Interesting how New Mexico has stagnated in numbers of members since 2015. I am thinking this is due to not having enough jobs or perhaps overall population growth. Because of Manhattan and Phila delphia being so close it would be hard to see New Jersey having its own temple. Not for a while, anyway. Could Vegas use a second temple relatively soon? What about New Hampshire?
Matt, thanks for your continued diligence in sharing these updated profiles. For the information of all who read this blog, the groundbreaking for the Feather River California Temple was held yesterday as scheduled:
Originally, it had been announced that Elder Scott D. Whiting, First Counselor in the North America West Area presidency and an Assistant Executive Director of the Temple Department, would preside thereat, but due to COVID-19 restrictions, Area Seventy Elder Paul H. Watkins did so instead.
Elder Watkins becomes the first man outside general Church leadership to oversee a temple groundbreaking since 3 Church building missionaries presided at the groundbreaking for the Hamilton New Zealand Temple in the late 1950s:
@St George Bob, This is my base reference book with detailed lists of Stakes by State/Province and Country. It is a little outdated, the last printed version released by the Deseret News for the Annual 2013 year, with Stakes listed up to October 2012 cutoff date for printing. You can add all Stakes listed here on this site after that date and search in Classic Maps to find locations (State/Province, and/or Country). I have a printed copy but i just found a PDF scanned copy for you to download for free.
As an additional resource, I had updated a Wikipedia List by State and Country, that was deleted by Wikipedia editors back in December 2018. Here is a archived copy retrieved from the Wayback Machine.
You would just need to add the Stakes organized and or closed since that date. Again from Matt's churchgrowth web blog here.
If you go back to a previous version in archive I had all of the links for almost all of the Classic Maps Stake offices location of each. You would need to be logged into your LDS account to access the links provided. Some stakes have closed or moved offices since that date.
I hope this and previous post are useful in your research. You can copy to your own file as needed.
3rd, Here is another resource website started by our Blog User, Main tour, at end of 2018, when my updated List was deleted from the original Wikipedia site. Currently being updated with new info.
Does Wikipedia delete all these pages because of lack of money, or negative bias or bigotry, or both? What are the top 5 states to not grow in Church terms? I would think that California and New Hampshire would be among them. Plains states lose people in general so maybe a few of those, too.
Eduardo, sorry about my delayed response to your question. As a longtime Wikipedia editor, I can tell you that some do operate on bias, bigotry, or other faulty motivations and reasoning in cases like this. Overall, as I have previously mentioned, the main problem we who edit articles covering subjects about the Church have run into is that there has been more than minor difficulties encountered when finding sources that would be considered as sufficiently independent of the Church itself in supporting coverage of Church-related topics. There has to be a certain degree of independent sourcing like that because Wikipedia needs to retain a tone of neutrality in its' offered point of view. Failure to do so would be seen as having bias in favor of such topics.
And unfortunately, as I have also mentioned here, there are not enough of the kind of editors who, like me myself, are trying to strike the proper neutral balance between our membership in the Church and enthusiasm for content about Church-related topics and working around and in cooperation with or working to change problematic policies. And without enough of those kinds of editors working on those issues under those parameters, it's easier for those that may not understand the importance of Church topics to look at articles that fail to be neutral by the current policy definitions, which in turn results in those articles being subject to deletion discussions.
As one who has participated in many of those discussions, I've seen those that clearly have enough of a bias against the Church, or who have a sound policy-based reason to suggest consideration of deleting such articles. In the latter case, I have tried to suggest a few times that a certain discussion be paused while the relevant issues are addressed, but some admins are so gung-ho about getting rid of problematic pages that that suggestion could be seen as unreasonable. There's a lot of give-and-take nuance involved in these coversations, which can make them interesting. Hopefully in future days, there will be more Church members editing Wikipedia who can help make a real difference in navigating these often-difficult situations. For now, those of us who are working through things as they are, rather than how we'd like them to be, have a tricky time even in optimal circumstances.
