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

[Jesse Stay]

I haven't checked today to see if these have been added, but we might
want to consider some of the witnesses listed on fairwiki as well -
they usually do a somewhat decent job of citing what they put there (I
think we obviously would want to cite the source, not fairwiki):

http://www.fairwiki.org/index.php/Joseph_Smith_did_not_know_if_God_existed_in_1823

Here's fairwiki's response to all the First Vision issues.  There's a
lot of great citations and witnesses there representing more than
what's stated on the wikipedia article:

http://www.fairwiki.org/index.php/First_Vision_accounts

Jesse

On 4/2/07, Bill Pringle <wrp103 at psu.edu> wrote:
> 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
>
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