarding what criteria that should be used for including a city/town/settlement in a list of locations that are part of the Mormon Corridor is shaping up at Talk:Mormon Corridor#Guidelines for inclusion. This may be of particular interest to participants of this WP project. -- 208.81.184.4 (talk) 16:08, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Temple Templates

There appears to be a template for every temple: Category:WikiProject_Latter_Day_Saint_movement_templates. Isn't the whole point of a temple template that you can just drop it onto every temple page and fill it out? If we're going to create a different template for every temple, then why bother creating a template at all? Why not just fill out the information for each temple on its page? Banaticus (talk) 17:17, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

There is a template that is dropped onto each template page: {{Infobox LDS Temple}}

However there was a problem with data being different on the temple page and on the lists like List of temples of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints so we created a data template that stores all the data for each temple and then it is merged with a normal template on the different lists and on the temple page itself. See Wikipedia:WikiProject Latter Day Saint movement/Temples for more information on how the system works and why we put it together. --Trödel 01:52, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

'Former members' category

Please see Category_talk:Former_Latter_Day_Saints#References?--Jeffro77 (talk) 05:03, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Importance rating for Book of Mormon related articles

I confess to not being particularly well informed on a lot of subjects related to the Latter Day Saints. But I recently went through the articles related to the Book of Mormon, and found that few if any of them are considered to be of anything higher than "Low" importance, including the Books of the Book of Mormon themselves. If, as I understand, these books form a fair part of the theological basis of the LDSs, I have to wonder whether this is appropriate. I might ask that one of the more editors more knowledgable on the subject look over these articles and determine if the importance rating is accurate. Thank you. John Carter (talk) 21:59, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Portal article selection issues

Hello. As several of you might already know, there are a rather large number of portals relating to the basic subject of "Christianity" and all of its subtopics, this being one of them. One problem which might arise from the presence of all these portals is the possibility that certain articles might be comparatively overused by the portals, possibly even concurrently, while other articles as worthy get overlooked. To possibly help reduce the likelihood of that happening, I have started a list at User:John Carter/Christianity portals of the various eligible articles which at least seem to me to be directly relevant to the portals. Anyone so interested is more than encouraged to take part in the selection of articles. Thank you. John Carter (talk) 22:29, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Rename some LDS leadership cats?

The following cats are not named properly if they are to including counselors, which is what they are doing based on the cat description and the articles included:

• Category:General presidents of the Relief Society of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
• Category:General presidents of the Young Women organization of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
• Category:General presidents of the Primary of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Shouldn't they be renames something like this?

• Category:General presidency of the Relief Society of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
• Category:General presidency of the Young Women organization of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
• Category:General presidency of the Primary of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Thoughts? -- 208.81.184.4 (talk) 17:13, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

I suppose doing this would technically make these names more correct. The only downside that I see is that they would have to be named Category:Members of the general presidency of the Relief Society of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, etc., and that makes for quite a long category name. I'm not sure how we could shorten it. Using "LDS Church" is out, since categories shouldn't use abbreviations. (Note also that there are also similarly named categories for the Young Men and the Sunday School in the LDS Church.) Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 22:27, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Could we do Category:Leadership of the Relief Society of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, etc..., and then in the description of the cat indicate the cat is for GA/General Officer level only, not for local congregations? -- 208.81.184.4 (talk) 20:29, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Hm, that's an idea, and not a bad one. I think such a change would make things no worse than they are now. The change would make things a little less precise (more ambiguous), but at the same time it would improve accuracy by avoiding classing a counselor as a "president". I would probably support such a change. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 22:44, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Why not just use Category:General officers of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. All this segmenting into smaller and smaller categories is annoying - if we are approaching 200 pages in the category I can see subdividing it, but, if not, it is easier to scan through one page rather than clicking going back, clicking again, rinse, repeat when looking for something. Especially when using scholarly definitions that are not used by the general public. See for example Category:Latter Day Saint denominations which has way to many subcategories that are useless. --Trödel 02:15, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

One basic reason not to is that there are individual categories for Category:Relief Society, Category:Young Men organization of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and the others. To merge all of the leaders categories together would not allow for these leaders categories to be subcategories within the particular organization category. A second reason is that the general president of the Sunday School has duties that are quite different from those of the general president of the Relief Society, so we're not really grouping like positions together in that way. That said, I might be able to support lumping them together, but I would think that it would at least be appropriate to have a separate category for the leaders of the women-led auxiliaries as a separate subcategory. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 10:37, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

That wouldn't be so bad - the article would just have two categories in them - Relief Society and and General Officers of the Church. --Trödel 01:21, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

I would agree that grouping priesthood leadership at the General Officer level would be fine in just one cat (including Sunday School & Young Men presidencies). However I think that the Young Woman & Primary organizations need separate leadership categories, as leaders of these auxiliaries are not priesthood leadership. -- 208.81.184.4 (talk) 15:33, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Murdered Missionary articles AfD

Members of this project may want to look at:

• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Todd Ray Wilson
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jeffrey Brent Ball

These are 2 separate articles on a single event: the May 24, 1989 murder of this missionary companionship in La Paz, Bolivia by a guerrilla terrorist group. The nominator is probably correct about this being an example of WP:ONEVENT, but the discussion is leaning toward a simple delete of both articles. I think that the verifiable details of the two articles need to either be merged together into a new article describing the incident and it's impact, &/or it should be merged into Missionary (LDS Church)/Mission (LDS Church). -- 208.81.184.4 (talk) 15:02, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

GA Reassessment of Mormon Trail

I have done the GA Reassessment of the Mormon Trail article as part of the GA Sweeps project. I have found the article does not meet current GA Criteria and as such I have placed the article on hold pending work. I am notifying all interested editors that this article may be delisted if it is not improved. My review can be found here. If you have any questions please contact me on my talk page. H1nkles (talk) 23:40, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

West Ridge Academy

There has been debate on Talk:West Ridge Academy as to whether the article should be included under this Wikiproject. My position is that, due to the nature of the allegations against it, it should be included, as it would be of interest to editors interested in general LDS-related topics. Another user, User:Storm Rider, disagrees with this fairly strongly. I think it would be good to get some more voices there, and was also wondering what people's opinions here would be about whether it should be included under this Wikiproject. TallNapoleon (talk) 02:22, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Consultation on renaming article: Roman Catholic Church --> Catholic Church

Wikipedians at Talk:Roman Catholic Church are discussing the merits of changing the article name as such.
Roman Catholic Church → Catholic Church. Please share your opinions there. --Carlaude ^talk 12:10, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

GA reassessment of No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith

I have conducted a review of this article as part of the GA sweeps process. There are some issues which need addressing, which can be found at Talk:No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith/GA1. The article is on hold for seven days, so that these concerns may be addressed. Thanks. Jezhotwells (talk) 00:56, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Towns/Townships and villages