The official reason articles are deleted in Wikipedia is because the subject has not received sufficient coverage in reliable, 3rd party sources.
I have a ling standing debate with other Wikipedia editors over whether the Encyclopedia of Latter-day Saints history is a reliable 3rd party source. Since it lacked articles on all general authorities to the date of its publication it was more exclusive on that front than I once tried to make Wikipedia.
I think we should be hesitant about rushing to cry bias. There is a little bias in the fact that Elder Soares article has had to survive 2 deletion attempts, Elder Gong's article one and no other article on an apostle has ever faced a deletion attempt.
However it is not simple racism, and the fact that Catholic bishop articles languish for a decade or more only sourced to one directory style blog actually shows that the Wikipedia community cares far less about articles on Catholics and Catholic leaders than about Latter-day Saints.
What we really need is better content in some of the articles that survive. Burgess Owens article needs to say a little more substantial on his connection to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Brady Popinga's article needs to actually use the full name of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at least once. Poppinga's article in this race obsessed tome could say more on race.
I need to go dig up Lucille Tate's biography of David B. Haight and incorporate what is says of the marriage of Gerrit W. Gong and Susan Lindsey, a marriage that Elder Haight officiated at and which had some race based opposition to it.
I am not sure how I remember reading about that back in I believe 1997 considering I did not even meet the Gong's son until 1999.
in mind Wikipedia is supposed to follow published secondary sources, not anticipate them.
Elder Gong's article survived because he was impactful enough as either an international policy writer or international policy academic or both during last century to fit Wikipedia's definition of notability. The fact that Wikipedia did not exist until 2001 and no one created an article on Elder Gong until shortly after his call as a general authority do not negate that fact.
The success twice of the article on Elder Soares is all built on at least his general authority status, but since over 50 articles on general authorities, maybe over 100, have been deleted from Wikipedia it seems only apostles are default notable.
Elder Soares not only got national and international news coverage with his call, but major news papers in both Guatemala and El Salvador covered his apostolic visits to those countries. His dedication of the temple in Forteleza where he served a mission got news coverage there and from non-The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints owned as in Utah. The Salt Lake Teibune may be the only non-Church owned source that mentioned Elder Soares dedicating the Arequipa Temple, but I am not sure how well google records Arequipa papers.
Right now the weakest article on a current general authority is probably the one on Elder Dube. The next weakest one is on Elder Wakolo. The V day nuatu and Philippines sources are not very in depth.
The Fiji Sun source on Elder Wakolo is in depth and in the nations top paper. However in the claims of connection used against members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Lattwr-day Saints that have tried to claim an article or book published by BYU studies that says substantial things about the pioneer of Family History and Temple work gathering in Nexico by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Octaviano Tenorio, is not independent of Tenorio because over a decade after the source was published Tenorio became a general authority, would probably push the notion that since the Fiji Sun article was written by a Latter-day Saint who is a close personal friend of Wakolo, who just happens to also be one of Fiji's top journalists, this disqualifies the article. That is why I have never created a full article on Camilla Kimball. Anyone else who had an independent publisher print a biography of them, it does not matter that Bookcraft began in the Inprovement Era office and was later bought by Deseret Book, in the 1970s its ownership in no way traced to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. However people will argue her sister and don being the authors make the biography less than independent.
I understand Wikipedia's aversion to primary sourcing, but sometimes they interpret primary sourcing in odd ways.
I also vaguely know why Wikipedia has such uneven notability standards but I do not think they make sense. Every person who ever served in every legislature at a national level or at the top sub-national level is considered default notable. New Hampshire alone has more than 400 state ki legislature members.
All Episcopal, Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and most Lutheran bishops are considered default notable. The Catholic bishop on average presides over 400,000 people but there are huge deviations. The Episcopal bishop is below 15,000 on average. Yet virtually every Episcopal bishop has an article many even current Catholic bishops lack them. The comparisons would look fairer if I said Anglican. However the Anglican bishops with the largest dioceses are least likely to have articles. They are primarily in Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya and a few other African countries.
