Book of Mormon monetary system: Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs talk 19:03, 22 December 2023 (UTC) [ reply ] Note:  This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Religion and Economics .  Owen× ☎ 19:27, 22 December 2023 (UTC) [ reply ] Delete or ok with a (see self reply) Merge to Book of Alma or Nephites .  Seems to be an OK amount of scholarship on the topic to merit a mention.  I will note that my ! vote is based on lack of notability outside of the two suggested parent topics, not WP:INDEPENDENT : "almost every single source is clearly not independent, being affiliated with or published by the Church of Latter Day Saints" is an extremely broad claim.  I don't think we can make the claim that religious scholarship is primary to the religious text, "everyone who researches the Book of Genesis is affiliated with the Catholic Church " wouldn't fly even if it was true.  A412 ( Talk • C ) 19:40, 22 December 2023 (UTC) [ reply ] Journal of Book of Mormon Studies is funded by Brigham Young University , which is funded by the LDS Church.  Books published by Deseret Book Company : owned by LDS Church.  Herald House : owned by the RLDS Church.  If some article on Catholic doctrine was sourced solely to Jesuit journals, I'd say your point of comparison would make sense, but this isn't a situation where "they're talking about a Mormon topic and thus Mormon scholarship cannot be independent," it's that almost all the Mormon scholarship is directly connected to the Church .  Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs talk 20:12, 22 December 2023 (UTC) [ reply ] The LDS and RLDS are different churches.  A better comparison would be if an article on Catholic doctrine in the 14th century had writers from both the Catholic Church and the Methodists, or if an article on the Koran was written by organizations based in both the Sunni and Shia sects.  Naraht ( talk ) 20:23, 22 December 2023 (UTC) [ reply ] But both are part of the Latter Day Saints movement , so they both have the same independence issues.  They don't counter each other out, they have the same issue.  Horse Eye's Back ( talk ) 21:36, 22 December 2023 (UTC) [ reply ] I think the independence argument has been explained very well by User:P-Makoto , so I'll repeat my notability/sigcov argument.  Nobody is discussing this when they're not discussing the Book of Alma , the Nephites , or how it integrates with one of the above (how it helps explain the narrative of the former, or the setting of the latter).  Also updating to a merge vote, coverage in that vein appears fairly substantial.  A412 ( Talk • C ) 01:01, 23 December 2023 (UTC) [ reply ] Comment David Fuchs Referring to the Book of Mormon as writing about fiction is *not* going to help with a rational discussion.  Naraht ( talk ) 20:03, 22 December 2023 (UTC) [ reply ] @ Naraht : if the book of Mormon isn't historically rational then isn't the world it describes a fictional one?  It doesn't describe the real world, it describes a religious fantasy world.  Horse Eye's Back ( talk ) 21:33, 22 December 2023 (UTC) [ reply ] There are some independent sources, I'm not sure that any of them contain significant coverage of the topic at hand though...  I would lead towards a merge with Book of Mormon or the pages suggested by A412.  Horse Eye's Back ( talk ) 21:29, 22 December 2023 (UTC) [ reply ] Merge a watered down version of this into Book of Alma as suggested by @ A412 .  @ David Fuchs misses that MOS:WAF specifically says “exemptions might apply to other special forms of literature in which the fiction/non-fiction categorization is disputed, such as the possibly historical elements of religious scripture” as religious texts are generally sorted with non-fiction in settings such as libraries, etc.  That said, WP:INDISCRIMINATE makes me lean toward viewing this article as being overly detailed for the purposes of Wikipedia and that a summary description could be included with context in Book of Alma .  DJ Cane ( talk ) 21:30, 22 December 2023 (UTC) [ reply ] There are no "possibly historical elements" in Mormon scripture...  Its not like Jewish, Hindu, or Christian scripture, none of it has been substantiated by historians.  Horse Eye's Back ( talk ) 21:38, 22 December 2023 (UTC) [ reply ] I see you’re pretty set on making your view on that point obvious in this discussion but it is not relevant to whether or not this article should be deleted, merged, or kept.  DJ Cane ( talk ) 22:00, 22 December 2023 (UTC) [ reply ] Look, fiction and myth are different.  Fiction aims to entertain, myth aims to explain religious truths.  There are good and bad fiction and good and bad myth, and of course everyone has their own set of preferred religious myth in line with their belief system... yes, even atheists.  