Talk:List of Latter Day Saints

Latest comment: 1 year ago by DanCandland in topic Reliability of recently added sources

New archive

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Please note that I have archived past discussion on this article to /archive 1. You may wish to refer to the discussions in the archive. Since it's been a point of contention on this article, please note especially the past discussion of the standards of WP:BLP. -Porlob (talk) 20:00, 4 February 2011 (UTC)Reply

famousmomons.net?

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A huge number of the references on this list point to famousmormons.net. While some of the entries on that site are accompanied by media quotes from their subjects stating they are Mormon, many others(Grant Wilson, as an example) do not establish the subject as being Mormon other than by asserting it by presence on the page.

WP:BLPCAT requires that a person identify themselves as part of the Latter Day Saint movement in a reliable source in order to be included on this list. famousmormons.net would seem to fail this standard. I'm not ready to delete those entries for now (though I certainly won't object if others do), but these refs need to be updated to a reliable source if they are to remain. -Porlob (talk) 05:46, 5 February 2011 (UTC)Reply

If you give me the names of the ones that need verifying, I can look for the sources, and remove those I can't verify. Spalds (talk) 18:39, 7 February 2011 (UTC)Reply
Well, Grant Wilson was the one I noticed this on. But the lack of any sources on that entry made me doubt the reliability of the famousmormons.net source on the whole. -Porlob (talk) 04:17, 9 February 2011 (UTC)Reply
You can add Clyde Wright and Jaret Wright (baseball) as other questionable entries. I've been following Mormons in baseball for a decade and I've never found reliable information that makes them even inactive Mormons, let alone Mormons that acknowledge that they are so.
I should also add that Dennis Eckersley doesn't fit the definition of publicly acknowledging that he is Mormon. From what I can tell, Eckersley has never acknowledged Mormon membership. The only reason he is considered Mormon by some is that he once told a Mormon teammate that he had been baptized a Mormon as a teenager, but his family left the Church within a few years. The only source for this story is Jim Isom's book Mormons in the Majors (privately published, 1993?).
As I have researched who is Mormon in a variety of fields over the years, I have long found that the information on famousmormons.net is generally not reliable. Kent Larsen (talk) 03:39, 12 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

Article needs to be cleaned up

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The reason I say it needs to be cleaned up is that there are Latter-Day Saints, which is what the title of the article refers to - but then we see that it also includes several break off religions as well. Why are they included here? I propose that they be moved to their own list (i.e. "List of Rigdonites", etc.). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.169.152.145 (talk) 03:11, 25 December 2011 (UTC)Reply

Agree Entirely

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This listing needs major correction and research. I've done some work, but there is much to do. --Deaddebate (talk) 01:37, 17 October 2016 (UTC)Reply

Too American

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Seriously needs more mentions of people from outside the USA.--MacRusgail (talk) 20:02, 27 March 2012 (UTC)Reply

Shay Carl

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Where would Shay Carl from youtube fit in here? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.235.47.22 (talk) 09:20, 8 June 2012 (UTC)Reply

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Is this notable as a page?

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Why does the Wikipedia require a page listing notable persons who happen to be Mormon? DeusImperator (talk) 00:25, 28 February 2018 (UTC)Reply

See WP:SPINOFF and WP:SPLITLIST. Rather than have all of this on the Latter Day Saint movement page, it has its own stand-alone article (and this article is actually larger than the current Latter Day Saint movement article). Also, this is for all Latter Day Saint movement groups, not just Mormon. It's the same as having a separate list for alumni of a particular school or notable people from a specific town. If the list within the article on the school or town is large, a separate list can be, and often is, created and usually a summary section is left at the original article directing readers to the full list (not the case at Latter Day Saint movement). For an example, see Michigan State University#People and List of Michigan State University people. In the end, it's an organizational thing to easily ID notable people who are connected by a notable topic, such as being a member of a Latter Day Saint movement group or alumni from a certain school or place. --JonRidinger (talk) 00:42, 28 February 2018 (UTC)Reply

Change Title Name

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This article should be titled "List of Latter-day Saints" — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2605:A601:A975:3700:99CA:E010:FCBC:B098 (talk) 03:29, 25 October 2020 (UTC)Reply

