Talk:Joseph Smith/Archive 23

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Fawn Brodie

I've visited this page before, although I'm not overly familiar with it, or the subject. Would someone please explain to me why the Fawn Brodie citations are being removed? Many thanks, Obscurasky (talk) 01:50, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

Hi Obscurasky, Trevdna wants to get this page to FA status. FormalDude listed Brodie's book as deprecated on the under-construction source guide for LDS topics. While Brodie's book was amazing in its time, I agree that there are better sources out there. Earlier on this talk page, Trevdna stated "Without the support of the Wikiproject (and in fact I would expect downright opposition from its members) I expect another FAC would go nowhere." In an effort to show my support, both for getting the page to FA and for the project to make a good source guide, I have been trying to replace the Brodie citations where possible. There has not been discussion on categorizing Brodie's book as "deprecated" vs. "generally unreliable." You could start a discussion on the talk page for the source guide if you like. I haven't done a comprehensive source analysis for the Joseph Smith page, but I am trying to be very transparent about my work. I work in the BYU Library as their Wikipedian-in-Residence. I am not a formally trained historian, but I have worked on many church history Wikipedia pages over the last six years and have some familiarity with Mormon history sources. Rachel Helps (BYU) (talk) 18:39, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

Hello Rachel, and thank you for the response. So are you sponsored by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints? Obscurasky (talk) 00:51, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

She is a Wikipedian in residence for the library at BYU, which is owned by the church. Her COI statements are at User:Rachel Helps (BYU)#Conflict of Interest statements. She is, in my experience, a model Wikipedian, and is extremely cautious about not inserting her own biases and keeping a NPOV. ~Awilley (talk) 00:10, 24 November 2022 (UTC)

Yes, I have a paid position at the BYU Library, which is part of BYU, which is funded by the LDS Church. I determine the pages that I and my student employees work on, and I believe that I have the editorial freedom I need to try to be neutral (i.e., no one at my work is hovering over my edits, to my knowledge). I am working in good faith (trying to adhere to NPOV), but I do believe that a person's beliefs can affect their writing unconsciously, and that there should be oversight from other editors, especially on a page like Joseph Smith's where there is so much controversial material. My edits so far have been mostly in the references, although I have changed a few details when I couldn't find exactly the same information in the other sources. Rachel Helps (BYU) (talk) 16:55, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

Just want to endorse Rachel’s summary of the situation here. I believe this article is essentially FA worthy. However, FormalDude’s summary of non-reliable sources very clearly lists Brodie as “deprecated”; also, at a recent WP:PR on the mainline LDS Church itself he specifically pointed it out as considering it “unreliable.” Together, these actions signal to me he is very likely to oppose this article for FA as it now stands based on the article’s reliance on Brodie for key passages. As an active Wikipedian and member of the LDS wiki project, I expect FormalDude’s opposition would effectively end the article’s FA chances. Although I basically disagree with FormalDude’s assessment of Brodie myself, I would say his assessment carries considerable weight as a very active Wikipedian. (Overall, more active than I am by far.)

Therefore, the task before us, I think, if we want to submit for FA, is to substitute those Brodie references while keeping the article’s overall tone and POV substantially unchanged. I had thought it was too big a lift and had basically given up - but Rachel may yet prove me wrong! I know I certainly don’t have access to the high quality sources that would be required to make this happen. But Rachel appears to be uniquely situated as BYU’s Wikipedian in residence to access many, many high quality, neutral sources that most Wikipedians simply do not have the time or resources to access or cite - but which are invaluable in getting this article over the top.

All that to say: asking Rachel if she is “sponsored” by the LDS Church - and I think implying that her edits are somehow tainted thereby - is probably facile. She’s doing a good job, at a task that no one has been able or willing to do for literally over 10 years. Any issues with her individual edits (which I have found none so far) can easily be discussed here. She is not exactly trying to silence Brodie’s POV - if anything she is trying to preserve it as we seek other more modern sources to say essentially the same things. And most importantly, the detailed work she is doing is probably the only way we will obtain consensus from all sides for one (hopefully) final FA push. Trevdna (talk) 04:57, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

Enquiring about possible conflict of interest is not facile; neutrality is a key criteria of FA articles. Obscurasky (talk) 18:04, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

I've got to say I'm uncomfortable with Brodie's work being declared "deprecated" by fiat with no prior discussion. I've started a discussion here. ~Awilley (talk) 00:12, 24 November 2022 (UTC)

It was reading Brodie that first got me interested in Mormonism. Furthermore, I wish that in my eighth decade, I had the narrative style Brodie exhibited at thirty. Though I understand the desire to use more recent sources in this article, referring to Brodie as "deprecated" makes me uneasy as well, especially since I'm the same age as the book. John Foxe (talk) 03:02, 24 November 2022 (UTC)

@Obscurasky I guess I would just say I think we should let the edits speak for themselves and discuss any problematic edits on a case-by-case basis. I mean, we all have our own biases and personal conflicts of interest, but we put them aside to make NPOV edits all the time. Trevdna (talk) 02:16, 27 November 2022 (UTC)

I have some other tasks I need to work on before the end of the year, but I hope to keep helping to get the sourcing on this page to FA in January. I believe the need to replace the Brodie citations will depend on the results of the discussion Awilley linked to. Rachel Helps (BYU) (talk) 16:55, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

Removed?

There is no consensus here to remove but the content does appear to have been removed from the article, does anyone know why? @Rachel Helps (BYU), Obscurasky, and Awilley: Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:58, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

At the time it was removed there was an apparent consensus to have it removed. Consensus changed. I was planning on adding the citations back myself sometime after the holidays when I have more time, or to let Rachel do it as she offered to in January when she has more time.

For how it's done, I've liked the format where we put a short phrase after each citation if there's disagreement about what happened or why it happened. Example: Bushman page xx (saying that Smith did this for such and such a reason); Brodie page xx (Saying the reason was actually this); Vogel page xx (Adding a bit more context) ~Awilley (talk) 19:14, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

I would prefer in-text attribution, but maybe because that's all I've seen. Where is that format used? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 19:17, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

See the citations in the Joseph_Smith#Revelations section as an example, particularly the ones currently numbered 219 and 220. They give more detail and nuance than would be typical in the body of the article and allow for multiple points of view on the motivation behind the "revelations". ~Awilley (talk) 21:03, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

I'm not sure I like that, is it in the MoS? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 00:36, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

The MOS doesn't enforce specific citation styles that I know of. The style we're using is the 3rd one from the top at Help:Explanatory_notes. See also Wikipedia:Citing_sources#Bundling_citations. ~Awilley (talk) 04:45, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

Having reviewed I think I'd strongly prefer in-text attribution with a daughter page being created if the text becomes too long. No reason we can't have a entire article on the topic if there's coverage. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 15:04, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

I would support Awilley's suggestion to put historiographic debates and disagreements in the citations. Frequent in-text attribution seems clunky and more than necessary; Wikipedia articles are encyclopedic overviews and ought not to be exhaustive records of a whole historiography where not needed. And I am not sure how a daughter page would resolve the matter when the topic under discussion is Joseph Smith in toto and this is already the Joseph Smith page. P-Makoto (talk) 20:47, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

This page is only 155,110 bytes all-inclusive, that means that there is plenty of room for expansion before we have to start worrying about it being too long. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 23:09, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

I am not worried about the number of bytes; Wikipedia is not paper and that ordinary length restrictions do not necessarily apply. Rather, I am thinking about the user experience. I think users seeking an encyclopedic overview of a subject will appreciate extensive historiographic debate about motives and contexts being kept to footnotes so that the overview itself can be a focused reading experience, especially in a top-level article that folks are hoping to nominate for Featured Article status. P-Makoto (talk) 17:53, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

Regarding consensus, I noticed that there may be some ongoing discussion on that talk page as there's a new post from a user who's done some editing on Latter Day Saint movement articles. (the specific diff) Whether that further changes what the consensus might be is, I figure, not for me alone to say; I just thought it right to bring up here. P-Makoto (talk) 05:24, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

I've read the article, this talk page, and the Fawn Brodie page. I'm far from an expert on the subject, but I have to say that any impartial reader would share my suspicion that there's more to the Fawn Brodie references being removed than meets the eye. She was excommunicated from the LDS Church and I gather that considerable animosity still exists. Is this really just a coincidence? Psychic Alley (talk) 12:33, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

The earliest occurrence of the idea that Brodie is an unreliable or deprecated source for WP seems to have shown up here and shared by P-Makoto, Epachamo, and FormalDude. Trevdna appears to have become aware of this assessment through the feedback at Wikipedia:Peer review/The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints/archive1 and was the first to suggest the replacement of the Brodie citations on this article. I don't see anything in any of these editors' statements or histories to suggest ulterior motives or suspicious coincidences. --FyzixFighter (talk) 17:29, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

OK, did not read it all, but there appears to be nothing concrete there to justify the enormous effort that's taking place to expunge Brodie from this page. Actually makes me wonder even more whether there might be an ulterior motive afoot? Psychic Alley (talk) 19:22, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

I am sorry if my contributions have given you any negative impressions, but I would ask that you please assume good faith of those who participated in those early discussions about sources for Latter Day Saint movement pages. If you seek a justification for the "enormous effort" (which I am not even familiar with and have not participated in to begin with), it was because of concern that if the page includes references to questioned sources that might impede a Featured Article review process, as discussed above on this page by Trevnda: However, FormalDude’s summary of non-reliable sources very clearly lists Brodie as “deprecated”; also, at a recent WP:PR on the mainline LDS Church itself he specifically pointed it out as considering it “unreliable.” Together, these actions signal to me he is very likely to oppose this article for FA as it now stands based on the article’s reliance on Brodie for key passages. As an active Wikipedian and member of the LDS wiki project, I expect FormalDude’s opposition would effectively end the article’s FA chances.

I would add, Psychic Alley, that although you describe this as an "enormous effort that's taking place", in the present tense, from the discussion on that page, the present tense is not appropriate for describing this, as the process has in fact stopped and will most likely, as Awilley describes, be reversed, either by Awilley or by Helps: At the time it was removed there was an apparent consensus to have it removed. Consensus changed. I was planning on adding the citations back myself sometime after the holidays when I have more time, or to let Rachel do it as she offered to in January when she has more time. I am not so confident one can say what the consensus is, but I think we can at least agree that after further discussion, there now is not a consensus among editors that No Man Knows is "generally unreliable" where there previously had been as described on the Latter Day Saint movement Wikipedia project sources page (that entry in the table has since changed; here is the current version).

For any interested in some of the reasons I at least had for being reticent about accepting No Man Knows My History on Wikipedia, my views are based on reading review essays and historiographical papers published in independent academic periodicals for fields of Mormon history and American Christian history. I concluded that while No Man Knows does provide basic historical facts, the interpretation it place those facts in is problematic since as Wikipedians we do not do primary source research of our own that would might lead us to develop a different interpretation of the same facts. The essay in Church History states that the framework used in No Man Knows "has been discarded" since its publication, and D. Michael Quinn called the book "deeply flawed" such that as soon as any other scholarly biographies of Smith were published, he stopped recommending No Man Knows and always suggested that students and colleagues read and rely on more recent biographies, such as Donna Hill's (Doubleday, 1977). For the convenience of those not familiar with the discussion on the Latter Day Saint movement sources page, I will repost the following excerpts, which I had posted to the discussion page for the Latter Day Saint movement sources page:

My ambivalence about the book is not my own but is based on other historians' assessments, some that were contemporaneous and some that are retrospective. Here are a few excerpts and the articles that I have read:

"Despite the evidence of prodigious research, despite the charming imagery of its style and its stirring chronicle of an enigmatic career, the book has two methodological weaknesses… not only has little patience with the pretensions of Mormonism, but little appreciation of religious phenomena generally… concerned, or at least it would seem, with painting a pen portrait rather than with writing a work of history. The work reads as though she began by studying the historical background sufficiently to formulate what she regarded as a reasonable and believable approach to Joseph Smith and then proceeded to mobilize the evidence to illustrate and support her interpretation… colorful adjectives and sometimes damning inferences imply a finality of judgment that is not warranted by the contradictory character of the evidence she examined." In Leonard J. Arrington, "Scholarly Studies of Mormonism in the Twentieth Century", Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 1, no. 1 (Spring 1966): 25.

"That Brodie's work has gone so long without effective challenge or criticism is peculiar. [This statement was written in the 1970s.] During the quarter century since her book appeared the factual, 'scientific', external sort of history that characterized the Progressive period, and her book to a considerable extent, has been discarded. In its wake has come the rise of American intellectual and religious history, including the revitalization of social history through use of demographical and other methodological techniques". In Marvin S. Hill, "Secular or Sectarian History? A Critique of No Man Knows My History", Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture 43, no. 1 (March 1974): 79.

"Despite its strengths, No Man Knows My History seems particularly deficient and deserving of critical reevaluation in two aspects. One of these was noticed in 1946 by Ralph Gabriel of Yale, who observed that Brodie's work was largely external in its treatment of Smith and that it 'may be called appropriately secular history.' When it is recalled that Mormonism was a religious movement and Smith a religious leader this is no small deficiency. The other aspect is its sectarian tendencies—Brodie's inclination to dwell upon the truth or untruth of the prophet's claims and to evaluate his career from a highly moralistic perspective. This results in her bringing to her assessment of Smith some overly simple and rather inflexible standards by which to judge him." In Hill, "Secular or Sectarian", 80.

