Talk:Taniela B. Wakolo

Temple lighting ceremony?
I do not think that the following sentences need to be included: "In 2019 Wakolo presided over the lighting of the LDS Church temple in White Plains, Quezon City, Philippines. Other prominent attendees there included Rev. Fr. Richard Babao from the Ministry for Ecumenism and Interfaith Affairs, Archdiocese of Manila." This was a minor event and not that important in the grand scheme of ... anything, really – but especially not important in the grand scheme of this person's life/bio article. I'm not sure, but its inclusion seems to me to be an attempt to include a third-party source for the sake of including the source. I tried removing the information but was reverted by User:Johnpacklambert. My view seems to have some support from User:ChristensenMJ? Good Ol’factory (talk) 01:03, 1 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Agree with Good Ol’factory...As noted in the edit summary, particularly with context of the many articles about general authorities which have been deleted in recent years, which seems a natural driver for some of these actions, I think when good faith editors try "too hard" to establish notability, or provide any additional source(s), it actually can reduce the "strength" of any argument for notability. ChristensenMJ (talk) 16:54, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

I can't speak to the whether or not the article should be included, but I can say that the event is a big deal in Manila. Similar to the lighting ceremony in Washington, D.C., local politicians and religious leaders attend and a there's a large audience. It's considered an 'honor' to light the ceremony.Fullrabb (talk) 01:50, 7 July 2020 (UTC)FullRabb
 * I am tired of hogwash articles with one citation to the non-reliable IMDb being allowed to stand and articles I have poured my strength and soul into, dug up multiple unquestioned reliable 3rd party independent secondary sources on, and provided links to multiple full length biographical articles on the subject being deleted. This is an outrage. There are lots of articles on Catholic bishops sourced only to a directory style entry on a blog, but articles on general authorities of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, even ones who have served as area presidents of 3 areas, each of which has about as much if not more membership than most Catholic dioceses, and who have more general Church recognition than any mere Catholic bishop and in some way than even most Cardinals, get deleted. Then we have sourced instances of actual news coverage that people want to throw away because they do not understand how big of an event this is. The wanting to delete this coverage is a sign of the Amero-centricity of much of the coverage in Wikipedia. It has been a very hard battle to find adequate sources on leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in some countries, such as the Philippines, and when we do find these sources as we did with Michael J. Teh they get rejected because they do not write with the professionalism one expects from American journalists. This uneven evaluation of sources adds to structural issues that add to under representation in the project of people who are not from the US. At the same time over and over again junk articles sourced only to one short internal mention on a website of an organization that the person was a part of or awarded some minor award by over and over and over again are kept. The nominations of articles on General Authority Seventies for deletion are driven by animus. The rules keep changing and more and more and more sources are defined as not meeting an every expanding and broadening guideline of GNG, which is used against General Authority Seventies in a way that is never demand of beauty queens, footballers, other athletes or actors and actresses. There is a clear double standard and it is used to exclude most heavily articles on non-American general authorities often by people who have clearly invested in promulgating a false and misleading representation of who the members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are and what drives them. Every time we find a source that meets the rules that existed the rules are changed, and more are thrown up against us and more articles are excluded. Yet junk articles on footballers who played in one game once are retained and to even suggest that some of them should be deleted opens me to harassment and eventually to being limited to one deletion nomination a day. Yes, I am very worked up about this because my work has been denigrated, demeaned, insulted and scrutinized while others have done shoddy work and gotten away with it. For too long too many people have gotten away writing snide attacks on the efforts of Wikipedians instead of being forced to try their hand to improve the allegedly too narrow articles they mock. Maybe I am over reacting but Taniela Wakolo is one of very few non-American General Authority seventies of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints we still have an article on, and this is because we have adequate third party coverage of him in papers in Fiji and elsewhere, and this is an article that we will keep covering what he actually did as much as possible. The current policies have the stupid result that they try and force us to under utilize those sources that actually understand the culture of the people involved enough to write about them. This is somehow considered a fair approach to articles on members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and it goes to extreme lengths. Not just do people fight against the clearly indepdent of the subject full length bios in the Ensign and the Church News, some want to exclude any reference in the Deseret News, once the case was coverage in clearly non-religious context long before the person became a general authority. Some others want to exclude any reference in a work published by Deseret Book, even if it is a biography that is clearly indepdent of the subject or another work clearly indepdent, and some want to exclude any publication of BYU, including BYU Studies which is a clearly aacdemically indepdent publication that is not directly influenenced by general authorities in its publication decisions. Octaviano Tenorio and his adequate coverage in a book published by BYU studies is the galling example of that overly broad attempt to basically disallow anything at all even tangentially connected to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. These are not at all fair assessments of what is independent of the subject of the articles invollved. They also usually ignore how ludicrously low in the broad scope of things it is that every article on anyone who ever served as a member of a state legislature is considered covering a notable subject. Sorry if I went too long, but this irks me.John Pack Lambert (talk) 14:59, 7 July 2020 (UTC)
 * What exactly does this have to do with whether the temple lighting information should be included in this article?Good Ol’factory (talk) 04:43, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

In case there was any misunderstanding, or just a good-and apparently much needed-opportunity to vent regarding articles that have been deleted in recent years...I don't disagree with much of what has been said of the "reasoning" provided behind those deletions. At the same time, as noted in the earlier comment, I believe that trying "too hard" to "force" or "convince of" notability actually hurts in generating credibility more than it helps. I am sure it's a wonderful event and with three members of the area presidency, it's natural he would have his turn to have a more visible role in the lighting. It just seems too much stretching to engender notability, in the WP sense. ChristensenMJ (talk) 16:55, 10 July 2020 (UTC)