Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ordinance (LDS Church)


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. Sam Walton (talk) 09:53, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

Ordinance (LDS Church)

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Ordinance (LDS Church) is a newly created article which is largely word-for-word identical to the existing article Ordinance (Latter Day Saints). Clearly, both are describing near-identical things although there are some subtle differences which the author contends are important enough to warrant a separate article, although this seems to be an undesirable WP:CFORK. To me, any differences are clearly better dealt with within the original article; in the current form it is difficult to ascertain what the differences actually are, requiring a side-by-side comparison - which will become worse in future as ongoing edits will render such comparisons near impossible. The author of the new article opposes rationalising the articles back into one and claims this is the correct way to proceed, although I and another editor dispute this. For discussion see Talk:Ordinance_(LDS_Church), Talk:Ordinance_(Latter_Day_Saints) and User talk:ARTEST4ECHO. RichardOSmith (talk) 09:02, 17 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Strongly Oppose
 * They are not word-for-word identical to each other. If you go to Compare Pages you will see that there are major differences between the two pages.  A side by side comparison is a simple matter. Here are just 4 Major examples of how that are different both wording and doctrinally (and I could list many more):
 * The "Temple ordinances" section. It covers the fact that most sects do not practice these at all, as only the original church founded by Smith, the LDS Church-derived and Cutlerite-derived denominations do these ordinance.  It also covers ordinance that only sects like Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Strangite) practice.
 * The inclusion of a 3rd Priesthood (the Patriarchal priesthood) justification for Lineal succession (Mormonism) in many sects, but wholly rejected by the LDS Church, so Ordinance (LDS Church) only list two priesthoods.
 * The non-saving ordinances includes information that some ordinance that are not practiced by the LDS Church, such as Animal sacrifice, Foot washing, The Lord's Supper and Evangelist's blessing. The (LDS Church) page doesn't include this information as they have never done these ordinances.
 * The LDS Church page has a section on ordinances that only they practiced, but have now stopped practicing.
 * This is how MOS:LDS and WP:NCLDS has defined how articles related to the Latter Day Saint movement vs the LDS Church are supposed to work. For example Sacrament (Community of Christ) vs Sacrament (LDS Church) vs Sacrament (Latter Day Saints)  and First Presidency (Latter Day Saints) vs First Presidency (Community of Christ) vs First Presidency (LDS Church) and Priesthood (Latter Day Saints) vs Priesthood (LDS Church) vs Priesthood (Community of Christ).  There are hundreds of sect that fall under the "Latter Day Saint" umbrella.  Maybe an administrators who understands how the Latter Day Saint movement is broken up, such as, can better explain this, as it seems I have failed to do so.
 * To force the LDS Church, the Community of Christ, the Church of Christ (Temple Lot), The Church of Jesus Christ (Bickertonite) and the hundreds of other sects to share the same page is both impractical it is very POVish towards those that believe the LDS Church is the only true successor to Smith. It would be like asking the "Christianity" pages to conform only to the Catholic churches beliefs.  That is why MOS:LDS and WP:NCLDS set up this method. What RichardOSmith seems to be missing is that there are major doctoral differences between the different sects, so these pages are different.
 * Another editor has not dispute the contents on the page. The only other editor has been, who seemed to me to agreed that the "Latter Day Saints" page had an inappropriate LDS Church POV, and seemed to agree that as it was written it was a (LDS Church) version instead of the (Latter Day Saints) version it should be.  I have as of yet seen Jgstokes disagree with me.  We have worked together to improve the page.  The only other person involved, besides RichardOSmith, has been Drmies, who seems to have a problem with the way I created the page not its content. (see my talk page).  I feel he doesn't yet know the facts and will address that there as I did not just Copy and Paste it as he suggests.  If you go to the histories, you will see I did a massive rewrites, using my sandbox, in a way moved the page to Ordinance (LDS Church), and modified  it to included information on other sects as should have been Ordinance (Latter Day Saints), using my sandboxes.  If anything (Latter Day Saints) is a copy of the new (LDS Church).
 * As time goes on more and more differences will come up. I have only as of yet added 5 of the major Latter Day Saint denominations to the the (Latter Day Saint) page.  I think deleting (LDS Church) will only harm things as then there were be ether a POV toward the LDS Church or a POV away from the LDS Church.  Again this is why MOS:LDS and WP:NCLDS has defined defined it to work this way.--- ARTEST4ECHO(Talk) 12:08, 17 September 2015 (UTC)


