Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Latter Day Saint movement/Archive 1

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Proposal to Change Name

I propose that the title of this project is changed to WikiProject Mormonism. This is because while all members of the LDS church are Mormons, not all Mormons are LDS. There are many non-LDS mormon groups, and this project is likely to deal with the exact same issues. Naming it WikipRoject LDS movement biases it towards LDS-only, whereas Mormon covers all the bases.--Josiah 20:37, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I think it's understood around here that Latter-day Saint movement means anybody following Joseph Smith Restorationism. I might be wrong on that though. It was originally going to be called Wikiproject Mormonism.Cookiecaper 21:19, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)

The Latter Day Saint movement is broader than Latter-day Saints. (Note, for example, the hyphen. The Utah church is hyphenated, but other elements of the movemtn Joseph Smith inspired are not.) I did suggest Mormonism originally. However, a couple of regular contributers felt that the name has a marginally pejorative connotation that could deter participants or atract flames. I percieve no such connotation myself, but it is a live issue, see Talk:Mormonism. If others agree with you though, I'd be more than happy to move it. I think "Mormonism" is much more widely understood. Cool Hand Luke 21:58, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)

However, are users not familiar with LDS and other Mormon beliefs going to realize that the two may be talking about different concepts? I don't think so. To illustrate, when an Orthodox Jew writes "G-d" and "god" he/she is reffering to two completely different things. The first reffering to the God he/she worships, the latter referring to any god he/she does not believe in. (The exception to this would be in things such as prayerbooks, and similar religous writings)--Josiah 19:38, 17 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I'm beginning to have second thoughts about my earlier preference for Latter Day Saint in this title. The term Mormonism is more widely known, and is a bit broader term in the sense that it covers cultural and other issues. It's also the designated parenthetical descriptor in all these Wikipedia articles. My only concern is that I want to make Community of Christ members and others feel welcome. It would be nice to get the input of someone from the Community of Christ on this issue. My sense is that this denomination is comfortable with the term Latter Day Saint movement (after all, they used to be called the RLDS Church), and less comfortable with the term Mormonism. But I'm not sure if they would be put-off by the term Mormonism, and I'm not sure if it makes a practical difference. I guess I'm sort of ambivalent now as to which title would be best. I could go either way. COGDEN 23:47, Oct 16, 2004 (UTC)

Not that precedence makes a difference, but we've pretty much made the distintion in most articles between Latter Day Saint and Mormonism. The big difference is Temples. I think we should leave as-is, or change all references to Latter Day Saints to Mormonsism in articles. We have to be consistent, which was one of my reservations about this project. Open to other thoughts and arguments. -Visorstuff 10:35, 17 Oct 2004 (UTC)

If no one seriously objects by tommorrow, I will move this to WikiProject Mormonism.--Josiah 23:20, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)

With all due respect (truly ^_^), I do object. The name was Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints under Joseph Smith. Mormon and Mormonism were pejorative terms. - Gilgamesh 00:43, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Perhaps Latter Day Saintism (or something like this) would be more appropriate. Mormonism just doesn't seem very welcoming to CofC members. From what I've seen, the Brighamite (minus Aaronic Order and FLDS) and Strangite sects have no problem with the term "Mormon" or "Mormonism." Church of Christ (whatever following; Bickertonites, Cutlerites, etc), Josephites (CofC), and FLDS (I believe), however, seem to be against the use of these terms---most likely because they want to distance themselves from the big Utah Church. Quoting from this site: "I asked the tour guide there if the members of their church referred to themselves as Mormons -- a perfectly innocent question on my part. She said, 'No!' and scooted about ten feet away from me, never coming within ten feet of me the rest of the tour." This page on the CofC website uses the term "Mormon" to refer to a follower, but it is unclear whether or not it is acceptable inside the Church. Perhaps we should get in touch with someone from (at least) the CofC and Strangite churches. I'll send e-mails, if no one objects. But I think it's important that we itemize what terms may be offensive to whatever groups, if not to avoid offense (and vandalism), to avoid confusion and increase professionalism. I vote to leave as-is until we get some other perspectives. The "Latter Day Saint movement" seems to be a fairly broad term, encompassing everything from Green Jello to anti-Mormons. Bruce 01:12, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I would be opposed to Latter Day Saintism as it's even less widely understood than what we have. I think the points about the CoC alone should preclude movement (didn't they often differentiate themselves by calling Brighamites "Mormons"?) But an added incentive is that some Latter-day Saints, including at least one valuable editor here, find the term offensive. I guess "WikiProject Latter Day Saint movement" has grown on me. Cool Hand Luke (Communicate!) 03:33, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Allright then. It seems that keeping it Latter Day Saint movement is just a better wording all around. I was just trying to avoid "Mormonism" which is perjorative to some and has nearly exclusive connotations to the CoJCoLdS. I shot off an e-mail to the public relations department at the Community of Christ just a few hours ago. We should be able to glean some insight from that and perhaps create a page here that more-or-less standardizes the usage of LDS terminology for the purposes of Wikipedia. Bruce 03:44, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I'm happy with the name of this project as it is, but that raises the question of what do we do with all the X (Mormonism) articles. Do we keep the project name as is, but still use (Mormonism) as a parenthetical? Changing the parentheticals to something like (Latter Day Saint) is a bit awkward, because there is a second set of parentheticals entitled (Latter-day Saint). COGDEN 05:05, Oct 19, 2004 (UTC)

