I will respond to messages on this page. Please check your contributions list ("My contributions") for responses. If there is a response, your edit is no longer the "top" edit in the list.

Unlike other Wikipedians I don't archive Talk pages since old revisions are automatically archived anyway - if you want to access previous comments use the "Page history" function. But I keep a log of the removals:

• Removed all comments prior to Jan 2003. --Eloquence 04:42 Jan 1, 2003 (UTC)
• Removed all comments prior to Feb 2003. --Eloquence 10:19 Feb 3, 2003 (UTC)
• Removed all comments prior to March 2003. --Eloquence 21:19 Mar 3, 2003 (UTC)
• Removed all comments prior to April 2003. --Eloquence 08:14 25 May 2003 (UTC)
• Removed all comments up to May 31 2003. -Eloquence 19:14 31 May 2003 (UTC)
• Removed all comments up to June 21, 2003. --Eloquence 18:58 21 Jun 2003 (UTC)
• Removed all comments up to July 3, 2003. --Eloquence 21:51 3 Jul 2003 (UTC)
• Removed all comments up to July 22, 2003. --Eloquence 09:07 24 Jul 2003 (UTC)
• Removed all comments up to August 28, 2003.—Eloquence 02:11, Aug 28, 2003 (UTC)
• Removed all comments up to October 15, 2003.—Eloquence 22:39, Oct 15, 2003 (UTC)
• Removed all comments up to December 5, 2003.—Eloquence 15:17, Dec 5, 2003 (UTC)
• Removed all comments up to December 20, 2003.—Eloquence 12:42, Dec 20, 2003 (UTC)

Gahhh - some major brainfade was the cause of that. The redirect should point to earless seal, not eared seal. Fixed now. Perhaps it could use some fleshing out but I'm going to bed. Tommorow. Thanks for the heads-up! Tannin 14:13, 20 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Oops! Missed your "Work in progress" note. Sorry. Andy Mabbett 19:23, 20 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Hi Erik, the Mother Teresa discussions on the village pump were turning into nothing but a slanging match so I've refactored and moved only what was relevant to the NPOV tutorial talk page. I saw you wrote you were going to take a break from the MT article. That might be for the best as you don't want one article to cause you to burnout. Don't worry, there are plenty of others who will be keeping an eye on it. Even though their views may not exactly reflect yours, it doesn't mean the article is going to fall into complete disrepair if you leave it alone a couple of weeks. Angela. 05:03, 22 Dec 2003 (UTC)

With sections like "positive secular quotations concerning Mother Teresa", it's certainly not improving. But amusing in the way that some traffic accidents can be amusing if you ignore the tragedy. In terms of NPOV, these accidents happen all over Wikipedia, especially on articles where religion and science, faith and facts collide. But while it's noble to help the victims of these accidents, it might be time to think about improving traffic safety. And that's what I'm going to do.—Eloquence

Hello Eloquence. I have something very strange on your talk page. I can edit it, but simple display stops just after "User talk:" string, and so I don't see the text. I have tried other users talk page, and don't have the same problem. Very mysterious bug. gbog

Now text is back... Strange... May be my proxy is bad.gbog

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Where do you stand on this effort? Still interested? I have given the idea plenty of thought and perhaps can see your POV. What do you think of this idea? Is this an approriate way to think of organizing things?

• The Mormonism Controversy is an issue unto itself. Has resulted in deaths on both sides. Deserves an article with some name.
• We should have only one main Mormonism Controversy article. All other Mormonism articles should not be Controversy oriented.
• Disputes about the Book of Mormon could be organized on the Mormonism Controversy article, with pointers to various more general articles on American Archealogy, Book of Mormon Chiasmus, Solomon Spaulding, Book of Mormon Animals, etc.

That frankly seems to make the situation worse. My main criticism was that the current structure reduces the visibility of the controversies. If all of them are relegated to a single overview page, then what remains in the main articles? "All other Mormonism articles should not be Controversy oriented"? What do you mean with "controversy oriented"? I'm not asking to make them oriented toward controversy, but to include controversies in these articles (with summaries and links to detailed articles). Any page with "controversies" in the title sounds like a divergence from NPOV to me.

However, I think it will be better to discuss this issue in the abstract, that is, to develop a general policy on such matters. That would avoid the emotional component of the issue and once we have clear rules, we can apply them to all articles about controversial issues consistently. It also seems unfair to me to single out the Mormonism articles here as other articles are equally concerned. Would you be interested in participating in such a general policy discussion?—Eloquence

Good points. I don't know that I have the experience needed to discuss other articles with any knowledge, but since the resulting answer needs to be in harmony with all Wikidom, I want to lean that way. But realize that my examples will have to be from the Mormonism Controversy background.

My thoughts on this are still rather fluid, so feel free to guide me through, and I will do the best to help implement the result in the Mormonism articles.

My latest thoughts run like this (forgve my lame formatting):

Much of the Mormonism Controversy discussion tends to be quite undisciplined, with the result that any given Mormonism related page might become burdened with all kinds of extraneous information. For example, on the Book of Mormon page we ended up with discussions about the LDS Church doctrine of the Godhead. When discussions get heated (like the Mormonism Controversy), people have a hard time staying on the subject at hand. And issues tend to get mixed up (eg. LDS Church and Book of Mormon)

Amid a heated discussion, like the Book of Mormon page had turned into and the Book of Mormon Controversies is tending toward, all sorts of information ends up on a page that is better left to other pages.