"During a graduate seminar at Yale early in 1974, I was asked to recommend a biography of Mormonism's founding prophet, Joseph Smith Jr. (1805–44). I replied: 'There has only been one scholarly biography in the past thirty years, but I don't like recommending it, because Fawn M. Brodie's 1945 No Man Knows My History is deeply flawed in its research, in its unrelenting distaste for Joseph Smith, and in its interpretive framework. But she demonstrated his complex personality, identified crucial issues, asked significant questions, gave previously unavailable information, and wrote with stellar prose.' …Of course, every student in the seminar read Brodie to learn about pre-Utah Mormonism. Although unfortunate, this was inevitable for non-LDS scholars and general readers." In D. Michael Quinn, "Biographers and the Mormon 'Prophet Puzzle': 1974 to 2004", Journal of Mormon History 32, no. 2 (Summer 2006): 226.

"For twenty-five years, [Donna] Hill's book [Joseph Smith: The First Mormon, published by Doubleday in 1977] was my only recommendation to anyone interested in Smith's sojourn from birth to death." In Quinn, "Mormon 'Prophet Puzzle'", 227. (The "25 years" time span is because 2002 was the publication year of Robert Remini's Joseph Smith for the Penguin Lives series which Quinn also regarded positively; see page 241.)

Bushman's assessment of No Man Knows is not necessarily universal, and this is across a range of time and publications. For example, D. Michael Quinn (also an eminent and significant historian, I hope we might agree) was much more explicit about concerns and preferred to recommend other books.

In the course of discussion on the talk page, Awilley acknowledged these historians' criticisms, but their reaction to these assessments was, ultimately, different from my own, which I suppose goes to show how Wikipedians can agree to disagree. In any event, I hope, Psychic Alley, you understand why I now ask that you not cast aspersions on the motives of editors who have tried their best to contribute to the project and to learn from reliable sources about the topics in question. That we can disagree need not be taken as evidence of bad faith or ulterior motives. P-Makoto (talk) 20:43, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

@Psychic Alley: I'm the person who has probably done the most work opposing the deprecation/removal of Brodie's book. I personally didn't see anything nefarious going on. P-Makoto had legitimate concerns and interpreted things differently than I would have. ~Awilley (talk) 23:22, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

@Awilley: nefarious can be a strong word, although I stand by my point that any impartial reader would share my suspicion that there's more going on here than meets the eye. As far as I can tell, there's very little issue with the material itself; only with Brodie being the source for it. And, despite reassurances above, you simply can't ignore the fact that it's the church who's payed an editor to expunge Brodie (someone they excommunicated) from this article. This looks very much like modern damnatio memoriae to me and, while I'm not in a position to say whether or not it is justified, I do feel confident in saying the perception of many people will be that it is motivated, more by a desire to trash Brodie's reputation as a respected commentator, than it is to do with improving the article. Psychic Alley (talk) 13:21, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

I understand it looks bad when you look at it that way. And I realize that many reasonable people could look at it that way and have similar concerns. On the surface the optics aren't good.

I would encourage you and anybody else with concerns to dig a little deeper. I think you'll find pretty quickly that Rachel Helps (BYU) had no part in the decision to depreciate Brodie and when that decision was challenged (by me) she held herself back from participating in that that thread as well even though I pinged her to the conversation. Other editors made the decision to remove Brodie and she accepted their decision as consensus. So later when there were concerns that citing a "deprecated source" could prevent this article from passing a FA review, Rachel tried to help out by implementing the consensus by removing the deprecated source.

For the concern that someone at BYU told Rachel to remove Brodie and she was complying with that, I will try to find a link to Rachel describing how she chooses what she works on. You can read that and decide for yourself whether to accept that at face value. ~Awilley (talk) 15:48, 17 December 2022 (UTC) link. ~Awilley (talk) 18:19, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

Wait, now there was a decision to deprecate Brodie? I thought Brodie had never been deprecated? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 15:56, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

@Psychic Alley I think many impartial readers who read this whole talk page (permalink) would conclude that even if they disagree with the former (and I would emphasize that; former) categorization of No Man Knows My History, what has been taking place has not been suspicious.

As Awilley states, Helps was not involved in the categorization of No Man Knows as unreliable. That was something I proposed and added to what was, at the time, a talk page described as an "essay" run by FormalDude. Later, FormalDude turned that into a Wikipedia project page for Wikiproject Latter Day Saint movement, sort of "grandfathering" in my categorization of No Man Knows. I was not actively editing Wikipedia when that transition happened and didn't know it took place. I do not work for the LDS Church, and as far as I know, FormalDude does not either.

On October 31, on this talk page, user Trevdna wrote that they were concerned that the presence of citations to No Man Knows would result in a failed Featured Article nomination: I was informed, at the peer review of the LDS Church article, that No Man Knows My History is now considered a deprecated source per the LDS Wikiproject. WP:LDS/RS. Therefore I expect this article would require extensive rework to remove references to it and replace them with "contemporary consensus among specialists in Mormon history across a broad range of scholars, including both Mormons of various denominations and non-Mormons." ... Without the support of the Wikiproject (and in fact I would expect downright opposition from its members) I expect another FAC would go nowhere. Trevdna, who is not as far as I am aware paid by the LDS Church, was the one who brought up the matter of No Man Knows My History and stated their belief that a successful Featured Article nomination would "require" (their words) "remov[ing] references to it [No Man Knows My History] and replac[ing] them". Although Trevdna personally disagreed with the categorization expressed on the Latter Day Saint movement sources page, they were not interested in changing it.

Rachel Helps, who discloses her employment by the BYU Library and has a Conflict of Interest disclosure on her user page, offered to assist, asking for permission before moving forward and for oversight: It looks like a lot of the Brodie citations are cited along with other biographies. I only see about twelve citations where Brodie is cited with no other supporting citations. Maybe I could tackle some of the citations after I finish up my work on the Brigham Young page (which is probably going to take a long time; I keep getting pulled into other Wikimedia projects!). If I were to work on the page though, I would want oversight by some non-LDS (or at least non-BYU-affiliated) editors.

Trevdna replied, providing that permission and oversight: Rachel - if you are looking to help find references, I would say that should be where we go now: if you can find references that can substantially substitute for those 12 citations, I think this could still work. A few of them will probably require reworking the article itself (notably the section I just got done on the BoM and View of the Hebrews), and maybe this could make it through with a few Brodie references, but overall I think that’s the last major push.

When questions were raised about replacing references to No Man Knows—something that had been discussed on this talk page, as demonstrated by these quotations—Helps paused and stopped such revisions. Discussion took place on both this page and the Latter Day Saint movement sources talk page, which you can see here. No one involved in the discussion works for the LDS Church.

Those arguing in favor of categorizing No Man Knows as unreliable have based arguments on the book, not on Fawn Brodie's confessional status. You can see this in the excerpts I shared above, which I also shared on the Latter Day Saint movement sources talk page. These are excerpts from historiography essays published in independent academic journals which publish in the history of Mormonism and the history of American Christianity. I have never brought up Fawn Brodie's confessional status, nor would I want to.

I would add that Helps herself did not participate in the discussion; she simply waited to learn what the new consensus would be. Helps has apparently offered to restore the references to No Man Knows. Awilley wrote: I was planning on adding the citations back myself sometime after the holidays when I have more time, or to let Rachel do it as she offered to in January when she has more time.

Given all this, I do not think any impartial reader would share [your] suspicion (emphasis added). Some might share an initial confusion, but on this talk page there have already been multiple impartial readers who do not ultimately share your suspicion. Awilley has advocated for changing the categorization of No Man Knows to what it is currently listed as, "Additional Considerations", and they expressed, I personally didn't see anything nefarious going on. P-Makoto had legitimate concerns and interpreted things differently. Trevdna, who also disagreed with the way No Man Knows previously was categorized, wrote, asking Rachel if she is “sponsored” by the LDS Church - and I think implying that her edits are somehow tainted thereby - is probably facile. She’s doing a good job.

I can understand some initial confusion, but the balance of the evidence in the discussion points to this process being one based on the usual Wikipedia principles of reliable sources, open conversation, and consensus. No Latter Day Saint denomination pays me. Other users involved have also not worked for the LDS Church, like Trevdna and FormalDude. Rachel Helps appropriately discloses her employment with the BYU Library. If this is working for the LDS Church, it is very distantly and indirectly. It would be like saying that a librarian at Baylor University worked for the General Baptist Convention of Texas. In some sense, perhaps, but day to day Helps's employer is the library, not some LDS apostle or other. But in any case, she discloses her potential COI, she asks for oversight, and she responds to oversight.

As such, again, I ask that you please not cast aspersions. It is hard to not see a rather negative connotation in your claim that This looks very much like modern damnatio memoriae. I have done my best to be honest and neutral in this whole process. I think other users, whether Rachel Helps or Awilley or others, have as well. As I said, I can understand some initial confusion, but I do not think persisting in accusing users of trying to trash Brodie's reputation. If you want to know what I think of Fawn Brodie as a person and historian, you can read what I wrote on the Latter Day Saint movement sources talk page: To write Mormon history in the midcentury was no easy task given the less convenient access to archival material and the controversy surrounding, and Brodie was an important historian, not just of Mormonism but of U. S. history as well. I think the book is not reliable for Wikipedia purposes for the reasons I shared above and on that project talk page, but that is not because of who Brodie was personally or even professionally. The book was published in its own time when the historiography was very different, when the source base was different, when the discipline of history was different.

Overall, I think many impartial readers who read the full sweep of what has happened would conclude that what has taken place has not been suspicious but rather has reflected typical Wikipedia principles and policies: a Wikipedian in residence discloses their potential COI and asks for oversight, there is open discussion of disagreements when they arise, and a consensus can change with new discussion.

@Horse Eye's Back, please do not state something that I cannot help but think you already know is untrue, since folks like I and Awilley have been explaining this to you for weeks on the Latter Day Saint movement sources project page. I am not sure how you could claim ignorance of how No Man Knows was in the past listed as deprecated on the project page. You yourself made the edit that changed that presentation. While you apparently do not accept that that was a "consensus", what else was it? As Awilley stated, Wikipedia:Silence and consensus applied. Even Trevdna, who disagreed, accepted it as a consensus of the project. Now that there has been new discussion, that is no longer consensus, but that does not mean that, for example, Trevdna was wrong for thinking there was one when there was one. P-Makoto (talk) 16:38, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

I know it was falsely listed as such, but IRL it was never deprecated which is what Awilley just claimed. There never was a deprecation discussion (which requires a formal RfC), correct? There never was a consensus, correct? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:52, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

Awilley did not claim "it was falsely listed as such" or that "it was never deprecated". Awilley claimed that what took place was an example of Wikipedia: Silence and consensus. There was not an explicit discussion, but there also wasn't an objection.

On the Latter Day Saint movement sources talk page, I replied the following to you, explaining what had happened:

At the time I added No Man Knows to the table, the page was, as Awilley describes, "a collaboration with just a few editors". It was in user space and was described as an "essay". In that early version of the page, there was not a clear instruction about referencing discussions such as in RSN. As Awilley describes, we can understand what happened as a case of Wikipedia:Silence and consensus.

My understanding is that when the userpage was changed to a project page, the expectation changed to one in which referencing a discussion was expected. FormalDude apparently still copied over No Man Knows, inadvertently grandfathering it in without clarifying why. I was on an informal wikibreak at the time and didn't even know about FormalDude changing the userpage essay into a project page.

When I added the information, the page was not a project page, and I was not aware of any instruction that RSN discussions had to be linked. FormalDude, who ran the "essay" as it was then called, did not object to my contribution. I did not know about the "essay" being turned into a project page until some time after it had happened.

In any case, there now has been an extensive discussion, and the category itself has changed. At the current moment, no one is trying to replace citations to No Man Knows My History on the Joseph Smith page. I am not sure what is being accomplished by going over this again and again, Horse Eye's Back. It seems you repeatedly make an accusation that something was not simply inaccurate but moreover wrongful, even implicitly bad faith. (for example, you already on the Latter Day Saint movement sources talk page asserted that I claimed that the source had been deprecated despite there being no such consensus) Someone like myself or Awilley explains what happened in context (which I have quoted 2–3 paragraphs above, i.e. that the consensus changing now does not make the prior consensus a false or bad faith effort). And you, sometimes on the same page and sometimes on another page, repeat that accusation, ignoring earlier explanations and discussion (as you appear to have done here). What is this contributing to efforts to discuss improving Wikipedia and the Joseph Smith page specifically? P-Makoto (talk) 17:16, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

I feel bad about having indirectly launched such a controversy. However - since we’re in it - I want to say that I essentially agree with P-Makoto’s appraisal of the situation. It might have looked, to a casual observer, as though there was an effort to suppress Brodie. And that perception might have been reinforced by the fact that Rachel Helps is BYU library’s Wikipedian in residence. But a deeper dive on the situation should show there is nothing nefarious about the situation:

1) There had been an apparent consensus to deprecate Brodie. We can quibble about exactly how that consensus was built, but I and other editors (namely Rachel Helps) took it in good faith. 2) After the discussion on the talk page, I suggested that - if Rachel wanted to help move this toward FA status (which has been a long standing goal of mine) - she could work on removing the Brodie references and replacing them with equivalents, being careful not to alter the overall POV of the article. I see she has been scrupulous in working to either remove only Brodie refs that were redundant, or replace them with refs that say essentially the same thing. (Well done, Rachel!) Again, I know the optics look questionable- and for that reason it may be regrettable that BYU’s WiR was the only one with the resources and drive to make these changes- but these edits have not changed the POV of the articles, and followed the talk page consensus at every step. 3) In the course of these discussions, the decision was made to revisit the apparent consensus to deprecate Brodie. I think it’s telling - for anyone who thinks there’s anything nefarious about this - that, as soon as that consensus began to be revisited, Rachel paused her edits. If this were an underhanded attempt to remove material critical of Smith - why stop? 4) The new consensus, it appears (the discussion has tapered off) - which can be found at the LDS wikiproject, is that Brodie should no longer be deprecated, but should be used with care and that articles should “defer” to newer, presumably more reliable sources. I personally agree with that consensus and think it’s quite reasonable.