...plus all the categories that would need to be flipped. I think "Mormonism" ought to remain a parenthetical by precedent and to avoid confusion. A WikiProject name probably has a higher duty to be inviting; intelligibility to outsiders shouldn't be as much a concern. Cool Hand Luke (Communicate!) 05:18, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Please understand that most of the Mormonism articles are truly narrow enough about Mormonism not as broad as the Latter Day Saint movement. I don't see a discrepancy. I am concerned about how much time it has taken to settle on a name, and fear that the myopic and opinionated tendancies the Latter Day Saint contributors will cause problems to this project. Let's focus more on content rather than naming conventions and less-important items. Let's also try to note doctrinal differences as appropriate. There is too much "this is what mormonism teaches" when in fact it is a LDS belief or a commonly-held LDS belief. Some of Mormonism and for sure the Latter Day Saint movement differs significantly in doctrines. -Visorstuff 23:28, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Missing Links

I am very opposed to missing/dead links in Wikipedia - I hate having a red hyperlink in an article - I don't think that is is good for the casual wikipedia reader who is curious about a subject to end up on a page that has no content or is not a stub. I propose that we remove all missing links in Latter Day Saint articles, and rather, create them here, or create links to stubs from this page. If we dont, readers will Google a POV, and often incorrect, answer to the question we raised, thus promoting un-wikipedia content and the promotion of mormon folklore and misperceptions (Heaven knows there is too many of them as it is). If we don't remove them we do a disservice to the project and Wikipedia readers in general. Let's not send folks on a wild goose chase or raise questions about topics that we don't provide an answer. Missing links ONLY on this page, and let's try to minimize, by the creation of stubs when adding to this page? Thoughts? -Visorstuff 10:35, 17 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I don't think that's a bad idea. Until recently, most of the main articles were maintained so they didn't have deadlinks. (For example, I don't remember when Joseph Smith, Jr. got them, but it has some now.) I don't dislike them as much as you do, but since we now have a place for requested Latter Day Saint articles, they don't need to be littering the encyclopedia. You're right about POV. Some dead links even seem to encourage POV authorship by pushing an agenda. (See Controversies regarding The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints which I ommitted—"Financial prosperity of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints"...absurd).

By the same token, I really object to the explosion of LDS apostle stubs nearly free of content. Guidelines say we should make articles as well as possible, and I try to do this. It seems to be motivated by a desire to give all the apostles articles, but I'm not sure if this is a good thing in itself. As they are, nothing distinguishes truly remarkable apostles (some of which don't even have articles), from less notable ones. They're all burried under stubs with a couple of dates, if even that! (See: James E. Talmage). We should have really started with the most notable ones and moved out.