Up until recently current African general authorities were the most heavily covered of any by continent group of general authorities at 67%. They fell to 40% coverage in the last conference.
I am sure that Thierry S. Mutombo is notable for the leadership he provided as head of family history services for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Among other initiatives he higher 15 teams to gather oral family histories, often sending them deep in the bush where missionaries have never gone. Jeffrey Bradshaw's remarks at the 2018 Fair Mormon conference on Mutombo will not be enough, so I am biding my time on creating an article on Elder Mutombo.
I also have been convinced for almost a decade that Brother Ahmad Corbitt was notable for being the director of the Public and Government relations office of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in New York City. Unfortunately while in the throes of Kellerism the New York Times was not so convinced and could write an article on the idea the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was mainly white including a quote from Brother Corbitt on the matter without dealing with the implications of the Church giving a black man largely raised in the nation of Islam such a position of trust.
Now that Brorher Corbitt us 1st counselor in the Young Men's General Presidency I am even more convinced he is notable. I am also convinced his work in the missionary department piloting the area mission specialist program is important, but I still face the fact that very few outside writers being published by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have taken any note of Ahmad Corbitt. The fact that in 2010 Wikipedia had articles on every general officer of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints ever and that it still has articles on most causes little pause.
I fear I brought the backlash by trying at one point to create articles on most non-American area seventies. That was a Bridge too far as was creating articles on a Miss Nevada USA winner and a Latter-day Saint African-American man who was a Republican nominee for congress who I knew personally in both those cases. Those are two of maybe 5 articles I created I also later nominated to be deleted.
Sorry this went so long. I have done over 386,000 edits on Wikipedia. I know it enough to know much of some of its struggles.
The biggest problem is that the Ensign and Chur h News articles on new general authorities are so good, and the Church's press release biographies tend to be so fair, balanced and comprehensive, that there is little incentive in most cases for anyone not directly employed by the Church to go to the trouble of creating more material on the lives of general authorities and general officers of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Wikipedia has nearly 1 million articles on living people. This is in large part because anyone who ever played even 1 game in a fully professional football (or as we say in the US soccer) league is considered default notable.
Keep in mind some countries have up to 5 fully pro league, even in the US where pro-soccer is not much followed we have multiple fully pro leagues.
If this was a reasonable standard, every tenure equivalent faculty member would be notable and I would not have seen several articles on BYU faculty I created be deleted.
If this were a reasonable standard, I would get an endorsement that every speaker in general conference of Thw Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, at least since going to the 2 day format, was notable. All general authorities would eventually be included and I would be able to create articles on the two youths who spoke at April conference.
Instead the articles on Benjamin de Hoyos and Juan Uceda as well as Michael J. Teh and many other general authorities have been deleted.
Academic notability requires meeting one of 5 criteria. Number 1 is having significant impact in your field of study broadly defined. Another item is holding a named chair, although ssd's ome named chairs do not count. Another is being the academic head of a university. In the US this means president but provost may count as well. In the British system this means being vice chancellor. Another is being editor-in-chief of a major academic publication. I pushed over the speedy deletion of the article on Marie Cornwall since as the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Sociology and Religion she clearly met this.
Many academics will eventually met multiple of these criteria. Few will meet any before they are 35.
An even more ambiguous rule is that actors and actresses need to have had "significant" roles in multiple "notable" productions. Most commercially released Hollywoid films are notable, lots of other films are too, so much so that this is a pretty low bar. What counts as a significant role is more to debate, but there are so many articles that have sat in Wikipedia for over a decade sourced only to IMDb which Wikipedia says is unreliable and all biographies of living people need at least one reliable source this rule is hard to believe it has any meaning.