So in conclusion: I don’t think there’s anything nefarious about all this, though I can see how it appears that way. I support Rachel’s edits. However, it appears there will be no further efforts to deprecate Brodie. Which I also agree with. We are all volunteers trying to do the right thing and sort through some thorny issues.

Cheers to all! Trevdna (talk) 19:56, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

(Also, for the record, I am not paid by the LDS Church, either directly or indirectly.) Trevdna (talk) 19:56, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

Proposed Featured Article Candidacy

Every to-do on this article that I can think of is resolved. Does anyone see anything else I/we may have missed? I intend to nominate this article in the next couple of weeks if there are no additional concerns.

Also - would anyone be willing to co-nominate this article with me? I know there are a lot of great editors who have put in lots of work over the years - and I wouldn't mind some help rapidly resolving any concerns that come up at FAC. Trevdna (talk) 08:01, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

I can help with any sourcing questions in January (I still have a shelf of books on Joseph Smith checked out). Rachel Helps (BYU) (talk) 20:52, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

I’m really not sure the article would be be considered acceptable for FA status given that, at least one, significant editor has been paid by the church to work on it? Obscurasky (talk) 01:04, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

If you have a problem with my edits to this page, would you please address them directly, Obscurasky? Rachel Helps (BYU) (talk) 17:27, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

Clearly, that's not what I said. Obscurasky (talk) 17:31, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

@Obscurasky, the employment status of @Rachel Helps (BYU) should not impact whether this article reaches FA status. As has been implied, we need to look at the content of the edits themselves, and less significantly who made those edits. Rollidan (talk) 23:14, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

@Obscurasky I am also willing to help with any sourcing questions, or verify any edit you feel Rachel Helps is biased on. In my experience editing with her over the years, she has acted in good faith. Epachamo (talk) 11:21, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

@Obscurasky I agree with Epachamo's and Rollidan's comments on Rachel Helps. After reviewing her most recent edits on this article, I couldn't detect any problematic bias. Likewise, I believe she has been sufficiently transparent with her edits - discussing on the talk page before making any edit of consequence. All guidance on I could find on Wikipedians in residence, including at WP:COI, and here, is actually fairly positive towards them, as long as they follow prescribed guidelines - which by all accounts Rachel appears to. In any case, every source is completely silent on if articles edited by WiR's are eligible for FA status, so I have no reason to believe they are not. Trevdna (talk) 00:18, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

In editing the affected articles directly Rachel Helps (BYU) departs radically from WP:COI editing best practices. "COI editors are strongly discouraged from editing affected articles directly, and can propose changes on article talk pages instead." Horse Eye's Back (talk) 00:32, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

The COI guideline does not absolutely prohibit people with a connection to a subject from editing articles on that subject. Editors who have such a connection can still comply with the COI guideline by discussing proposed article changes first, or by making uncontroversial edits. In this case, I would argue that the connection is tenuous at best, as has been noted by other uninvolved editors. Are there any controversial edits that have been made here? Which of the FA criteria does this impact? --FyzixFighter (talk) 03:12, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

Yes, it does not absolutely prohibit it... But it does strongly discourage it. How is the connection tenuous? The editor is directly employed by the religion founded by Joseph Smith, that's not a tenuous connection. That being said their authorship of the article only appear to be 1.5% so should be easy to excise if people still believe its an issue. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:53, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

I'd still like to add this chart before it is nominated. An earlier, now archived conversation was never resolved.Epachamo (talk) 11:21, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

Timeline of Joseph Smith's marriages

Does anyone have any objection to including this one? I'm neutral personally, but if it's important to you, Epachamo, I think we should have the discussion & resolve it once and for all. Just trying to move things along... Trevdna (talk) 00:18, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

What were the objections last time(s) this image was discussed? Can you provide a link to the previous discussions - We should probably ping the previous participants? --FyzixFighter (talk) 03:12, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

The discussion is here: Talk:Joseph_Smith/Archive_22#User_made_graph_removed_from_article_-_discuss. Objections by @Awilley: and @Awilley: centered around it being too much information for a main article. I disagree. His polygamy was a huge part of Joseph Smith's life in the Nauvoo period, and a significant doctrinal significance to this day, particularly in fundamentalist denominations but also in the main LDS branches. Epachamo (talk) 10:14, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

I'm really struggling to understand the argument that its too much information for a main article, it appears to be a very broad summary which is highly appropriate for the main article. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:56, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

I support the addition of the chart. It adds context and is not too much information. I'd say its content parallels directly with one of the paragraphs in the polygamy section. That'd probably where it should go, anyways. Rollidan (talk) 18:35, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

I think it's too much detail, and not really pertinent to the article. Why is a graph about the ages of his wives particularly enlightening? As someone said in the original discussion, all it shows is that he married women of varying ages and marital statuses, To say that does not require a graph. There's no trend or change over time that a graph would make a graph particularly helpful. JeffUK (talk) 20:27, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

I studied the chart again this morning, and again it strikes me as too much detail. It's too dense. You have to study an enlarged version for a few minutes to really understand what's going on. It's a 6-dimensional chart (Smith age, wife age, age gap, marker color, marker shape, marker opacity). And you can't read any of the text at thumbnail size, which is the size it would need to be in this top-level article. So if a reader doesn't click on the chart it doesn't actually tell them anything, and if the reader does click on the chart they have to study it to figure out what's going on, and then they've only learned what they could have learned in 30 seconds by reading the 2nd paragraph of the Polygamy section. So it either fails to add value, or it takes the reader on an unnecessary tangent. I'm not opposed to having some kind of chart showing Smith's wives, but it needs to be something where you can glance at the thumbnail and immediately understand what's going on.

A bit off topic, but if you still have the Excel file you used to create the chart, I have some suggestions for improvement.

• The x and y axes don't start at zero and start at different numbers (15 and 20). I suggest at least starting at the same number.
• The x and y axes have dramatically different scales even though they have the same units (years of age)
• I'd make the 0 yr age gap line either thicker or solid instead of dashed.
• The chart title is too verbose.
• The axis labels are also too long. I'd do something like "Joseph Smith age" and "Wife age (at time of marriage)"

Again, I'd suggest if you want to use a chart in this article you use something more simple that clearly demonstrates one thing. For example, you could plot the number of wives vs. time, a 2-dimensional chart that would quickly show how the plural marriages accelerated dramatically in Smith's last couple of years of life. ~Awilley (talk) 19:02, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

Agree with Awilley. ––FormalDude (talk) 18:21, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

Correct procedure for reverting good-faith edits

I'm very annoyed that an edit I made to a section title has been continually reverted, first by @FyzixFighter:, then by @ChristensenMJ:. I want to assume good-faith, but to be honest it feels very much like censorship. WP:ONLYREVERT makes it pretty clear that the correct procedure for reverting good-faith edits is to leave them in place and discuss them if you're not happy. I am happy to discuss the edit, although I note that neither editor has raised the matter here. Obscurasky (talk) 15:41, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

It's pretty standard procedure for the person trying to change the status quo to start the talk page discussion when their edit is challenged.

As for the edit itself, I think the "claimed" is strongly enough implied that it doesn't need to be explicitly stated in the section title. For instance, the section title at Jesus#Resurrection and ascension and the article at Resurrection of Jesus aren't violations of NPOV because Wikipedia is not arguing that Jesus actually rose from the dead, we're just reporting what the story is according to the gospels, or what Christians believe. It would be overkill for us to move the article Resurrection of Jesus to Claimed resurrection of Jesus or Alleged resurrection of Jesus. ~Awilley (talk) 17:10, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

The assumption of good-faith is the right approach, as that is how it was received as well, including the reverted edits. As Awilley noted, it seems there is plenty throughout the article that provides sufficient context to "state" rather than implication which is more like claim. ChristensenMJ (talk) 18:25, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

That said, we should still be careful how we word the actual text of the article. "Smith dictated a revelation" or "Smith produced a revelation" but not "Smith received a revelation". ~Awilley (talk) 21:13, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

Yes, totally agree with that....my earlier comment stemmed from having often seen something like "Smith stated he received a revelation..." - yet, there may be a balance not to overly-anchor on having that qualifier in every instance.... ChristensenMJ (talk) 21:34, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

Awilley and ChristensenMJ; It isn’t pretty standard procedure. Standard procedure, as described in WP:ONLYREVERT, is to leave a good-faith edit in place and discuss it. And in any case, your bold revert isn’t supported by WP:BRD either, (which you linked in its defence). That page even says that bold reverting shouldn’t be used more than once for the same edit. So let’s just leave that there.

As for the edit itself, you cite the Jesus#Resurrection and ascension section of the Jesus article, in support of not having a prerequisite like ‘claimed’ before ‘revelations’. Your point has some merit, but it’s worth noting that the lead in the Jesus article includes an overarching qualifier; "Christian doctrines include the beliefs that Jesus ….. rose from the dead" (my highlighting). To be fair, there’s a sort of loose qualifier on the Joseph Smith page too, which reads "Smith published many revelations and other texts that his followers regard as scripture." In my view, that isn’t sufficiently encyclopaedic to negate the need for further qualifiers later in the article. My suggested compromise then, would be to beef up that section of the lead in this article, with a view to making it more encyclopaedic and removing the need for subsequent qualifiers. Obscurasky (talk) 19:12, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

Race / slavery

A few things in the article, concerning Smith's views on race and slavery, trouble me. However, it's not my intention to be divisive, and I realise there's a possibility of contention, so I do think it best to raise them here before making edits. To start, I'm unsure how appropriate it is to list Smith's position on these under 'Political views'? There's an argument that slavery could be seen as a political issue in Smith's day, but that's not the case now. Likewise, is use of the (unquoted) terms blacks and whites really the correct terminology to be using nowadays? Also, Smith said some very contentious things about race, yet the only mention of what he did say on the subject is "Smith said that blacks were not inherently inferior to whites", which seems rather sanitized to me. I'd like to address these points, anyone have any thoughts before I do? Obscurasky (talk) 15:18, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

Noting that I made a quick edit changing "blacks" and "whites" to "black people" and "white people". Is that what you had in mind? I don't know the best place to discuss Smith's views on slavery, but in the 1840s it was definitely political. As for how to appropriately treat racist views espoused by people living in the United States during the 1800s, again I don't know the best way of doing that. If you look closely enough nearly everybody was a racist in some way. Is it the historian's job to find that racism and call it out? I don't know. In the biographies I've read Smith's views on slavery are usually discussed in the context of the political environment where he was living. For example, when he wrote the essay against abolitionism, it was in the context of older Missourians attacking new Mormon settlements because they were afraid that the Mormons were abolitionists and were going to challenge Missouri's status as a slave state. (His carefully worded essay did little to change the Missourians' minds.) And when Smith said that slaves should be freed by selling public lands to compensate the slave masters, that was in the context of his presidential campaign when slavery was a hot issue in the lead up to the civil war. ~Awilley (talk) 17:27, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

I don't have time to respond to this today, but why have you made that edit? Obscurasky (talk) 19:15, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

You had asked if blacks and whites was really the correct terminology to be using nowadays. I interpreted that as a suggestion that we update those terms to something like black people and white people. I'll admit I don't know if I'm up to date on what the correct terminology is, so if what I wrote is wrong or if you know something better, please feel free to fix it! ~Awilley (talk) 20:45, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

Joseph Smith absolutely DID believe that black people were inferior to white people. Even when he believed in freeing slaves he was in favor of strong anti-miscegenation laws. He had a hamitic world view, and believed that while everyone was a descendent of Adam, black people were descended from Cain through Ham, cursed with black skin and a degenerate nature. People like Elijah Abel, who was 1/16 black, were promised that their souls would become white some day, throwing off their degenerate nature. Given that virtually every biography and numerous scholarly articles have commented on this, it absolutely should be placed in the article. Epachamo (talk) 06:39, 21 December 2022 (UTC)

Well raised point; the sentence as it stood oversimplified a lot compared to what it cites. More complexity—and acknowledgment of racialization and racism—could and should be fairly introduced. I've made an attempt at that, which I hope is amenable and not too bold. Open to feedback of course, and the page remains open to edits of course.

