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GA Review

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Reviewer: SilkTork (talk · contribs) 14:33, 17 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

initial review

Tick box

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GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria

  1. Is it reasonably well written?
    A. Prose quality:
    B. MoS compliance for lead, layout, words to watch, fiction, and lists:
  2. Is it factually accurate and verifiable?
    A. References to sources:
    B. Citation of reliable sources where necessary:
    C. No original research:
  3. Is it broad in its coverage?
    A. Major aspects:
    B. Focused:
  4. Is it neutral?
    Fair representation without bias:
  5. Is it stable?
    No edit wars, etc:
  6. Does it contain images to illustrate the topic?
    A. Images are copyright tagged, and non-free images have fair use rationales:
    B. Images are provided where possible and appropriate, with suitable captions:
  7. Overall:
    Pass or Fail:


Comments

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Pass

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I have responded below, and have tweaked parts of the history section, particularly Beginnings and Pioneer era. ~Adjwilley (talk) 17:26, 16 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Query

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I have cropped down several of the long captions. Thank you for pointing that out. ~Adjwilley (talk) 18:02, 24 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I put the Christus in the Beliefs section to illustrate that for Mormons, Christ is the central and most important figure (see the citation for details). Unfortunately the caption itself did not convey that very well, so I have changed it to something more simple, and cited it. ~Adjwilley (talk) 18:24, 24 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The picture of Gladys Knight was an illustration of a black Mormon. I basically copied the image and caption from the article on Black Mormons. I think that black Mormons themselves are particularly notable in this article because until 1978, they weren't allowed to participate in temple ceremonies. I'm not particularly attached to that image though. It used to be in the collage at the top of the article, but somebody replaced it with Marie Osmond a while back.~Adjwilley (talk) 18:24, 24 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The stained glass picture is an illustration of Joseph Smith's First Vision. That is the event that Mormons point to as the beginning and most-important event of their dispensation. Bushman actually has a picture of the same window in his book Mormonism: a very short introduction. ~Adjwilley (talk) 18:02, 24 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Prose. Prose is readable with correct spelling, though the language is too technical - assuming a knowledge of the reader that the reader may not have. See WP:Jargon. Examples - "...a religion started by Joseph Smith during the American Second Great Awakening." The Second Great Awakening needs explaining. "the young Joseph was seeking a remission of his sins" is unclear, and some specific Mormon terminology, such as "the doctrines of sealing" and "stakes" is best explained in the text rather than expecting a reader to constantly look elsewhere for the meaning. Link to other articles, of course, but that should be for greater detail if the reader wishes, it should have to be necessary to click on the link to be able to read the article. In addition, there is a slight tendency toward writing short, choppy sentences which inhibits reading flow. The second paragraph of the lead is an example of this. SilkTork ✔Tea time 01:20, 24 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I think you're hitting on one of my weaknesses here. I think I've fixed all the problems you've pointed out. SGA is fixed, the paragraph with the "young Joseph" is re-written, as is the 2nd paragraph of the Lead. Sealing and Stakes aren't explained explicitly, but I've put them in a context where the meaning can be guessed pretty well (...the church was divided into stakes and wards). All in all, I've made a couple short sentences longer, but I'm not very good at seeing these kinds of things. Same goes with terminology. I'll try to keep an eye out for it, but I may have to rely on others for that part. ~Adjwilley (talk) 17:24, 16 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. I actually added the CN tag myself after I copied the statement from the article on Homosexuality and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I have deleted the sentence, and will add it back if/when I find a citation for it. I've tagged it in the original article as well, but haven't deleted that yet, hoping somebody will find one. ~Adjwilley (talk) 19:03, 10 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
As for the sourcing, I'd say that the main source used is actually a 2008 book by the same author of Rough Stone called Mormonism: a very short introduction. It's part of a series on Very Short Introductions, and it seemed fairly balanced to me. It didn't avoid any controversial issues like polygmay, mountain meadows, the priesthood ban, etc.
One small side-note about the Rough Stone Rolling: As far as I understand, this book is widely acclaimed as the best biography on Joseph Smith. A close second probably goes to Fawn Brodie's work from the mid-20th century. I think it's much more likely that the article on the book is unbalanced, rather than the book itself. I've checked the edit history of the article, and let's just say that the editor who wrote most of the article has kind of a reputation...if you know what I mean. ~Adjwilley (talk) 15:54, 10 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for that. I've had a look at some cites, and it appears that cite 66 is intended to support the statement that in 1978 black males could become priests - though the footnote is talking about the origins of the policy to exclude black, rather than the date. Looking for other sources to support the date and the policy change, I found a number of scanned sources available on Google Books, which provide accessible details in context - such as [1], [2], [3] and [4]. It's not a requirement of Wikipedia or Good Articles that