At the least, the list gives us a method to remove the links from all referring pages. It's also a starting point for articles we really do need, but the list obviously needs editing. I think it's obvious we should have a biography on Parley P. Pratt, but no one will miss Rockwell: A Legend of the Wild West. Cool Hand Luke (Communicate!) 19:09, 17 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I was going to go through and start documenting the apostles one by one, and that was one of the first steps, just to get articles out there so I can add content as I read through the history. I'll try to be more judicious in the creation of new pages from now on. But eventually I plan to have full articles for every single one of the apostles. Each of them has a great story and it's relevant to the big picture of what was happening in the church in each of the eras. Admittedly, it will take a long time. Jgardner 20:22, 2004 Oct 18 (UTC)

I'm sorry, do take no offense. I agree that all of the Apostles are undoubtably notable enough for wikipedia. It's simply that some of these articles are substubs, which wikipedians generally loath. Lots of your articles are good starts, and I really do appreciate the work, as I said. Some others had created some apostle articles, but your project is much more ambitious, and that's not a bad thing. Perhaps just add them with more content going forward. Cool Hand Luke (Communicate!) 03:33, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)

That said, let's err on the side of populating articles and then creating categories. I think the Apostle category is a needed one, but could have been done faster, and more appropriately by focusing on the more influential Apostles adn workign out, THEN creating a category. We do a disservice when we don't provide information. I propose we make these two items (the removal of dead links and the content population of Apostles category articles) our first priority. Keep up the good work. -Visorstuff 23:28, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I saw the "missing links" title and thought I should speak up for my people...Oh, you mean that kind of missing link ;) Personally, I don't mind either stubs or red links, as long as they are articles that actually should be created or expanded at some point in the future. I don't think it's a problem for casual Wikipedians, either, because once they click on a red link the first time, they catch on. And stubs can be just as accurate and NPOV as a large article. So I'm not that concerned, and I'd rather just write articles. But if someone wants to do the work to fix existing red links, that's great. COGDEN 21:55, Oct 22, 2004 (UTC)

Timeline?

As I'm documenting the apostles, I've noticed that there is no timeline. It would be relevant to add a timeline in my opinion. I'm still new around here and I know next to 0 about Community of Christ and how everythin is divided up. Should we have three timelines - 1 for Joseph Smith / Early Mormonism, 1 for LDS church, and 1 for the other branches? I think that would be the least confusing. Also, should we have "2004 in LDS" and "1830 in Mormonism" type articles? I think these would be advantages, but maybe we'd only have enough details for decades? Comments? Jgardner 20:16, 2004 Oct 18 (UTC)

Right now, we have an article on the History of the LDS Church (needing expansion, BTW), and on the History of the Latter Day Saint movement (which most the churches share), and someday we might get an article on Community of Christ history. As a rule, wikipedians don't like to "break out" articles unless they get too long or pertain to legitimately different subjects. For example, if the history of the LDS church was much longer we might consider breaking into logical time periods (maybe pre-manifesto for, and post-1890, something like that.) However, even if the history articles got much, much longer we almost certainly wouldn't need to break them into years or even decades.

We might consider making a simple timeline of history, see List of themed timelines for examples of these. Speaking for myself though, I wouldn't want such a timeline unless it was quite thorough. Cool Hand Luke (Communicate!) 21:02, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)

There is not enough content to do a timeline category. A "Key dates in Mormonism" or "Key Dates in the Latter Day Saint movement" or "Key Dates in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints" articles, would be appropriate. -Visorstuff 23:28, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)

First "real" order of business

Okay, now that the logistics nightmare seems to be over, let's decide what to tackle first.

As stated above, I propose we make the removal of dead links and the content population of Apostles category articles our first priorities. Since dead links are oftentimes irrelevant, let's put all of them on the project page (that aren't already there) and vote on which should be articles and which should be deleted. If you would like to work on an article, I think it would be good to put your name next to the article you are planning to work on and include a timeframe for its completion. If multiple people are working on the same article, they can collaborate together. Let's help User:jgardner finish up the Apostles category first - jgardner, you want to list all of the empty articles here and we'll sign up? See my example on the project page.

If anyone else has ideas on the first "real" order of business, let's discuss and get to work. Thoughts? -Visorstuff 23:28, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I agree in full. However, may I make a suggestion that when people remove deadlinks they cite this WikiProject in the description? I fear that some editors will be tempted to revert, or insert other deadlinks. If we refer them here though, we not only avoid reverts, we potentially get another contributer. Cool Hand Luke (Communicate!) 23:50, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I added a subheading under style on the project page (Wikipedia:WikiProject Latter Day Saint movement#Deadlinks) so that I have a specific anchor to refer to when removing deadlinks. Do you think this policy goes far enough? Cool Hand Luke (Communicate!) 09:03, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I've made some minor changes to the wording - wish it was enforceable. Great idea on linking back to a "policy." Wish it were my idea. -Visorstuff 00:27, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Non-LDS