A possible drawback of my revision is that it's not strictly political, getting as it does into early Mormon cosmologies of lineage. But I hazard Smith hardly ever neatly cleaved his life and thought between religion, culture, and politics, so that seems to be expected. P-Makoto (talk) 08:42, 21 December 2022 (UTC)

I thought it might have been best to discuss this section before making edits, but seeing that others have gone ahead and made edits, I've done so too. I've added a section; Views on slavery and race because I believe that, in a modern-day context, it's inappropriate to lump this into the section Political views. This decision is, I think, given added weight in light of P-Makoto's revision which, as she says, is not strictly political. Obscurasky (talk) 22:06, 21 December 2022 (UTC)

First, while I'm sure it's only accidental, @Obscurasky, I have to point out my pronouns (given on my user page) are she/her, and I would appreciate you correcting your third-person reference to me in your comment.

One other question: I notice you added a vague tag to "Smith once said" but I am not sure what you would have changed. If you go to the reference (Bushman, Rough Stone Rolling, 289), that is the context given for the statement: "he [Smith] once said in a private conversation" (emphasis added). I would suggest removing the vague since it's about as specific as seems appropriate to an encyclopedic overview. If you have a reason for why you think that is nevertheless too vague for Wikipedia, I am open to hearing it. P-Makoto (talk) 22:23, 21 December 2022 (UTC)

P-Makoto, my apologies.

I do think that once said sounds rather imprecise, in the article and, apparently, in the source, but it's not a big deal for me. If you still feel strongly about it please feel free to remove the tag. Obscurasky (talk) 22:57, 21 December 2022 (UTC)

It happens; thanks for the fix.

As for the wording in the page, it's not that I feel strongly about retaining "once said" so much as I wasn't sure what more specific wording could replace it. Would mentioning that Smith said this in a private conversation be an improvement? P-Makoto (talk) 17:16, 22 December 2022 (UTC)

I've removed the vague tag (which I previously added), partly because it's really not that big of a deal for me, and partly because I don't want it to detract from P-Makoto's edits, which are a significant improvement on the previous wording. Obscurasky (talk) 11:26, 24 December 2022 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 30 December 2022

I think it would be appropriate to word the first sentence, at best, to introduce him as "the founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly referred to and recognized as Mormonism" instead of referring to the latter first as the members of the church are now placing more emphasis and importance on the church's actual name. 2601:681:4300:6CC0:419C:5692:96D2:6DDF (talk) 05:07, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

Smith is considered the founder of many churches that fall under Mormonism. ~Awilley (talk) 18:50, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

Views on capital punishment

The sole reference to Smith's views on capital punishment has been removed from the article and my feeling is that this isn't an improvement. I've read that Smith was a was a strong proponent of capital punishment, and commented the most appropriate type to use too. Does anyone have any thoughts on how best to incorporate this into the article? Obscurasky (talk) 17:40, 27 December 2022 (UTC)

If you have read in reliable secondary sources that Smith was a strong proponent of capital punishment, could you share those sources with us? I commented on the sentence about capital punishment because the only citation appended was to B. H. Roberts's 1909 History of the Church, which was a compilation of primary sources (transcriptions, diary entries, etc.) rather than a reliable secondary source (and scholarly source criticism of the History of the Church, called "problematic" and "(justifiably) derided", brings History of the Church's reliability as a primary source into question as well). As Trevdna wrote in the edit summary, they removed it because the absence of a reliable secondary source "amounts to a failed verification". However, if you know of reliable secondary sources on the subject, such sources would provide successful verification, and the content could be appropriately restored. If there are not reliable secondary sources that verify the topic, however, then removing unverified content is, by Wikipedia standards, an improvement. P-Makoto (talk) 23:53, 27 December 2022 (UTC)

A compilation of primary sources with commentary/analysis is a secondary source, no? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 15:28, 28 December 2022 (UTC)

I second P-Makoto’s comment here. I would be supportive of including this information - if an admissible secondary source can be found. When I reviewed the Roberts source, it seemed very vague, especially the part about beheadings. Trevdna (talk) 04:29, 28 December 2022 (UTC)

Just because B. H. Roberts used primary sources himself, does that really make his work a primary source too? And to be fair, the criticism which you cited ("problematic" and "(justifiably) derided") comes from a blog site owned by, or at least aligned to, the LDS Church. I think some readers might question the impartiality of omitting Smith's position on capital punishment from the article - are there really no reliable sources for it?

These are some references from elsewhere on Wiki. The first is taken from the Mormonism and violence article:

Joseph Smith, the founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, was a strong proponent of capital punishment, and he favored execution methods that involved the shedding of blood as retribution for crimes of bloodshed. In 1843, he or his scribe commented that the common execution method in Christian nations was hanging, "instead of blood for blood according to the law of heaven." In a March 4, 1843, debate with church leader George A. Smith, who argued against capital punishment, Smith said that if he ever had the opportunity to enact a death penalty law, he "was opposed to hanging" the convict; rather, he would "shoot him, or cut off his head, spill his blood on the ground, and let the smoke thereof ascend up to God" (Roberts 1909, p. 296). In the church's April 6, 1843, general conference, Smith said he would "wring a thief's neck off if I can find him. if I cannot bring him to justice any other way."

This is taken from the Blood atonement page:

...... in the Book of Mormon there are verses which clearly detail that "the law of Moses" requires capital punishment for the crime of murder and that Jesus' death and Atonement "fulfills" the law of Moses such that there should be no more blood sacrifices.

The concept of blood atonement for adultery was less clearly articulated in LDS scripture. In Doctrine and Covenants 132, Joseph Smith wrote that people who break the "New and Everlasting Covenant" (Celestial marriage) would be "destroyed in the flesh" and be punished until they received their exaltation at the Last Judgment.

And this is taken from the Joseph Smith 1844 presidential campaign page:

Smith favored a constitutional amendment providing for capital punishment of public officials who refused to assist those denied their constitutional rights. He wrote, "The state rights doctrines are what feed mobs." Obscurasky (talk) 13:45, 28 December 2022 (UTC)

First, The blog Juvenile Instructor is not "owned by" or "aligned with" any denomination. It is operated by historians who are either in training to receive or have received graduate degrees like PhDs. The article I linked to was written by Benjamin Park, author of the Liveright/W. W. Norton-published book Kingdom of Nauvoo, a historical monograph about local theocracy and national politics in Smith-era Nauvoo (a positive review from Kirkus Reviews). The blog's tongue-in-cheek name derives from a historical (and no longer extant) Latter-day Saint magazine, but it's no more "owned by" or "aligned with" the church than the American Historical Review is owned by the United States government (which is to say it isn't). I confess to some confusion; do you mean to argue that B. H. Roberts's History of the Church, a compilation of primary sources, compiled by a general authority of the LDS Church, published by the LDS Church, more than a hundred years ago, is more independent and reliable than a contemporary historian's article on a website, because the website is named after a defunct magazine? If we were historians doing original research, we would often prefer older sources closer to the original event; however, we are Wikipedians striving not to research but to summarize others' research.

Second, it's not simply that B. H. Roberts "uses" primary sources. History of the Church is hardly anything but primary sources. To Horse Eye's Back's question, History of the Church is not a commentary on primary sources like a true documentary history or papers project would be. It's straightforwardly a compilation. There's virtually no editorial voice from Roberts; it's nearly all diary entries, nineteenth-century newspaper clippings, and speech transcripts. To use History of the Church directly without supplements from other secondary sources would be to engage in our own interpretation of sources. History of the Church does appear elsewhere on the page, but generally to provide specific dates in conjunction with secondary sources providing the interpretation which other editors have summarized.

Third, there is a good argument that Wikipedia pages ought not cite other Wikipedia pages. That the content appears on another Wikipedia page does not guarantee its fitness; it is necessary to make a case on and for this page.

Fourth, the references used on the other Wikipedia pages do not inspire much confidence. Most of the references are to historical documents produced in the 1800s (primary sources), to B. H. Roberts's compilation History of the Church, and to scripture like the Book of Mormon and Doctrine and Covenants. Those are primary sources.

Finally, I notice that it looks like there are some non-primary sources you've shared here, but without much detail. They are Hickman's "Political Legacy of Joseph Smith", "Quinn 1997", and "Gardner 1979". I have read Hickman's article, and I know it verifies Smith advocating capital punishment for "any public official who refused to assist those denied their constitutional rights", so there is a verifiable source for that on the page. Perhaps "Quinn 1997" and "Gardner 1979" provide the other information you want to include on the page about Smith's views on hangings versus firing squads; however, the author's surname and the year are not enough details to be sure what the source in question is. A Wikipedia page may not itself be a reliable source (as no Wikipedia page is a reliable source for Wikipedia), but the secondary sources it cites could be. Could you share with us more identifying details about those sources so we can all consult them?

You "question the impartiality of omitting Smith's position on capital punishment from the article". As indirect as that is, I ask that you please be careful about what you imply. I think we're both acting in good faith. You ask, "are there really no reliable sources for it?" My answer is, I don't know; I didn't find references to Smith's preferred mode of execution in the secondary sources I was familiar with. However, you said you have read about it, and that's why I asked you further up in the thread, "If you have read in reliable secondary sources that Smith was a strong proponent of capital punishment, could you share those sources with us?" I would also like to include the content because this is interesting information pertinent to Smith's political views; I only pointed it out and Trevdna only removed it because it had no secondary sourcing and neither of us were familiar with secondary sources that verified the content. Since you desire to restore the content, please, let us know what the secondary sources are so it can be verified. I would remind that widely accepted Wikipedia policy is that "The onus to achieve consensus for inclusion is on those seeking to include disputed content." P-Makoto (talk) 17:44, 28 December 2022 (UTC)

P-Makoto, thank you for the response. I'm not going to respond in similar detail, as these things can get out of hand, although I will confess to being a little upset by the analysis with which you begin your last paragraph. In particular, the subtle miss-quoting where you omit "I think some readers might..." and replace it with the precursor You. Whether that was deliberate or subconscious, it unacceptably shifts the bias of what I wrote. In any case, I can categorically assure you that all my comments concerning this article have been made in good-faith. It goes without saying that the article needs to be impartial, although my comment does indicate a view that it should also be seen to be impartial. Other editors have commented above (on a different issue) saying "the optics don't look good" and that, in my view, is a perfectly reasonable point to make. The optics of removing the article's sole mention of Smith's views on capital punishment do not look good, and especially so when so much is written about them elsewhere on Wikipedia. That is not an unreasonable point to make. Obscurasky (talk) 14:35, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

Whether Smith's views on capital punishment are "interesting" is not relevant on Wikipedia; notability is the standard. If there are reliable secondary sources that mention it, we can decide on the due weight to give those views. Until reliable secondary sources are identified, it's more appropriate to give no weight to those views. ~TPW 14:57, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

I'm sorry you feel upset, @Obscurasky. I tried to be clear in saying that "I think we're both acting in good faith" (emphasis added), i.e. that you and I are both acting in good faith. I am sorry that was insufficient. I assure you I didn't misquote deliberately, but I see how I was careless in that sentence. I'll strive to be more careful hereon out.

I think there's no need to respond to my comments in so much detail anyway because I think the most important question is just the last one I asked: "please, let us know what the secondary sources are so it can be verified" (emphasis added). I don't seem to know as much about this subject as you do. I don't personally know what the "Gardner 1979" and "Quinn 1997" shortened references that are in the footnotes you put on this page are shortened references to. I don't know what their contents are. Because I don't know, I am wondering if they might be reliable secondary sources that verify the content. And if they are reliable secondary sources, then that would resolve the difficulty, because that would demonstrate notability. Could you please share more identifying information about the secondary sources that verify the notability of the information you want to include on the page? It feels like we might be very close to a resolution. I wouldn't want my ignorance of secondary sources you may be familiar with to impede the inclusion. P-Makoto (talk) 18:57, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

For what it's worth I spent nearly a half hour today searching Bushman for any reference to this. I started by searching the index, then flipping through sections about political views and the presidential campaign, and finally by typing search terms from "hanging" to "blood for blood" into a Google Books search of Bushman. I didn't come up with anything. Maybe there's something, but I didn't find it. Assuming for sake of argument that it's not there, that would be a good reason to also exclude it from this article. (If it's not notable enough to be mentioned in a 560 page biography with nearly 200 more pages of footnotes, it probably isn't notable enough for an encyclopedia article.) ~Awilley (talk) 19:07, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

P-Makoto, "I don't seem to know as much about this subject as you do...." I'm not sure what the evidence is to support this remark, I'm not even sure why you've written it, since it's clearly irrelevant. Let's focus on making the article better. Obscurasky (talk) 14:00, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

I am sorry if I have spoken in error or in a way that has offended you. When I wrote "this subject" I meant specifically Smith's views on capital punishment. Your urging the inclusion of such information and quotation of excerpts about it (it being specifically Smith's views on capital punishment) suggested to me you might know more about Smith's views on capital punishment than I (I knew nothing about them before reading the sentence you suggested restoring to the article). I apologize for any mistake on my part. In any case, I share your interest in making the article better. P-Makoto (talk) 11:09, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

Thank you, but no apology necessary. I am not offended. Obscurasky (talk) 22:30, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

References

Wording which includes "claimed" and "reported"

This edit includes the terms "claimed" and "reported", which is discouraged under WP:CLAIM. I reverted the addition of these words to the established wording but I was reverted. I am bringing the edit here for more discussion. Bahooka (talk) 17:41, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

I support the revert initially performed by Bahooka, but then brought here for discussion following "claimed" and "reported" being introduced again. WP:CLAIM applies to the good-faith edits. ChristensenMJ (talk) 18:28, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

Refences to Smith’s (claimed/reported/alleged/etc) revelations without adequate qualification is, I believe, a weak point in the article’s encyclopaedic nature. It’s an issue I’ve tried to address, but was met with opposition. My compromise suggestion has been to include a robust qualifier in the lead, to negate the need for other qualifiers further on in the article (although wording would still be important). For example, the lead in the Jesus article includes the qualifier "Christian doctrines include the beliefs that Jesus ….. rose from the dead" (my highlighting). This negates the need for further qualifiers in sections such Jesus#Resurrection and ascension, as opposed to Jesus#The alleged resurrection and ascension.