Thus it is impossible to see the level of scrutiny but on articles where the subject is identified as a faithful member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as other than suspect. However I try not letting my frustration with uneven rule enforcement and the special deference to sportsmen rise too high.
I still think some Wikipedia editors have gone too extreme in false understandings of what editorial independence is. Brigham Young Univeridities studies quarterly is clearly an independent source for anything it reports on. Financial ownership does not override the ways its editorial board is set up.
This applies in several other cases. Items published in the Deseret News proper are editorially independent.
Any hair analysis would allow Matt Maternich as a source for some things, but Wikipedia has a knee jerk aversion to blogs.
Well, it has an aversion but does not enforce it on articles on Catholic bishops. To be fair my attempts to delete articles on Catholic bishops sourced merely to directory style blogs have all failed because there are almost always better sources. There were also independent sources on Elder Uceda and Elder Teh but it was claimed by others that these were not in depth enough.
Wikipedia is a complex place. It is also a project that in its 19 years has changed and evolved much. The inclusion rules have tightened over time, but un m has ny cases we are just seeing these inclusion rules applied to 2006 articles.
Wikipedia also has huge problems with presentism. These are exasperated by many polemical enemies of Tge Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints using presentism troupes and methods to attack 19th and 20th century members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
JPL, I mean no disrespect to you personally, and I recognize that you and I have had distinctly different experiences and areas of focus on Wikipedia. I started editing Wikipedia in mid-to-late 2006, and although I began my time there focusing solely on subjects related to the Church, in the near 1.5 decades that have followed, I have expanded my focus to a wider variety of topics of interest to me. I don't know the specific number of edits I've logged, but with an increasing number of articles on my watchlist that have nothing whatsoever to do with any Church-related topic, I can tell you that my experience editing non-Church articles is markedly different from editing articles about other subjects. More often than not, if an article on any of those subjects have been nominated for deletion, they are for markedly different reasons than a lack of notability, or of sufficient sourcing independent of the article subject. The two arguments used for Church-related article deletion nominations are fundamentally different and held to an entirely different standard than articles unconnected to Church-related subjects. That does point to bias or prejudice relating to Church subjects to a stronger degree than is the case for other articles proposed for deletion.
And that's why I keep mentioning here and on Wikipedia that there is a need for more people who are interested in Church subjects and want them to be covered on Wikipedia to help editors like you and me to fix the issues with the current policies that have directly led to the deletion of articles about Church-related subjects. Those standards are not equally applied to deletion discussions about subjects not related to the Church or its' leaders. So there is some degree of bias against Church-related subjects that doesn't exist to the same degree on subjects not connected to the Church. But that's just my assessment based on what I've observed in the difference between how Church-related subjects are treated differently than subjects not related to Church topics.
That said, I'm glad to hear that both articles about Elders Gong and Soares survived the latest deletion attempts. I was not aware of that. After taking time to weigh in on those deletion discussions, I've had personal circumstances which have prevented further participation on Wikipedia for the time being. Hopefully the changes that have been or will be made to all Church articles will prevent such deletions from happening in the future. In the meantime, I renew my statement that more Church member editors are needed for articles about the Church so that there will be more manpower working on the issues that have led to past deletion nominations and also a better-coordinated effort to resolve the existing issues with the current policies. More people being involved in such attempts would do a world of good, especially if there are enough that understand and are willing to work around or work towards fixing the systemic issues on Wikipedia that have led to those recent deletion nominations, many of which have been successful for Church-related topics. Thanks.
16 comments:
Interesting how New Mexico has stagnated in numbers of members since 2015. I am thinking this is due to not having enough jobs or perhaps overall population growth.
Because of Manhattan and Phila delphia being so close it would be hard to see New Jersey having its own temple. Not for a while, anyway.
Could Vegas use a second temple relatively soon? What about New Hampshire?