This is just a reminder about the difference between a town/township (New York refers to them as "Towns" and Ohio refers to them as "Townships") and a village. This has come to light in the articles relating to Lorenzo Snow and the John Johnson Farm. Both the Snow home and the John Johnson Farm are located in their respective township, but near the village of the same name (in these cases Mantua and Hiram). In the northeast United States, including northeast Ohio which was settled by New Englanders, a township/town and a village/city are two distinct entities with different governments and boundaries, but many times share similar histories and names and frequently the village is in or near the center of the township of the same name. Such is the case with Mantua, Ohio and Mantua Township as well as Hiram, Ohio and Hiram Township. This is true for many of the early church history sites in Vermont, New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. Most often the events happened in the town/township rather than the village. --JonRidinger (talk) 20:02, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Following up, I've noticed this has also occurred in many of the town articles related to the very early church history in New York. There is a difference between the town of Palmyra and the village of Palmyra as well as the town of Manchester. Much of the early history actually happened in the town of Manchester and the Smith farm straddles the border between the towns of Manchester and Palmyra as well as Wayne and Ontario counties (See Joseph Smith History and Joseph's mention of their "removal to Manchester" which was all of about 200 yards down the street). The First Vision could've happened in either as the woods are on the border; the log cabin where he was living at the time is in the town of Palmyra, while the Book of Mormon was published in the village of Palmyra. The frame home (where the family moved in 1825) and the Hill Cumorah are all in Manchester, so the Hill Cumorah Pageant is not held in Palmyra. --JonRidinger (talk) 04:36, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

Etymology of Mosiah

Hi,

Can anyone please take a look at my question at Talk:King Mosiah I?

Thanks in advance. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 15:03, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Folk Christianity

The "Mormonisim is a cult" anvil is being hammered on again, this time at Folk Christianity. As seems common in these cases, the contribs are full of weasel wording & statements that are not directly supported with inline cites. -- 208.81.184.4 (talk) 20:05, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

That article looks like a morass of WP:OR. I'm half inclined to nominate it for deletion. Shereth 20:17, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

I nominated this for deletion - clearly OR and I couldn't find a consistent definition when I researched the term. --Trödel 23:43, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Whitney Awards, et al.

There is currently an AfD for Whitney Awards, as well as the related AfD for Robison Wells and AfD for Kerry Blair, all of which may be of interest to members of this project. The argument in all of these cases is essentially that the Mormon publishing ghetto is of insufficient notability to merit articles relating to it. -- 71.223.123.112 (talk) 04:24, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Kirtland Temple vs. Kirtland Temple Suit

These two articles present opposite views of the same events. Briefly: In 1880, the RLDS Church (as it was formerly known) had a lawsuit to quiet title pending in Ohio to establish its ownership of the Kirtland Temple. The defendants were two of its own officials who held a deed to the temple, plus the LDS Church.

According to the article Kirtland Temple, the RLDS Church won the lawsuit because the court found that they were the rightful successor to the original church founded by Joseph Smith.

Yet according to the article Kirtland Temple Suit, the RLDS Church's case was dismissed on the grounds that they were not in possession of the property, and so the court never ruled on whether the RLDS Church was the rightful successor to that original church. The same article goes on to say that the RLDS Church's attorney published the proposed findings of fact (including the finding that the RLDS Church was the rightful successor) in a newspaper to make it look like the court had judged in favor of the RLDS Church when it had not done so.

It should be noted that one of the few relevant sources which I could find online is an article [1] from BYU Studies, which states that the RLDS Church did win the case. Since BYU Studies is affiliated with the LDS Church, I wouldn't expect that journal to publish an article stating that the RLDS Church won a lawsuit against the LDS Church unless it was actually true.

So what is the real story? Was the claim that the RLDS Church's lawsuit was dismissed made up by someone to make the RLDS Church look bad? Or what? --Metropolitan90 (talk) 17:40, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

I too have been confused by the difference. I wrote the initial Kirtland Temple Suit using mostly the BYU Studies article and other sources. The edits that have been made to the article that state that the RLDS Church actually lost but that the lawyer made it look like they won, etc., were made solely by User:Rogersep, who I believe may be Eric Paul Rogers, one of the authors of one of the cited articles that have been added to Kirtland Temple Suit. I haven't yet been able to get a copy of his article that is cited or the other one by Kim Loving to verify any of this—I kind of assumed he knew more about the issue than I did so I dropped the issue. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 22:05, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Launius' book and article were written before Kim Loving did extensive research on ownership of the Kirtland Temple in 2004. If Launius were to write on the topic again, no doubt he would cite Loving's research. The fact that the lawsuit was dismissed is mentioned even in Launius' book. "The judge gave the case a surprise ending that church leaders did not anticipate. He concluded that 'the Court finds as matter of law that the Plaintiff is not entitled to the Judgment or relief prayed for in its petition. And there upon it is ordered and adjudged that this action be dismissed at the costs of the Plaintiff.'" [Roger D. Launius, The Kirtland Temple: A Historical Narrative, Independence, Missouri: Herald Publishing House, 1986), 113-114.] Launius dismisses the notion that the dismissed case has no bearing on legal ownership as "quibble". Loving refutes this claim: "These polemical proclamations of victory may have carried some weight in the court of public opinion...The only difficulty, at least from today's perspective, was that the Reorganization's polemical proclamations of judicially determined legitimacy actually had no legal basis whatsoever. In fact, the legal result of the lawsuit was that the title stood exactly as it had before the case was filed; legally, nothing had been accomplished. This finding goes to the very essence of the matter and can hardly be dismissed as mere 'quibbling'." [Kim L. Loving, "Ownership of the Kirtland Temple", Journal of Mormon History (Fall 2004), 65-66.] --dbolton (talk) 05:55, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

This issue should be clarified in the various articles so there is not a contradiction with some citing only Launius and others citing Loving etc. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 07:20, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

I changed the Kirtland Temple article to say "clear ownership by at least 1901" and cover the dispute between sources more fully in the "Legacy" section of Kirtland Temple Suit.--dbolton (talk) 02:29, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Temples by geographic region

I made some updates to List of temples of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints by geographic region today - I moved the map to the left and more clearly indicated country/region next to map. I also added a small (50px) image since we have a lot of images now - I think it looks much better than when we tried pictures before and most of the rows were empty. Would appreciate any feedback --Trödel 17:07, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Looks nice to me. If I can convince myself to wander up to that part of town I'll see about snapping an image of the Phoenix temple site and plug up that hole sometime this week, too. :) Shereth 17:11, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Sounds great - my brother-in-law has been unreliable in getting that done for me ;) --Trödel 19:24, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

I also added a placeholder image - it seems there has been great controversy over the use of these type of images on Wikipedia with some huge debate about their use, which from my brief scan of the discussion resulted in a No Decision type of outcome. So please let me know if you object to the use of this image. If there is some opposition I guess we should discuss it. If there is significant opposition, I'll revert the change I made today until that discussion is concluded. --Trödel 19:24, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

I don't really see the benefit to having them, but at the same time I don't see that they are causing any issues, so there is no pressing need to remove them. I suppose the only issue I could think of is that, on the list page, the text in the graphic becomes rather compressed and at that resolution it may not be immediately clear that it is a placeholder image. Still, that's a minor issue and does not warrant removing them. Shereth 19:48, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

I was involved in the placeholder debate as an opposer to placeholders. During and since the debate, I've grown to accept the fact that I'll have to live with them because of the lack of consensus on the issue. I'm not going to object to their use here for a few additional reasons:

1. The male/female/neither pictures I felt were particularly ugly, but the image Trödel made with the SLC Temple profile doesn't look that bad - it's a well-recognized symbol of temples.
2. Unlike pictures of celebrities and other notable people, truly free (Wikipedia acceptable) pictures of temples should be easily attainable, as many amateur photographers photograph the buildings. People looking at the articles are more likely to have good quality pictures that they are willing to freely license.
3. There is a finite scope for this placeholder - it is possible that in the near future we will have freely licensed pictures of all the temples.
4. Unlike the biographical image placeholders, this one is added in a template instead of scattered through thousands of articles, and if consensus is reached to get rid of it, it can be done with ease. Unlike biographical articles, adding a picture can improve every temple article.