print sources have to be available online or even in most libraries, though using Google Books is encouraged. Though I've yet to finish checking sources, as it stands I think I'm unlikely to fail this article for lack of appropriate sourcing; I'm bringing this up just as an additional thing to think about to make the article more helpful to readers. If a fact can be easily verified by a scanned book, then go for that. The book used for cite 66 (Bushman's Short Introduction) is scanned, and the passage quoted in the footnote is here. SilkTork ✔Tea time 17:14, 10 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The date was actually on the next page. I was using the Google book myself when I made the citation, and it's often hard to tell what page you're on once you buy the book (it doesn't say where the page divisions are). I've fixed the citation now. I'll check up on trying to give links to the online Google books. That sounds like a great idea. ~Adjwilley (talk) 18:46, 10 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I haven't had time yet to put Google book links in the footnotes. ~Adjwilley (talk) 17:42, 16 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Broad coverage. I'm picking up in my background reading a fair amount of material on race issues - the sources indicated above show that. The article does deal with black people, though my query here is the manner with which it is dealt. The article has a major section Groups within Mormonism, with a definition list of such groups. What was the thinking behind organising it that way? There is a sense that the race issue is perhaps not dealt with clearly in this manner. I also felt that the section title implied religious sub-groups within Mormonism, rather than groups defined by location or ethnicity. So I looked and found Pure Church of Christ, as a sub group, and Scattering-Saints-Schism-Within-Mormonism, which indicates others. The section does have Fundamentalist Mormons, though I'm wondering if that is sufficent. I'm becoming aware of the size and complexity of the topic - we don't expect comprehensive coverage at GA level, so the way the article is organised may work, but I'd like some idea of the thinking behind it. SilkTork ✔Tea time 17:38, 10 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
As I understand it, race didn't really become a big issue until the civil rights movement in the 1960s when the LDS Church came under heavy criticism. That's why I put the policy in the Modern Times section instead of both the Modern Times and the Pioneer era. I also included the section on Black Mormons because of the history with the priesthood ban, not because they're part of a different church or anything.
I wanted the Groups section to be an overview of some of the different "kinds" of Mormons. Most of these are members of the LDS Church, the main exceptions being Fundamentalist Mormons, and Ex-Mormons. I tried to organize the section roughly by the size of these groups, but there is also a dimension of distance from "mainstream" Mormon theology (which is why ex-Mormons are last, even though their group is larger than some of the groups above them). I see most of the groups as being different sub-cultures that have kind of popped out of the fabric, in the sense that you can say stuff like "D. Michael Quinn is a cultural Mormon" or "Bruce Bastian is an LGBT Mormon," or "Tal Bachman is an ex-Mormon" or "Aaron Eckhart is an inactive Mormon."
As for the actual schisms, there are a whole bunch of them, as you can see by looking at List of sects in the Latter Day Saint movement. All the churches that split off during Joseph Smith's life are dead now. After Smith died, there were a large number of people who claimed to be his successors. Most of the "Saints" followed Brigham Young, who led them to Utah and published the practice of Polygamy. The rest of the groups bounced around until about 1850 when most of them coalesced under the leadership of Smith's son to form a reorganized church, now known as the Community of Christ. The CoC rejected the title of "Mormon", so today the term "Mormons" only applies to Brigham Young's faction (i.e. the LDS Church), and the small groups that split off of it. The vast majority of Mormon spliter groups fall under the category of "Fundamentalist" Mormons, who split in the early 1900s when the LDS Church discontinued the practice of Polygamy. Does that answer your questions? ~Adjwilley (talk) 18:46, 10 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • The history section appears to deal more with Mormonism than with the Mormon people. Could there be a slight shift in the article to deal a little more with the people and the different sects, and to allow the Mormonism article to carry more of the burden of the history of the faith itself? Some information about how Mormons as people were treated by others - as well as modern day attitudes? SilkTork ✔Tea time 17:59, 10 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Yes. I agree that it should deal more with the Mormon people. I think the Early and Pioneer sections will probably need the most work here, but I'll see what happens as I dive in this week. ~Adjwilley (talk) 21:00, 11 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • I've made a few changes to the history section, trying to orient it more around Mormons, their culture, etc.
  • I've made several changes to the Beliefs section, cutting out an entire paragraph that was talking about Ordinances. I originally wrote the paragraph because there was almost no discussion of ordinances in the Mormons or Mormonism articles. I've since added a paragraph on ordinances to the Mormonism article, so this one is probably redundant, as well as having too much detail.
  • I also found some very recent Pew Research studies on Mormons. These discuss how Mormons view themselves, and how other Americans view Mormons. I've added them to some footnotes as supporting information, but I'm trying to avoid a US-centric bias, since most of these opinion polls (including the one you provided above) are for the United States, and many of them are tied to Willard Romney. I've included a sentence about Mormons self-identifying as Christians, and other Christians (particularly white evangelical Protestants) disagreeing with this view. ~Adjwilley (talk) 00:23, 16 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Fail