I notice that P-Makoto has gone some way to address the issue with this edit. While it is an improvement, it is not, in my view, sufficiently robust enough, as it stands, to negate the need for further qualifiers further on in the article. Obscurasky (talk) 13:08, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

The relevant sentence, as I understand it, as it presently stands is (Smith published many documents and texts which his followers consider scripture and revelations from God.) As you say you think it could still be more robust, could you expand on how?

For example, would you prefer something like texts which his followers believe are scripture and revelations from God, or perhaps like texts which adherents of the Latter Day Saint movement generally believe are scripture and revelations from God? I was under the impression "consider" and "believe" are roughly synonymous, but if you think specifically "believe" would be closer to the suggested model of the Jesus article, I don't think there'd be anything adverse in such an edit. P-Makoto (talk) 16:54, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

I've made some changes to the lead, which as far as I am concerned, are sufficient to negate the need for similar qualifiers further on in the article. Obscurasky (talk) 21:01, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

P-Makoto, I'm going to assume good-faith - in that you're not deliberately trying to understate this point - but I simply can't accept that "Smith published many documents and texts" is a sufficient summarization for the claimed origin of Mormon "scripture and revelations". Obscurasky (talk) 22:09, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

I think there are still some issues with the changes to the last paragraph in the lede. 1) It fails MOS:CLAIM - there are ways to still be neutral without using "claim" per that guidance. 2) It is far too narrow by focusing strictly on what would become the D&C, which excludes other texts like the Book of Moses and the Book of Abraham. 3) There is a question of accuracy - not all of the texts that were canonized fall under the same concept of divine revelation, for example the articles of faith, and not all of the texts attributed to revelation were canonized into scripture, such as the Lectures on Faith. 4) Because of 2 and 3 it didn't seem like the sentences accurately summarized the body of the article. I've tried to rearrange and tweak the words, keeping wording that is neutral with respect to whether or not these were actual revelations. --FyzixFighter (talk) 18:35, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

I would echo FyzixFighter's concerns about the word "claim" and add my own reasons and thoughts. "Claim" over-emphasizes the idea of a statement's possible (perhaps implicitly probable) falsehood, of disingenuity or delusion. Neutrally describing what Smith and his followers attributed, how they treated something is an alternative which maintains a neutral wikivoice—Wikipedia never says these are revelations; only that Smith and his followers believed they were—without implications of disingenuity distracting from the page's educational point.

In case an example might be helpful, I would point out that this turn of phrase resembles examples of contemporary reliable, scholarly sources writing about Smith. the back of the Penguin Classics Book of Mormon (2008) states that the book "is regarded as sacred scripture by followers around the world" (emphasis added).

I'd also add that I don't understand why "published" would be understatement. It's a literal description of what he did with these texts he produced: he published them as books, periodicals, pamphlets, etc. And to say that his adherents of the Latter Day Saint movement "consider" these texts scriptures and revelations again makes no non-neutral claims with wikivoice; it only describes what these people believed.

I hope that FyzixFighter's revision addresses concerns about a neutral wikivoice around the board. I have contributed some revision as well which I hope does not materially change the point but just cleans up details. P-Makoto (talk) 23:34, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

FyzixFighter and P-Makoto, the word ‘claimed’ does not fail MOS:CLAIM – it is discouraged on the grounds that its use can call a "statement's credibility into question". My reasoning was; because the declaration is so strong, an equally strong qualification is also appropriate. If we were writing about someone saying “I’ve seen a horse” or “I’ve been to the shops”, "said" would be fine, but if someone says “I’ve met God and he told me this…” [paraphrased] I do believe that a stronger qualification than "said" is required. I’d like you to reconsider your positions on this, but in any case, I don't like "Smith reported experiencing a series of visions". Arguably, it comes across as though he was reporting an actual event. I'm not saying that needs to be questioned here, but the wording should take account of the fact that not everyone believes the event actually took place. Also, to be frank, it just sounds a little silly anyway.

I used this website as a basis of my edit. It says "most of these [revelations of J.S.] now appear as sections of the Doctrine and Covenants". However, there does seem to be variation in what should be classified as ‘revelation’ and, certainly in the context of my edit, I think you’re right that it was too narrowly focused on D&C.

Using “published”, in isolation, is an understatement because it provides no real context. Smith’s followers didn’t accept his revelations as scripture just because they were ‘published’ – they did so because they believed they’d been divinely revealed to him. This context is important. It’s why my edit included "the majority of which he said were given in the first-person voice of Jesus Christ". If he did say that, I don't see any reason why it should be removed. And, on a purely aesthetic level, I used the word ‘Mormon’ to avoid using ‘adherents of the Latter Day Saint movement’ twice in the same paragraph. I don't think the change looks good - and less so as the two mentions are worded slightly differently. Obscurasky (talk) 15:46, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

Brief summary: I explain that I think a strong declaration qualifies itself in the eyes of a reader. I note that there are reliable sources which describe Smith "reporting" and "sa[ying]" (said); I note that examples from the field are mixed, and seeing the split my takeaway is that it is appropriate to heed MOS:CLAIM's discouragement. I ask a question at the end about whether words like "believe" might be an acceptable compromise: a stronger qualification than "said" seems to be but without implying disingenuousness as "claim" might seem to. At the end, I excerpt examples from reliable secondary sources.

Full version:

I perhaps should have added in my prior comment that I do not think claim "fails" MOS:CLAIM as FyzixFighter put. But I do think it is sufficiently discouraged that we can appropriately choose to productively avoid it.

My reasoning was; because the declaration is so strong, an equally strong qualification is also appropriate.

I think I do see where you're coming from. I suppose my reasoning has been that because the declaration is so strong, it is its own qualification. If you said to me, "P-Makoto, my neighbor said they ran into Elvis Presley, who is actually alive" rather than "claimed", I would still think that "said" had sufficiently qualified the statement; it is so strong that it qualifies itself in the eyes of the audience.

Arguably, it might be seen as an indication that he was ‘reporting’ an actual event… to be frank, it just sounds a little silly in that context.

It may sound silly to you at first blush, but in my experience reading scholarship, including by non-Mormons, it's not unheard of or silly. Various examples treat the things Smith said he experienced as events which were phenomenologically real—real in his perception and in the perception of other Mormons—even if not real in some higher-order, material sense. i.e. saying Smith "said" God spoke to him isn't confirmation that God "actually" spoke to him; only that Smith experienced something which he perceived as being God speaking to him. At the bottom of this comment, I include a couple examples, all written by non-Mormons and published by reliable, secular presses.

For transparency, I recognize that "said" rather than "claimed" isn't universal in scholarship, and perhaps you (Obscurasky) are taking your cues from such writings. While reviewing the approach taken in several books, I did notice there are some that use "claim" in an early reference, and I excerpt a few examples at the bottom of this comment.

We perhaps have different takeaways. When I see the field perhaps split on what the right turn of phrase to use near the beginning of discussing Smith and Mormonism is, I think it seems appropriate to take the discouragement in MOS:CLAIM to heart and use, if possible (and I think it is possible), other neutral words.

Your stylistic comment is well-taken; I should have been more attentive to the surrounding sentences of the paragraph and less redundant in word choice.

In a previous comment, I asked if words like "believe" would be more acceptable to you, but I think edits made to the page distracted from that part of the conversation. I ask again: would words like "believe" rather than "reported"/"said" be more acceptable to you? They avoid implying disingenousness as "claimed" might (which I think is what bothers FyzixFighter) but I hope also would read as a stronger qualification than "said" does (as you want a stronger qualification).

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A few examples of "said" and "reported"

Jan Shipps, Mormonism: The Story of a New Religious Tradition (University of Illinois Press, 1985), 1: "Such accounts first cite Smith's reports of visions of heavenly beings manifested to him in the 1820s when he still lived with his parents on a farm in Palmyra. Then they go on to tell about the coming forth of the Book of Mormon, a document said to have been miraculously translated from hieroglyphics engraved on golden plates whose location had been revealed to Smith by an angel." (emphasis added)

Laurie Maffly-Kipp, introduction to The Book of Mormon, Penguin Classics (Penguin, 2008), xii: "He was said to have found a gold Bible, a book he was in the process of translating from ancient characters in the summer of 1829." (emphasis added)

Sarah Barringer Gordon, The Mormon Question: Polygamy and Constitutional Conflict in Nineteenth-century America (University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 19: "Joseph Smith, the sect's founder, prophet, and first president, translated the 'golden plates,' which he reported were revealed to him by an angel." (emphasis added)

I quote a long excerpt, again from the back cover of the Penguin Book of Mormon, because I think it's an interesting example in this discussion:

The Book of Mormon (Penguin, 2008), back cover: "According to Mormon belief, The Book of Mormon was inscribed on golden plates by ancient prophets. It contains stories of ancient peoples who migrated from the Near East to the Americas, founding civilizations led by kings, prophets, and priests, and continuing in the religious practices of the Israelites. The narrative also explains that Jesus Christ appeared to New World peoples after his resurrection. The golden plates were discovered in upstate New York and translated by Joseph Smith Jr., under the guidance of an angel, Moroni." (emphasis added)

The first sentence includes a "belief" qualification, but it doesn't clearly carry over to the rest—is Penguin endorsing the idea that Smith literally did discover ancient plates through an angel's guidance? I don't think so. I think Penguin is describing the story and recognizes that readers can decide for themselves.

A few examples of "claimed"

Nathan O. Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity (Yale University Press, 1989), 115: Smith "began to claim that he had gained possession of a cache of gold plates and the Urim and Thummim"; though this book is an ambiguous example as there is also a non-claim formulation on page 114 that almost sounds like accepting Smith as really being a seer: "Smith evinced clearly his skill as a charismatic seer, a spiritual gift" (emphasis added)

Adam Jortner, No Place for Saints: Mobs and Mormons in Jacksonian America (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2022), 3: "Joseph Smith Jr. claimed to have unearthed golden plates" (emphasis added) P-Makoto (talk) 17:19, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

@Obscurasky: I somehow entirely glazed past your last paragraph, and for my failure to fully read your comment, I apologize. On the matter of the expressed point of view of the revelations, you've persuaded me, and I think you're entirely right. That is an important aspect of Smith's corpus and is a major part of why he was influential and is interesting to begin with. I think I have been at least partly misunderstanding the point you've been making, and for that I apologize.

I am guessing FyzixFighter would still like to avoid the verb "claim" because of implications of uncredibility, but I think it is still possible to do as you suggest, Obscurasky, and better emphasize Smith and his followers believing his revelations were the voice of God. I have tried to make a revision in accordance with your suggestion, and if you think there's something that needs to be adjusted or improved or overhauled, I'd invite you to edit (or to post on the talk page if you prefer)—though I personally suggest avoiding if at all possible the verb form of claim, since that's how some of the back and forth got started. Thanks for your patience throughout this. P-Makoto (talk) 03:13, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

Joseph Smith vs Joseph Smith Jr.

Forgive me if this has already been discussed, as it seems an obvious point to make. Did Joseph Smith actually use Jr. after his name? If he didn't, or even if he did so only in his youth, is it strictly correct to use it in the bold title at the beginning of this article? Just because his father was also called Joseph, that wouldn't necessarily be sufficient reason to apply the suffix here. Obscurasky (talk) 21:43, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

You can see his name given as "Joseph Smith, Jr." on the title page of this 1837 edition of the Book of Mormon and as "Joseph Smith, Jun." on the title page of this 1841 edition of the Book of Mormon.

Reliable secondary sources also refer to Smith using the suffix "Jr.", often in the first or an early mention of him when they give his full name. Here are just a few examples:

Jana Riess, Religion News (2022): "Mormonism’s founder, Joseph Smith Jr."

University of Illinois Press blog (2018): "Painting of Joseph Smith Jr., circa 1842"

Neilson and Givens, Joseph Smith Jr.: Reappraisals After Two Centuries (Oxford University Press, 2009): (the title seems to speak for itself)

The Book of Mormon, Penguin Classics (Penguin, 2008), i: "Founder of the religious movement known as Mormonism, JOSEPH SMITH JR. (1805–1844)" (capitalization is original to the source)

Richard Lyman Bushman, Rough Stone Rolling (Alfred A. Knopf, 2005) 19: "She was feeling optimistic when another son, Joseph Smith Jr., arrived on December 23, 1805."