Medal of Honor winners

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Marvin Rex Young who was awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously for his actions in Viet Nam was raised as a Latter-day Saint. He was a member of our branch in Odessa, Texas when we were both teenagers. 216.181.161.225 (talk) 16:40, 15 January 2023 (UTC)Reply

Do you have a citation from a reliable source stating that Marvin Rex Young was a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and was awarded the Medal of Honor? If so, we can add his name to the list. Bahooka (talk) 20:30, 15 January 2023 (UTC)Reply

Removal of content

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After several weeks of noticing edit activity on this article in the watchlist, today was the first time this was reviewed more directly. While all done in good faith, the extensive adding of content to this article, specifically related to baseball, is far beyond WP guidelines and the purpose of the article. As the introductory paragraph indicates, this listing is for those who have obtained notability, generally meaning those with a level of notability that justifies an existing WP article. Almost none of the minor league players meet this threshold. WP is not a directory, or an attempt to have/be an exhaustive list, in this case, of any Latter Day Saint who ever played baseball. This also includes the lack of need for multiple categories where many of the individuals are duplicated from having different roles or experiences (i.e., coached/managed later in their career, played on an Olympic or other event team, etc.). The listing of other areas across this article shows how this should be listed - link to a WP article, with a relatively brief focus on the specific accomplishment related to the category being listed. There also seems to have been problems created by what appears to be too many sources listed - which also doesn't address whether they qualify as reliable sources. Generally, not more than a few citations are needed for each individual, primarily because more in-depth information on them would exist on the individual's article. Again, with emphasis on and appreciation for the good-faith efforts, WP is also not a place to address an individual's interest or hobbies for topics, in this case, baseball. All this content should not be restored, unless there can be proven that there is notabilty and need to warrant individuals being listed. ChristensenMJ (talk) 18:33, 21 July 2023 (UTC)Reply

References section not showing

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Does anyone know why the references section is not showing? The template looks fine, but no citations show. Bahooka (talk) 19:15, 23 July 2023 (UTC)Reply

Non-helpful/solution response, but I have been wondering the same thing that last several days.....As FyzixFighter began the unenviable task I was going to try and start on, of removing all the excessive "citations" - which you addressed on the user's talk page - I wondered if it was even just that the template/ref list was "overwhelmed" by the volume. ChristensenMJ (talk) 04:25, 24 July 2023 (UTC)Reply
If anyone else want to start in on removing the excessive citations - I have concerns about whether or not some citations satisfy WP:RS. While I have left in ldspros.com and famousmormons.net citations, I am now thinking we should not keep those and I'll probably doubleback and remove those (not right now - it's late). The former has no indication of where the information has come from and I've already found one error. The latter might provide a good jumping off point for further research, but by itself does not appear to satisfy WP:RS. Apparently at one time Deseret News had a list that they updated of Mormons in professional sports, but links to it now appear dead. I did find this DN article which could be used for some individuals if nothing else is found.
Also, Mormons in the major leagues : career histories of 44 LDS baseball players by Jim Ison might be helpful, but I can't find a digital copy of it. It looks like BYU Library has a couple of copies. --FyzixFighter (talk) 04:56, 24 July 2023 (UTC)Reply
Agreed on WP:RS, as I noted in the talk section just above this one after my removal of all the minor league listings.... there is much that needs to be done here. I have resisted some urge to simply go back to the last "clean" version and live with losing what may have been added Ok, to avoid the time and effort (such as you've just been taking) to sift through the abundant detail. ChristensenMJ (talk) 05:20, 24 July 2023 (UTC)Reply
@ChristensenMJ: I would support reverting back to the last clean version, probably this one. That might fix the reference anomaly. Going in and re-adding individuals added in the last month with appropriate references is probably going to be a bit easier, and more inline with WP:BLP since many would fall in that category. --FyzixFighter (talk) 13:30, 24 July 2023 (UTC)Reply
I've swapped in the <references /> tag to avoid the template; that will at least show the refs. It's still way beyond the expanded size (with templates all included in code) limit of 2MB, so most ref templates will be broken. Really need to find combined sources, avoid adding a dozen to every single person on the list, and maybe splitting the article in to sub-articles. Sam Kuru (talk) 00:18, 25 July 2023 (UTC)Reply
Thank you for switching the tag. It has helped some, but the references continue to max out at about number 772, as mentioned probably due to the size. Hopefully continuing to pare down the references will help, or the article needs to be split. Bahooka (talk) 19:19, 26 July 2023 (UTC)Reply