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  • To meet GA criteria 1(b), which relates to specific manual of style guidelines, the article needs to comply with the advice in WP:LEAD. That is, in addition to being an introduction, the lead needs to be an adequate overview of the whole of the article. As a rough guide, each major section in the article should be represented with an appropriate summary in the lead. Also, the article should provide further details on all the things mentioned in the lead. And, the first few sentences should mention the most notable features of the article's subject - the essential facts that every reader should know. The "Second Great Awakening" is mentioned in the first sentence, but not in the main body. The history of the Mormons is merely hinted at in the lead. SilkTork ✔Tea time 01:22, 24 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I have removed Second Great Awakening from the Lead, and integrated it into the History section. I also put a bare-bones history into the 1st paragraph of the Lead, and mentioned Polygamy in the 2nd paragraph (that's one of the more important facts). Polygamy is also mentioned in the Terminology section, immediately following the Lead. ~Adjwilley (talk) 16:59, 24 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I've made a couple other changes to the Lead, and I think it better summarizes the whole article, though there are a couple places where I'm still trying to nail down a correct wording (the "tended to gather to a central geographic location" is a little too wordy for me, and I'm looking for alternatives). Overall, the Lead has been changed to reflect more of the history (which as you noted wasn't summarized very well) and less of the beliefs (I took out a bit on ordinances and authority). ~Adjwilley (talk) 16:53, 16 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

General comments

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Thanks. I've been editing Joseph Smith recently, which actually seems to suffer from citation overkill. It currently has 470 citations and counting. I'm trying not to overdo it here. The book I cite the most is Bushman's Mormonism: a very short introduction mostly because it's short and easy to cite. I know I could improve the article, the "Pioneer" and "Culture" sections particularly, if I used some more of O'Dea's The Mormons. (I will probably come back and do that when I'm finished at Joseph Smith.) I use a book by Mauss for the "Modern Times", several books for "Beginnings", and a cornucopia of sources for the "Groups" section. The worst-cited section is probably "Beliefs," but that's fairly non-controversial anyway. ~Adjwilley (talk) 18:24, 24 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I have thought a lot about it, and it used to be much worse. The current format is mostly the work of User:Hodgson-Burnett's Secret Garden who has done a lot of work on lists. Because this article gets more views than most other Mormon-themed articles, I wanted the "Groups" section to be sort of a hub linking to all the different kinds of Mormons. ~Adjwilley (talk) 18:24, 24 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Adjwilley's comment

Thank you for your thoughtful comments. This is the first article I've contributed to significantly, and I appreciate you setting me straight on a number of these things. I would appreciate it if you would give me some time to fix some of these issues before failing the article. I feel that I can fix some of these fairly quickly over the next couple days (not including the holiday). ~Adjwilley (talk) 02:37, 24 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  • Yes, you'll have time. I'm not even finished with the review yet. When I do finish if there's work to be done I always put an hold for an initial minimum of seven days. This hold will be extended as long as work is being done, or contact is being made, as the aim of the GA project is to improve articles, and as long as an article is being improved then, within reason, I prefer to hold rather than fail. A month is not unusual. Though if it stretches to more than two months then any period of inactivity can cause onlookers to leave comments of concern, and if it gets to three months, onlookers start to question the nature of the process, even if there is plenty of activity. SilkTork ✔Tea time 10:19, 24 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you. One to two weeks should be more than enough time.~Adjwilley (talk) 16:59, 24 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hold