I can't find exactly where it was discussed during the debate, but a point was made that what was being debated mainly applied to biographical articles, not to other wikiprojects; other wikiprojects being free to set their own standards. I think Wikipedia:WikiProject Ships has their own placeholder. – jaksmata 21:26, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Thx for the compliments about the picture - I think I am going to wash out the blue a little and repost. I see now why there was some objections to the biographical image placeholders, as that is a never ending project. We don't, generally, have a problem with new temples, the trouble has been getting an image of all the temples from 1999-2000 - especially those outside the US. I'm hopeful that this will help us fill in the rest of the gaps. :) --Trödel 00:37, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

FYI - I created some custom language so that if users do decide to contribute their images it will help them do so - click on the image to see the language and then "If you are prepared to do this click here". This will add the images to Category:Images of temples replacing placeholders so that we can review the images and put them in the data templates as appropriate. --Trödel 02:59, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Gila Valley Arizona, and temple names

Minor problem I've come across. I noticed that the link to the official webpage for the Gila Valley Arizona Temple refers to it as The Gila Valley Arizona Temple, with the addition of "The" much like The Hague Netherlands Temple. It appears to be the only other temple that incorporates "The" into the name itself.[2] As such I moved the article to The Gila Valley Arizona Temple, as it appears to be the official name (as horrible sounding a construct as that is, official is official). However, since this would also seem to warrant tweaking numerous templates that refer to the temple, I am seeking input here prior to having at the numerous and sundry templates to reflect the "proper" title. We currently seem to lack any kind of specific guidance on how to name these articles and thus the assumption I've gone on is "use the official name". As silly as it looks to have "The" in front of the article title, it seems to me to be the "proper" way to do it. Thoughts? Shereth 20:09, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

I wonder if it's an oversight at lds.com. It's an unusual situation because unlike The Hague, there isn't a community called "The Gila Valley" (or "Gila Valley" either). Also, other temples named after geographical features (e.g., Jordan River and Oquirrh Mountain) don't have a "The" in front... I'm fine with leaving it with the "The" for now, and waiting to see what the Church does. – jaksmata 20:51, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

I don't think it's an oversight, this article from the LDS newsroom seems to use "The Gila Valley Arizona" temple. I think it's a bad choice of name - locally the area is called "Gila Valley" and not "The Gila Valley". Like I said, though, official is official and if they like tacking on "The" ... more power to 'em. Anyway, is it worth fiddling with the related templates, or should we let it be for now? Shereth 20:58, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

You're right, it doesn't look like an oversight. To get everything to look "correct", I think all you need to do is change the article itself and the info template (Template:LDS Temple/Gila Valley Arizona Temple). Even if you move the template to include "The", the resulting redirect will keep lists, infoboxes and other templates showing the right data. – jaksmata 21:43, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

I agree that it's awkward and probably not best usage, but also seems to be used consistently. It could change, though. I remember when the new temple-name style was first adopted, all of the temples that were announced for Mexico were given really long names that incorporated the name of the Mexican state that it was located in, but that convention was eventually dropped once the temples were completed. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 21:46, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Since our current convention seems to be to simply follow whatever the official name is, I've gone ahead and made the adjustments to reflect the "official" name. It should not be difficult to revert, should the official name be changed at some point. Thanks for the feedback. Shereth 21:55, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Personally I don't like the use of "The Gila Valley" but we should keep the name the same on the article and the data template that matches the official name since that has been the convention that we've followed. Thanks for also updating the map templates. --Trödel 00:38, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Commons image puzzler

Can anyone help identify what File:Zaslona tlumaczenia.jpg is? It was added to commons:Category:Mormonism, but there is no English description, and I'm not familiar with the object in the image. Is it possibly a veil used when translating the Book of Mormon, or perhaps a veil from the Kirtland Temple? -- 208.81.184.4 (talk) 22:52, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

According to Google Translate, the name translates to "Veil translation", so I am inclined to believe the title is meant to be "Translation veil", fitting your first hypothesis. I cannot be sure of the origin of the object (or the photo) myself. Shereth 22:59, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

It is completely unfamiliar to me. There is no "veil" purported to have been used in the translation process by Joseph Smith; there was a curtain discussed being raised to separate Joseph from the others while translating, but I have never heard of anyone possessing the actual curtain known today.

It resembles nothing in LDS temples. I don't know what it could be or which specific Latter Day Saint movement groups it could belong to. The Strangites possibly because the founder was supposed to have translated a record. Some others have new scriptures also. Just my two cents.--^StormRider 23:35, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps might be something to do with Zełwągi ... though I don't know what it possibly could be. ... (Curtains from the original church building there?) Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 23:51, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

The only article the picture is currently used in is pl:Urim i Tumim which I am assuming links to the English Article Urim and Thummim. As I can't read Polish, I can only suppose that it is there to demonstrate the curtain that separated Joseph while translating as Storm Rider supposed. This can only be a recreation (I don't know of any place that purports to have the original curtain on display). Thus, it should be identified as such. However, I'm not sure it should be used at all. --Trödel 00:43, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

I'm no polish expert either, but it looks to me like the Polish Wikipedia says that the picture is of "the curtain used by Latter Day Saint Joseph Smith while translating the [Book of] Mormon manuscript with the Urim and Thummim." Authenticity seems far-fetched to me... maybe it's supposed to be a reproduction or something. This question might be better answered on Commons or w:pl. I asked about the origin of the picture at w:pl:Dyskusja:Urim i Tumim, hopefully I get an answer and not just a laugh at my attempt to write in Polish. – jaksmata 05:18, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

The resolution is not the same, but click the linked "curtain" at the bottom of [3] and you get the same image. Still sheds no light on the origin of the image, but the image itself seems to be out there. Copyright info seems questionable without more information from the uploader. Shereth 15:57, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

You can also get to the exact same image with a description from a link called "Curtain at Peter Whitmer Farm" on this page, also found at Bill McKeever's Mormonism Research Ministry web page. It seems highly likely that the image was copied from from mrm.org without permission, and so is a copyvio. I'll tag it as such at commons. Thank you everyone that helped look at this! -- 208.81.184.4 (talk) 15:38, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