@Bahooka, ChristensenMJ, DanCandland, and Kuru: I don't know if this is related - but when I've been trying to clean up the baseball section, often I get a warning for adding a blacklist website to the citations (I haven't added anything, just deleting stuff). It claims the website is "about.com". I get this error even when I try to blank the baseball section. I wonder if the error is related to the size or something. I'd like to try ChristensenMJ's suggestion to revert back to a "clean" version (this one) and seeing if that fixes it. If it doesn't, then revert back to the current version. If it does work, we can go through all the intervening edits and reinsert new material (minus the non-RS, non-related, and superfluous citations). I'm out of other ideas to fix the issue. Thoughts? --FyzixFighter (talk) 04:43, 28 July 2023 (UTC)Reply

This is the edit that broke the references template. I'm not sure why, but the edit before it shows all the references. Bahooka (talk) 05:21, 28 July 2023 (UTC)Reply
Fixed the blacklist error - there was an "about.com" error in a later section. I'm think that because the reflist was borked up, the website only got flagged when the script was able to actually show the reference. I've also cleaned up the citations in the baseball section per WP:RS and limited it to one citation per name (about 15 citations for the whole baseball section when leveraging single sources for multiple names) as I tried to explain to Dan below. --FyzixFighter (talk) 08:18, 28 July 2023 (UTC)Reply
Hi everyone, In the Reference List # 85 is showing up as red text (throwing an error) that says, " {{cite news}}: Empty citation (help): |last1= has generic name (help)". In looking at the Source Code, it appears to be displaying the red text because of the Last Name of the Author of the Referenced News Article (Cite Link) is listed as "|last1=News |first1=Deseret", in the web page, it lists the Author as "By Deseret News". I didn't know what to do, so I experimented with "|last1=News |first1=Deseret". I waited to see what would happen, but nothing has happened with it, so now I am asking what do we do in this situation? DanCandland (talk) 21:37, 1 August 2023 (UTC)Reply