But nominating myth as fiction, even if pretty much every non-Mormon agrees that the myths related in the book of Mormon are indeed fiction, is rude.  Myths that have RS coverage get articles, without reference to the truth or provability of those myths.  Jclemens ( talk ) 22:57, 22 December 2023 (UTC) [ reply ] So you're saying that what applies to a fictional world doesn't apply to a mythical world?  I was under the impression that mythical was a type of fictional.  What does that mean for something like Krapopolis ?  Horse Eye's Back ( talk ) 23:18, 22 December 2023 (UTC) [ reply ] The only reason that is reasonable to also consider Mormon scriptures as fiction as opposed to only myth is that we can identify elements as so transparently self-serving (D&C 132 :51-56, for example) that most reliable sources find it objectively unreasonable to believe that Joseph Smith believed what he wrote: he wrote fiction as myth for personal gain...  But that's not how we treat myth here.  Jclemens ( talk ) 07:12, 24 December 2023 (UTC) [ reply ] And what specifically is the difference between treating them as fiction vs as myth?  I don't find any difference that applies to this context in either policy or guideline...  The sentence "X that have RS coverage get articles" is the exact same no matter whether you put fiction or myth in the X and the whole point is that this mythical figure does not have significant independent coverage.  Horse Eye's Back ( talk ) 14:58, 24 December 2023 (UTC) [ reply ] If you think it makes no difference, why did you bring up the book being a fictional one that is not like Jewish, Hindu, or Christian scripture in the first place?  P-Makoto (she/her) ( talk ) 17:23, 24 December 2023 (UTC) [ reply ] I didn't bring it up, I responded to the editor who did.  I think you're also misquoting me.. .  Its the world which the book described which I described as a fictional one , not the book.  The difference between the Book of Mormon and those scriptures is that those scriptures contain possibly historical elements, the Book of Mormon does not.  Horse Eye's Back ( talk ) 18:04, 24 December 2023 (UTC) [ reply ] Keep .  Description and analysis of the topic in multiple secondary sources demonstrates its sufficient notability, and it is a topic sufficiently discrete from suggested merges like Nephites and book of Alma; The Shire is a separate page from Hobbits and Fellowship of the Ring , for example.  Additionally, I would posit that social or institutional affiliation with Latter Day Saint denominations is not itself a failure of independence from, specifically, the topic of the Book of Mormon monetary system.  As user A412 points out, "I don't think we can make the claim that religious scholarship is primary to the religious text".  There was a conversation about this at WikiProject Christianity where the advice given was that using sources that expressly support the view that the Book of Mormon is a historically accurate account is acceptable—Wikipedia relies on similar sources for its coverage of Catholicism, Hinduism, and many other major world religions.  Wikipedia itself does not put in its own voice claims that aren't NPOV, but as the Oxford University Press-published book Understanding the Book of Mormon (pp. 23–26) explains, speculation about a setting's mechanics has a long history in the literary analysis of fiction, and that can be as true for the Book of Mormon, making Nephite existence irrelevant to the analysis in the articles by Takagi and Couch.  And what is Takagi's or Couch's financial or legal relationship to, specifically, the Book of Mormon monetary system?  If their sources were being cited for something about the history of BYU, then I could understand non-independence.  But BYU's participation in Mormonism doesn't make the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies or BYU Studies non-independent of content in the Book of Mormon any more than, to give an example, Baylor University's participation in the Baptist tradition would make it non-independent of content in the Bible.  Baylor University Press's Peter: Disciple, Apostle, Martyr is independent of the biblical figure Peter, though Baylor University Press is not independent of Baylor University.  In a similar way, I hold that "Gold, Silver, and Grain" is independent of the Book of Mormon monetary system.  Finally, I would point out that there are cited sources from publishers without institutional affiliations.  John Christopher Thomas's A Pentecostal Reads the Book of Mormon from CPT Press is not affiliated with the LDS Church.  And the commentaries The Book of Mormon for the Least of These and Second Witness are published with publishers that, while specializing in Mormon studies, are independent of religious institutions.  