On a somewhat disappointing side note, it's really too bad that a website that is as hostile to Mormonism as MRM has so many useful images on Mormonism topics where equivalent images are currently lacking here on WP. Even when WP does have pictures that are similar to the ones found there, several of their pictures of higher quality than the ones here. Anyone interested in opening a dialog with them to see if they will license their images to be compatible with posting them at WP/Commons? -- 208.81.184.4 (talk) 19:30, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Not long after the image was tagged, it looks like someone at MRM emailed permission to OTRS and the image is now properly licensed. That was fast! I wonder who asked them for permission. In any event, it looks fairly likely they will be willing to license (at least some of) their images for use. Good to know. Shereth 19:37, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Christianity coordinators elections

Any parties interested in being one of the coordinators of WikiProject Christianity and its various related projects is encouraged to list themselves as a candidate at Wikipedia:WikiProject Christianity/Coordinators/Election 2. It would be particularly beneficial if we had individuals from as broad a range of areas of the project as possible, to help ensure that we have people knowledgable about the widest range of content possible. John Carter (talk) 20:49, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Request for input

My verbage in the three sentences I tossed out for the new article Stay LDS / Mormon sounds too promotional/positive/feature storyish, I think. Would some editors spare a moment to step in and tweak it to have moreso of the dryness appropriate to an encyclopedia? ↜Just M E here , now 17:51, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

AfD for Mormonism and Islam

Members of this project might be interested in the AfD for Mormonism and Islam. -- 71.223.123.112 (talk) 02:30, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

Update on Placeholder image Replace this image - temple.png

FYI - I got my first email yesterday from someone wanting to donate their image - I've uploaded the images for the Montreal Quebec Temple to Commons. I hope we'll have some others!!

The very good news is that we are now in the single digits for dedicated temples without an image - only 9 to go! And only 19 images to go including announced and under construction temples. --Trödel 02:37, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

NOTICE. Request For Comment: Changes to Naming policies which may affect WikiProject naming conventions.

Following recent changes by some editors to the Wikipedia:Naming conventions policy page, a Request For Comment, (RFC) is now being held to debate the removal of the passage specifying that individual WikiProject and other naming conventions are able to make exceptions to the standard policy of using Common Names as the titles of Wikipedia articles.

This WikiProject is being notified since it operates such a specific naming convention. Editors are invited to comment on the proposed change at this location. Xandar 01:24, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

The above "notification" is a grossly biased misrepresentation of the changes under discussion. The old version of the naming conventions policy tried to lay down binding rules; we don't work that way, so it was necessary also to make explicit exceptions. The new version articulates principles, and allows for consensus to establish how they should be applied. Thus there is no longer any need for exceptions. In fact, making exceptions is nonsense, since there are no rules to make exceptions to. These changes are good for specific conventions. Xandar is trying to induce moral panic in those who stand to gain the most from this. Xandar is only opposed to the new version because he thinks the wording, not the general thrust, weakens his position in a dispute unrelated to this RfC. Don't be fooled. Hesperian 02:43, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

No. Don't be fooled. The proposed wording change is shown at the RFC linked in my post above. The removal of the "exceptions" phrase is a very significant change. The policy never stated that it consisted of "rules" before, and it still doesn't. However it remains policy. Simply stating a personal view that titling a section "principles" changes the status of the policy page, is one not even accepted by many editors on Hesperians side. There is already an attempt to use the principle of no exceptions to the "use common name" policy to radically change the Naming conflict page, and one of the proposers of this change has indicated that the guidance on flora is also targetted. The change is in my view an attempt to impose a rigid, top-down policy on naming which ignores what wikipedia editors on the ground find most useful. Xandar 03:15, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Take the debate somewhere else, folks. You can post a notice here, but there's no need to debate here what the proposal actually proposes. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 05:09, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

(Article) Criticism of the Latter Day Saint movement

I noticed that a large portion of this article is made up of unverified claims. Interestingly enough, when you look at a cited source, there is verification that the claim was made, but no actual verification that the claim is accurate or correct. No undisputed evidence. Also, many of the sources are not exactly what I would call the equivalent of the United States National Academy of Sciences. I.E. "Critics, including Fawn M. Brodie,[36] the Tanners, and the Institute for Religious Research[37]". Since I am new to Wikipedia, my question to you is what exactly do you consider to be adequate verification? Verification, in my opinion, is the consensus of the majority of the scientific community, and looking through Wikipedia's policies, it seems in general to be focused on presenting facts specifically, especially if anything presented could damage the reputation of individuals or organizations. I also noticed this article was marked for cleanup on the project page, so there must be other editors with similar views perhaps? If I were to edit the article according to a “verified claims only” policy, a disturbingly large portion would simply be deleted, and it would certainly cause unwanted levels of contention which I, in no way, wish to instigate. I'm very interested in editing the article according to such policy, but I wont edit anything without a consensus from the editors of this project. Any participation in this discussion would be highly appreciated. Sharpsr1990 (talk) 01:55, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

It is highly dependent upon how the claims are being communicated in the article. Are the claims being listed as claims or are they being listed as facts? Take the Aquatic ape hypothesis. It is, at best, a fringe theory that is not accepted by the scientific community as a whole, and the claims made by its proponents have not been verified as correct. The theories and evidence put forward by the proponents is often disputed. However, the article is not passing the claims off as being factual, but is merely stating facts about the claims. The same goes for any article. We aren't (especially) concerned with whether a claim is factual, but rather whether the information about the claim is factual. I hope that makes sense. You may want to read WP:UNDUE for insight on how to handle minority opinions. Shereth 14:25, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

That makes sense. Thats why I brought the issue to the talk page, and I thank you for your reply. I have only been editing Wikipedia for a few days, so I wanted to get the opinion of some of the experienced editors here. I am sure you noticed earlier in the discussion that I did state that they had proof that the claims were made, just not that they were accurate, so I understand entirely what your saying. I do have a few points of view I would like to share though. The Aquatic ape hypothesis was derived from scientists, not "self - created" scientists as the Criticism of the LDS movement contains. One would think that in order to publish something in an encyclopedia, were you the reference, you would at least need, say, a doctorate in the field you were writing about? Not only are many of the references in that article the minority, they don't even have a professional degree to back their research in the field they are professing to be proficient in. An article containing criticism should only cite professional sources, so as not to damage the reputation of a person or organization they are criticizing needlessly. If you are willing to take a look into the article, you will notice that there are references used which fit into the category of " self - created historians and scientists" that I am describing. Any they are used over and over again. As Wikipedia policy states, no original research, and in my opinion, citing someone who is not an expert in that field is citing original research. Displaying the views of a minority is one thing. Displaying the views of a minority who do not hold doctorates in the fields they write about is another, especially when those views are exceptionally negative. There is significant differences between the Aquatic ape hypothesis and the article I'm referring to. I thank you for your response again, and would appreciate any additional participation in the discussion. Sharpsr1990 (talk) 18:02, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

One thing you will discover as you continue working here at Wikipedia is that a lot of what ends up here is far from scholarly. Our sources are most certainly not limited to what you would call "professional degree" level material; a significant portion of it comes from newspapers and the like. If you have not already done so you might want to read WP:RS and familiarize yourself with what "qualifies" as a reliable source. It is absolutely permissable to site "self-created historians" so long as the information is relevant and meets the guideline I mentioned above. That policy also touches on sourcing of "fringe" or "extremist" opinions and is likely applicable to your case. Shereth 18:13, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for your quick response. I noticed that under the "fringe" or "extremist" section it said this. Organizations and individuals that express views that are widely acknowledged by reliable sources as fringe, pseudo-academic,[3] or extremist may only be used as sources of information about those organizations or individuals. They may be used, especially in articles about those organizations or individuals, without the requirement that they be published experts in the field, so long as:

1. the material cited is not unduly self-serving;

2. it does not involve claims about third parties;

3. it does not involve claims about events not directly related to the subject;

4. there is no reason to doubt its authenticity;

5. the article is not based primarily on such sources.

