Talk:Mormonism and history

OR/SYNTH issues with image caption

A couple of different iterations of the caption have been inserted in the last couple of days. I'm agreeing with anon208 that they all still suffer from a WP:SYNTH problem. In particular, it seems that the synthesis goes like this: A) A number of accounts describe the translation process with JS looking at the seerstones/U&T in the hat, B) an image on the LDS website has it a different way (a way that is based on a few other accounts), therefore C) the LDS Church is ignoring the accounts that mention the hat and promoting "faithful history" (the section of the article where this image appears). Beyond the OR/SYNTH issues, the conclusion that the church is ignoring those accounts is actually faulty because the accounts of using a seerstone (as opposed to the U&T) with and without the hat do appear in articles in the LDS "Ensign" magazine in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, (for example this article) and also in other publications by LDS church leaders around the same time. --FyzixFighter (talk) 00:09, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

I'll concede on the seer stones, but not on the picture of the hat. The Church has never issued a picture of Smith translating with the hat because it's, well, so weird and would be a public relations disaster. So, what can I say or cite on that subject you wouldn't consider original research/synthesis?--John Foxe (talk) 20:10, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

How about a reliable source that discusses the Church's choice of depictions of the translation process and speaks to this particular question? If no such reliable source exists, then on what/whose authority would Wikipedia be relying on to assert its significance to the topic? Also, your statement "The Church has never issued a picture of Smith translating with the hat because it's, well, so weird and would be a public relations disaster" is not only complete conjecture, but also soapboxing—it has no bearing on how the caption should be worded, so it's just a gratuitous dig at the LDS church. Given the tendency for soapboxing from any perspective to disrupt collaborative efforts, I think you need to be more circumspect in that regard. "Article talk pages should not be used by editors as platforms for their personal views on a subject." alanyst 23:06, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Let the Church publish such an image, and I'll repent in dust and ashes.--John Foxe (talk) 20:41, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

I should probably explain my revert... I've been watching this for a bit, and while this iteration definitely had better sourcing, it still had lots of problems. First, it was way too long. In my browser the image caption was poking through three sections. Also, if lengthy quotes are discouraged in the article prose, what about captions? Lastly, while Grant Palmer probably deserves some weight, this was way over the top. (As far as I know, he is not widely regarded as a NPOV source and those are the sources we should be trying to represent in the article...I wish we could just cut out the bickering between apologetics and polemics and focus on making good articles.) I think that what you're trying to write belongs in the text of the article somewhere, and merits about a sentence of weight, paraphrasing what Palmer says instead of extensively quoting him. Also, as I said in my edit summary, it would be best to agree on a wording here before making any more "Bold" edits to the article. ~Adjwilley (talk) 00:19, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

I'd be happy for you to suggest a compromise. As for Palmer, his book was peer-reviewed and has proper scholarly apparatus. On what authority can his work be excluded as POV?--John Foxe (talk) 19:56, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

I'm not saying that it must be excluded as POV, I'm just saying it's not the best source. It's out there on the fringes and it's not something that mainstream scholars cite a lot (at least positively). As for being peer-reviewed and having "proper scholarly apparatus", one could say the same thing of any number of apologetic works. But you know this already. I'd suggest something along the lines of "Grant Palmer has criticized the church of publishing images that portray the Book of Mormon translation process without the seer stone or "interpreters" that witnesses say Smith placed in his hat." As for where that would go in the article, I'm not sure. It feels like it doesn't really fit anywhere and is being shoehorned in, which is probably why you highlighted it in the image caption in the first place. ~Adjwilley (talk) 00:25, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

How about "Grant Palmer has noted that the LDS church magazine never depicted Smith looking into a hat but rather 'studying the plates much like an archaeologist or classicist might'"? That sentence is short enough to include in the caption—even the mention of Palmer might be dropped to make it shorter—but the footnote can include the references to the seven Ensign articles cited by Palmer. (Think of the picture and its caption as a "box" within the text.)

No apologetic work published by the LDS Church is peer-reviewed. If a work by a Mormon about Mormonism can be peer-reviewed by say, historians of American religion generally, even the church would urge that it be published elsewhere because of the increased credibility that the publication would gain among non-believers. Terryl Givens' work is a good example.

It really doesn't make a difference whether Palmer is someone whom scholars quote or not. No one here has argued that what Palmer says about this matter isn't true.--John Foxe (talk) 19:59, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

Re: rephrase, that could possibly work with a couple tweaks, such as substituting the word noted for said. Lemme see if I can make an edit to that effect.