Matt, thanks for your continued diligence in sharing these updated profiles. For the information of all who read this blog, the groundbreaking for the Feather River California Temple was held yesterday as scheduled:
https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/ground-broken-for-feather-river-temple
Originally, it had been announced that Elder Scott D. Whiting, First Counselor in the North America West Area presidency and an Assistant Executive Director of the Temple Department, would preside thereat, but due to COVID-19 restrictions, Area Seventy Elder Paul H. Watkins did so instead.
Elder Watkins becomes the first man outside general Church leadership to oversee a temple groundbreaking since 3 Church building missionaries presided at the groundbreaking for the Hamilton New Zealand Temple in the late 1950s:
https://churchofjesuschristtemples.org/hamilton-new-zealand-temple/
My thanks once again to you all.
The Feather River Temple groundbreaking was done. The Church has demolished a stake center to make way for a temple.
Is this the first temple groundbreaking by an area seventy?
Do you know why it is so hard to locate a list, or info, on Stakes in each state and/or country?
@St George Bob, This is my base reference book with detailed lists of Stakes by State/Province and Country. It is a little outdated, the last printed version released by the Deseret News for the Annual 2013 year, with Stakes listed up to October 2012 cutoff date for printing. You can add all Stakes listed here on this site after that date and search in Classic Maps to find locations (State/Province, and/or Country). I have a printed copy but i just found a PDF scanned copy for you to download for free.
https://unquotebooks.com/get/ebook.php?id=QVa6NAEACAAJ
https://artdary.net/get/ebook.php?id=QVa6NAEACAAJ
Or you can order paperback copy (New or Used) from Amazon website :
https://www.amazon.com/Church-Almanac-2013/dp/1609074203/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8
As an additional resource, I had updated a Wikipedia List by State and Country, that was deleted by Wikipedia editors back in December 2018. Here is a archived copy retrieved from the Wayback Machine.
https://web.archive.org/web/20181226110531/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_stakes_of_The_Church_of_Jesus_Christ_of_Latter-day_Saints
You would just need to add the Stakes organized and or closed since that date. Again from Matt's churchgrowth web blog here.
If you go back to a previous version in archive I had all of the links for almost all of the Classic Maps Stake offices location of each. You would need to be logged into your LDS account to access the links provided. Some stakes have closed or moved offices since that date.
I hope this and previous post are useful in your research. You can copy to your own file as needed.
3rd, Here is another resource website started by our Blog User, Main tour, at end of 2018, when my updated List was deleted from the original Wikipedia site. Currently being updated with new info.
https://mormon.wikia.org/wiki/List_of_Stakes_of_the_Church
Does Wikipedia delete all these pages because of lack of money, or negative bias or bigotry, or both?
What are the top 5 states to not grow in Church terms? I would think that California and New Hampshire would be among them. Plains states lose people in general so maybe a few of those, too.
Temple Rick has had good lists of stakes and districts attributed to each temple.
Eduardo, sorry about my delayed response to your question. As a longtime Wikipedia editor, I can tell you that some do operate on bias, bigotry, or other faulty motivations and reasoning in cases like this. Overall, as I have previously mentioned, the main problem we who edit articles covering subjects about the Church have run into is that there has been more than minor difficulties encountered when finding sources that would be considered as sufficiently independent of the Church itself in supporting coverage of Church-related topics. There has to be a certain degree of independent sourcing like that because Wikipedia needs to retain a tone of neutrality in its' offered point of view. Failure to do so would be seen as having bias in favor of such topics.
And unfortunately, as I have also mentioned here, there are not enough of the kind of editors who, like me myself, are trying to strike the proper neutral balance between our membership in the Church and enthusiasm for content about Church-related topics and working around and in cooperation with or working to change problematic policies. And without enough of those kinds of editors working on those issues under those parameters, it's easier for those that may not understand the importance of Church topics to look at articles that fail to be neutral by the current policy definitions, which in turn results in those articles being subject to deletion discussions.