So it does mention that they do not need to be experts in the field, if they meet the following requirements. Notice number 2. it does not involve claims about third parties. The entire article involves claims about third parties. Actually, that is all the article is. Criticism of the latter day saint movement. But of course, that would lead to the debate of what you consider extremist, and the reality is that most significant intellectual bodies do not care about many of the sources in the article and there are no sources to prove that they are or aren't considered “fringe, pseudo-academic, or extremist“. Discussion ended. Thank you for your comments Shereth. And I especially thank you for being courteous to a new editor. Sharpsr1990 (talk) 19:14, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Request for participation

There is significant debate occurring on the talk page of the Criticism of the Latter Day Saint movement article. Currently there is a discussion for a title change, but contribution to other issues are valuable as well. Currently this article is listed for cleanup on the Latter Day Saint movement project, and the article needs moderate attention to meet Wikipedia standards. Any participation would be appreciated. Sharpsr1990 (talk) 13:51, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Adding it to my watchlist, although it might be a few days before I can really do anything directly myself. Other input is also more than welcomed. John Carter (talk) 16:29, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Possible balance issues on Prophecies of Joseph Smith, Jr. section

The recent change at Prophecies of Joseph Smith, Jr.#Alleged false prophecies to a table format, and the abbreviated version of the table at Unfulfilled religious predictions#Mormonism seems to be very one sided, as there is only the critics view represented. -- 208.81.184.4 (talk) 23:33, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Mormon Corridor

This recent edit essentially decapitated the Mormon Corridor article. Additional participation in the discussion of this issue would be appreciated at Talk:Mormon Corridor. -- 208.81.184.4 (talk) 17:11, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Is Cody Judy a WP:ONEVENT?

Is Cody Judy truly notable, or does that article meet WP:ONEVENT? Any thought would be welcome at Talk:Cody Judy#Notability. -- 208.81.184.4 (talk) 20:06, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, it is WP:ONEVENT. Totally. I would support a merge and redirect to Howard W. Hunter. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 21:44, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Cody Judy has been opened on this article. -- 208.81.184.4 (talk) 00:02, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

LDS section at Christian naturism

Members of this project might be intrested in reviewing Christian naturism#LDS naturists; it seems to be exclusively POV pushing non-mainstream LDS views espoused by the "LDS Skinny-Dipper Forum", using a WP:OR synthesis to give the appearance that the LDS Church approves (or at least accepts) nudism. -- 208.81.184.4 (talk) 22:03, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Categorization

I am currently putting together full category trees for this project and the LDS Church subproject. This project's list is going to be at Wikipedia:WikiProject Latter Day Saint movement/Categories. If, on completion (which should be a day or so max - when the link above goes blue), someone more knowledgable about the project could review the categories in this group's category tree and, for those with subcategories and their own separate subcategories specifically for the LDS Church, it would probably be very helpful. I am aware that the LDS Church is by far the largest group in the LDS movement, but it would still be useful, I think, if it were clearer which categories deal exclusively with it, and which with the larger LDS movement. Thank you. John Carter (talk) 00:18, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

I took a quick look and it looks to me like the categories follow the standards we set in the project. If Latter Day Saint or Latter Day Saint movement is included then it is about the overall culture or similar beliefs etc. If LDS or Latter-day Saint is used it is specific to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (CJC). Articles should have a similar standard "Latter Day Saint" in the article title or in a parenthetical is used in articles that are not denomination specific; "LDS Church" in the title or a parenthetical are specific to the CJC. --Trödel 05:16, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

The one question which rises to me, and maybe this is a bit of an overreaction, is regarding the term "Latter Day Saints" in category names. Maybe it is true that only the LDS church has expanded much beyond the US, so it might be somewhat unnecessary, but having a clearer distinction at least available between LDS members and others a bit more visible in the names of the categories. John Carter (talk) 15:02, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Jack Mormon nominated for deletion

The article on Jack Mormon has been nominated for deletion - please offer an opinion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jack Mormon. Thanks. WBardwin (talk) 04:22, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Neutrality arguments resurfacing again

Please see: Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#BYU_Studies. Opinions please. WBardwin (talk) 03:34, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Especially for Youth

The Especially for Youth article has been "nominated" for deletion. This could or could not be related to the fact that the same new article is also been nominated for deletion on the Portuguese Wiki (See the talk page), but it looks like the article there will be kept. Nominated by a user for "Lack of independent reliable secondary sources.", I can't see why delete it now when it has been in existence for a number of years now and does have importance within youth of the LDS Church. Secondary sources however for this article are hard to find. I know that the Especially for Youth program through personal correspondence doesn't want unofficial representation of the program, and off the top of my head the best we could add is some old news articles, most of which that can be linked back to the church or BYU anyway in terms of authors, and the masters thesis by John Bytheway of the first 10 years of EFY history. Every other website that can be found don't hold much if any value, towards a Wikipedia article anyway. --Tayuke (talk) 01:10, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Nauvoo Brass Band

Members of the Wikiproject may be interested in an AfD that has been created for Nauvoo Brass Band. The article has been slightly expanded to attempt to demonstrate the notability of the origional organization, but additional contributions by other editors to the article would be helpful. -- 208.81.184.4 (talk) 22:19, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Another Gospel (evangelical anti-cult book) nominated for deletion

Another Gospel, an article about an "anti-cult" book (which includes the LDS Church in its definition of "cults"), is being nominated for deletion on grounds of non-notability. I'd encourage any interested people to go to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Another Gospel (book) and contribute to the discussion. Richwales (talk) 03:27, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

WP 1.0 bot announcement

This message is being sent to each WikiProject that participates in the WP 1.0 assessment system. On Saturday, January 23, 2010, the WP 1.0 bot will be upgraded. Your project does not need to take any action, but the appearance of your project's summary table will change. The upgrade will make many new, optional features available to all WikiProjects. Additional information is available at the WP 1.0 project homepage. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:31, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Major religious groups

The Latter Day Saint movement should be added to the list of major religious groups. It is foolish for thoes that deny that it has become a major world religion. 208.27.203.131 (talk) 22:19, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

The Latter Day Saint movement is a Christian denomination, and is thus included with the rest of Christianity. Shereth 23:01, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

The rest of Christianity disregards, in terms stunningly rude and blunt, the revelations accepted by Latter Day Saints. 208.27.203.131 (talk) 23:51, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Also, the distinction that rises with additional revelation is no less profound than the difference between accepting the Old Testament and the New. So, Mormonism is better classified as the fourth major Abrahamic faith. It is no mere subset of Christianity, which by definition rejects later revelation. 208.27.203.131 (talk) 23:59, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

You are correct that the LDS movement has additional scripture. However, attempting to use a rejection of these scriptures by other groups within Christianity as a way to exclude it from Christianity is problematic. For example, where does doctrinal conflict begin to exclude groups or not? Is it at additional scripture? How about at belief in the Trinity? How about belief in Jesus as a personal Savior? Given that there are over 36,000 different Christian denominations the challenge of excluding groups based upon doctrinal conflict would be very complex if not impossible. Also, who would decide who gets in and who goes?