Re: "No apologetic work published by the LDS Church is peer-reviewed." Perhaps, but that still doesn't invalidate my point. There are plenty of peer-reviewed apologetic works not published by the LDS Church.

RE: "It doesn't make a difference whether Palmer is someone whom scholars quote or not..", Of course it makes a difference. Look at it this way: there are millions of "true" facts out there that can be used by scholars in their works. Good scholars are the ones who choose their facts wisely, and these are the ones who are well-respected and are cited by other scholars. The partisan "scholars" who are out to push a POV or agenda choose to publish the "true" facts that support their agenda. They might get cited positively by a few other partisan scholars who agree with them, will get a few negative reviews, and will then be ignored by the good, mainstream scholarly community. So if we want to write a good, neutral encyclopedia article, which scholars should we use to determine how much weight to give to all of the available "true" facts we have available? ~Adjwilley (talk) 20:32, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

My point is that Palmer is stating what we agree to be true. No one's argued that Palmer is wrong, that Ensign did indeed publish an image of Joseph Smith looking in a hat. Palmer's just a convenient secondary source for citing the obvious—which I can't do on my own because it's considered OR/SYNTH here at Wikipedia.--John Foxe (talk) 22:33, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

I still think that none of that should be added to the description of this illustration. Images (and the descriptions of them) are not used here on WP for directly making a point; instead they are used for further illustrating information that is already described in the text, especially when it which can't be adequately described exclusively only in text — the point is that images are complementary to the text in the article body, and image descriptions are not a viable battleground. If John Foxe wants to describe what he sees as an issue with the artistic depictions of how JSJr dictated the text of the Book of Mormon, fine, lets write a balanced wp:NPOV paragraph or two with multiple wp:RS that describes this, but that still would not mean we need to change the image description. -- 208.81.184.4 (talk) 21:31, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

On what authority can't illustrations be used here to make a point? Textbooks are filled with such things, and they're very effective at grabbing the attention of students. Why not here?--John Foxe (talk) 22:33, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

It is a general Wikipedia norm that images need to be directly relevant to the article, and captions shouldn't be presenting new information that's not already in the text. (I was ignoring that when I made my edit, for the sake of compromise.) As for using illustrations to make a Point, I dunno...I keep getting the nagging feeling that there is some sort of soapboxing at the heart of all this, and language like that doesn't help. ~Adjwilley (talk) 00:09, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

@John Foxe: Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a textbook: one very important difference is that textbooks by their very nature contain wp:OR/wp:SYNTH. The basic "criteria for a good caption", from wp:Manual of Style/Captions: "1. clearly identifies the subject of the picture, without detailing the obvious. 2. is succinct. 3. establishes the picture's relevance to the article. 4. provides context for the picture. 5. draws the reader into the article". From wp:Manual of Style/Accessibility#Images "2. Images should contain a caption, either using the built in image syntax or a secondary line of text. The caption should concisely describe the meaning of the image, the essential information it is trying to convey. ... 5. Images should be inside the section they belong to (after the heading and after any links to other articles), and not in the heading nor at the end of the previous section, otherwise screen readers would read the image (and its textual alternative) in a different section; as they would appear to viewers of the mobile site." The purpose of captions are to succinctly describe what is depicted by images, and the purpose of images are to illustrate article text: leave the apoligetics & polemics to the article text itself. -- 208.81.184.4 (talk) 00:14, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

A short addition to the caption would do everything mandated in the MoS, especially "establish the picture's relevance to the article" and "draw the reader into the article." No soapboxing going on at all. We're all agreed that the LDS Church has never portrayed Joseph Smith translating the BoM while looking into his hat despite what Givens and Bushman say.--John Foxe (talk) 21:47, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

I don't think the question has been whether Smith ever looked into his hat, although it's not out of the question that he tried to study them without the hat, particularly near the beginning of the translation process. I'm a bit confused, by the way, by the reference to Givens and Bushman. There's a good article on the subject that I had occasion to read recently, and I think you'd find it interesting. [1] That article seems to indicate that 19th century newspapers usually took the Martin Harris route (spectacles and curtain, not stone in hat) influencing people's perceptions on the matter, and that most people saw it that way until the 1980s. Anyway, if you feel like reading I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts on the article. ~Adjwilley (talk) 04:23, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

That's a fine apologetic article that I think can be cited as a source for the addition to the caption that I've suggested: "One thing seems certain based upon witness accounts—during the period of the translation process after the loss of the 116 pages, Joseph sat in [Page 148] the open, without a curtain, dictating to his scribe while looking into his hat."

