MastersClayPot

Mercy seat

Thank you for your contributions to Wikipedia. As a member of the Wikipedia community, I would like to remind you of Wikipedia's neutral-point-of-view policy for editors. In the meantime, please be bold and continue contributing to Wikipedia. Thank you! FreplySpang 02:36, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Please remember that Wikipedia is a collaborative effort - it's not "your" article. I reverted the Mercy seat article back to the way it was before you started editing it, because you are rewriting it from a Christian point of view. Our neutral point of view policy means that we do not endorse a particular point of view. If you want to add information to the article, that would be more than welcome, as long as it follows this principle of neutrality. You can say "Christian theologians believe that the Mercy Seat was an image of Jesus," but you can't state as fact that "The Mercy Seat was an image of Jesus." It would be better if you worked with the existing article, extending it where you can, rather than replacing it wholesale. FreplySpang 02:46, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

See the previous version of the article, and please do review the neutrality policy. Jewish tradition and Christian interpretations of the Bible do not necessarily agree on the significance of the mercy seat, and apparently the phrase has picked up secondary meanings over the millennia. In short, we do not endorse a particular interpretation of the Bible. FreplySpang 02:53, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

P.S. I'm logging off for now, so I won't be responding immediately if you leave another message. FreplySpang 02:57, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

When you contribute to Wikipedia, your contributions are open for others to edit. As it says at the bottom of the edit screen, "If you don't want your writing to be edited mercilessly or redistributed by others, do not submit it." Note also the Edit summary box on the edit screen - the edit summary is often where people explain the changes they have made. In the case of Mercy seat, you removed information that was present in the previous version of the article. I merged it back in, and I also made some changes to fit our standard style. (For instance, we don't bold the title of the article in the body of the article.) I did, in fact, keep a fair amount of the material you added. For more guidelines on the collaborative nature of Wikipedia editing, you may want to check out our Welcome page. FreplySpang 00:41, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

MastersClayPot

Please tell me how I "screwed up" the formatting in the article, Mercy seat. I simply thought that to put information about a secular song prior to the Biblical teachings about the Mercy seat would be a disservice to the Word of God. God's Word is worthy of the most prominent place. Plus, who cares whether or not a song is entitled Mercy Seat? Most likely, whoever is searching for information about the Mercy Seat is not looking for a song. I understand that credit and applause is due to the songwriter/singer; but, how much more credit and applause should there be given to Christ? My edit simply put the song information at the bottom, in its own heading, where it could still be found (if someone so seeks) and not take away from the richness of the Word of God. — Preceding unsigned comment added by MastersClayPot (talk • contribs)

1. First, please don't bring in God. We're trying to write a good & Free encyclopedia to help people; divisive things like religion and spreading "the richness of the Word of God" have no place here. There's a quote from another editor I like to use to express my view on these matters:

Wikipedia's articles are no place for strong views. Or rather, we feel about them the way that a natural history museum feels about tigers. We admire them and want our visitors to see how fierce and clever they are, so we stuff them and mount them for close inspection, with all sorts of carefully worded signs to get people to appreciate them as much as we do. But however much we adore tigers, a live tiger loose in the museum is seen as an urgent problem. --User:William Pietri

2. Secondly, my comment about the formatting was in fact a reference to the References and trivia sections. Didn't it bother you how ugly it was, how non-standard and puffed up with whitespace it was? It sure did me.

3. Thirdly, placing that link at top has nothing to do with religion (your "disservice to the Word of God"; hence #1) but with following the Manuals of style for Wikipedia article (see Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Top links for an example of what I mean); these style issues are important for consistency and clarity: you yourself have confused the song with the Biblical object (note your inconsistent capitalization in your message in which you refer to the Biblical subject both by "Mercy seat" and "Mercy Seat"): "Most likely, whoever is searching for information about the Mercy Seat is not looking for a song." If an editor like yourself who knows all about this stuff could make a slip, how much more so would a random visitor or searcher? --Gwern (contribs) 23:55 16 November 2006 (GMT)