 * It is SUCH a good idea to create articles from scratch... Drmies (talk) 16:11, 17 September 2015 (UTC)
 * cmt - I know you have an issue with the way I went about creating this page, and you know I disagree. However, How the page was created is not a criteria for deletion and it doesn't change the fact that the two pages are no longer the same, have a different focus, this is how Latter Day Saint movement vs LDS Church pages are supposed to work, that trying to merge them is both impractical and LDS Church POVish, and as time goes on more and more differences will come up.--- ARTEST4ECHO(Talk) 16:23, 17 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I don't see how you can disagree with the very true statement that "it's a good idea to start articles from scratch", but I'll be glad to add "and not by copying and pasting an entire article and making some changes". Sheesh--you're going to have to accept this at some point; a "yes Drmies" will do. Note also that I didn't say we should delete this page, though yesterday I came this close to deleting it simply via A10. What is totally missing in the whiny edit summary here with its false appeal to our civility polity is a "thanks for not deleting it". You're welcome anyway. Drmies (talk) 16:34, 17 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Your welcome to think what you want, but I disagree with your assessment of the situation, and don't plan on "thanking you" any times soon. If you want to have a legitimate discussion on what you think I did wrong or if this page is the same page or not, fine, but calling me "Lazy", "Whiny", and "Distasteful", and other comments you have made seems uncivil to me, especially from an Administrator (WP:ADMINCOND) which makes it impossible for me to agree with you.
 * Again the How the page was created is not a criteria for deletion and it doesn't change the fact that the two pages are no longer the same.--- ARTEST4ECHO(Talk) 17:11, 17 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Strongly oppose I believe the argument ARTEST4ECHO has made to be sound, and I couldn't agree more. --Jgstokes (talk) 04:38, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