As one who has participated in many of those discussions, I've seen those that clearly have enough of a bias against the Church, or who have a sound policy-based reason to suggest consideration of deleting such articles. In the latter case, I have tried to suggest a few times that a certain discussion be paused while the relevant issues are addressed, but some admins are so gung-ho about getting rid of problematic pages that that suggestion could be seen as unreasonable. There's a lot of give-and-take nuance involved in these coversations, which can make them interesting. Hopefully in future days, there will be more Church members editing Wikipedia who can help make a real difference in navigating these often-difficult situations. For now, those of us who are working through things as they are, rather than how we'd like them to be, have a tricky time even in optimal circumstances.
The official reason articles are deleted in Wikipedia is because the subject has not received sufficient coverage in reliable, 3rd party sources.
I have a ling standing debate with other Wikipedia editors over whether the Encyclopedia of Latter-day Saints history is a reliable 3rd party source. Since it lacked articles on all general authorities to the date of its publication it was more exclusive on that front than I once tried to make Wikipedia.
I think we should be hesitant about rushing to cry bias. There is a little bias in the fact that Elder Soares article has had to survive 2 deletion attempts, Elder Gong's article one and no other article on an apostle has ever faced a deletion attempt.
However it is not simple racism, and the fact that Catholic bishop articles languish for a decade or more only sourced to one directory style blog actually shows that the Wikipedia community cares far less about articles on Catholics and Catholic leaders than about Latter-day Saints.
What we really need is better content in some of the articles that survive. Burgess Owens article needs to say a little more substantial on his connection to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Brady Popinga's article needs to actually use the full name of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at least once. Poppinga's article in this race obsessed tome could say more on race.
I need to go dig up Lucille Tate's biography of David B. Haight and incorporate what is says of the marriage of Gerrit W. Gong and Susan Lindsey, a marriage that Elder Haight officiated at and which had some race based opposition to it.
I am not sure how I remember reading about that back in I believe 1997 considering I did not even meet the Gong's son until 1999.
Keep
in mind Wikipedia is supposed to follow published secondary sources, not anticipate them.
Elder Gong's article survived because he was impactful enough as either an international policy writer or international policy academic or both during last century to fit Wikipedia's definition of notability. The fact that Wikipedia did not exist until 2001 and no one created an article on Elder Gong until shortly after his call as a general authority do not negate that fact.
The success twice of the article on Elder Soares is all built on at least his general authority status, but since over 50 articles on general authorities, maybe over 100, have been deleted from Wikipedia it seems only apostles are default notable.
Elder Soares not only got national and international news coverage with his call, but major news papers in both Guatemala and El Salvador covered his apostolic visits to those countries. His dedication of the temple in Forteleza where he served a mission got news coverage there and from non-The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints owned as in Utah. The Salt Lake Teibune may be the only non-Church owned source that mentioned Elder Soares dedicating the Arequipa Temple, but I am not sure how well google records Arequipa papers.
Right now the weakest article on a current general authority is probably the one on Elder Dube. The next weakest one is on Elder Wakolo. The V day nuatu and Philippines sources are not very in depth.
The Fiji Sun source on Elder Wakolo is in depth and in the nations top paper. However in the claims of connection used against members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Lattwr-day Saints that have tried to claim an article or book published by BYU studies that says substantial things about the pioneer of Family History and Temple work gathering in Nexico by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Octaviano Tenorio, is not independent of Tenorio because over a decade after the source was published Tenorio became a general authority, would probably push the notion that since the Fiji Sun article was written by a Latter-day Saint who is a close personal friend of Wakolo, who just happens to also be one of Fiji's top journalists, this disqualifies the article. That is why I have never created a full article on Camilla Kimball. Anyone else who had an independent publisher print a biography of them, it does not matter that Bookcraft began in the Inprovement Era office and was later bought by Deseret Book, in the 1970s its ownership in no way traced to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. However people will argue her sister and don being the authors make the biography less than independent.
I understand Wikipedia's aversion to primary sourcing, but sometimes they interpret primary sourcing in odd ways.
