Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Jgstokes (talk | contribs) at 20:00, 30 October 2021 (Undid revision 1052715595 by Mustang Marshmallow (talk). Spam comment will be referred to Misplaced Pages admins for possible disciplinary measures.). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Hello, everyone! While I welcome any discussion here about the nature of my edits or about how I can help anyone else in any way on Misplaced Pages, at the same time, within the last couple of months, several people who have posted comments for me here have not taken the time to mention the page related to the nature of the concerns they are expressing. If I can ask this of you all, I'd very much appreciate it if, going forward, anyone leaving feedback here would please specifically mention the exact page and edit about which you have come here to dialogue. And because I have always tried to live by the philosophy that we can disagree without becoming disagreeable, I'd also appreciate it if the discussions here can remain of a civil, polite, and agreeable tone. That will do more to enable me to provide the best feedback I can in response than will any other approach. I appreciate your cooperation with me on this. With that said, let the discussions continue here as needed! --Jgstokes (talk) 03:58, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

ideas about "depicting religiously sensitive material"

Hi Jgstokes, a while back I started a "guide to depicting religiously sensitive material" in my sandbox. I was inspired by my experience asking to have the image of the temple garb on the endowment page moved further down on the page. I found two or three other examples of religious material that adherents don't want photographed. I got distracted by other work and didn't really finish it. I'm trying to decide if it's worth finishing. What do you think? Rachel Helps (BYU) (talk) 19:26, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

Rachel Helps (BYU): thanks for requesting my input on this matter. I know that on the one hand, as a Church member, it does in some ways bother me to have those photos publicly displayed. As a member of the Latter Day Saint movement project, however, I also understand that fair usage has been applied to those photos. So I do think there is room either way on that spectrum, towards a scenario where the pictures could be better placed elsewhere in the article, or where the photographs themselves would be replaced or removed. If my memory serves me correctly, around a year or two ago, the Church released a new video series about temple worship, and in those videos, some new photographs related to the video content were included. As a consequence, my recommendation would be to keep working on that for the time being. If and when you feel you might want community input on it before, in conjunction with, during, and after you finish putting that together, I'd encourage you to submit that to the appropriate page, or even to the talk page of the project. That would be my recommendation to you for the time being. Hope that helps. Thanks for reaching out to request my input on this matter. --Jgstokes (talk) 04:20, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

Reverted edit

Hello, I'm rather confused as to why you reverted my changes at List of general authorities of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In my edit, I put headers in sentence case, took inappropriate external links out of the text, removed a few stray periods that didn't match the phrasing of the rest of the list, corrected a link, and did a few spelling and capitalization fixes. All of these were in line with the MOS and general Wiki standards.

How on earth was it "more correct" before I implemented these changes? Is the article better with duplicate citations, inappropriate caps, the misspelling "magzine" and "For the Strength of Youth" as a redlink due to a typo? I honestly don't understand what I'm missing here. Thank you, Jessicapierce (talk) 13:27, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for taking time to address this as I invited you to do so on the page in question. So the biggest concerns I had with your edits were that the level of change was slightly more significant than the explanations you provided had implied. Unfortunately, several articles relating to the Church have been subject to a series of unhelpful edits where the edit summary offered did not properly describe the intent and reasoning of the changes, or why they were needed.

I have no qualms in terms of believing your editing intent was good faith. Let's now look at specifics of the changes. The partial reference you removed had been complete at one point. I have not been able to check and see if the reference in question is still active. In either case, since that was an established reference, I would not have raised an issue with that edit if you had restored the original source rather than removing it. I had intended to go back and fix that myself, but haven't had a chance to do so yet. Regarding the second edit I reverted, there were a few issues I could see. There are some cases (such as the citation in question) where it is consistent with Misplaced Pages policy to utilize an external link in the midst of regular content, so your describing that as a "copy edit" seemed problematic to me. I also didn't understand the rationale behind using the lower case for "served" and "presidency". Even if "served" should be in the lower case, "Presidency" refers to the title of the group to which the leaders belong, so that is correctly capitalized, which can be verified here, here, and here, where the title of the position always shows "Presidency" in the capital case.

Aside from these specifics, as I mentioned, your edit summary seemed insufficient in terms of explaining what you were changing and why. I am not sure how long you've been editing Misplaced Pages in general or articles about the Church in particular, but I approached my response to your edit (and the resulting revert) from 1.5 decades of editing experience here, most of which has been devoted to and focused on articles about the Church. Based on your explanation that seemed incomplete, I opted to revert those changes. If you have any follow-up issues relating to my revert, please let me know. In the meantime, thanks again for addressing this issue here as invited to do so. --Jgstokes (talk) 22:02, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

Thanks very much for your reply - I never hear back from many people here, and I suspect my frustration with that made it into my initial message to you - apologies for that. I really am just trying to understand your rationale, and I appreciate you taking the time to add some context.