Most of my knowledge will be best applied reffering to the Non-LDS portions of articles. Which articles could I be of assistance in?--Josiah 01:22, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Well, IZAK once did a number on Mormonism and Judaism, making sloppy context-ignorant text dumps from Israelite. The article still "needs cleanup", and it needs all the appropriate perspectives. (I should cease being a dumping page for people to move stuff and then ignore.) - Gilgamesh 03:40, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I've asked Yoshiah_ap to help balance Mormonism and Judaism. It'll be a huge renovation project, to fix all the sloppy edits from ages past. Everyone's help is appreciated. Let's do this civilly and amicably. :) - Gilgamesh 03:56, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)

The article has been very much gutted and reorganized into a decent stub. I've added a little, but not enough. I'll work on more tommorrow. :)--Josiah 04:39, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)

On an almost unrelated note, do you want a good picture of a Star of David from the Salt Lake Assembly Hall? I'm thinking about taking a bunch of pictures downtown—mostly for the work I do on Salt Lake City topics. Cool Hand Luke (Communicate!) 05:20, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)

No thanks, I've got too many of them on my HDD as it is :P--Josiah 14:10, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Sounds great. Release a copy into the Wikipedia license and put it in Mormonism and Judaism next to where it's mentioned. :) - Gilgamesh 00:50, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)

William Marks

I drafted the much requested William Marks article - needs some extra eyes, editing and wiki-fying. Needs categorization. Who will help? Shall I tackle William Law next? -Visorstuff 00:09, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)

List of articles about Mormonism

Need help here. I've noticed that many of the articles about the Latter Day Saint movement are not categorized (Obscure topics like Council of Fifty and Anointed Quorum are good examples - why is Anointed Quorum categorized when it is much more obscure and Council of Fifty not when it was a major heirarchal force in the early movement?). All LDS-related articles were at one time listed at List of articles about Mormonism, but the list is quickly growing out of date. I don't want to get rid of the comprehensive list, as it provides Wikipedians a one-stop shop of places to start studying the Latter Day Saint movement, however, it needs a major overhaul and re-focusing to get cleaned up and complete again. Willing to hear suggestions ON THIS PAGE as it seems to need a decision eminating from this body of editors. I suggest cleaning up and making a closer association, if not combining with this project page, Thoughts? -Visorstuff 19:55, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I think categorization should be added to as many movement-related articles, but don't worry too much about adding everything to the list. I should be able to write a script that scours Mormonism categories and generates a report of categorized articles not on the list, then I could add these in mass. The list is a good thing for casual users, and I think it can be kept somewhat up-to-date. Do we want to include stubs? There are currently only about a dozen stubs on the list (according to the report I put on the project page—those articles came from the list), but the LDS-stubs category has swollen to 85.

Incidentally, thank you for William Marks. It's significantly better than Joseph Smith III. I swear, if I knew any Community of Christ folks, I'd bribe 'em to work on Wikipedia. Cool Hand Luke 02:18, 3 Nov 2004 (UTC)

If you could add them in mass to the page, that would be great - I want to it as simple as possible for Wikipedians to find Mormonism articles. If your script could pull related articles every couple of months, that would be wonderful. I also think stubs would be a good thing to include - as their own category - so that people can expand them more easily. So the page may morph a bit to inlcude all categories as well as all articles.

What do you think of adding a script at the end of all Latter Day Saint movement articles pointing the the list of articles? This would help the casual reseacher/editor find things easier? Kind of a meta-category? Let me know what you think.

Would you like me to take another look at JS III? I'm not CoC, but can add in much from their perspective, as I have access to some of their history. Let me know. -Visorstuff 16:46, 3 Nov 2004 (UTC)

When I set up the present category structure, I didn't necessarily categorize all the articles in List of articles about Mormonism. I guess I missed Council of Fifty (that's been remedied). I agree that the list should be kept up-to-date independently of the Category system, because the list contains information that cannot really be put in the categorization system. For example, I can't really see tagging Arianism, Millerites, or Scientology with Mormonism categories, even though those articles may discuss Mormonism briefly. COGDEN 19:50, Nov 3, 2004 (UTC)