I also vaguely know why Wikipedia has such uneven notability standards but I do not think they make sense. Every person who ever served in every legislature at a national level or at the top sub-national level is considered default notable. New Hampshire alone has more than 400 state ki legislature members.
All Episcopal, Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and most Lutheran bishops are considered default notable. The Catholic bishop on average presides over 400,000 people but there are huge deviations. The Episcopal bishop is below 15,000 on average. Yet virtually every Episcopal bishop has an article many even current Catholic bishops lack them. The comparisons would look fairer if I said Anglican. However the Anglican bishops with the largest dioceses are least likely to have articles. They are primarily in Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya and a few other African countries.
Up until recently current African general authorities were the most heavily covered of any by continent group of general authorities at 67%. They fell to 40% coverage in the last conference.
I am sure that Thierry S. Mutombo is notable for the leadership he provided as head of family history services for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Among other initiatives he higher 15 teams to gather oral family histories, often sending them deep in the bush where missionaries have never gone. Jeffrey Bradshaw's remarks at the 2018 Fair Mormon conference on Mutombo will not be enough, so I am biding my time on creating an article on Elder Mutombo.
I also have been convinced for almost a decade that Brother Ahmad Corbitt was notable for being the director of the Public and Government relations office of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in New York City. Unfortunately while in the throes of Kellerism the New York Times was not so convinced and could write an article on the idea the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was mainly white including a quote from Brother Corbitt on the matter without dealing with the implications of the Church giving a black man largely raised in the nation of Islam such a position of trust.
Now that Brorher Corbitt us 1st counselor in the Young Men's General Presidency I am even more convinced he is notable. I am also convinced his work in the missionary department piloting the area mission specialist program is important, but I still face the fact that very few outside writers being published by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have taken any note of Ahmad Corbitt. The fact that in 2010 Wikipedia had articles on every general officer of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints ever and that it still has articles on most causes little pause.
I fear I brought the backlash by trying at one point to create articles on most non-American area seventies. That was a Bridge too far as was creating articles on a Miss Nevada USA winner and a Latter-day Saint African-American man who was a Republican nominee for congress who I knew personally in both those cases. Those are two of maybe 5 articles I created I also later nominated to be deleted.
Sorry this went so long. I have done over 386,000 edits on Wikipedia. I know it enough to know much of some of its struggles.
The biggest problem is that the Ensign and Chur h News articles on new general authorities are so good, and the Church's press release biographies tend to be so fair, balanced and comprehensive, that there is little incentive in most cases for anyone not directly employed by the Church to go to the trouble of creating more material on the lives of general authorities and general officers of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Wikipedia has nearly 1 million articles on living people. This is in large part because anyone who ever played even 1 game in a fully professional football (or as we say in the US soccer) league is considered default notable.
Keep in mind some countries have up to 5 fully pro league, even in the US where pro-soccer is not much followed we have multiple fully pro leagues.
If this was a reasonable standard, every tenure equivalent faculty member would be notable and I would not have seen several articles on BYU faculty I created be deleted.
If this were a reasonable standard, I would get an endorsement that every speaker in general conference of Thw Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, at least since going to the 2 day format, was notable. All general authorities would eventually be included and I would be able to create articles on the two youths who spoke at April conference.
Instead the articles on Benjamin de Hoyos and Juan Uceda as well as Michael J. Teh and many other general authorities have been deleted.
Academic notability requires meeting one of 5 criteria. Number 1 is having significant impact in your field of study broadly defined. Another item is holding a named chair, although ssd's ome named chairs do not count. Another is being the academic head of a university. In the US this means president but provost may count as well. In the British system this means being vice chancellor. Another is being editor-in-chief of a major academic publication. I pushed over the speedy deletion of the article on Marie Cornwall since as the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Sociology and Religion she clearly met this.
Many academics will eventually met multiple of these criteria. Few will meet any before they are 35.