I think we're probably pretty much agreed on the bulk of the actual minor copy edits I did at that article, and I don't want to waste your time going over every detail, but briefly:

Caps: "Years Served" should absolutely go in sentence case ("Years served") (per MOS:HEAD; "sentence case... also applies to headers of tables"), but the "Presidency" thing brings up an interesting point. Just now I re-read up on Wiki policy on titles (which I thought I was remembering right, but there's a lot to remember). In short, as outlined here, titles are capitalized, offices aren't. One example given there is "President Nixon" vs. "Nixon was the president." It was with that rationale that I changed the capitalization there. However, I know very little about the LDS Church, and if it's their policy to always capitalize "Presidency," I would assume that would take precedence over general MOS guidelines, especially in a Church-centered article. I'm glad to defer to you on this (and ultimately it's a REALLY fine MOS point anyway).

External links: Another topic I just refreshed my memory on. I'm seeing that, as I thought, "external links normally should not be placed in the body of an article" (per this). However, that page does also say that rare exceptions can be made (though it doesn't describe any). My default is usually to remove external links from the body of an article (which I do, as a general policy, mention in the summary, but seem to have omitted this time). That particular external link looked, to me, like it would be more appropriate as a citation. I'm honestly surprised this was an issue. Can you shed any light on this, or is this just likely to be something that different editors might have a different take on? Genuinely asking.

I'm going go go back and resubmit some of the lesser changes I made at that article now, because I won't be able to sleep at night knowing "magzine" is out there. Cheers, Jessicapierce (talk) 22:33, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

I apologize for your frustration about talk page messages being ignored in most cases. Right off the bat, when I started editing on Misplaced Pages in 2006 or so, I quickly espoused and shared ideals that would direct my work here. Among those elements was "We can disagree without becoming disagreeable". It seems like some people seem inclined to take talk page messages directed to them as a personal affront or something to get offended about, and I disagree with that kind of thinking. If I can be respectful in dealing with earnest concerns, I find that I am responded to with that same courtesy. So I issue an open invitation to you: If you ever have future concerns about my edits, feel free to raise them here, and I will always do my best to respond ASAP to all earnest meswsages.

Your observations about the Misplaced Pages MOS on capitalizations are on point, as are your observations that articles about the Church might use different parameters. We are currently in the process of drafting new guidelines relating to notability about Church related subjects. If you think you might be interested in contributing to that, feel free to weigh in on the relevant pages, which are linked in the talk page for this project, where some of the issues you mentioned may be addressed. In the meantime, hopefully my explanations were helpful. Please let me know if you have any further questions, and thanks again for reaching out about this. --Jgstokes (talk) 00:16, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

I couldn't agree more re "disagreeing without being disagreeable." I work in a field that involves a fair amount of customer service, and it's daunting to see how quickly many people will snap into angry defensiveness in situations that don't call for it at all. So I appreciate balanced reasonableness more than you can know!

I will definitely keep an eye on that project's talk page. I'm always interested in learning the endless fine points of Misplaced Pages stuff, especially things like English variants and topic-specific details (such as the "President" thing) - because in essence, it's a way to show respect to certain topics and communities, through language. Which is always my own goal as well. I'm sorry to hear that some Church articles have been the target of persistent nonconstructive edits. It's not a surprise, but it's a disappointment. People will be people, I suppose, but I'm glad there are others, such as yourself, who care enough about the topic to try and keep things tidy. Cheers, Jessicapierce (talk) 02:14, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

I will plan on looking forward to your input on these issues any time you offer those. In the meantime, thanks again for dialoguing with me on this issue here. I've been in positions where interactions with other editors are nonconstructive, and where they've seemed more inclined to think the worst of me. So I am happy to recognize and express appreciation for good faith actions whenever they occur. I look forward to your additional input on Church articles whenever you'd care to provide it. Keep up the great work! --Jgstokes (talk) 05:30, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

Saturday Night Live - Reverted Edit

Hello,

I'm not sure I understood your reasoning for removing my edit on the Saturday Night Live (season 47) page. You said there wasn't a reliable source, but the exact same source that is being used on the page to back up the claim that she performed nude (Variety, footnote #9 on the page) also, in the very same quote in the very same article, verified that it was the first time in the history of the show it had ever been done, which is noteworthy. I simply added it along with the other information that came from that article about the performance. If it is dubious, then it would seem to me that all of the other claims based on that article that are still up must be as well. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Michaelsmith81 (talk • contribs) 03:35, 13 October 2021 (UTC)‎

Sorry about my delayed response, and thanks for weighing in with your question. Please remember to sign your talkpage comments with the signature symbol above (immediately following the Bold and Italic text buttons) so that any replies can be correctly addressed to you personally. As far as your inquiry about my edit in question, I was aware that the article you cited contained a summary of the episode, but somehow missed that it included the information you had added. I was therefore mistaken in my edit, and by submitting it, I unintentionally violated this policy and this policy. I reread the article after reading your message, and I can see now that I was mistaken in the action I took. Please accept my profound apologies, and thanks for taking time to point out my error on this matter. I appreciate hearing from you on this. --Jgstokes (talk) 05:48, 13 October 2021 (UTC)