Reliability of recently added sources

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As noted in the last two discussion topics above, there have been a number of citations added in the last month, mainly by DanCandland (tagging him in case he'd like to comment as well). I have concerns about a few of the sources and whether or not they qualify as WP's definition of reliable sources. The questionable sources are famousmormons.net, ldspros.com, and mormonbaseball.com. Famousmormons.net was discussed back in 2011 and it seemed like the few that commented on the discussion agreed it was not reliable and I agree. I don't see it meeting the requirements of WP:RS. Ldspros.com has even less information, just a list of names in categories, and also has a vendor/commercial site vibe. I've also found at least one error doing quick spot checks of a few names. And mormonbaseball.com looks like a self-published blog - albeit it seems like the creator places importance on good evidence before inclusion rather than hearsay, but it still would fall under the definition of a self-published source, which should never be used for other living people (WP:RSSELF). It is likely that there are good, reliable sources (news articles, books, etc) that could be used, and some have been added recently. I would also caution that affiliation with BYU (ie noting that someone played sports at BYU) is insufficient for supporting the claim that someone is Mormon - there are lots of athletes at BYU who are not Mormon. Thoughts? -- FyzixFighter (talk) 00:12, 26 July 2023 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for tagging me so that I can reply. I didn't know that this was possible until now. I have been trying to collect Baseball Cards of LDS Athletes since I was 7 in 1977 (when the Seattle Mariners came to my town) and it has grown into other sports as well. I started in the 1970's and throughout the 1980's by reading The Church News, but I just had to memorize the list, as I didn't think that there was more than about 5 or 10 LDS athletes in MLB. After my Mission in 1989-1991, I purchased the book, "Mormons in the Major Leagues" and began collecting Baseball Cards again, particularly of LDS players as I was now armed with a List. But I soon found that it wasn't perfect. For example, it claimed that Spencer Adams was the first LDS MLB player, but I had already known that it was Roy Castleton. Also, the checklist for Ken R. Hunt also included Ken L. Hunt as if they were the same person. Every website that I have gone to has had minor defects/bugs. (In college, I started as an English-Journalism Major and thought about becoming a Sports Editor; however, when I saw how much more money I could make with computers, I switched my Major to Computer Science and I have made a living as a Software Test Engineer critiquing Web Sites ever since. In other words most of my life has been about finding Bugs, reporting/making Defect Reports and troubleshooting the Defect Reports to closure.) The most frustrating part of my job is being told by Software Developers that they write perfect code and are incapable of mistakes, usually saying things like, "I tested it and it compiled!" [Just because it compiled that doesn't mean that there aren't mistakes.] The most rewarding part of my career has been when I make an Enhancement Request and the Management Team agrees that it's a good idea and implements my idea in the web site. Sorry, I got a little side tracked there, but it's very applicable here... Anyway, as I have compiled my list of LDS athletes, I have taken from many different websites and have come to the very same conclusions that you have, although you seem to have a more worthless attitude than I have had. However, looking at it from your point of view, if you are trying to have a stellar reputation as being 100% accurate, I can understand the need to not use unreliable, nobody wants a bad reputation; however, if you refuse to use anyone that isn't 100% perfect, you will never have anyone on your list. I am also well aware that not everyone that goes to BYU is LDS, I learned this well when I was at Ricks College and was shocked by the fact that one of my teammates tried to steal my 1st Baseman's Mitt on the last day of Fall Try-outs. I did get it back in the Spring. All of my information comes from what I can find online, as I have only met 2 of these LDS MLB athletes, my Ricks College Teammate, Garrett Stephenson, and Barry Bonnell, when I picked up his daughter, Ginger, for a first date (Ginger Bonnell and I met in the Bellevue 8th YSA Ward). 1- The first problem that I saw with your website was that it said that it said in BIG BOLD TEXT: "This article has multiple issues" and "needs additional citations for verification". So I started attaching EVERY link that I could find, even if it just mentioned what teams they played for. Since it was the FIRST thing that I saw ever time that I went to your List, I figured that you needed A LOT of cites, as many as you could get, so I went crazy with all of the Citations. 2- The second problem was when I tried to use FindAGrave.com and all of those references were automatically deleted and I was then told not to use them because they were unreliable, but I never heard why they were unreliable, and I feared that others might be deleted soon. I thought, "Okay fine, I won't use them", even though I thought that they were some of my best citations. 