Many new topics arise from controversy. Mormonism examples include

• Book of Mormon Language (Linguistics)
• Book of Mormon Archealogy
• Book of Mormon Authorship
• Book of Mormon Theology
• Book of Mormon Peoples

These new topics become serious areas of study and knowledge as serious combatants tackle them.

When I go to read about Islam, I don't want to see page after page of discussion. I want to see the distillation of the key issues with references to serious studies. Similarly, reading about Chiasmus and Smithsonian statements or The Three Witnesses on the Book of Mormon or a Book of Mormon Controversies page is too much. Distill it and refer! That way no separate Controversies page is needed.

When I go to the page on Joseph Smith, Jr., I expect to see in the very first paragraph that he is "the controversial Mormon Prophet" or "Heated controversy has attended Mormonism from the day Smith told his mother, 'I have discovered for myself that Presbyterianism is not true.'" I expect to read that he had about 33 wives. I expect an index to the key core controversies about Joseph Smith. The same for the Book of Mormon and the LDS Church. While I don't want pages on pages of discussion, I want to know what is so hot about this guy and his church.

Depending on the strength of controversy, I think the fact and strength of the controversy ought to be very prominently and early mentioned in every controversial article. Even, say, an article on Oliver Cowdery might mention the "controversial connection with the Book of Mormon". It would be very hard to overstated the heat of the Mormon Controversy, so this is a good extreme case. Somewhere in the article, maybe at the end, the salient outline of the controversy should be given with pointers to other articles.

Since Mormonism is highly controversial, we might expect an unusual number of ancillary topics. We would reduce entropy and redundancy by creating new topics where serious claims and studies have been made. We would expect many Mormonism articles to mention controversy. We would expect some key articles that are the parents of key controversies to outline their controversies in non-redundant fashion:

• Joseph Smith, Jr.-- visions, angels, reject creeds, new scripture, polygamy, temple, "theocracy"
• Book of Mormon-- too like Bible, too unlike Bible, no real world foundation, poor language, too Smithlike, too American, etc.
• LDS Church-- large, rich, authoritarian, secretive, etc.

We would have the rest of articles point to the core articles as parents. For example, under Oliver Cowdery, we might say, "Mormons look to Cowdery's testimony of the Golden Plates as a key argument in their side of the controversy about the Book of Mormon." Or under Kinderhook Plates, we might say, "Critics of Mormonism often refer to the Kinderhook Plates as an example of the susceptibility of Joseph Smith, Jr. to fraud.

Is that better? Hawstom 08:38, 27 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I agree with Hawstom's comments. I think that articles about any controversial subject, such as the Book of Mormon or Joseph Smith, Jr., should not shy away from the controversies (at least by mentioning them and citing a more in-depth article on the subject), and if there is substantial information in a given aspect of the Book of Mormon or Joseph Smith, such as "Book of Mormon Authorship", the more in-depth page should not be a generic "controversies regarding x" page, but should be a page regarding the subtopic that is controversial. Many aspects of Mormonism are controversial, but articles with the word "controversy" in their title are so vaguely-defined that anything and everything "fits there" and it becomes a usenet forum rather than an encyclopedia article. COGDEN 03:46, 30 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I probably should stop doing this manually. I do think we need a bot to search malformed stub messages though. Anyway, sorry about the spam. I didn't realize it clogged that up. ;) -- Emperorbma 12:26, 27 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Re: Man-eating lions
Wow, you're fast. OK, I'll see what I can do. -- Emperorbma 23:24, 27 Dec 2003 (UTC)

• Thanks for the editing, I thought it looked a bit E2-ish... -- Emperorbma 23:36, 27 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Yeah. Watch for those overlinks to obscure articles that will never get written ;-) —Eloquence

Hallo Erik,

Danke für Deine Ausführungen. Es ist manchmal schrecklich, wenn man reiner User verschiedenster Software ist und man daher immer einen anderen braucht, der einem was erklärt. Andererseits: Wenn es Dir gelingt, so versetze Dich einmal in einen informatikunerfahrenen Neuling, der glaubt, da sei wo ein bug, der sich dann durch verschiedene Wikipedia-Seiten klickt und schließlich bei völlig Unverständlichem landet.

Falls Du in den letzten Monaten heimlich Dein Studium (eines Deiner Studien?) beendet haben solltest, so gratuliere ich herzlich. (In diesem Zusammenhang interessiert Dich vielleicht der meines Erachtens ziemlich schräge Numerus clausus-Atikel.) Hoffe, Weihnachtsmann/Christkind haben wunschgemäß agiert.

"Achse Wien-Berlin" klingt nicht so toll, daher bloß schöne Grüße aus Wien

Kurt aka KF 00:20, 28 Dec 2003 (UTC)

You know what, you should just leave the number pages alone while their deletion is being discussed at Wikipedia:Votes for deletion. I do not think it is right to just simply jump the gun and blank them yourself. Some people think that they should stay, and if you blank the pages, you'll just sway the vote toward deletion, and that is just not fair. Denelson83 07:03, 31 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Nobody has questioned the deletion so far, it is just the method that is under discussion, and until someone proposes a practical alternative, this seems the most open way to do it. This is a major effort and some bulldozing is required to get it done.—Eloquence

As far as I can tell, it's still under discussion. You may well be right that most of the numbers over 100 have too little content to be usefull and should be deleted, but IMO while disussion is going on it's better to leave the text in the pages for folks to see while their making up their minds. Cheers, -- Infrogmation 17:13, 31 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I agree, blanking pages with non-offensive content is a bad idea Jack 17:19, 31 Dec 2003 (UTC)