To say that By Common Consent Press or Greg Kofford Books lack independence would be like saying that the University of Illinois Press, which also has a specialization in Mormon studies publications, is not independent of Book of Mormon topics.  All this is to say that whatever one concludes about the topic's notability, it is not the case that "almost every single source is clearly not independent".  Multiple sources have clear independence, as they don't have the attributes which the nominator says contests independence (institutional affiliation with a particular denomination).  To close, I think that the article requires some revision—there are some portions that lean undue and could be trimmed, and multiple uses of the past tense that should be replaced with the present tense, befitting narration of literary content and to make it clearer that Wikipedia is describing this simply as content in a book—but I think the page should be kept.  P-Makoto (she/her) ( talk ) 22:05, 22 December 2023 (UTC) [ reply ] Note:  This discussion has been included in the list of Latter Day Saints-related deletion discussions .  Spiderone (Talk to Spider) 11:26, 23 December 2023 (UTC) [ reply ] Keep per all the other keep ! votes above.  This topic is “myth”, not “fiction”.  LDS sources are inadequate to establish secular, historical accuracy but they’re fine for describing this topic in religious terms and for establishing notability.  See our many dozens of articles about people, places and events in the Hebrew Scriptures, for example.  —- A. B. ( talk • contribs • global count ) 16:52, 23 December 2023 (UTC) [ reply ] Merge .  The article is well-researched and well-written.  However, we need sources from outside the financial and ideological control of LDS churches to establish that this topic is of broad, real-world importance.  We do not get NPOV or evidence of notability when the sources of SIGCOV are exclusively from people who believe the historicity of this material, who have a vested interest in maintaining its narrative and increasing its reach, and/or who are directly financially involved with the organizations that dictate which material is acceptable within the religion.  Apologist researchers are necessarily going to approach issues between scripture vs non-LDS academic consensus (in history/archaeology/anthro etc.) very differently from those looking at the topic from a non-LDS/secular perspective.  For example, the article predictably deemphasizes the substantial anachronism surrounding the existence of Nephite coins (Lehi left Jerusalem before coins were invented, and no Nephite coins--or Nephite anything--have been found in America) and seemingly skips the whole controversy regarding the addition of the word "coins" to Alma 11 chapter summaries by the Church Authority in 1920 and the ad hoc attempt by FAIR to then reconcile mentions of "pieces" of gold and silver in the context of money as actually being references to a system of weights and measures (despite no such metal weights being discovered either).  JoelleJay ( talk ) 20:28, 23 December 2023 (UTC) [ reply ] Setting aside our disagreement about the topic's notability, I would point out that if there is thinking that the article has problems, Articles for Deletion is not for articles that need cleanup, but rather for articles that do not belong on Wikipedia.  If cleanup is what's needed, an article can be fixed.  Toward that end, I have gone ahead and revised the page.  One of the revisions took the page's existing reference to the coinage/pieces matter in passing and rendered it more explicitly.  P-Makoto (she/her) ( talk ) 22:47, 23 December 2023 (UTC) [ reply ] Keep ( edit conflict ) it can be argued that every holy book is fiction and myth.  Did Noah really collect two of every animal and put them on a boat while God flooded the earth killing every living thing?  I think the sourcing for this article meets our GNG.  A Merge to Nephites WP:ATD-M is also reasonable and would preserve the material if others think this article should not exist.  Lightburst ( talk ) 20:43, 23 December 2023 (UTC) [ reply ] Merge to Nephites or Book of Alma per JoelleJay.  ~~ AirshipJungleman29 ( talk ) 22:06, 23 December 2023 (UTC) [ reply ] Merge to Nephites and/or Book of Alma .  Both of those articles are quite short, so regardless of notability or historicity it's quite unclear why a separate article is needed for their use of currency.  But per JoelleJay this minor element of a work of fiction also does not seem to be notable.  Reywas92 Talk 16:49, 26 December 2023 (UTC) [ reply ] Delete : as non-notable WP:FICTION offshoot, as per nomination.  बिनोद थारू ( talk ) 03:17, 27 December 2023 (UTC) [ reply ] Delete or merge and if it is merged, we should only keep sources which are not restricted from disagreeing with the Book of Mormon or their church doctrine.  