Talk:Criticism of Joseph Smith

This is a Summary Style article: not a place for details
This is a summary style article, so it should not contain any detailed info. All detailed info should go into the articles that this links to. If you would like to add rebutttal or apologetic information, please consider adding it into the more detailed articles: this is a Summary article, and so is not the best place to put details. If you feel that details really need to be added to this page, consider putting the details in footnote, rather than in the primary text.

New article
This article grew out of a discussion on the Talk page for Criticism of Mormonism. That article has a section "Criticism of Joseph Smith". That section is (now) rather poorly written: it only has a couple of items, and the detail is not proportional to what most notable critics say about JS. This article here is an attempt to re-write that section, with the following goals:


 * 1) Be more complete: cover all notable criticisms by notable critics
 * 2) Be more proportional:  detail in proportion to noteworthiness
 * 3) Dont be a POV fork:  Leave all detail in the primary articles that deal with the various topics (e.g. Book of Abraham or Plural Marriage
 * 4) Conform to WP:Summary Style policy.

I suggest that the existing "Criticism of JS" section in the Criticism of Mormonism be deleted and replaced with a "main" tag pointing to this article.


 * --Noleander (talk) 06:23, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

POV header
This article has Naming and WP:NPOV issues. -- Trödel 02:52, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

Lmao and it's a good thing it's there. Here we have an article on the criticism of this person and yet we have six, yup, six crappy sources in the first paragraph talking about how great this person is. Gimme a break. Npov like this is the reason why wikipedia can't be taken seriously. 71.226.33.28 (talk) 00:14, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Merger proposal
I am recommending that this page be merged with Joseph Smith. The page has obvious neutrality issues, but more importantly, it is an unacceptable WP:POV Fork. Criticism of Joseph Smith that is sourced reliably should be integrated into the article on Joseph Smith. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Adjwilley (talk • contribs) 17:03, December 21, 2011
 * I agree with the merger. Discussion of criticisms belongs in the main Joseph Smith article, to the extent it can fit there, or if not, then in one of the sub-articles. In this case, most of the content is touched upon in both the Smith article and in many of the sub-articles. So I think we can probably just delete this material. The only thing that might be non-redundant is the material about Smith/Bennett abortion allegations, which might contain some material that isn't elsewhere. That material might be moved to one of the sub-articles. CO GDEN  07:38, 7 August 2012 (UTC)
 * In general I agree, however, I have two concerns:
 * Can we keep Joseph Smith NPOV, if we add a page that "has obvious neutrality issues" to it
 * Can we keep Joseph Smith from becoming a monstrously long article?
 * If we can keep these two things from happening, then I agree with a merge.--ARTEST4ECHO (talk/contribs) 12:20, 7 August 2012 (UTC)
 * "Criticism of x" type articles should be deleted in my opinion since they tend to become attack pages which lack any balance. If reliably sourced material cannot be integrated within the main article because of text inflation then it would be much better having "Assements of x" articles which will at least tend towards balance. Well that's what I think anyway. Yt95 (talk) 11:07, 9 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Just a thought. Perhaps a better merge would be to merge it with Criticism of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints under a Subsection "Joseph Smith".  Just a thought.--ARTEST4ECHO (talk/contribs) 13:50, 9 August 2012 (UTC)
 * I think the merger should be with Joseph Smith, meaning that the redirect should point there. However, I don't foresee the need to actually add anything from this article to the Joseph Smith article. Almost everything from this article, including the important sources, is already mentioned in the Joseph Smith article or its sub-articles, and the one or two possible instances of non-redundant text can be added to sub-articles. CO GDEN  23:35, 9 August 2012 (UTC)
 * I am fine ether way. As long as we can keep Joseph Smith NPOV and prevent if from becoming a monstrously long, then I have no objections.--ARTEST4ECHO (talk/contribs) 13:18, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

OK, I merged the section on abortion allegations into a section on plural marriage in Life of Joseph Smith from 1839 to 1844, with a small change. I tucked the quotation from Sarah Pratt's husband into a footnote so that it would be a single paragraph instead of three. I agree that merging any other content into the main article would be largely redundant, so I'll just redirect the rest. ~Adjwilley (talk) 16:58, 16 August 2012 (UTC)