What is clear is that the LDS movement believes that Jesus was the only begotten son of the God, that he was born of the virgin Mary, lived a perfect life, performed miracles, bled from every pore in the Garden of Gethsemane, gave his life on the cross as an atoning sacrifice for all mankind, rose the third day, returned to sit on the right hand of the Father, and will return again one day. Those beliefs Christian in their entirety and for this reason it is placed firmly within Christianity.

There have been individuals who have called Mormonism a new religion; so you are not alone. However, this line of thinking has not gained support by the vast majority of scholars. It is very difficult to call it separate given Mormonism's very deep commitment to Jesus Christ. --^StormRider 00:41, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

AFAIK, the official stance from the LDS church is that it is, in fact, a re-instatement of the original church as established by Jesus Christ; I'm not sure you can get more Christian than that. That it has additional scripture and significant doctrinal differences from other mainline Christian faiths is not especially relevant, as the fundamental elements of a Christian faith (belief in the divine nature of Christ as the Messiah, etc) are quite intact within Mormonism. Shereth 14:12, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

The view that Mormonism should be grouped with other Christian sects is not a consensus. Jan Shipps, for example argues that Mormonism is something new that moves beyond Christianity in the same way that Christianity moved beyond Judaism after initially being considered merely a Jewish sect. Personally, I agree with Shipps that Mormonism is about as dissimilar to traditional Christianity as the latter is to Judaism, and I think (I'm just guessing) that this view reflects the majority. However, the main obstacle to classifying Mormonism outside Christianity is that Mormons adamantly claim the term Christianity for themselves. Mormons, too, agree that their religion is fundamentally different from Catholicism and Protestantism, but Mormons believe they understand the true Jesus, and practice Jesus' true faith, and are thus more Christian than Catholics and Protestants--and certainly would never cede the title of Christian exclusively to them. Therefore most traditional Christian denominations, rather than rudely claiming that Mormons are not Christian, have said that Mormonism is not part of "traditional" Christianity. That seems to me like a good compromise. COGDEN 00:44, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Endowment (Latter Day Saints) vs. Endowment (Mormonism)

In comparing Endowment (Latter Day Saints) to Endowment (Mormonism), I can't see any fine grain distinction necessitating separate articles on these seemingly identical topics. Am I missing something, or can these be merged? -- 208.81.184.4 (talk) 16:36, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

I'd bring this up on one of those talk pages, as well. I think one reason for splitting the two articles is that it is convenient to split this topic up into two parts. The much more obscure understandings of endowment found in early Mormon history and the Community of Christ are found in Endowment (Latter Day Saints), while the very specific and predominant understanding within Mormonism is in Endowment (Mormonism). Most people who search for "endowment" within the LDS context expect to learn about the Nauvoo Endowment as practiced by Mormonism. Pitting this dominant view together in the same article with the older, more diverse, and obscure understandings of endowment seems a bit like putting a pit bull in the same box as a mini-poodle. COGDEN 01:04, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Open-source image of Captain Moroni?

Are there any available public domain or pre-1923 depictions of Captain Moroni to add to the article? The really famous painting everyone knows is apparently by Friberg and copyright 1951, so no-go there. Any other options? MatthewVanitas (talk) 05:30, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Look at Mormon —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.209.88.56 (talk) 20:55, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

There is no image of Captain Moroni at that link. There is an image of an Angel Moroni statue, but Captain Moroni is not the same person as the Angel Moroni (&/or Moroni (Book of Mormon)).-- 71.223.127.190 (talk) 01:31, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Portaal:Heiligen der Laatste Dagen —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.209.88.94 (talk) 20:19, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

• I doubt that one exists. It looks like there are a number of interpretations on the Internet, it might be possible to contact one of them and see if they'd be willing to release an image under an acceptable license; since there is no authoritative description of the subject, all interpretations thereof are of equal encyclopedic value. Shereth 20:47, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Accuracy - Second Anointing

This whole "project" reeks. You call Bueger an unreliable source and then provide an employee of FARMS as an unbiased analysis. Give me a break! If that is how Wikipedia Mormon issues will be settled, then we might as well just delete all the Mormon content on this site and have one link that refers everyone back to the official LDS Church site. There all of humanity will be able to drink from the well of white washed Mormon history forever more.

It appears to me that all a Mormon has to do to discredit a given article is claim that the author "hates" Mormonism. Well, let's at least be fair on the other side and let's not involve anyone on the payroll of the Corporation of the President. Talk about bias! Bakirish (talk) 23:44, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

More than one author, one article, and one point of view should be used as sources for all articles in Wikipedia. Editors do have the right to assert that a source is biased, and should present evidence to back their assertion. However, your point that any source originating within the LDS organization, their publishing system, or their educational system should be excluded also contains bias. Would you then assert that no Mormon sources, or pro-Mormon souces, be used at all on LDS related articles? Would you assert that no official Catholic sources, or pro-Catholic sources, be used for Catholic articles? How about the Church of England? You see, this problem with biased sources goes on and on. Instead of attacking this project, why don't you tell us why you think Bueger is reliable and what research, documentation and presentation makes his work a citable source? Best wishes. WBardwin (talk) 06:53, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

You may just be venting on a personal soap box; if so, no problems and you have been heard. However, if you are trying to state that all Mormon related topics should be deleted for bias then you have made some serious charges. Can you please provide an example of an article that only uses pro-Mormon references for the entire article?

As WBardwin has stated, there are all kinds of unacceptable references or sources just as there are a vast number of good references or sources that meet Wikipedia standards. If they meet Wikipedia standards they are used; if they don't they are not used. -^StormRider 15:23, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

All these issues can easily be resolved by paying attention to WP:UNDUE, WP:FRINGE, and WP:RS. Specialized Mormon apologetic material like that produced by FARMS has its place, though what it can be used for depends on the circumstances, how well the work has been received by the broader academic community, and on how far removed the material is from the academic mainstream. COGDEN 19:24, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Emma Smith Kennedy

Seems the article about Emma Smith Kennedy has problems, some of which I have noted on the talk page. I dislike the bare inline links to flikr hosted material. The article is mostly a collection of quotes of her predictions. The images of Truman are overkill, the article is about Emma - not Truman. I see very little evidence of notability and feel an afd is needed here unless someone wants to do a re-write or extensive clean-up. Vsmith (talk) 03:30, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Again: Does anyone here speak Georgian (Kartuli / ქართული)?