I think there were two or three of those in here.  Big Money Threepwood ( talk ) 03:51, 27 December 2023 (UTC) [ reply ] Comment.  Hello.  As the creator of this article I want to apologize for my portrayal of the Book of Mormon monetary system as fact.   Originally when I created the article I thought I had taken a neutral stance, but now I can see that, in fact, I did not.  I understand that people have different views on this point and I am grateful that we can discuss this.  I appreciate everyone's  participation in this discussion.  The article has great need for revision.  Thank you to P-Makoto for her extensive edits that shifted the language of the article and presented the material as strictly within the Book of Mormon narrative.  Heidi Pusey BYU ( talk ) 20:03, 28 December 2023 (UTC) [ reply ] Keep because secondary, independent coverage exists.  I am extremely hesitant to describe religious scholars as categorically non-independent, even in the context of a very hierarchical religion.  As noted above, that is inconsistent with how we treat other religions.  WhinyTheYounger ※ Talk 02:18, 29 December 2023 (UTC) [ reply ] @ WhinyTheYounger : What religions are you seeing whose treatment is inconsistent?  Its at the minimum how we treat Judaism, Evangelicalism, Catholicism, the Unification Church, and Falun Gong...  Those are the other religious areas I have significant experience in on wiki, but perhaps there actually are ones which where we treat non-independent sources as independent.  Horse Eye's Back ( talk ) 20:48, 29 December 2023 (UTC) [ reply ] I don't think we treat religious affiliation alone as indicator that a source is not independent and thus unsuitable to meet WP:N.  If that were true, then an article like Vatican Pharmacy would be suspect — except for sources 5 and 6, they all appear to be from explicitly Catholic sources.  Obviously, the Pharmacy is real, and not mythical, but what about a relatively obscure Catholic Saint for whom most or all sources are Catholic (like Alban Roe or Albert of Trapani )?  I'd not assume those sources are completely non-independent, and I'd be fine treating them as establishing notability.  (I also don't think the (non-)historicity of the Book of Mormon is relevant when it comes to determining whether a source is independent, as another commenter noted above. ) WhinyTheYounger ※ Talk 22:09, 29 December 2023 (UTC) [ reply ] Nobody has proposed that we treat religious affiliation alone as indicator that a source is not independent unless I missed something.  If you would like to challenge the notability of Vatican Pharmacy you can, but I suspect that there are suitable independent sources (notability is after all never limited to the sources in the article).  Horse Eye's Back ( talk ) 22:37, 29 December 2023 (UTC) [ reply ] Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.  Relisting comment: I'm relisting this discussion as I see no consensus yet.  I'm a little doubtful that, with opinions circling around the LDS church and not the notabiity of the article subject established by reliable sources, a consensus can be arrived at.  But still it is worth it to give this discussion a little more time.  I'm aware that it's frowned upon to use the term "LDS church"  but I don't have the time right now to track down the new established nomenclature.  Please add new comments below this notice.  Thanks, L iz Read!  Talk!  23:52, 29 December 2023 (UTC) [ reply ] @ Liz : Its Mormon Church which is now frowned upon...  LDS Church (with a big C) is the new established nomenclature.  Horse Eye's Back ( talk ) 18:36, 1 January 2024 (UTC) [ reply ] By way of aside (and noting that this is solely for clarification and doesn't strictly pertain to the deletion discussion), my understanding is that "LDS Church" is the consensus of Wikipedia's Manual of Style.  I don't know if I'd quite call it "new," as it has been around as a phrase for years, since the 1950s at least .  Wikipedia's Manual of Style does indeed discourage "Mormon Church" as an "informal appellation" and has done so since 2011 .  As far as "frowned upon" goes, the denomination itself requests the use of its full name in first mentions and "the Church of Jesus Christ" in subsequent mentions and apparently dissuades the use of "LDS" and LDS Church" . That is not, however, something Wikipedia's own Manual of Style commits to for its main article pages. As for what terminology an individual user wishes to use on discussion pages, I suppose that's up to them. P-Makoto (she/her) ( talk ) 19:12, 1 January 2024 (UTC) [ reply ] Yes by "new" I was thinking we were talking post 2011 on wiki. Thanks for the links to the official Church style guide. I doubt Church of Jesus Christ will ever get consensus for use, its so ambiguous as to be nearly useless for encyclopedic purposes. Horse Eye's Back ( talk ) 19:48, 1 January 2024 (UTC) [ reply ] Merely to clear up an inadvertent misunderstanding, I will clarify that I did not share multiple links to the official Church style guide (there would be no need to link to it more than once). I shared only one link to the Latter-day Saints' own style guide, to source its disinclination for "LDS Church". The other links were to a book published in 1953 with the phrase "L.  