Robert V. Remini, Joseph Smith, Penguin Lives (Penguin, 2002), ix: "The founder of this Church, the Prophet, Joseph Smith Jr."

American Prophet, PBS (n. d.): "Born on December 23, 1805, in Sharon, Vermont, to Joseph and Lucy Mack Smith, Joseph Smith Jr. grew up on a series of tenant farms"

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As an appended observation, even if it turns out Smith was not often known as "Joseph Smith Jr." throughout his life and was more known as "Joseph Smith", while no Wikipedia article is necessarily binding, the example set in other Wikipedia articles suggests it is still appropriate to call him by his birth name in the first reference. See, for example, Slim Pickens which begins "Louis Burton Lindley Jr. (June 29, 1919 – December 8, 1983)" (bolding is original to the source). P-Makoto (talk) 00:13, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

This article was named Joseph Smith, Jr. years ago but was moved to Joseph Smith probably for WP:COMMONNAME reasons. I suspect that for much or most of his life he was Joseph Smith, Jr., but so eclipsed his father that he became Joseph Smith and his father became Joseph Smith Senior. But I agree using the birth name first is appropriate. ~Awilley (talk) 04:51, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for the responses. Obscurasky (talk) 11:16, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

Layout

I've separated out the Books of Moses and Abraham, which seemed to be sitting somewhat clumsily together in the same section. There are a couple of other layout changes too, which I think would improve the article, but which I wanted to raise here first.

Firstly, I think it would be logical to move the Legacy section down the page and position it after the Views and teachings section. Also, I think the lack of a Polygamy sub-section, under Views and teaching, is an omission that needs addressing. It currently sits under Family and descendants. Some of the information included there does need to stay where it is, but some would fit better under V&t. Obscurasky (talk) 12:19, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

I think you're right that Polygamy fits better under the Views and teachings section. Legacy in general does make sense further down, but the "successors and denominations" subsection beginning with "Smith's death resulted in a succession crisis" should be left immediately after the "Death" subsection IMO.

I actually disagree with the splitting of Moses and Abraham. The books are closely related and usually discussed together. They're now part of the same volume, the Pearl of Great Price, and if I remember correctly they also cover some similar material (a retelling of the creation story). ~Awilley (talk) 21:54, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

I am not so sure the content currently under "Polygamy" would be fitting in the "Views and teachings" section. As it is presently written, "Polygamy" does not describe Smith's teachings about or theology of polygamy so much as it describes the history and phenomenon of it (how many involved? Ages? Intimacy? Effect on family? etc.)

Would y'all be amenable to instead of moving the "Polygamy" subsection, rather, expanding the "Theology of family" subsection under "Teachings" to incorporate more of Smith's teachings pertaining to polygamy? I am familiar with some publications that I think provide the kind of answers that will enable the "Theology of family" section to be expanded with content on Smith's polygamy (listed at the bottom of my comment). Of course, it's an inexhaustive list, so if y'all are aware of other appropriate sources, those can also provide insights.

I agree that if Legacy is moved, the "successors and denominations" subsection ought to stay adjacent to the end of Smith's life in the chronological biography portion.

I am a bit at sea on how to organize Moses and Abraham. I have seen them discussed together as well as separately. On the one hand, Awilley is right to point out that they were later compiled into a single book, the 1851 pamphlet known as The Pearl of Great Price (which was in 1880 canonized as scripture by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints headquartered in Utah). Terryl Givens and Brian M. Hauglid's The Pearl of Greatest Price (Oxford University Press, 2019) examines the entire Pearl of Great Price, both Moses and Abraham. Content-wise, both the Books of Moses and Abraham are expansions upon biblical cntent with cosmological bends.

On the other hand, Moses and Abraham were produced in two different projects. The Moses text was dictated as part of Smith's Bible revision project and so was (if I am not mistaken) incorporated into the Inspired Version of the Bible that the Reorganized Church used to use (Smith's Bible revision has since fallen out of favor with the denomination, especially in its incarnation as Community of Christ). Meanwhile, the Abraham project, while it does resemble and expand on some biblical narratives, was not produced as part of the Bible revision (and as a result the Reorganized tradition never really adopted the materials or promoted them as scripture). Richard Bushman's Rough Stone Rolling (Knopf, 2005) treats the Moses and Abraham texts separately, though that is perhaps simply a matter of chronology since they are also produced at different times of Smith's life (the Bible revision goes until ~1833 while Smith embarks on his Abraham project starting 1835).

That's a long way of saying I'm not personally sure what the right move is (whether to have "Moses and Abraham" or "Book of Moses" and "Book of Abraham").

My ability to contribute may slow in the next week or so because of other needs to attend to, but I will do my best not to abandon the collaboration in the event there is some way I can help.

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Inexhaustive list of publications I think could be useful as references for expanding "Theology of the family" with more content on Smith's polygamy/celestial marriage/plural marriage

• Benjamin E. Park, Kingdom of Nauvoo: The Rise and Fall of a Religious Empire on the American Frontier (Liveright, 2020).
  • treats Smith's polygamy as part of an "Abrahamic" project to create order in a disorderly society by tying families together
• Craig L. Foster, "Doctrine and Covenants Section 132 and Joseph Smith's Expanding Concept of Family", in The Persistence of Polygamy: Joseph Smith and the Origins of Mormon Polygamy (John Whitmer Books, 2010), 87–98.
  • polygamy as part of an evolving idea of familial kinship into which people can be adopted
• Peter S. Coviello, Make Yourselves Gods: Mormons and the Unfinished Business of American Secularism (University of Chicago Press, 2019).
  • polygamy as a means of "enlargement" that makes it possible for the practitioner to transcend the confines of mortality and "becomes as gods" in the next life
• Maybe a hint of Stewart Davenport, Sex and Sects: The Story of Mormon Polygamy, Shaker Celibacy, and Oneida Complex Marriage (University of Virginia Press, 2022)
  • there's some pages which interpret polygamy as a process of identity-formation by defining virtue for Smith's followers in contrast to Victorian companionate monogamy

P-Makoto (talk) 22:37, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

I don't have much to add really, but I do agree that, if the Legacy section is moved, the Successors and denominations subsection ought to stay where it as - perhaps as a section in it's own right?

Awilley is right to point out that the books of Moses and Abraham were later compiled into a single book, but the section title is Revelations and, as they are separate revelations, with very different back-stories, I have to say that lumping them together makes no sense at all to me.

In a similar vein, Smith's views and teachings on polygamy are of significant interest. My view remains that it deserves a subsection of its own, but if the consensus is to expand the Theology of family subsection instead, I wouldn't object. Obscurasky (talk) 23:30, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

re Moses and Abraham: Most of Smith's revelations were separate revelations with very different back-stories that were later compiled. The section "Other revelations" mentions several of them including "The Law", "The Vision", "The Olive Leaf", and "The Word of Wisdom". Yet we discuss them in a single section. ~Awilley (talk) 04:32, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

Polygamy is an interesting one. It was under Theology of the Family for a while, but I placed it where it was a couple of months back because, well, the section didn't treat the theological aspects of it at all. If we expand it with his theological expositions on the matter, I wouldn't mind moving it over there. But for now, the article primarily deals with the history of his practice of polygamy - not to mention Emma's reaction to it - so I think it fits better under Family, as it's currently written. Trevdna (talk) 23:51, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

As far as polygamy goes, I'll add here that I expanded the "Theology of Family" subsection under "Views and teachings" with more content pertaining to the theology of polygamy, while the "Polygamy" subsection under "Family" treats the subject as history and as a matter pertaining to Smith's family. P-Makoto (talk) 04:26, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

Some comments to prepare for FA nomination

@Trevdna:: Does anyone see anything else I/we may have missed?

Had some free time. I hope some nonexhaustive suggestions in the vein of what a review might point out are helpful. Pardon the length; it got a little away from me, but I think the majority of the suggestions would be relatively minor changes if integrated.

• No comments on the lede. Pretty impressive. Smith's is a hard life to summarize, and this does it.

Early years

• Does the end of the first paragraph need a reference note? ("...taking out a mortgage on a 100-acre (40 ha) farm in the townships of Palmyra and Manchester.")

Resolved by adding reference not to Bushman, RSR, 27–32 for the main content of the move to the Palmyra area and to "Smith Family Log Home, Palmyra, New York" from the Ensign Peak Foundation website to verify the acreage (100 acres). P-Makoto (talk) 23:10, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

• Is the Burned-over District being a "hotbed of religious enthusiasm" really controversial enough to require five reference notes?

Trimmed. Trevdna (talk) 04:32, 22 December 2022 (UTC)

• Is a shortened note necessary for Allen 1966 when it is only used once on the page? ("largely unknown to most Mormons,")

Excellent catch. Moved. Trevdna (talk) 05:24, 22 December 2022 (UTC)

• Just a suggestion, but the sentence about the outcome of the 1826 trial being unclear might benefit from also referencing this essay from The Joseph Smith Papers which concludes that while the lack of evidence that Smith has held in the bridewell "strongly suggests that Neely did not convict JS, the lack of verifiable contemporary records renders tentative any conclusion about the case’s outcome." similar to the Mormon Scriptures Studies source's conclusion that any conclusions would only be tentative.

Have added the source to the reference note with no change to the body text (as none seemed necessary; it's simply additional corroboration from a robust and recently published source). P-Makoto (talk) 23:21, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

• I would either trim, rephrase, or remove the sentence about Hale saying Smith was "saucy and insolent to his father". Leonard Arrington and Davis Bitton, The Mormon Experience: A History of the Latter-day Saints (Alfred A. Knopf, 1979), 18, state this about Hales's statement: "Hales's testimony, however, was undoubtedly influenced by the treatment he felt he himself had received from his son-in-law. The evidence, in any event, indicates that although Smith's family believed in his prophetic gifts, he deferred to his father in matters of family discipline until the latter's death in 1840" (source). It's accurate to say that Hale thought little of Smith, but it doesn't seem that Hales's claim about Smith's relationship with Smith Sr. is historical consensus. At the very least, solomonspalding.com does not seem like the most stable source for this quote.

I don't know that I feel great about leaving it out entirely, if only for POV considerations. Don't want to make it feel like we are selectively removing sources that reflect poorly on Smith. That said, however: if someone else wanted to remove this due to the source (I've always thought Howe was closer to a primary source than a secondary) I wouldn't object. I've simply trimmed it for now. Trevdna (talk) 05:24, 22 December 2022 (UTC)

You're right that it wouldn't be right to take out the whole phrase; that's my bad. I should have specified not removing the sentence but just the clause about being "saucy and insolent to his father"; *that* Hale generally disapproved of Smith is I think historians' consensus, even if the veracity of Hale's reasons are contested. I think your trim was really good. I did a little more revising, retaining the content you had, adding a note about Isaac Hale thinking Smith was too much a "stranger", and I replaced the solomonspalding.com reference note with one to the more stable and scholarly Mormon Enigma. P-Makoto (talk) 17:28, 22 December 2022 (UTC)

Founding a church

• Perhaps ancillary, but I wonder if paragraph 3 is entirely fair to Lucy Harris. While she became skeptical of the project eventually, at first she was with her husband one of the firmest supporters. (See Amy Easton-Flake and Rachel Cope, "Reconfiguring the Archive: Women and the Social Production of the Book of Mormon", in Producing Ancient Scripture: Joseph Smith's Translation Projects in the Development of Mormon Christianity, ed. Michael Hubbard Mackay, Mark Ashurst-McGee, and Brian M. Hauglid [Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2020], 105–134.)

Resolved after revisions made to the page. P-Makoto (talk) 22:34, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

• Does the sentence "According to Smith, the angel Moroni took back the plates once Smith finished using them" need a reference note (since it's at the end of the paragraph)? I think Remini, 68 provides the necessary information.

Resolved by adding a reference note for Remini, Joseph Smith, 68 to the end of that sentence. P-Makoto (talk) 20:05, 22 December 2022 (UTC)

Life in Missouri

• The sentence "instituting a settlement in Adam-ondi-Ahman, in Daviess County" is at the end of a paragraph; does that need a reference note?

Resolved by adding a note with two cite journal references. P-Makoto (talk) 19:36, 23 December 2022 (UTC)

Life in Nauvoo

• I think there's sufficient disagreement about the photograph in the historical community to make it prudent to note that disagreement. See Peggy Fletcher Stack, " 'The whole affect feels off to me' — Why Some Historians Doubt That's a Photo of Joseph Smith, Salt Lake Tribune, July 29, 2022 and Ardis E. Parshall, "Is It Joseph Smith? The Scotch Verdict", Keepapitchinin, July 27, 2022. (Parshall's blog is reliable as an example of "well-known professional researchers writing within their field"; for further corroboration of the legitimacy of Parshall's questions, see "Occasionally, legitimate questions are raised about the evidence for authenticity, like this excellent post at Ardis Parshall’s Keepapitchinin blog, urging caution about hasty conclusions" in Jana Riess, "A Real Joseph Smith Photo—or Not? Why do Mormons Care so Much?", Religion News, July 28, 2022.

Resolved by adding Peggy Fletcher Stack's article to note with some discussion of the non-consensus among historians. P-Makoto (talk) 18:42, 23 December 2022 (UTC)

Legacy

• "In it, two conflicting characterizations of Smith have emerged...": This phrasing uses the present tense which suggests the bifurcated historiography persists. Is that still the case, though? Shipps wrote her landmark essay in 1974; has the historiography not changed since then?
• Does the paragraph about "Memorials to Smith include..." need a reference note?

