[Ldsoss] Re: Ldsoss Digest, Vol 39, Issue 1

[Bill Pringle]

At 11:21 AM 4/2/2007, "Thomas Haws" <tom.haws at gmail.com> wrote:

>I have a lot of Wikipedia experience, particularly in the LDS area, and I
>have system administrator privileges there.  I know at least one other
>participant on this list is an experienced Wikipedian.
>
>The Wikipedia community stalwarts are fiercely committed to a non-negotiable
>policy of non-bias.  The non-bias policy states that all significant points
>of view must be represented appropriately and that when any point of view is
>represented, it must be done with a sympathetic tone.  The best way to
>improve Wikipedia is to present all information of interest with source
>citations as though you were explaining to your teenage kid all the
>diversity of opinion and information in the world regarding the First
>Vision.
>
>For the First Vision article, it would be appropriate to include a statement
>that in the LDS Church the 1838 account of the vision is canonical.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I agree.  In fact, I just edited a change to the First Vision article 
to make it more NPOV (Neutral Point of View).  The only way for 
Wikipedia to become anti-Mormon is for LDS to avoid the site.

It is important to realize that neutral means that all points of view 
are respected.  Therefore, you will read things like "Joseph Smith 
claimed to have a vision ..."  A faithful LDS person would rather 
read "Joseph Smith had a vision".  However, that would not be 
permitted.  It works the other way as well: "Cirtics claim ..." when 
anti-Mormons would probably want things like that stated as facts.

It is important to respect this neutrality.  At one point, somebody 
made a bunch of biased edits to some article.  It was found that the 
IP Address was in the church offices, and so that raised quite a 
stink.  The conclusion was that it was just an over-zealous employee 
rather than an organized effort to bias the articles, but if too many 
such incidents were to happen, it would have caused a real problem.

I hesitate to mention this (for fear things will get knocked out of 
balance), but I have been working on the article "Mormonism and 
Christianity", which attempts to compare the two viewpoints.  In 
addition to a number of LDS editors, we have a protestant who is 
asking some really good questions in trying to understand what we 
believe and why.  If you get the right mix of people, then articles 
can come together very nicely.  If, however, you get too many zealots 
(from either side) working on the article, it can get quite tedious, 
but even the most obnoxious are helpful in that they can detect bias 
in places that we wouldn't notice.

IMHO if an article is well-balanced and truly NPOV, then neither side 
is happy with it.  ;^)




---
Bill Pringle
work: Bill.Pringle at unisys.com   http://www.unisysfsp.com
http://www.unisys.com
home/school: wrp103 at psu.edu http://www.personal.psu.edu/~wrp103
http://CherylWheeler.com