3- I then tried using Wikipedia Profiles as a citation, because that was my next best place to find details as to who is or isn't LDS. But then I was told NOT to use Wikipedia as a Reference for this Wikipedia Page, because it could create a Loop AND Wikipedia isn't a reliable source. I get the Loop, but the part about Wikipedia being unreliable, I thought about quitting, but figured that it was good learning experience and that I could enhance my skills, so I kept going. I got a long way before I ran into another Web Page that I was told NOT to use because it was unreliable and that was the Bullpen section of Baseball-Reference.com. I had only used it 2 or 3 times and so I wasn't really that discouraged and I continued, wondering if I would ever get enough Links on here to get that message to go away. 5- I started finding that many of the Links that other people had attached were broken or no longer functional. When I manually went to these Web Sites, they would say, "Sorry but this article has been removed." This is why I haven't gone to some of these other Web Sites that other people have used like ESPN, because apparently they delete their articles after a year or two. 6- Next came the problem that almost made me quit. It was a shocker!!! I had separated out the MLB players from the MiLB players and the MiLB players List was even bigger than the MLB players and after a month of hard work, someone there deleted the whole List of MiLB players. Your Web Site does say, "Professionals" not "Amateurs" and MiLB players are professionals and many of them have Baseball Cards in MLB uniforms, which I felt was the very need for including them, so that people could better understand that this LDS player was just in the "organization" or "farm system" for an MLB team. To have all the work just flushed without any warning. I felt deflated and that so much of my time and hard work had not been valued and it was discarded like trash. 7- I was then told a couple of days ago that I should only be attaching a citation that has BOTH that they played professional Baseball and that they are LDS and a ton of my Citations had been removed. I feared that you guys were just deleting everything, so I looked at the rules and thought to myself that Baseball-Reference.com, The Baseball Cube and Trading Card DataBase were NEVER going to mention someone's religion (I had just linked them to prove that they did play Baseball and for which teams.) As I read the rules more carefully, I saw that they didn't want more than 4 Citations per line and I knew that some of my lines had 60 Citations, so I went to work deleting Baseball-Reference.com, The Baseball Cube and Trading Card DataBase as fast as possible. I then started going through all of the SABR Citations and I started deleting most of them, almost every player had one; but I had to look in the link and manually search for words like Church, LDS, Mormon, Latter, Saint, etc. I ended up only keeping about 5 SABR links out of about 130 or so MLB players. I was then planning on being more selective about the Mormon Baseball Citations that I was going to delete. For example, only use the ones that referenced the player's name the most, or has the best description about them being LDS. But this was going to take a ginormous amount of time and I am running out of time to work on this project. 8- Finally we come to today's problem. Now you're telling me that you're not sure if you can use FamousMormons.Net, LDSPros.com, or MormonBaseball.com. These were the ONLY websites besides Wikipedia that I saw that was making lists of LDS players. In most cases they are listing the same people, so it's frustrating to hear that they can't be trusted. How accurate do they have to be to be trustworthy? 75%, 90%, 99%, 100%? So these "Listing" Web Sites need to have an "explanation" area, and the best to do this is FamousMormons.Net, or at least they use to have a section of people "rumored to be LDS" and they explained what they tried to do. I looked at Tom Hank's profile a day or two ago, and it gives a nice explanation about how his Mom had one of her Divorces with one of her husbands because she had decided to become active in the church and he didn't want to be a member, but he was too young to really remember the whole situation. I would probably not count Tom Hanks as a member, but it would still be nice to have a separate section for "rumored", but that's particularly hard with your Web Page that is strictly a list and nothing but a List. It's never going to be 100% accurate, consider these 2 viewpoints of some friends of mine. The first is Dustin, and one day after working together for a year, he decided to tell me that he had been Baptized about 10 years ago. I asked him why he didn't tell me this until now and he said, "I didn't think that I was a member anymore because I haven't been to Church in about 8 or 9 years." Now let's look at my co-worker, Paul, his wife is a member of the church, but he has never been Baptized. I have tried to help the Missionaries teach him, but he always asks a questions like, "Does the Church really own Pepsi?" or "Where are the Dinosaurs in the Bible?", whenever the Missionaries try to ask him to be Baptized. Whenever Paul isn't around his wife he always wants to talk about the most disgusting and obnoxious things. He is the exact opposite of the 13th Article of Faith, in that if there is anything disgusting, he seeks after it. So I am totally embarrassed every time that he tells someone that he is a Mormon. So I asked him why he said that and he said that he thought that he was a member of the church, just because he went to church almost every Sunday with his wife and 2 daughters. Then there's another classifier that people use to use a lot, but it's fading in time as people would call themselves a "Jack Mormon". Meaning that they were raised a Mormon, or even believed the teachings, but had a hard time living the Word of Wisdom (most specifically Smoking Tabaco and