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I'm putting on hold for seven days to allow a response to the queries I've raised. I feel this is an informative article which provides a useful overview of the Mormon people, though I have some questions about the organisation and focus. In particular I wonder if there is too much material on the faith, and not enough on the people themselves, their attitudes, and the attitudes of others toward them. These are queries rather than failings, as the criteria for a Good Article is not as strict as that for a Featured Article, and the article may be listed as a GA with still some room for development or discussion. SilkTork ✔Tea time 18:10, 10 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Refresh

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Cleaning the blackboard so we can see where we are and what still needs doing (if anything). SilkTork ✔Tea time 13:11, 25 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Tick box

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GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria

  1. Is it reasonably well written?
    A. Prose quality:
    B. MoS compliance for lead, layout, words to watch, fiction, and lists:
  2. Is it factually accurate and verifiable?
    A. References to sources:
    B. Citation of reliable sources where necessary:
    C. No original research:
  3. Is it broad in its coverage?
    A. Major aspects:
    B. Focused:
  4. Is it neutral?
    Fair representation without bias:
  5. Is it stable?
    No edit wars, etc:
  6. Does it contain images to illustrate the topic?
    A. Images are copyright tagged, and non-free images have fair use rationales:
    B. Images are provided where possible and appropriate, with suitable captions:
  7. Overall:
    Pass or Fail:

Comments

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I'm working on trimming the history section, and making it clearer at the same time. Please correct any mistakes or challenge any of my edits. SilkTork ✔Tea time 14:21, 25 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The Modern times section of the history is much more Mormon focussed than the earlier history. It is more about the Mormon people, and less about the church - though it does slip into some church material in the last paragraph. SilkTork ✔Tea time 11:36, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. The Modern Times section is one of the pieces I wrote from scratch. I will work on the Beginnings and Pioneer sections again. ~Adjwilley (talk) 06:16, 31 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I couldn't find a source, so I deleted the pejorative part altogether. If Bushman or O'Dea don't mention it, we're probably ok to leave it out. ~Adjwilley (talk) 06:16, 31 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • "The city grew rapidly as missionary converts immigrated westward from Europe and elsewhere." Not sure what this means. Can you rephrase? 11:29, 28 January 2012 (UTC)
Done. ~Adjwilley (talk) 06:16, 31 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm going through doing some copy-editing with the intention of tidying up so I can pass this on the prose criteria, however I have come upon the statements "endowment and sealing of married couples" and "divided into wards and "stakes"" which contains unexplained terms. Either these terms should be explained at the point where the reader sees them, or they should be avoided, substituting with a more common expression where appropriate. SilkTork ✔Tea time 11:33, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I've moved wards and "stakes" later in the article and revised it to read, "The church is divided by locality into congregations called wards with several wards making up a "stake"." How does that sound? ~Adjwilley (talk) 22:35, 31 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
That is clearer and more helpful. SilkTork ✔Tea time 00:30, 7 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • The more I am looking into this article the more problems I am seeing. Looking at List of sects in the Latter Day Saint movement, I note that little of that information is summarised in this article. I think that Jews is a useful article to compare with this one. It keeps focused on the Jews as a people, limits discussion of church and beliefs to a brief summary, and avoids cultural topics. Aspects of what to put in and what to leave out of an article are always going to be up for debate, and I accept the Beliefs and the Culture sections, and find them useful. I have doubts, though, about the focus of the groups section. I think that perhaps breaking it up into sects proper, and dealing with the main strands of those sects, perhaps as indicated here, separately from social or ethnic groups, might be useful. But grouping Black Mormons as distinct from Gay Mormons as distinct from Fundamentalist Mormons, as distinct from Utah Mormons, is a little unclear - and are Gay Mormons really a group? I understand that there are Mormons who may be gay, but there are also Mormons who are vegetarian, and I wonder if discussion on such matters belongs in the Beliefs section rather than the Groups section as it seems more to belong to the church as a body rather than as the Mormons as a people. SilkTork ✔Tea time 12:24, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I've moved the paragraph on LGBT Mormons into the culture section and tied it to the Law of Chastity. I moved Black Mormons to the History section (Modern Times) where the priesthood ban was already mentioned. I also moved the International Mormons to the Modern Times section. The Groups section now deals entirely with the "shades" of Mormonism, leaving out race, ethnicity, orientation, etc. ~Adjwilley (talk) 19:38, 1 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I've removed or explained the jargon terms you brought up. ~Adjwilley (talk) 19:38, 1 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Sources check out, and there is plenty of inline citation. Minor aspects like "applied pejoratively" not being cited are not significant enough for concern, and can be dealt with as part of ongoing development. SilkTork ✔Tea time 13:17, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I actually removed the "pejoratively" bit, as explained above. ~Adjwilley (talk) 19:38, 1 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Having looked at this afresh, I feel the main area of concern is the coverage and focus. The article would benefit from a slight shift in focus to concentrate on the topic, which is the Mormon people rather than the Mormon church. Sometimes this could be a matter of a simple rewording as in this. Careful editing of the History section is the first target, then a pass through the rest of the article to pick up other wordings or text which are not appropriate. Coverage concerns are mainly in the Groups section, and that would be a matter of bringing in more information about Mormon sects, and reshuffling the information about ethnicity, sexuality, etc, into the beliefs section. I don't think that a Mormon person is defined by their ethnicity or sexuality, though the Mormon church will have some rulings on such matters, and the Mormon people as a whole may have a response to that. Am I making sense here? The remaining concerns are prose and the lead. The lead will be best looked at again after the article has been tidied up, and the prose concerns are fairly minor, to do with clarity over terminology, and all other matters being OK, I would not hold up a listing just for that. I'll put this on hold for another seven days, and I hope that people can get to work and deal with the remaining issues within that time. SilkTork ✔Tea time 13:35, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Cmt - I agree the sect information could be alluded to, succinctly. As for the various "cultural" categorizations: Unlike with Jews, whose sub-ethnicities vary so widely (see Category:Jews by country), the lion's share of multi-generational Mormons have familial ties to Utah; so, such distinctions as that between Utah Mormons and non- and the like are notable and it would seem reasonable to include coverage of these terms in the article, at least IMO.--Hodgdon's secret garden (talk) 03:49, 30 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