I have seen the way Drmies has gone after him over his strong opposition to the page. It is my belief that Drmies' opinion is based on a strong anti-LDS bias and a disregard for the relevant Wikipedia policies. I fully realize that in so saying, I make myself a target for Drmies' ire to be turned on me, and I don't care. The reasons ARTEST4ECHO set forth have gone ignored and unanswered by Drmies, who is resorting to petty personal attacks that have no basis in fact. It is my opinion that this page makes a vital distinction between ordinances as practiced by the LDS Church and ordinances as practiced by the remaining sects in the Latter Day Saint movement. Any effort to delete this page in its infancy demonstrates a limited vision and a clear anti-LDS bias, which are, simply put, totally wrong reasons to delete a page, and I am unalterably opposed to any premature attempt to delete this page, especially as made by editors who are far less than neutral on the subject. That's my two cents. --Jgstokes (talk) 04:38, 18 September 2015 (UTC)
 * @Jgstokes, you talk about petty personal attacks, yet spend most of your argument attacking Drmies, who is just doing his job as an admin. What's all this about him having "a strong anti-LDS bias and a disregard for the relevant Wikipedia policies"? Do you have any evidence of that, or is it an empty personal attack? Instead of assuming bad faith and commenting on other contributors, why don't you just make an argument based on the criteria for deletion? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Adjwilley (talk • contribs) 14:29, 18 September 2015
 * The evidence supporting my comment on this issue is on the talk page for all to see. Further, Drmies is in violation of WP policy by having another account whose focus is solely to substantiate the views expressed by Drmies. I can prove this. Go to my talk page. The last comment on there is from a Richardosmith, asking me to withdraw my comments on this page attacking him. I have never attacked a Richardosmith, on this, or any other WP page. So I knew right away that this was a duplicate account solely meant to agree with Drmies. Those are the facts of the matter. I therefore find it hard to believe anything he says, because his conduct has been far less than honest and above-board. As to my specific argument against the deletion of this page, I stated in the comment above my belief that ARTEST4ECHO's argument is sound, and the fact that I echoed it speaks volumes about what my position is. In the meantime, now you have my specific reasons for the previous comment. --Jgstokes (talk) 04:47, 19 September 2015 (UTC)
 * : your original comment consists of four sections:
 * first sentence - agreement with 's 'keep' rationale
 * next four sentences - unjustifiable personal attack aimed directly at
 * next sentence - further agreement with ARTEST4ECHO
 * the text "Any effort to delete this page in its infancy demonstrates a limited vision and a clear anti-LDS bias, which are, simply put, totally wrong reasons to delete a page, and I am unalterably opposed to any premature attempt to delete this page, especially as made by editors who are far less than neutral on the subject".
 * I note that in this last part you refer to editors in the plural, so you are aiming this at myself and possibly pre-emptively at anyone else who would dare to come along and support deletion. (If you were aiming that at Drmies as well then bear in mind that he has not made any attempt to delete this page - in fact, he declined speedy deletion.) So I repeat what I wrote on your talk page: unless you can substantiate your claims that I have "limited vision", "a clear anti-LDS bias" and am "far less than neutral on the subject", please withdraw this personal attack. To make things worse, you are now claiming that I am a sockpuppet of Drmies. Stop digging. Drmies is an administrator who could have speedily deleted this article after I nominated it, but chose not to. Why would it make sense to do that, and then have the sockpuppet account nominate the article for deletion instead? So please withdraw that accusation too. RichardOSmith (talk) 10:10, 19 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Delete or Merge per Naming conventions (Latter Day Saints): 3. Do not over-specialize: do not create articles specific to one faction of the Latter Day Saint movement if the article could be improved by treating the subject within a larger context. Make any distinctions on one of the articles. There's no reason to have such nearly duplicate articles on the exact same subject, one taking a slightly different viewpoint. Softlavender (talk) 10:43, 19 September 2015 (UTC); edited 04:31, 20 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Delete, per nom and Softlavender. (Merge any salient points back, if necessary, and next time start from scratch) -Roxy the dog™ (Resonate) 11:22, 19 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Merge per Softlavender. The guideline is pretty clear and this appears to be what it describes not to do. AlbinoFerret  13:11, 19 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom. NE Ent 14:26, 19 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Delete as a WP:POVFORK. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:00, 19 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Delete per Softlavender and WP:CFORK. As others have pointed out any particulars of note can be merged into the appropriate article. MarnetteD&#124;Talk 18:09, 19 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Delete as POVFORK. Anything that isn't can be merged as noted.  Dbrodbeck (talk) 20:58, 19 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Delete as POVFORK. Niteshift36 (talk) 04:05, 20 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Delete as an unneeded fork. A single article about the topic describing the similarities and differences among the various LDS sects is the way to go. Cullen328  Let's discuss it  04:23, 20 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Delete as POV fork. Dennis Brown - 2&cent; 17:05, 20 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Delete The arguments for deletion have already been well made. Chillum 01:42, 21 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Delete This and this show how similar the two articles are. Obvious POVFORK. BTW, it's early this year: it's snowing. --Randykitty (talk) 16:45, 22 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Delete - POV fork. Carrite (talk) 22:08, 22 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Delete, and urge SNOW closure Probable copyvio, POVFORK, and no non-LDS sources. p  b  p  18:06, 23 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom. Not sure why this hasn't been closed yet.  Onel 5969  TT me 03:16, 25 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Christianity-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 03:42, 25 September 2015 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.