drinking Alcoholic Beverages. But as those things are becoming less and less popular in society, I have heard "Jack Mormon" less and less with time. In closing, let me just say that I was using 12 different Web Sites for my Citations. You have already taken away 2, and then you said that they had to have both Baseball and LDS confirmations in the Citation, and that took away another 3, and now you're thinking of taking away another 3 (which are my best/easiest to use), now I am down to 4 and 2 of the 4 have so few articles about LDS, for example, 1 of the 4 is the "BaseballHallofFame.org" Web Site. How many LDS members do you think I can find in there? What this leaves me with is the Church News, Deseret News, and SABR. As I have been searching these Web Sites, I will do a search on a player's name, and then open each article and do a "Find" Search on that. It's been super slow and tedious, because all of these Web Sites use an "OR" Search, never an "AND" Search. So Searching for someone with a common name like Dave Smith will pull up a million results that have either Dave or Smith, even when I have tried to Search for "Dave Smith". Even typing in "Dave Smith" MLB gives me a million more results, because it's now Dave or Smith or MLB. I will usually get about 15 to 20 results, and when I go into each result, I do a "Find Search" on the Article and it will usually say, "0" results, so I back out and down to the next article until I have gone through all 15 or 20 Articles that have either Dave or Smith in it. When I do get results, I still have to read the results because it might just say, "Roy Hallady pitched a No-Hitter" and no mention about being a member of the church in that New Article. You guys are going to do what you have to do, or what you feel like you need to do, but if you take away LDSPros.com, FamousMormons.Net and MormonBaseball.com, I am going to lose a lot of my motivation to help compile this List. I have also thought about creating my own Web Site with a List, but now I am losing my motivation for that too, because it sounds like I won't be taken seriously, the guy at MormonBaseball.com. He did a great effort of giving weekly updates and that shows a lot of devotion, but it's clear that he gave up after a couple of years, as all of his weekly reports only went from 2012-2014. DanCandland (talk) 06:44, 26 July 2023 (UTC)Reply
@DanCandland: I'm sorry that you are feeling frustrated, and I don't intend to mean that these websites are worthless. I do think that they are a good jumping off point for identifying names that we can they search for in sources that do meet wikipedia's criteria for reliable sources. If you've had some frustration with having citations deleted, I would recommend reading up on WP policies regarding what sources are acceptable (see WP:RS). Information included in WP has to be able to be verified to reliable, independent, and published sources. The best sources have a professional structure for checking or analyzing facts, legal issues, evidence, and arguments. The greater the degree of scrutiny given to these issues, the more reliable the source. Content from websites whose content is largely user-generated is generally unacceptable - this is why sites like Findagrave, the bullpen section, and wikipedia itself are not considered valid references for verifying information. It's not that self-published sources like the three I mentioned above don't show their work/evidence, it's that we have no idea what kind of editorial process they have for checking/analyzing evidence. Sometimes we can get away with self-published sources in some contexts, but the policy is much stricter when it's biographical information about living people. I'm sorry if that makes you feel unmotivated - again, become familiar with the policy regarding what WP considers reliable sources, and I think that will help and you will see opportunities to contribute within those guidelines. I think a great example of this is your addition of the Ison source. I had found mentions of it, but it doesn't even show up on google books! (I was going to try to at least get images of the table of contents when I went through Provo in a couple weeks as they have a copy at BYU.) --FyzixFighter (talk) 00:42, 27 July 2023 (UTC)Reply
Thanks for your kind words and encouragement. I understand about policies and verifying sources; however, I previously had no idea how to find out if something was self-published or if they had a professional structure for checking/analyzing facts. I had figured out that most Newspapers sites were going to probably have that, which is why I started going to Church News and Deseret News, but their Searches are not User Friendly (quantity over quality). -Subject change- New issue for today was that I was trying to delete some of the repetitive Cite Links and ones that didn't reference if they were a member of the church or not and I started getting error messages about adding a partial link, with "about.com" as the keyword in the middle of the ginormous error message. I then tried deleting 1 Cite Link and it worked. Then 2 Cite Links, then 3, then 4, then 5 and when I got to deleting 6 Cite Links, I got the error message again. I did the same process again, but only got to 2 or 3, and then I couldn't remove any more Cite Links at all, even now after taking the Activities Day Boys out for a Swim. I figured that I was limited to only about 10 or 12 links that I could delete a day and no more than 6 at a time. So I moved on to the Basketball list and I started to update that list. I figured out pretty quickly that there was a University of Kentucky Fan that had added to the list. For example, he listed "Mark Pope, Kentucky" and