Resolved by adding reference notes to an online exhibit from the University of Utah (for the Joseph Smith Memorial Building), to the public history website Intermountain Histories (for the JSBs at BYU), and to Vermont History (for the granite obelisk). P-Makoto (talk) 19:56, 22 December 2022 (UTC)

• "...Smith's brother Samuel, who died mysteriously..."; but the referenced note (Bushman, RSR, 555) just says Samuel died of billious fever; is that so mysterious?

There's more detail on this in Samuel Smith's own article. Apparently William "later stated that he had good reason to believe that Smith was poisoned by Hosea Stout on orders from Brigham Young and Willard Richards." Could you do a reference check on Quinn 1994, or any of the other references there? If so, I think it would be appropriate to maintain in the JS article but with a corrected reference. Trevdna (talk) 04:32, 22 December 2022 (UTC)

This is interesting. Quinn does include in his The Mormon Hierarchy the accusations from William Smith and Mary B. Smith Norman that Samuel was poisoned, but he doesn't quite affirm the claims one way or another. He writes, "This troubling allegation should not be ignored but cannot be verified" (The Mormon Hierarchy, 153). Lavina Fielding Anderson also treats this controversy in her Lucy's Book (Signature Books, 2000), but she seems more skeptical. Anderson acknowledges the accusations but writes, "William did not make this claim of poisoning until 1892 although, as the 1849 publication of the rumor shows, he did not originate it. Since he seems to have willingly believed the worst of the Twelve and to have seized uncritically on anything to their discredit, his fifty years of reticence is unusual. I found no documentation that Lucy ever considered Samuel's death to be murder" (Lucy's Book, 751n122). I'm not sure how to interpret Bushman not raising the point; it's possible he just didn't want to get into it.

Maybe rather than "died mysteriously", the page could narrate, "who died abruptly"? Leave discussion of the historical uncertainty to the Samuel H. Smith page and focus for the Joseph Smith page on the suddenness of Samuel's death and the effect of that on succession? The other references, like Quinn and Anderson, could be appropriately added to the note as well. P-Makoto (talk) 17:46, 22 December 2022 (UTC)

I like "abruptly" quite a lot. I've changed it in the article, and I will leave it to you (or another editor with access to the sources) to make the source change. Trevdna (talk) 05:26, 27 December 2022 (UTC)

• "Membership in Young's denomination surpassed 16 million members in 2018." Two thoughts: first, one could appropriately give the name of the denomination, i.e. "Young's denomination became the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church)"; second, it seems worthwhile to rephrase that to "members of record" since active membership varies from recorded membership, i.e. sometimes people are recorded as members by baptism or birth but are not always un-recorded if they stop practicing and participating. See David G. Stewart and Matthew Martinich, Reaching the Nations: International Church Growth Almanac, 2014 Edition (Henderson, NV: Cumorah Foundation, 2013); for a more accessible corroboration of this, see Melissa Wei-Tsing Inouye, introduction to roundtable review of Reaching the Nations in Mormon Studies Review 3 (2016): 148: "If the R[eaching ]T[he ]N[ations] estimate of 30 percent total activity for the entire church is correct—and the authors’ success in estimating activity on a country-by-country basis suggests that it is—then of the 15 million LDS members worldwide, 4.5 million are considered active." I don't know if it's necessary to get into all of that on the Joseph Smith page, so a change to "members of record" could be sufficient to maintain accuracy.

Agreed that it's not necessary to get into all of it here. "Members of record" is a possibility but might invite more scrutiny, especially from those who aren't familiar with the issues you've raised. How about "Nominal membership in Young's denomination surpassed 16 million in 2018."? (Now that I scrutinize it, I happen to see the "members" is redundant.)

"Nominal membership" makes sense! Simple, accurate, nondisruptive. I added "nominal" to that sentence and deleted the redundant second "membership". I hope it's alright I also added "Young's denomination, named the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church)"; I think this also helps provide body text content to which the lede's reference to the denomination can refer. P-Makoto (talk) 17:54, 22 December 2022 (UTC)

• "Many members of these smaller groups..." This sentence ends a paragraph; does it need a reference note?

Resolved by adding reference notes that warrant the content from the Encyclopædia Britannica and a Project Zion Podcast episode with Lachlan Mackay and Tony Chvala Smith. There probably is a slightly more robust source out there, but these are accessible online and are plenty sufficiently reliable (being an encyclopedia and content from published experts in the subfield of Community of Christ studies).

Family and descendants

• The second reference note in the first paragraph (appended to the sentence ending "...and David Hyrum Smith") is to an archived website just called "josephsmith.net" that appears to have formerly been run by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I realize it's relatively uncontroversial material (just counting who among the Smiths' children survived adulthood), but I can't help but wonder if there are better sources to reference.

Thankfully for me, this one is available in Bushman 2005. Switched out the ref. Trevdna (talk) 04:48, 22 December 2022 (UTC)

• "...there is unconfirmed evidence..."; that phrasing is somehow strange. Should this be "contested evidence" instead?

Agreed. But even "contested evidence" seems strange to me for the same reason, namely that using the term "evidence" seems to imply something pretty solid. I've gone with "evidence that Smith may have been a polygamist by 1835." Feel free to try again if you disagree of course. Trevdna (talk) 04:48, 22 December 2022 (UTC)

• The sentence that ends "...special religious marriages that would not take effect until after death" includes a reference to Hales's "Joseph Smith's Sexual Polyandry" hosted on the FAIR website. I think the same information could be referenced at a more stable and reliable publication in one of the books Hales has written on the subject in the Joseph Smith's Polygamy series (Greg Kofford Books, 2013–2015).
• The same note references D. Michael Quinn's "Evidence for the Sexual Side"; I will go to bat for just about anything Quinn writes, but strictly speaking it is a self-published source. The most accessible version is distributed with Quinn's permission on the website Joseph Smith's Polygamy, run by Laura Harris Hales and Brian Hales. The paper was not published with an official editor or peer review. I don't have my own opinion on the right decision—retain or trim?—to make on this question.
• The paragraph about Emma Smith denying Joseph Smith's participation in polygamy seems to mostly be original research; every reference note except for the last one are to primary sources: an interview and two newspaper articles. There almost certainly are secondary references that could warrant each sentence in the body text of the paragraph; it's just a matter of adding them.
• Related to the above bullet point, the last reference note is inappropriately sensationalist for an encyclopedic article: "Brodie speculates that this denial was 'her [Emma Smith's] revenge and solace for all her heartache and humiliation. ... This was her slap at all the sly young girls in the Mansion House who had looked first so worshipfully and then so knowingly at Joseph.' " This is excessively gossipy in tone and reduces the women involved to sexist stereotypes, both Emma Smith and the women who married Joseph Smith plurally (reduced respectively to a vengeful woman scorned and to "sly young girls", rather than thinking, feeling humans). Even supposing the retention of other citations of No Man Knows (a subject which remains under discussion; scroll down to comments exchanged between BoyNamedTzu and Awilley; permalink), I strongly urge at a minimum removing that particular quotation from the reference note and moreover removing that paginated reference to No Man Knows. Couching something as an author's speculation may theoretically make quotation acceptable, but I do not think that is justification enough for including what can read as little else than a swipe at these women rather than a balanced historical analysis. Why quote this or direct readers to it?
  • For examples of other interpretations of Emma Smith's behavior from more recent scholarship:
    • Emma Smith withheld information about polygamy in the hopes of "removing problems from [her children's] lives": "When Emma decided not to tell her children about plural marriage, it was an attempt to remove problems from their lives." In Linda King Newell and Valeen Tippetts Avery, Mormon Enigma: Emma Hale Smith, 2nd ed. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 292.
    • Emma Smith's denials of polygamy were couched in the carefully phrased, coded language of Nauvoo polygamy and related to her covenants to keep secret the forms of the Latter Day Saint practices of endowment and celestial marriage: "When she received her endowments she had taken upon herself covenants and promises that she swore never to reveal. She may have chosen to keep not only the forms and procedures of celestial marriage secret, but its very existence as well. She understood the code words the church leaders had used in Nauvoo to protect themselves and continued to use them throughout the remainder of her life. Her denials do not refute 'the true order of marriage,' the 'new and everlasting covenant,' 'celestial marriage,' or any of the other recognized terminology." In Newell and Avery, Mormon Enigma, 292.
      • On the same wavelength, "She fended off Joseph III's increasingly urgent questions about plural marriage, leaving the impression that her husband had never supported the principle but keeping the door open for the revelation she knew he had received." In Richard Lyman Bushman, Rough Stone Rolling (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), 555.
    • Emma Smith withheld information about polygamy because she had opposed polygamy for most of the time Joseph Smith practiced it, and she believed polygamy was the cause of her husband's death: "Emma Smith opposed polygamy during most of the time her husband practiced it and regarded it as the cause of his death. She did not teach her children the doctrines and practices of her late husband." In D. Michael Quinn, The Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1994), 237.
  • For examples of other interpretations of other women's behavior from more recent scholarship:
    • Rather than look "worshipfully" and "knowingly" at Smith, most were shocked by invitations to practice polygamy: "Nearly everyone who has commented on their first introduction to polygamy wrote that they at first looked at it with revulsion and shock, and fought the idea for a time." In Todd Compton, In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith (Signature Books, 1997), 238.
    • Plurally marrying was a means of cooperative salvation: "For Latter-day Saints, plurality was not just a social system. It was a means of salvation... all the righteous would eventually be bound together. She [Eliza R. Snow] insisted that spiritual bonds produced 'a holier feeling' than friendship, witnessing the possibility of an eternal network of souls". In Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, A House Full of Females: Plural Marriage and Women's Rights in Early Mormonism, 1835–1870 (Alfred A. Knopf, 2017), xvii.

I am VERY impressed by the depth of your scholarship on this topic, P-Makoto. I've gone ahead and made some changes: I've trimmed part of the paragraph that seems weakest to me (and seems to me least likely to be corroborated by secondary sources), but I've left a few other parts in. My reasoning being that I think you (or Rachel Helps) might still have a chance to find something in your resources that could corroborate the part I've left in. But if not, feel free to prune further. At the end, I've paraphrased Brodie's diatribe and inserted several of your resources to provide additional balance. N.B. I do not have access to the secondary sources - I've relied entirely on your descriptions and quotations you left on this talk page. (My motivation was to keep the momentum up and essentially give you a first draft to work with on that ref.) If I have misrepresented anything from any of those sources, please feel free to edit/remove/change what I have written. Trevdna (talk) 05:58, 27 December 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for your kind words. I don't know if I'd say I've done all that deep of scholarship on this topic; I'm just lucky enough to be familiar with some relevant books. Thank you for getting the revision started. I had some time today, so I contributed as well and added secondary source references to verify the other content in the paragraph. I trimmed some material that seemed redundant (the certificate on top of the petition) and added some context, but I think the overall point (that Emma Smith, while Joseph Smith was alive and after he was dead, by most appearances publicly denied Joseph Smith's involvement in polygamy) is preserved and now backed up with appropriate sources. I moved the sentence "Historians have proposed several possible motivations for Emma Smith's continued denials of Joseph's polygamy" into the final note since it seemed to stick out just on its own at the end of the body paragraph, but I am open to moving it out of the note and back into the body text if you think that's better.

I remain uneasy about the inclusion of Fawn Brodie, No Man Knows My History, 399 in the reference note at the end of the paragraph. The summarization of what she wrote is a tonal improvement compared to the quotation, and I am grateful to you for making that revision. Still, this seems to go beyond a matter of there being different interpretations in the scholarship. It's true there are a variety of views, but listed together, one can see how Brodie's speculation is significantly different from the other interpretations which are diverse but still gravitate around a broadly cohesive understanding of the historical actors and historical situation. I am hard-pressed to see the educational value of a speculation that diverges so much from the later scholarship. I realize I've already raised this in my comments above, so this is the second time I'm pressing this, and I don't mean to be pushy, just clear. If you disagree, I'll leave this at that. P-Makoto (talk) 06:44, 28 December 2022 (UTC)

Revelations

• "Modern historian Fawn Brodie..." As opposed to Jan Shipps, Dan Vogel, Richard Bushman, and others cited on this page, who by this phrasing are implicitly not modern historians? But what else would they be?

There were historians back in Smith's day as well. Mostly as opposed to them. But you're right, I've struck "modern." Trevdna (talk) 04:32, 22 December 2022 (UTC)

• "Although the Book of Mormon drew many converts to the church, Fawn Brodie argued that the 'book lives today because of the prophet, not he because of the book.' "; Interpreting the the Book of Mormon as being ancillary to charismatic leadership was more common when No Man Knows was published, but more recent work attests to the book's own influence on the Latter Day Saint movement. See for example Jan Shipps, "In the Beginning..." in Mormonism: The Story of a New Religious Tradition (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1985), 25–40; Richard Lyman Bushman, "The Book of Mormon in Early Mormon History", in Believing History: Latter-day Saint Essays (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 65–78; and Janiece Johnson, "Becoming a People of the Books: Early Mormon Converts and the New Word of the Lord" Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 27 (2018): 1–43.