D. S. Church" in the title (as a primary source to demonstrate the longterm use of "LDS Church"), to a CNN news article about the denomination's 2018 announcement requesting that others refrain from the word "Mormon" (as a secondary source about that request, since that more recent happening was potentially what Liz referred to as new nomenclature), and to MOS:LDS (twice; once for the current page, once for a version from 2011). In any case, the Manual of Style's current instruction for shortened reference is "LDS Church", and that has been a consensus for some time. P-Makoto (she/her) ( talk ) 21:17, 2 January 2024 (UTC) [ reply ] Well, I appreciate the clarification. I just remember that this was a big deal in Categories about two years ago when an editor set about renaming a large number of categories because the term that was being used was seen as insulting. Maybe it isn't such a sensitive issue now. L iz Read! Talk! 02:45, 3 January 2024 (UTC) [ reply ] It's entirely possible that Latter-day Saints themselves still consider it a sensitive issue, whatever the presently documented apparent consensus. The Manual of Style consensus has, from what I understand, held, but not uncontested ( permalink ). Consensus can change, and they can stay the same; what this consensus' future is, I wouldn't claim to know. P-Makoto (she/her) ( talk ) 09:20, 3 January 2024 (UTC) [ reply ] Officially, the Church does find it insulting (A victory for Satan), in practice even among members... the issue is that the (as of 2024) preferred use in Media by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints which is to use Church of Jesus Christ as an abbreviation after the first usage more or less gets a *NOPE* from the media starting with the main non LDS controlled Newspaper in Utah, the Salt Lake Tribune . See Mormon (word) for recent history. Naraht ( talk ) 11:41, 3 January 2024 (UTC) [ reply ] Respecting the faith and its followers is important, but I think we need to keep in mind that the next President after Russel can just as easily rehabilitate "Mormon" as Russel banished it... Its not settled Church doctrine. Horse Eye's Back ( talk ) 12:00, 3 January 2024 (UTC) [ reply ] I personally make no attempt to predict what may or may not happen in the WP:FUTURE and focus on, in the present, being respectful of others in my personal use of language while adhering to Wikipedia policies on article pages. P-Makoto (she/her) ( talk ) 16:13, 4 January 2024 (UTC) [ reply ] Delete : Might agree to selective Merge as a very last resort (ATD). There is a serious notability issue of the article subject. The article is not clear that it is a work of fiction. The article creator apologized for making it appear the article was fact. The article does not approach the subject from a clear perspective which makes it appear to be non-fiction when in fact it is a tale, or by definition: "a story, especially one that might be invented or difficult to believe". Why is this important? Not everyone that reads the article will read this talk page. It doesn't matter if unintentional or willful there is currently subterfuge. The article uses the terms "narrative of the Book of Mormon" or "Book of Mormon narrative". These words are indicative of an "LDS/secular perspective" that are not "independent of the subject". Since there are no clear rules on works of fiction we must use other tests such as the GNG guidelines. This article fails to provide reliable sources that are not in some way connected to the subject. This means there is certainly no chance of the article being written from a neutral point of view . See: Wikipedia is written from a neutral point of view .  -- Otr500 ( talk ) 05:34, 2 January 2024 (UTC) [ reply ] Keep The references includes those that are in no way controlled by either the LDS or CoC (formerly RLDS). Wikipedia treats Scripture as being different from Fiction. I'm certainly not going to support deletion of the article on Noah's ark if every reference is to a Jew, Christian or Muslim. This isn't Harry Potter and "The gold ones are Galleons.  