that's it. Mark Pope grew up in Bellevue, WA, not far from me in Seattle, WA. He then went to UW in Seattle before transferring to UK. Then he went on to play in the NBA. But since I have just learned the hard way that they only want Major Leagues and not Minor Leagues or Colleges, I removed Kentucky and put in all of the NBA teams that he played for. This illustrates how some people are more interested in College than Pros, or Olympic versions, so whomever suggested breaking this Lists into more/smaller Lists was on the right track. I had great fun learning about which players went on to play or coach for different countries and now all of that information that I learned and tried to share with the world has just been thrown in the garbage. I am almost done with Basketball, and this is a good idea of what the Baseball List will eventually look like when I am done, now that I have learned the hard way. **** I hope that you can use this to discourage the one person that said that they are seriously considering going back to the way that it was before I started editing this document.**** Note that I haven't touched the International or College-only Basketball players. But you can see that a New Zealander fan has added LDS Basketball players from their country in this List; therefore, there is an obvious need to break this Article up into smaller Lists. --- Looking ahead to Football, I don't like how it says "American and Canadian Football" so that it could be put in front of Baseball alphabetically and yet many of the listings are College or International-only players, Coaches, etc. If this hasn't sold you on the need for breaking down the lists, maybe this will... I have some great stories that I would like to share about Allen "Shadow" Turner, who was and LDS RM attending BYU that was hired to be the Interpreter for Kazihiro Sasaki, and later for Shigitoshi Hasagawa and Ichiro Suzuki (when he returned the the Seattle Mariners after playing with the Yankees and Marlins), but because they might need him to Interpret in-game, Allen Turner had to have a uniform position, so they made him a Bullpen Catcher. Where would you put that in an LDS List? MLB Support Staff? Furthermore, I am dying to find out if Rick Griffin is LDS or not. He's from the Seattle area and went to the University of Utah and was the Seattle Mariners' Trainer for about 40 years. He's probably why the Mariners were not heavily involved in PEDs as Alex Rodriguez said that he didn't get involved with PEDs until he left Seattle to sign with the Texas Rangers where teammate Jose Canseco introduced them to him. Rick Griffin has Baseball Cards and is currently on TV Commercials frequently during Seattle Mariners' Games for the last 3 or so years now promoting Prostate Cancer Screening, so he's becoming even more popular in his retirement. Any idea how I can find out if Rick Griffin is LDS? DanCandland (talk) 08:12, 27 July 2023 (UTC)Reply
WP:RS has a pretty good general (though not exhaustive list) of what are considered reliable and non-reliable sources for wikipedia articles. Editors will tend to err on the side of caution, especially when it comes to biographical information of living people (see WP:BLP). Another resource is WP:RSN where you can get the wider community opinion on if a source should be considered reliable. Generally I'd say if you can't confirm some kind of editorial process for a website source, assume it doesn't exist. At this point, I would ask you to refrain from adding more links to the questionable sources - I'm probably going to begin the process of removing sources that don't meet WP:RS. I'm sorry if that bothers or frustrates you, but this is a policy that the community has agreed to use.
Let me try an analogy here - wikipedia is like a community softball league. Everyone is welcome to play, but there are agreed upon rules. One of the rules might be that we agree to only do slow pitch. You've shown up, excited to play, but maybe weren't aware of the slow pitch rule. Your first time pitching, you decided to pitch fast because that's what you're good at and how you enjoy the game. Multiple people have now pointed out to you that the community rule is to do only slow pitch - no harm, no foul, you weren't aware so let's go back to playing the game. Maybe you're frustrated because you find slow pitch not as fun or enjoyable or not your strong suit, and you disagree with the community policy. If you continue to fast pitch, it is more likely that the community will ask you not to pitch anymore.
I've also seen the issue with the blacklist warning and "about.com". I really have no idea what's causing it. I think there is a mal-formed reference in one of the recently added citations that is causing problems. Or the number of citations is causing problems for the system. One advantage of reverting back a month may be to clear up issue. The previous can still be viewed in the article history and any new content that was reverted can be added back more judiciously, hopefully without causing the same error.
For some of your other questions regarding inclusion of support staff or individuals in particular, I'd recommend starting a separate topic thread here on the talk page. Another option is to keep a personal list on your user sandbox while you search for reliable sources. Stories are nice, but without reliable sources we can't include them in WP articles. --FyzixFighter (talk) 14:31, 27 July 2023 (UTC)Reply