Resolved comment by revising the Book of Mormon section using the aforementioned references as well as others. P-Makoto (talk) 23:34, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

• "The LDS Church has proposed..."; I wonder if the discourse about what degree to which Smith was inspired by the papyri could be shunted into a note instead of the body text? It seems odd to have what is essentially a theological debate in the text, with the Gospel Topics Essay on the one hand and Robert K. Ritner on the other. I say "a theological debate" because Ritner at the end of the essay makes very direct suggestions about the appropriate religious use of the Book of Abraham document. It's not a debate that Smith copied characters (that most scrupulous of Smith scholarship, The Joseph Smith Papers, accepts the copied Egyptian characters as fact: "Introduction to Egyptian Alphabet Documents, circa Early July–circa November 1835", in The Joseph Smith Papers: Revelations and Translations, vol. 4, Book of Abraham and Related Manuscripts [Church Historian's Press, 2018], 53–54); but how one interprets Smith's behavior within the context of producing a religious view of the text he dictated seems to on some level be a matter of religion and theology rather than history and archaeology.
• ..."prominent Egyptologists note..."; I don't mean to say that other prominent Egyptologists wouldn't agree with Ritner's identification of Smith copying hieroglyphs (as Ritner points out, one doesn't need to be an Egyptologist to recognize the obviously copied characters), but I'm not sure if Ritner's self-posted essay provides verification that multiple, plural Egyptologists have made that identification. It seems to me more likely that most prominent Egyptologists probably aren't interested in Joseph Smith and his Egyptian alphabets. I think there might be a different way to phrase the paragraph that is more straightforwardly neutral and descriptive without casting the matter as if there were a debate.

I agree that there really appears to be no debate on the Book of Abraham amongst mainstream scholars. I've removed the LDS Church's position on the matter as it seems extraneous to the scholarly consensus. Anyone interested in the various positions of the different parties can dig into the subarticles, wikilinks, and references. Thanks for catching this one. Trevdna (talk) 06:16, 27 December 2022 (UTC)

I may have misspoken; I think a description of the Latter-day Saint view would be sufficiently relevant, since it's mentioned in reliable sources and would be of interest to a curious reader (not endorsed, just described in a scholarly way). Obviously more detail would be found in subarticles, but a brief mention could still be fitting on this page, perhaps in a discursive note. My comment was more about the way it was presented in the body text, as if the religious view was on one "side" and Ritner's essay was another "side". It seemed oddly oppositional and like a more neutral presentation would just dispassionately describe the facts of the papyri and the existence of the religious tradition's interpretation, as a matter of sociological interest, for want of a better word. I hope it's alright that while revising that subsection (consolidated references, added a JSTOR URL to journal article, etc.) I added, to a reference note, some material about that, referencing 191n83–192n83 in Hazard's 2021 article in Religion & American Culture about how material objects may have inspired Smith's religious imaginary (and by referencing a scholarly secondary source, establishing verifiability and notability). If I have been too bold, I remain open to feedback, and we are of course all able to edit the page. P-Makoto (talk) 04:46, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

For what it is worth, you can actually get about half a dozen prominent egyptologists and other scholars that HAVE taken a look at it besides Ritner on record. [Klaus Baer], [Stephen Thompson], [Richard Parker], John A. Wilson, and even Théodule Devéria, the last of which saw the original ending of the Hor Scroll in the chicago museum before it was burned. The New York Times gathered a number of scholars in 1912 to look at the Book of Abraham. Epachamo (talk) 07:30, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for sharing these articles. I was familiar with the abundant Egyptological work on the Breathing Permit of Hôr. My comment about "multiple, plural Egyptologists" was specifically about the "Egyptian Alphabet" documents (i. e. Kirtland Egyptian Papers) which Smith and his scribes produced which in my perception seemed neglected by Egyptologists compared to the Permit (if "neglected" is even the right word since it's quite understandable; the Permit is the actual Egyptian document while Smith's Alphabet of transcribed characters is not). Although most of the articles you shared are only about the Breathing Permit, I am pleasantly surprised to learn that Baer's piece does address the Alphabet and Grammar, albeit briefly. P-Makoto (talk) 11:04, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

• "According to Parley P. Pratt, Smith dictated revelations orally..."; this reads oddly. Does oral dictation need to be attributed? How else would one dictate? Maybe revise to "Smith dictated revelations orally. According to Parley P. Pratt, they were recorded by a scribe without revisions or corrections."

Reworded. Trevdna (talk) 04:32, 22 December 2022 (UTC)

• The reference note at the end of the first paragraph under "Other revelations" includes the following: "(Smith "began to efface the communistic rubric of his young theology")." I'm not sure what that's doing; There's nothing in the body text of that paragraph about economic implications of Smith's teachings.

If you go back to Brodie's text, she tied in the end of the United Order with the republication of the Book of Commandments as the D&C. So the citation is correct but the quote is making a point that the article doesn't bother to make. I've just removed the quote, seems simplest. Trevdna (talk) 06:24, 27 December 2022 (UTC)

Views and teachings

• For the first reference note of the second paragraph under "Cosmology and theology", should the titles of book chapters be rendered in quotation marks rather than italicized? Otherwise they give the impression of being books rather than chapters.
• I wonder if there is a better source for the paragraph beginning "Smith favored a strong central bank and..." than B. H. Roberts's History of the Church. Are those political views found nowhere else? A potential alternative source for Smith's expressed political views could be Spencer W. McBride, Joseph Smith for President: The Prophet, the Assassins, and the Fight for American Religious Freedom (Oxford University Press, 2021).

After checking that note, whoever put it there only apparently intended for it to cite the last sentence, discussing Smith's views on capital punishment. I think we'd need other sources for the other sentences. Bushman only provides a partial verification of Smith "favor[ing] a strong central bank": he says Smith preferred a bank, but also it seems like he wanted some policies that would have made it a relatively weak institution - "hard money" policies etc. So overall, I will defer to others to cite that paragraph. Trevdna (talk) 05:02, 22 December 2022 (UTC)

I think I've got the paragraph appropriately supported using references to McBride, Joseph Smith for President (Oxford University Press, 2021) and to Hickman, "The Political Legacy of Joseph Smith" (Dialogue). I wondered whether or not to retain the last sentence, about capital punishment. It seems to be more like original research; the reference note is "Roberts 1909" but it's not to any editorial content B. H. Roberts wrote, but rather to a primary source document he compiled in History of the Church. Hickman does write that Smith proposed "capital punishment for any public official who refused to assist those denied their constitutional rights", but nothing about the form capital punishment should take (hanging or firing squad). To avoid over-boldness I left it there for now and just pose it as a question here. P-Makoto (talk) 19:26, 22 December 2022 (UTC)

Whew, I'm glad you pointed that out because I was thinking the exact same thing when I dove into that reference. The second page number, which I see you removed, seems like it was a very oblique - I would almost say clandestine - reference by Smith to hanging; but again, it seems like it had nothing to do with a public stance on capital punishment. Since there now appears to be agreement, I am going back to remove it entirely. I would say the only one guilty of over-boldness is probably the original editor who put it there in the first place, and I don't think the article will suffer without it. Trevdna (talk) 06:29, 27 December 2022 (UTC)

References

• Richard Abanes, One Nation Under Gods is referenced only once, and redundantly (three other references make largely the same point), and I would encourage removing it. The book received a rather negative review from the Journal of American History stating it resembles the polemical pro/con type of historiography that existed before the New Mormon History developed: "During the first hundred years after the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) was founded in 1830, almost all histories of it were sharply negative or positive. Then a few balanced, scholarly studies appeared, a trend flowering in the late 1960s and after. The journalist Richard Abanes's One Nation under Gods reverts to the negative type".

Removed. Good call. Trevdna (talk) 04:32, 22 December 2022 (UTC)

• Reid Neilson and Terryl Givens, ed. Joseph Smith Jr.: Reappraisals After Two Centuries (Oxford University Press, 2008) is also never cited, but this seems like an unusual omission considering the reliability of the press and the relevance of the topics treated.

Overall, I see why you are rightly pleased with where the page is. I think it's for the most part a successfully encyclopedic and informative summary of Smith's life, and I hope what I point out here helps make it even more so. I don't mean to obligate others to do the work to integrate such suggestions if they are not able or up to it. I'm happy to make edits. But the sensitivity around the page, owing to recent discussion about reliability of sources as well as the imminent FA nomination, led me to think that it'd be better to pose suggestions first before making changes. So I'm also happy to leave making edits to others if there is a strong preference. P-Makoto (talk) 15:04, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

That review is by Kathryn M. Daynes, disqualifying a source based on it would be questionable. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:35, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

Awesome, thanks a ton P-Makato!! I don't have a timeline on when I would incorporate these changes but upon a brief review these comments look to be on point. I'll do my best - others are welcome to pitch in as well of course, I don't WP:OWN this article at all. Trevdna (talk) 03:36, 22 December 2022 (UTC)

Also, I should note: the only major scholarly sources I have access to myself are Bushman 2005 and Brodie 1945. (Admittedly... it may have been a touch overambitious to make it my "longstanding goal" to move this article to FA status. But, you know, Stone Soup is a really great story.) So, P-Makato, I think it would be entirely appropriate for you to make some of these changes yourself, if you feel so inclined, especially the ones that are supported by a deep dive into these scholarly sources you have access to. I will pitch in where I can, but of course it would be inappropriate for me to reference sources I do not have access to myself. Trevdna (talk) 03:59, 22 December 2022 (UTC)

I'm glad these comments have been helpful, and the way you've integrated some into the page look great. I've been traveling for the holiday, so I'm away from my usual library and don't have a couple of the titles on hand (but do have more time to myself than anticipated, which I am interested in spending on Wikipedia), but I do have access to enough of the necessary books that I can get started on some of the comments. Others I'll get to when I can reach my local library again.

Thanks for corroborating the comments generally, and for your good questions and comments about some. I'll do my best to keep all my edits so we can all feel on the same page about the article and its readiness. No one WP:OWNs the page, but I still personally want to be mindful that y'all've put a lot of work in before I showed up, and I just hope I can help with pushing the page over the finish line. P-Makoto (talk) 17:12, 22 December 2022 (UTC)

I think there are only two comments I made that have not at least been touched upon.

The first was my suggestion that replacing the Hales 2012 reference (a web transcription of a presentation given at a FAIR conference) with a reference to one of the Joseph Smith's Polygamy books he wrote would be an improvement (as the book went through a review process with the publisher and received multiple broadly positive reviews of its usefulness and relevance in studies of the topic, mixed with some critique as good reviews often do). I have requested the relevant books at my library and hope they will be available to check them out within the month (hopefully sooner than that). I would be willing to identify appropriate verification and make any appropriate revisions once I can see the books. I also think there is content in Benjamin Park's Kingdom of Nauvoo (Liveright/W. W. Norton, 2020) about conjugality and/or non-conjugality in Smith's polygynous and polyandrous marriages which could provide some more support for content in the paragraph or that could be added to the paragraph. I have a personal copy but not with me, but I will finish my travels and be back with my usual books and local library later this week.

The second was my question about D. Michael Quinn's "Evidence for the Sexual Side". It seems to be cited to corroborate the Hales reference. As I mentioned previously, my aim isn't to question the paper, and self-published sources from well-reputed experts can be acceptable on Wikipedia (such as in blogs). But I'll just note that I previously acknowledged that it is a source that has not undergone peer or editor review, though Quinn states he refined the paper in response to comments from Hales.

Whether either of these require action before an FA nomination, I am not sure, as I am relatively unfamiliar with the process.

There are some lingering questions (mostly pertaining to polygamy subsection) and a few other thoughts about potential improvement that could help further boost the article, but they strike me as either non-urgent, or worth taking time for reflection. I may make revisions directly to the article if I think the content and references will attest to the appropriateness sufficiently. If discussion seems appropriate, I'll raise questions in new, more focused sections.

My thanks to editors who have been responsive to my (too voluminous, in retrospect) comments on the page and have helped implement them, including Trevdna. Thanks, y'all! P-Makoto (talk) 12:53, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for all your hard work on this, P-Makoto. I have no issue with taking our time in nominating this for FA status. I had earlier said I intended to nominate it at about this time, when it appeared to me the article had no more major edits to be made. I am happy to wait for you to get those last few references from your library if it means we can put the “polish of perfection” on this article. Thinking about it a little more, I may actually revisit a few other threads that have been raised by other editors as well before I submit. So take your time, let’s get it right, and make sure we have a full and complete consensus among all involved editors on all issues, before pushing forward. Trevdna (talk) 04:54, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

@Trevdna: Just mentioning here as an update, so you and other editors can know, that I got a few more books from my library and have made some further revisions, including replacing the "Emperor's New Clothes" paper (at least according to the reference note apparently given at an apologetic conferences) with what I think will be agreed is a more reliable, stable source (published scholarship from an established press). P-Makoto (talk) 04:24, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

Sounds great! I can’t wait to dive in. I think we are very close with all this now. Real life is keeping me much busier than I had expected so far this New Year, but it’s all good stuff. I’ll carve out some time in the next few days to review this and do another once-over on the article as a whole. Also I want to revisit the JosephSmithTranslating.jpg thing with John Foxe again. Trevdna (talk) 05:42, 29 January 2023 (UTC)