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A FairMormon Analysis of Wikipedia: Mormonism and Wikipedia/Joseph Smith, Jr./Early years A work by a collaboration of authors (Link to Wikipedia article here)
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1827 to 1830: Organizing the Church |
The name Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.. Wikipedia content is copied and made available under the GNU Free Documentation License. |
- | Wikipedia Main Article: years Joseph Smith, Jr.–Early years | Wikipedia Footnotes: Joseph Smith, Jr.–Notes | A FAIR Opinion |
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1A |
Joseph Smith, Jr. was born on December 23, 1805, in Sharon, Vermont to Joseph and Lucy Mack Smith, a poor farm family. In Joseph's early teen years, they moved to western New York—a region of intense religious activity during the Second Great Awakening—where they continued to farm just outside the town of Palmyra. Although Smith never joined a church during his youth, he did read the Bible and was also influenced by the folk religion of that time and place. |
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- | Wikipedia Main Article: Vision Joseph Smith, Jr.–First Vision | Wikipedia Footnotes: Joseph Smith, Jr.–Notes | A FAIR Opinion |
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2A |
As he later recorded the experience, Smith said that as a fourteen-year-old in 1820 he had received a theophany, an appearance of God to man, an event that Latter Day Saints commonly call the First Vision. Smith said that he had been concerned about what religious denomination to join and prayed in a nearby woods (now called the Sacred Grove). There he had a vision in which he saw God the Father and his Son, Jesus Christ, as two separate, glorious, resurrected beings of flesh and bone. They told him that no contemporary church was correct in its teachings and that he should join none of them. Smith recorded several different accounts of this experience, |
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2B |
and the version of the First Vision later canonized by the LDS Church was not publicly revealed until 1842. |
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- | Wikipedia Main Article: plates Joseph Smith, Jr.–Golden plates | Wikipedia Footnotes: Joseph Smith, Jr.–Notes | A FAIR Opinion |
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3A |
Meanwhile Smith participated in a "craze for treasure hunting." |
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3B |
Beginning as a youth in the early 1820s, Smith was paid to act as a "seer," using seer stones in mostly unsuccessful attempts to locate lost items and buried treasure. |
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3C |
Smith's contemporaries describe Smith's procedure for using seer stones to hunt for treasure as placing the stone in a white stovepipe hat, putting his face over the hat to block the light, and then "seeing" the information in the reflections of the stone. |
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3D |
His preferred stone, which some said he also used later to translate the golden plates, was chocolate-colored and about the size of an egg, found in a deep well he helped dig for one of his neighbors. |
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During this period Smith said he experienced a visitation from an angel named Moroni |
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who directed him to a long-buried book, inscribed on golden plates, which contained a record of God's dealings with ancient Israelite inhabitants of the Americas. This record, along with other artifacts (including a breastplate and what Smith referred to as the Urim and Thummim), was buried in a hill near his home. On September 22, 1827, Smith said that after four years of waiting and preparation, the angel allowed him to take possession of the plates and other artifacts. Almost immediately thereafter local people tried to discover where the plates were hidden. |
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3G |
Smith left his family farm in October 1825 and was hired by Josiah Stowel, of nearby Chenango county, to search for a Spanish silver mine by gazing at his seer stone. |
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In March 1826, as a result of his using his seer stone to search for the silver mine, Smith was charged with being a "disorderly person and an impostor" by a court in nearby Bainbridge. |
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3I |
Smith also met Emma Hale during this period and married her on January 18, 1827. Emma eventually gave birth to seven children, three of whom died shortly after birth. The Smiths also adopted twins. |
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Wikipedia references for "Joseph Smith, Jr." |
FairMormon regularly receives queries about specific LDS-themed Wikipedia articles with requests that we somehow "fix" them. Although some individual members of FAIR may choose to edit Wikipedia articles, FairMormon as an organization does not. Controversial Wikipedia articles require constant maintenance and a significant amount of time. We prefer instead to respond to claims in the FAIR Wiki rather than fight the ongoing battle that LDS Wikipedia articles sometimes invite. From FAIR’s perspective, assertions made in LDS-themed Wikipedia articles are therefore treated just like any other critical (or, if one prefers, "anti-Mormon") work. As those articles are revised and updated, we will periodically update our reviews to match.
Editors who wish to participate in editing LDS-themed Wikipedia articles can access the project page here: Wikipedia:WikiProject Latter Day Saint movement. You are not required to be LDS in order to participate—there are a number of good non-LDS editors who have made valuable contributions to these articles.
FAIR does not advocate removing any references from Wikipedia articles. The best approach to editing Wikipedia is to locate solid references to back up your position and add them rather than attempting to remove information. Individuals who intend to edit should be aware that posting information related to the real-world identities of Wikipedia editors will result in their being banned from editing Wikipedia. Attacking editors and attempting to "out" them on Wikipedia is considered very bad form. The best approach is to treat all Wikipedia editors, whether or not you agree or disagree with their approach, with respect and civility. An argumentative approach is not constructive to achieving a positive result, and will simply result in what is called an "edit war." Unfortunately, not all Wikipedia editors exhibit good faith toward other editors (see, for example, the comment above from "Duke53" or comments within these reviews made by John Foxe's sockpuppet "Hi540," both of whom repeatedly mocked LDS beliefs and LDS editors prior to their being banned.)
Although there exist editors on Wikipedia who openly declare their affiliation with the Church, they do not control Wikipedia. Ironically, some critics of the Church periodically falsely accuse Wikipedia editors of being LDS simply because they do not accept the critics' desired spin on a particular article.
Again, the answer is no. The truth is that Wikipedia is generally self-policing. Highly contentious articles do tend to draw the most passionate supporters and critics.
Although some LDS-related Wikipedia articles may appear to have a negative tone, they are in reality quite a bit more balanced than certain critical works such as One Nation Under Gods. Although many critical editors often accuse LDS-related Wikipedia articles of being "faith promoting" or claim that they are just an extension of the Sunday School manual, this is rarely the case. Few, if any, Latter-day Saints would find Wikipedia articles to be "faith promoting." Generally, the believers think that the articles are too negative and the critics believe that the articles are too positive. LDS Wikipedia articles should be informative without being overtly faith promoting. However, most of the primary sources, including the words of Joseph Smith himself, are "faith promoting." This presents a dilemma for Wikipedia editors who want to remain neutral. The unfortunate consequence is that Joseph's words are rewritten and intermixed with contradictory sources, resulting in boring and confusing prose.
We examine selected Wikipedia articles and examine them on a "claim-by-claim" basis, with links to responses in the FairMormon Answers Wiki. Wikipedia articles are constantly evolving. As a result, the analysis of each article will be updated periodically in order to bring it more into line with the current version of the article. The latest revision date may be viewed at the top of each individual section. The process by which Wikipedia articles are reviewed is the following:
The ability to quickly and easily access literature critical of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has been made significantly easier through the advent of the Internet. One of the primary sites that dominates search engine results is Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia that “anyone can edit.” Wikipedia contains a large number of articles related to Mormonism that are edited by believers, critics, and neutral parties. The reliability of information regarding the Church and its history is subject to the biases of the editors who choose to modify those articles. Even if a wiki article is thoroughly sourced, editors sometimes employ source material in a manner that supports their bias. This essay explores the dynamics behind the creation of Wikipedia articles about the Church, the role that believers and critics play in that process, and the reliability of the information produced in the resulting wiki articles.
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