There is a short article about "Mormons" in the Georgian Wikipedia, but it appears to have been mostly copied from material on the official website of the Georgian Orthodox Church, and based on my infinitesimally small grasp of the Georgian language, I have serious doubts as to whether it is anywhere near being balanced and neutral. Does anyone here either speak Georgian or know someone who does, so that this article could receive proper attention? Thanks. Richwales (talk) 01:59, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Individuals who are know for something unrelated to the LDS movement

Forgive me if this has already been discussed. I did look threw the discussion archives but was unable to find anything.

I have been going through the unassessed pages in this group. A small percentage of the articles in this group are individuals who are know for something unrelated to the LDS movement, but happen to be a member of an LDS sect. For example, Helen Andelin. She is famous for her book, Fascinating Womanhood. However, this book has no direct link to the Utah LDS church. Yes, it can be argued that her ideas are related to the LDS church, but this is only an example. So another example. Lori and George Schappell are known because they are conjoined twins who choose to lead public lives. One was baptized LDS, but they are not notable because of that. I guess my generalized question is "Should individuals who are notable for reason unrelated to the LDS movement be included in this workgroup, just because they are LDS of some kind, or should they be left out?"--ARTEST4ECHO ^talk 14:30, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

There are also people like Orson Scott Card and Gladys Knight who also happen to be LDS but also have achieved notability independently from their roles within the LDS Church as Mr. Card's fame as an assistant editor of the Ensign is likely to not merit notability. Yeah, I'd call that something to be questioning. Still, both of these individuals and others have had an influence on the general LDS culture even if they may not have been noted because of their involvement directly in the LDS movement or through official positions. Even more interesting is that not only is Gladys Knight not listed with this or any related Wikiproject, but that she is listed as something tied in with the James Bond Wikiproject. I would say that her relationship to Timothy Dalton is as tenuous or even less so than her relationship to Gordon B. Hinkley.

There doesn't seem to be any specific guidelines on how remote or tenuous the relationship needs to be for its inclusion, other than that some effort should be made for classification purposes. Perhaps there is some other opinion, but it is more if somebody has the will and gumption to make the assessments and there is at least some relationship to the Wikiproject. At the very least, make sure that the person is a member of an LDS sect of some kind and not just merely a rumor or something completely fabricated. In other words, don't put this on the Steve Martin page. -- Robert Horning (talk) 22:54, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

I would argue that since Card has openly talks about his LDS membership in his books, has written several books on LDS subjects and his LDS membership is a big influence in his writing, he should be included. However, I must admit I have a bit of a conflict of interest, so I would have to exclude myself from any real discussion on this subject (I happen to be a big OSC fan, I have meet him several times, and my sister is his sisters boss.)

However, I do realize that wasn't your point.

It's just that I keep running into individuals like Jeremy Coon whose article say nothing about his being a "Latter Day Saint" of any kind.

Therefore, I think I really didn't ask my question right. I guess what I'm trying to ask is “If a person is notable for non-lds reasons, is the simple fact that they are LDS (of whatever kind) enough of a reason for inclusion here, or dose there LDS membership need to have at least some part of there reason for notability?

Another example is Jake Garn The text of his pages say nothing about him being LDS, and it has nothing to do with why he is are notable. I would bet if you and him somehow were to meet at say a Political rally, you would never know he was LDS. You might not even be able to figure it out if you were trying to determine his religion. So he is only include here because someone knew he was LDS. That being the case, why include him? If this project has enough work to do with those people who are notable for being LDS.--ARTEST4ECHO ^talk 05:05, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

Note I have created a poll related to this talk section--ARTEST4ECHO ^talk 19:57, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

Mormon studies

...is a new article. If it gets up to snuff quickly, perhaps it can be picked up at DYK. So far I've just added the start of some lists, but text that is an overview of (1) the history and development of the discipline, and/or (2) an overview of selected topics often looked at in the field, in concise language and covering the breadth of the field, would be welcome, I think, as well.--Hodgson-Burnett's Secret Garden (talk) 21:13, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

LDS Tabernacles

Is anyone willing to split out Tabernacle#LDS Church into a stand alone article for these ~79 structures and their antecedents, such as the boweries and the canvas tabernacle planed for Nauvoo? The name could be something like Tabernacle (LDS Church) or Tabernacle (Mormonism). There is quite a lot more that can be written about these structures than is currently in that section, but I do not want to add that material to Tabernacle, since that article should really focus primarily on the origional Tabernacle, and should only have basic summaries (with links out to the more complete article) about the other usages of the term, such as was done with church tabernacle. -- 208.81.184.4 (talk) 16:00, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Would you (or anybody else) have some links to some information that can be used to create such an article? I can take some photographs of some nearby buildings and perhaps even make a whole group of articles as almost every one of the LDS tabernacles are notable in some significant fashion or another and represented some major milestones in LDS history. It sounds like an interesting challenge. --Robert Horning (talk) 18:25, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

While additional properly licensed quality photos are always useful, there already are several found at commons:Category:Tabernacles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that could be used to start the page. As for links to materials, the best purely academic source that I'm aware of is McArthur, A. J., & Wrobel, D. (2005). The buildings at the center: Latter-Day Saint tabernacles in the Mormon culture region. Thesis (M.A.)—University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 2005.[4][5][6] and additional links that are less targeted to academia exist as well. I'll see what I can do to collect those over the next few days. Is it possible to start a page under the LDS WikiProject where we can work on a draft version to collect this kind of information, and then move that article into the article mainspace once we get past the working draft stage? -- 208.81.184.4 (talk) 19:24, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Commons also has some media for other earlier (now discontinued) types of LDS buildings, such as tithing offices, Relief Society halls, and Stake Academies (such as the Oneida Stake Academy). -- 208.81.184.4 (talk) 20:11, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

As far as articles about individual structures, the only two currently existing are Salt Lake Tabernacle and Logan Tabernacle. -- 208.81.184.4 (talk) 21:07, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

I was referred to this discussion since the topic is relevant to me. Since around April I have gathered research on LDS tabernacles in my userspace at User:Rich jj/Sandbox/Tabernacles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. My work still has many issues that need to be hashed out, but I'd be happy if anyone was interested in further developing and refining it. I'll post several of these unresolved issues to User talk:Rich jj/Sandbox/Tabernacles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. ——Rich jj (talk) 17:19, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

For those that have not heard, the Provo Tabernacle was severely damaged on Dec 17, although at least part of the outer facade/building shell still seems to be intact after the fire was put out. There now is an article on that former building, but it could use some fleshing-out. -- 208.81.184.4 (talk) 16:49, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Glenn Beck

The Restoring Honor rally article has a section called Theological concern about Beck's Mormonism. Any input or comments?--Hodgson-Burnett's Secret Garden (talk) 03:33, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

What is the problem? Evangelical preachers who don't like Mormonism? I thought the section spelled out most of the problems and covers the topic in a mostly neutral manner. Perhaps an earlier edit was more biased than I was looking at. It certainly is an interesting read, even if those critical of Glen Beck's religion seem to be a little petty here. --Robert Horning (talk) 00:06, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Redirects