Latter Day Saint texts

I think that the Doctrine and Covenants and Pearl of Great Price should be promoted to "Category" status. My reasoning is that, like the Book of Mormon, these are collections of other "books". This case is not as strong for the Doctrine and Covenants because they are called 'sections'. But Section 89, known as the 'Word of Wisdom' could be an article under this category. I'm sure that others can come up with others that would qualify. -- Val42 06:40, 3 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I'm in favor of this. The Articles of Faith, Book of Abraham and Moses obviously belong in Pearl of Great Price, and future potential articles might qualify. For example, an article about the facsimilies, and the Joseph Smith translation of Matthew (which is already redlinked). Book of Commandments could arguably be cross categorized in both texts and D&C. Cool Hand Luke 07:26, 3 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I am in favor for a Pearl of Great Price category, but not the D&C yet. There are not enough free-standing articles to justify this yet. Aside from Word of Wisdom, I am unaware of any others. The Olive Leaf, Revelation on War, The New and Everlasting Covenant and others would make interesting articles in some cases, however, they are not done, and we should not get ahead of ourselves - like we did with the Apostles category. Don't get me wrong, I'd like to see it at that point, but it is premature to do so. -Visorstuff 16:31, 3 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I agree with Visorstuff. COGDEN 19:50, Nov 3, 2004 (UTC)

Stale?

Is there any movement within the project as of late?

I'm signing up for another article. Hope more will as well. -User:Visorstuff 06:33, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I still check for pages to work on when I need something to do. That's about all I use it for, though. The list of missing pages you know I think that should be updated. Cookiecaper 02:38, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I might add a new list of "most requested stubs." There's an enormous number of them. Sorry I haven't done more actual research. School is heavy now. I think I should point out that User:Neutrality made Category:Mormons, which I thought was odd: he just moved Orrin Hatch out of Category:Notable Latter Day Saints to Mormons. I think I'll hit his talk page again, I don't think he noticed. Cool Hand Luke 15:46, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I think the most requested stubs is a good idea - it would be nice to have sub-pages, or a better design for the massive listings above - and/or prioritize them.

Stay on the Mormons/Notable Latter Day Saints thing - that doesn't agree with our standard naming conventions either. -Visorstuff 16:07, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Yeah, that's precisely what I was thinking: moving script generated lists to subpages. Then when you want to sign up to write/expand an article, you'd list it on the main project. Cool Hand Luke 16:12, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

OK. I added the unlisted, categorized articles to List of articles about Mormonism—about 100 articles, mostly in Apostles. So long as articles pertaining to Mormonism get categorized appropriately, it's no problem for me to periodically gather articles articles for the list with the aid of my perl script. I'm working now on stubs, ordered by number of links-to. I'll put this on a subpage, and I'm considering moving the redlink list to a subpage too. Cool Hand Luke 03:20, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Images

I am working on Artikels about the Latter Day Saint movement in the German Wikipedia. It would be nice if you can put the pictures related to the Latter Day Saint movement (especial pictures of Temple) on commons. That would make it much easier for me to do pictures in the articels. --Donnyw 11:07, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

OK, I'm working on this. I've moved over most of the images I uploaded and listed them in commons:Temple Square, ect. User:Cookiecaper appears to have taken some pictures of the Salt Lake Temple. However, I find that many of our temple pictures are dubiously listed as fair use. Even assuming the pictures on Temples of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are fair use, this is an American concept which does not hold in Germany or anywhere else. I don't think commons accepts fair use (see debate at commons:Commons:Licensing, so these images cannot be moved over. Cool Hand Luke 09:24, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

thank you! commons will not accept fair use, it is also not accepted in the German Wikipedia. --Donnyw 13:31, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

RSS

Anyone have knowledge enough to create an RSS feed on project pages, letting us know when they get updated? -Visorstuff 16:09, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

That would be neat. Do you know any projects that do this? According to discussions at the village pump, feeds are not currently generated. Cool Hand Luke 21:04, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Excessive external links being seen as spam

There is a package of external links that seems to be proliferated through the project. An anon recently scolded Visorstuff (!) for spamming when he reverted a mass deletion of external links on one article. V and I agree that the external links package needs to be limited to an "as-needed" basis. I propose that the full links package go only on the LDS Church page, with other pages getting perhaps one link from LDS church if necessary, and links from other LDS churches as appropriate so as to preserve fairness (non-bias aka NPOV). Tom - Talk 20:32, Dec 7, 2004 (UTC)

Oh my, I've seen some of that. I strongly agree. External links should be narrowly restricted to the article's topic. General links are not needed all over the place. Cool Hand Luke 21:04, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)