An even more ambiguous rule is that actors and actresses need to have had "significant" roles in multiple "notable" productions. Most commercially released Hollywoid films are notable, lots of other films are too, so much so that this is a pretty low bar. What counts as a significant role is more to debate, but there are so many articles that have sat in Wikipedia for over a decade sourced only to IMDb which Wikipedia says is unreliable and all biographies of living people need at least one reliable source this rule is hard to believe it has any meaning.
Thus it is impossible to see the level of scrutiny but on articles where the subject is identified as a faithful member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as other than suspect. However I try not letting my frustration with uneven rule enforcement and the special deference to sportsmen rise too high.
I still think some Wikipedia editors have gone too extreme in false understandings of what editorial independence is. Brigham Young Univeridities studies quarterly is clearly an independent source for anything it reports on. Financial ownership does not override the ways its editorial board is set up.
This applies in several other cases. Items published in the Deseret News proper are editorially independent.
Any hair analysis would allow Matt Maternich as a source for some things, but Wikipedia has a knee jerk aversion to blogs.
Well, it has an aversion but does not enforce it on articles on Catholic bishops. To be fair my attempts to delete articles on Catholic bishops sourced merely to directory style blogs have all failed because there are almost always better sources. There were also independent sources on Elder Uceda and Elder Teh but it was claimed by others that these were not in depth enough.
Wikipedia is a complex place. It is also a project that in its 19 years has changed and evolved much. The inclusion rules have tightened over time, but un m has ny cases we are just seeing these inclusion rules applied to 2006 articles.
Wikipedia also has huge problems with presentism. These are exasperated by many polemical enemies of Tge Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints using presentism troupes and methods to attack 19th and 20th century members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
JPL, I mean no disrespect to you personally, and I recognize that you and I have had distinctly different experiences and areas of focus on Wikipedia. I started editing Wikipedia in mid-to-late 2006, and although I began my time there focusing solely on subjects related to the Church, in the near 1.5 decades that have followed, I have expanded my focus to a wider variety of topics of interest to me. I don't know the specific number of edits I've logged, but with an increasing number of articles on my watchlist that have nothing whatsoever to do with any Church-related topic, I can tell you that my experience editing non-Church articles is markedly different from editing articles about other subjects. More often than not, if an article on any of those subjects have been nominated for deletion, they are for markedly different reasons than a lack of notability, or of sufficient sourcing independent of the article subject. The two arguments used for Church-related article deletion nominations are fundamentally different and held to an entirely different standard than articles unconnected to Church-related subjects. That does point to bias or prejudice relating to Church subjects to a stronger degree than is the case for other articles proposed for deletion.
And that's why I keep mentioning here and on Wikipedia that there is a need for more people who are interested in Church subjects and want them to be covered on Wikipedia to help editors like you and me to fix the issues with the current policies that have directly led to the deletion of articles about Church-related subjects. Those standards are not equally applied to deletion discussions about subjects not related to the Church or its' leaders. So there is some degree of bias against Church-related subjects that doesn't exist to the same degree on subjects not connected to the Church. But that's just my assessment based on what I've observed in the difference between how Church-related subjects are treated differently than subjects not related to Church topics.
That said, I'm glad to hear that both articles about Elders Gong and Soares survived the latest deletion attempts. I was not aware of that. After taking time to weigh in on those deletion discussions, I've had personal circumstances which have prevented further participation on Wikipedia for the time being. Hopefully the changes that have been or will be made to all Church articles will prevent such deletions from happening in the future. In the meantime, I renew my statement that more Church member editors are needed for articles about the Church so that there will be more manpower working on the issues that have led to past deletion nominations and also a better-coordinated effort to resolve the existing issues with the current policies. More people being involved in such attempts would do a world of good, especially if there are enough that understand and are willing to work around or work towards fixing the systemic issues on Wikipedia that have led to those recent deletion nominations, many of which have been successful for Church-related topics. Thanks.
Post a Comment