I think that you missed the mark on why I am frustrated. It's not so much that you deleted the Cite Links, but because you have a BIG, BIG, BIG sign at the top of the web page saying that you need Cite Links. I gave you a lot and you just deleted them without an explanation. Thanks to the person that finally included me in comments. You see it's a description issue. It's like you have have a BIG sign on your store that says, "WE NEED CHANGE/COINS". I come in with a whole lot of Pennies, Nickels, Dimes and Quarters and I am looking for Dollar bills for my Coins and you just throw them in the trash. Now I'm upset. Why did you throw it away? I could still use them and why did you put up a sign that says you need them if you don't really need them? The first answer comes back in a text that says, "Pennies aren't good enough." I can't even ask if Nickels are Dimes are "good enough". Later someone from you store says, "We only need/want Quarters." Now I am like, "Why didn't you say so? Why doesn't your sign say, "Quarters needed" instead it says "change/coins" needed. --- I would like a copy of the MiLB players, WBC players, etc. back. even if you don't want them, I still would like to have that list. Maybe I will go and make my own Blog with that information. Furthermore, one of you have said in a previous comment that you told me not to use any "questionable sources". How was I suppose to know that? Nobody advertises on their web sites that they are questionable or "not reliable". Now, I get that I need to read about the WP so that I can learn how to tell a reliable site from a questionable site. It just says, "citation Needed" or "full citation needed". It needs to say, "Reliable citation needed" or others will continue to be frustrated, and most will just quit/give up. Yes, I am frustrating that you are deleting my cite links, but it's no where near as bad as the frustration that comes from feeling like you are doing FALSE ADVERTIZING. I think that I have offered up a simple solution to this by saying, "Add the word RELIABLE, before citation needed" and this would help with the problem feelings that you are giving to contributors. DanCandland (talk) 06:28, 29 July 2023 (UTC)Reply
Hi FyzixFighter (or anyone else at Wikipedia that will listen),
I have just found 3 awesome articles through LDSLiving.com. One about Bryce Harper signing a $330 Million Dollar Contract and the second for McKay Christenson getting a $1 Million Signing Bonus and was allowed to serve a 2-year "Mormon Mission". Both of these articles are the BEST stories that I have read for any of the Cited Links that I have found so far; however, it has raised several questions and/or suggestions from me:
1- I tried to figure out if LDSLiving.com was a reliable source or questionable source and I read the WP:RS article, but I am still not sure if LDSLiving.com is reliable or questionable.
2- In the 3rd LdsLiving.com article, to read the complete story, it linked me to "THRID HOUR". As I tried to follow the WP:RS article, I still couldn't be certain if it was reliable or questionable, but because there wasn't a lot of details about who or what created the THIRD HOUR website, I was originally thinking that I would have to consider it a questionable source. However, I then remembered that I had to go through LDSLiving.com and they seemed like a more reliable source, but they didn't have the full story. So I decided to put it in and let you guys make the decision. Now, before anyone thinks of me as lazy or stupid, I did figure out, all on my own, how to put the 2 Authors into the code, with Last1/Last2 and First1/First2. 3- Another article didn't list the writer's name, it just listed, "LDSLiving" as the Author, so I used "Unknown" for both First and Last Names. If this is wrong, I apologize. My next guess was to use LDS for the First Name and Living for the Last name. If I run across this in the future, what is the proper procedure? 4- In the McKay Christenson Article, it lists/pictures the backs of 4 Baseball Cards that all reference the fact that he served a 2-year "Mormon Mission". I know that I have other Sports Cards that list others that have gone on a Mission, like Shawn Bradley of the NBA, as an example. If I wanted to cite Baseball Cards, what would the code look like? Author=? Publisher=Topps Date=Year manufactured? and can I use Trading Card DataBase (www.tcdb.com) as the URL so people could click on the link and be taken to an image of the Sports Card? Which leads into my 5th and final question/suggestion... 5- If 2 Cite Links are listed, (Assuming that both are just as reliable) and you need to remove 1, could we go with the one that is linked to a website URL rather than referencing a book? This is because it was easy for me to click on a link to a website and I didn't have to order a book and wait for it to be delivered to my house. Thanks for listening. Answers would be appreciated. -Dan DanCandland (talk) 22:48, 30 July 2023 (UTC)Reply
Hi Everyone, I have been going through theChurchNews.com website and doing searches for Baseball players' names and I ran across one that could be for Baseball player, Dick Smith, but I can't tell, there isn't enough information to verify if it is him or not. Dick Smith was born in Oregon, and went to OSU, before playing MLB for the Mets and Dodgers. The article in this web page says that Dick Smith was called to be a Stake President in the Ontario, Oregon, Stake in 2007. According to Baseball-Reference.com, Dick Smith died in 2012, also in Oregon and was buried in Oregon, so this could be him; however, Dick Smith is common enough of a name that there's a good chance that it's not him. Do you have any way to check on the name in this web page to see if this is the same "Dick Smith" that played MLB? If it's the same, let's use it for the citation for Dick Smith: https://www.thechurchnews.com/2007/5/19/23233119/new-stake-presidents-412 DanCandland (talk) 21:49, 1 August 2023 (UTC)Reply