It has been my impression that redirect don't need {{LDSproject}} tags as long as the main article is in the project. However, recently a number of redirects were tags. Am I wrong on this idea? There are hundreds of LDS related redirects and putting them all into the project seems to be unneeded and troublesome. Unless a separate article for that redirect is needed, but no one has gotten around to it, I don’t see a reason to have them tagged with {{LDSproject}}.--ARTEST4ECHO ^talk 17:01, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

It's been two days. I'm going to be bold and remove the 10 redirects that were added that started my question. If I'm wrong I will put them back.--ARTEST4ECHO ^talk 15:12, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

Using {{LDSproject|class=Redirect}} puts the redirect in both Category:NA-Class Latter Day Saint movement articles & Category:NA-importance Latter Day Saint movement articles, while also tagging the redirect so that tools which use transcluded metadata (such as the Toolserver tool called Wikiproject Watchlist) can see those redirect as being involved with WikiProject Latter Day Saint movement. -- 208.81.184.4 (talk) 20:40, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Latter Day Saint movement articles have been selected for the Wikipedia 0.8 release

Version 0.8 is a collection of Wikipedia articles selected by the Wikipedia 1.0 team for offline release on USB key, DVD and mobile phone. Articles were selected based on their assessed importance and quality, then article versions (revisionIDs) were chosen for trustworthiness (freedom from vandalism) using an adaptation of the WikiTrust algorithm.

We would like to ask you to review the Latter Day Saint movement articles and revisionIDs we have chosen. Selected articles are marked with a diamond symbol (♦) to the right of each article, and this symbol links to the selected version of each article. If you believe we have included or excluded articles inappropriately, please contact us at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8 with the details. You may wish to look at your WikiProject's articles with cleanup tags and try to improve any that need work; if you do, please give us the new revisionID at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8. We would like to complete this consultation period by midnight UTC on Monday, October 11th.

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For the Wikipedia 1.0 editorial team, SelectionBot 23:14, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Christianity portals

I am currently trying to get together some lists of articles relevant to each Christianity-related portal which could be used, at least potentially, to help bring all the extant portals up to Featured Portal status. The current, admittedly incomplete, list of articles, images, etc., relevant to each portal can be found at User:John Carter/Christianity portals. I also think that, at least in theory, we would probably best use a single article only in a single portal, and that we probably have enough articles to do that, although there might be a few exceptions. I would welcome input from anyone on the associated talk page regarding which articles and other materials they would like to see associated with which portal(s), any suggestions for additional portals or changes to existing portals, etc. Thank you. John Carter (talk) 15:37, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Infobox for Relief Society Presidents

None of the Relief Society President articles I looked at have any infobox whatsoever, not even a generic one. Seems to me an infobox for Relief Society Presidents is appropriate. For example, see Emma Smith Thoughts or suggestions? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Btphelps (talk • contribs)

I'd recommend for an infobox to include the name of the LDS President who called the woman to the office, the time she served, who her counselors were, possibly the names of members of the Relief Society General Board that served under her too, and if you can dig up the information (from an LDS almanac or some other similar source) how many women were in the Relief Society when she served as president. This is in addition to things like a photo or other personal information relevant to the office. I would also suggest looking at the info box for LDS Presidents (like this one: Ezra Taft Benson) for some other suggestions and possibly a template to shamelessly copy in terms of getting the fields and look put into place.

There ought to be significant biographies for all of these women and it is a shame that more hasn't been done about this particular series of articles. Thanks for considering the idea, and if you need some help getting it set up, let me know. I don't want to step on your toes, but this is an excellent suggestion. --Robert Horning (talk) 06:45, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Hmm, I see the LDS prophets do not even have a custom infobox, but use the person infobox. Perhaps creating one for Relief Society presidents is overkill? Perhaps we need to create a succession template to show who preceded and followed each Relief Society President (along with the info you listed) like that for the prophet. I've never done this either. If you are handy with this sort of thing, please feel free to take the lead. -- btphelps ^{(talk) (contribs)} 21:10, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

File:Association des Scouts Liahona-SDJ.png

Is there crisper clipart I can link to for the central theme of this badge? I am trying to get it vectorized.--Kintetsubuffalo (talk) 20:14, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

"Pious fiction"

User:Noleander has just created an article Pious fiction that purports to be able to divine which parts of the Book of Mormon and Holy Bible are "pious fiction" according to his personal point of view. I've asked that it be speedy-deleted as a disparaging and pov-pushing article, serving no other purpose. Til Eulenspiegel (talk) 18:19, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

So you don't think that there are people who feel this way? Do you think this particular quote was taken out of context? As long as he isn't saying that the Book of Mormon is pious fiction, I fail to see the failure of NPOV in this situation. I realize that among those who are LDS this is about like pouring gasoline on an open fire, but I fail to see the falsehood of what was expressed or how this is POV pushing. If you are an apologist, the better response would be to demonstrate why it doesn't fit that description.

As for the article itself, if it remains as a hit list against religious thought, that would indeed be POV pushing and perhaps the concept itself ought to be better defined in the article, although as an example suggesting that the Book of Mormon itself is considered fiction doesn't seem to be too far out had several people me myself directly and have read that from many critics of the LDS faith and those critical of Joseph Smith in particular. --Robert Horning (talk) 20:18, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

I should explain that the article came a long way in the two hours between my original post and your reply. You can follow in the article history, but at first it stated categorically the opinion that the Bible and Book of Mormon simply "were" examples of pious fiction, no references provided. It reads a lot better now IMO. Til Eulenspiegel (talk) 21:14, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

User:Nickleus adds irrelevant content to denigrate Mormon targets

User:Nickleus has been adding irrelevant and/or unverifiable content across LDS articles, attempting to tarnish the image of LDS subjects. See his contributions. Please watch guy, so that we can revert any bad things. I learned this because of his recent edits to Erastus Snow, which I reverted. cookiecaper (talk / contribs) 18:38, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

I looked at his edits, and though some were probably not helpful edits (and rightfully were reverted), I see no pattern of wanton destruction and vandalism. All of his edits are true and referencable. Just because they are critical of the church doesn't mean that he should be on anyone's hitlist.--Descartes1979 (talk) 20:56, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

I'd suggest that it's better to focus on the articles rather than individual editors. On the Toolserver there is a very useful tool called Wikiproject Watchlist which provides a view of all of the most recent changes to articles that have the matching Wikiproject transcluded on the article's talk page. For this Wikiproject, these settings are particular useful. -- 208.81.184.4 (talk) 19:58, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Time to review Temple Garment image

Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints believe that the Temple Garment is sacred and that images of it should not be shown. However, an image exists on the Undergarments page - a topic that is tangentially related to temple garments. Therefore, in light of the meta:2010 Wikimedia Study of Controversial Content and it's suggestions relative to images which are considered sacred, I have begun a discussion regarding whether such inclusion is necessary at Talk:Undergarment#Time to review Temple Garment image. Please join the discussion. --Trödel 00:05, 7 December 2010 (UTC)