Seventeen silver Sickles to a Galleon and twenty-nine Knuts to a Sickle, it's easy enough. ". Naraht ( talk ) 15:07, 2 January 2024 (UTC) [ reply ] Merge to Nephites or Book of Alma , per all of the above reasons. Slatersteven ( talk ) 13:53, 3 January 2024 (UTC) [ reply ] Keep. The article has been extensively edited to fix fiction versus non-fiction issues, and no longer addresses the topic in a manner that lacks neutrality. Examples of such language include "within the narrative," "within the Book of Mormon," "narrative describes its setting," "people in the narrative. " I do not see anything in these examples that posit a non-neutral stance. As I see it, revisions have made it so the article presents the monetary system as existing within the Book of Mormon narrative. Additionally, most of the sources are independent from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The following sources are separate and independent from LDS publication: A Pentecostal Reads the Book of Mormon (CPT Press, which is a company that primarily publishes Pentecostal works); What Hath God Wrought and Annotated Book of Mormon (Oxford University Press, which dedicates itself to publishing scholarly works); and Early Nineteenth-century America and the Book of Mormon (Signature Books, which focuses on LDS history that is not published by the church itself--see "About Signature" . ). Heidi Pusey BYU ( talk ) 19:55, 3 January 2024 (UTC) [ reply ] @ Heidi Pusey BYU : are you aware of WP:COI and WP:PAID ? Because you appear to have voted in an AfD in which you have a massive conflict of interest as a paid editor of the LDS Church despite that being prohibited... e.g. "you should not act as a reviewer of affected article(s) at AfC, new pages patrol or elsewhere;".  Horse Eye's Back ( talk ) 20:09, 3 January 2024 (UTC) [ reply ] Heidi Pusey has a paid conflict of interest for BYU, her employer.  This is not a page about BYU.  This is a page about an aspect of the setting in the Book of Mormon.  Do employees of the U. S. federal government's Postal Service have a conflict of interest for articles involving aspects of literature written by the American founders?  They do not.  Nor does Heidi Pusey BYU have a conflict of interest for the Book of Mormon monetary system.  Even if one supposes that Heidi Pusey BYU does have a COI for this topic, what she has done is cast a vote in an Articles for Deletion discussion.  She has not reviewed or closed the discussion.  She has not acted as a reviewer at Articles for Creation (AfC).  She has not acted as a reviewer for the new pages patrol.  From what I am seeing in Wikipedia policy, Heidi Pusey BYU's vote here would not be prohibited.  In any case, she has disclosed her COI for her employer BYU, and this is not a page about a BYU topic.  Book of Mormon monetary system is not the only page Heidi Pusey BYU contributes to that you have gone out of your way to comment on.  Now you are escalating to COI aspersions.  It is difficult for this user to not be reminded of another occasion on which you began complaining about [a user] in multiple places and it is beginning to seem personal .  This pattern of behavior is becoming alarming, and I invite you to reconsider it and let the AfD vote proceed on its own.  P-Makoto (she/her) ( talk ) 01:49, 4 January 2024 (UTC) [ reply ] BYU is a non-independent arm of the LDS Church ...  This is an LDS topic.  She is currently acting as a reviewer in an AfD.  Please don't make this personal, the COI is a fact not an aspersion.  Horse Eye's Back ( talk ) 05:21, 4 January 2024 (UTC) [ reply ] It seems you are operating on a very liberal reading of WP:COI when WP:COIE further discusses the subject.  COI is more of a situation when a paid editor is editing about a company or person that could be directly impacted by coverage in Wikipedia.  An example of this would be if Elon Musk paid employees to edit pages about himself and his companies.  Student employees of the BYU library adding coverage about Latter-day Saint subjects does not meet that criteria any more than an editor in such a role at Notre Dame editing articles about Catholicism or one at the University of Texas editing articles about state government would - a declaration of such being a COI would be rediculous.  Per COIE this seems more like a Wikipedian in Residence position and their position as such is made blatantly obvious by appropriate disclaimer and by their username.  Furthermore, your zeal in confronting opinions opposing your own in this discussion is both non-constructive and alarming, and I agree with the discussion provided by @ P-Makoto that your cross-discussion comments targeting specific editors is concerning and possibly worth an outside review on its own.  DJ Cane ( talk ) 15:07, 4 January 2024 (UTC) [ reply ] The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate.  Please do not modify it.  Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review ).  No further edits should be made to this page.

Discussion outcome: no consensus