On hold

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On hold to deal with:

  • Trimming excessive text on the Mormon church
Tried to replace stuff on church with stuff on people. ~Adjwilley (talk) 23:43, 6 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Rephrasing to ensure focus is on the Mormon people rather than the Mormon church
  • Bringing in a summary of the sects
I'm not quite sure what you're looking for here. If you count all the Mormons who are members of other sects, they will represent about 0.3% of all Mormons. Of these 0.3%, I'd estimate that 99% of them can be safely categorized as Fundamentalists (those who continued the 19th century practice of polygamy). There are lots of these little sects, ranging from quiet conservative groups to texbook cults, but trying to talk about these sects, I believe, goes beyond the scope of this article.
My opinion is that a general explanation of Fundamentalism is probably best, without trying to go into too much detail, but providing links to the Mormon Fundamentalism article. Currently Fundamentalist groups show up in the Terminology section, the end of the Pioneer era (when polygamy was discontinued and the split occurred), and the Groups section. There are also links to the two largest sects within the movement (FLDS and AUB).
Additionally, we have two "See also" links to List of sects in the Latter Day Saint movement: one in the See Also section, and one in the hatnotes at the beginning of the Groups section.
Anyway, I'm hoping you might clarify what you want here. ~Adjwilley (talk) 21:59, 31 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Could you please clarify that in the article - that sort of information is useful. SilkTork ✔Tea time 15:52, 1 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Shuffling the material in the Group section so that matters related to sexuality and ethnicity are dealt with in the belief section
Done (described above) ~Adjwilley (talk) 23:43, 6 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Clarifying some jargon terms
Clarified or deleted the ones you pointed out. ~Adjwilley (talk) 23:43, 6 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Reworking the lead after the rest of the work has been done on the article.
I haven't touched the lead yet...the content of the article didn't change that much, though the focus did. ~Adjwilley (talk) 23:43, 6 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Any queries, please give me a ping - I may not pick this up on my watchlist at the moment as its quite busy. SilkTork ✔Tea time 13:40, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Pass

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The article contains a useful and reasonably detailed guide to Mormons. The prose is clear, informative and readable. There are areas to discuss and work on, such as developing the lead, continuing to ensure the prose is easy to understand, making sure there is focus on the people rather than the church, and in dealing appropriately with sects and cultural groups; however, the article sufficiently meets the GA criteria to be listed as a Good Article. SilkTork ✔Tea time 15:22, 7 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

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