As you say, it's not out of the question that Smith used a different translation method when he was behind the curtain dictating to Martin Harris; but none of the dictation taken by Harris became part of the Book of Mormon anyway.--John Foxe (talk) 17:50, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Again, the question is not whether Smith looked into his hat, nor is it whether the pictures in Ensign portrayed that. The question is whether it is important and relevant enough to this article to highlight it in the image caption. Did church members actively try to rewrite history in this instance, or were they influenced by the majority of newspapers reporting that Smith used "spectacles"? Do sources agree on this point? (Nicholson argues the latter, Palmer the former, presumably...I don't have access to the full text.) Does the "translation" method even matter at all? (Nicholson says no, and I can't see why it would matter to a skeptical source, since from an unbeliever's perspective whether Smith used a stone, hat, glasses, or nothing, it's still fabrication instead of translation.) If it doesn't matter to anybody, why the big push to highlight it here? ~Adjwilley (talk) 23:16, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

The way the LDS Church has tried to ignore the hat is a remarkable illustration of a previous paragraph in the article:

Historian D. Michael Quinn, later excommunicated from the LDS Church, noted that traditional "Mormon apologists discuss such 'sensitive evidence' only when this evidence is so well known that ignoring it is almost impossible." In an oft-quoted speech to Church educators in 1981, Apostle Boyd Packer warned them from the temptation "to tell everything, whether it is worthy or faith-promoting or not....In an effort to be objective, impartial, and scholarly, a writer or a teacher may unwittingly be giving equal time to the adversary....Do not spread disease germs!"

Here's a case in which anti-Mormons, non-Mormons, Mormon scholars, Mormon apologists, and every other knowledgeable person is agreed: Joseph Smith buried his face in his hat while translating the Book of Mormon. Yet the Church chooses to portray the event otherwise. The difference in presentation is an excellent example of what "faithful history" can mean in practice.--John Foxe (talk) 20:54, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

Then write a paragraph or two that is neither wp:OR nor wp:SYNTH, which describe this specific example of "faithful history" that you want to highlight and put that in the text of that section. That's where such text belongs; you can't "draw someone into the article" with an image where there is no clearly related text in the section where the image is placed. -- 208.81.184.4 (talk) 16:57, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

Why not? Can you provide a Wikipedia rule that prohibits it?--John Foxe (talk) 19:02, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

It's a Wikipedia norm, and it's common sense. Image captions, like the Lead section, should reflect what's in the article. Sorry I've been slow to respond here, I've got a lot going on in real life, and I felt this conversation was distracting me from more important things. Speaking of importance, you still haven't answered my question about why this is important, and I've asked it twice. To me this image caption issue is roughly on the level of trying to use the caption for an image of Yankee Doodle to criticize A.M. Willard for having portrayed Doodle without a hat, when everyone knows he had a hat and even stuck a feather in it. The problem is, you are right about the hat, but you are wrong about the article. Simply restating your case over and over in different ways isn't going to make you right about the article. Until you can demonstrate that this is important (i.e. Notable), relevant, and generally representative of the sources, there's probably not a lot you can do with this, although as 208 suggested, framing a non-OR/synth paragraph to go into the section is probably your best bet. I realize this is something you feel strongly about, and I've been trying to help you find a compromise, but I feel like things are going in circles again, and I don't have the time for that. ~Adjwilley (talk) 20:05, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

Could someone provide a Wikipedia rule that says the image captions have to explicitly illustrate what's already in the article? If there's no such rule, then we could take this disagreement to an appropriate dispute resolution forum.

Sorry that I've been unclear about the purpose of my proposed addition. I want to add a phrase to the picture caption stating that the LDS Church magazine Ensign has never portrayed Joseph Smith translating the Book of Mormon while staring into his hat because that fact so well reflects the subject of the article: the ambivalent relationship between Mormonism and history.--John Foxe (talk) 20:37, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

Since when does wp:Wikilawyering matter to you? Does "Frankly, Les, every time you start citing Wikipedia rules, I tune them out as Mormon smokescreen..." ring any bells? (Here's a refresher in case it slipped your mind.) -- 208.81.184.4 (talk) 17:58, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

Sorry for the cheep shot; it's obvious that I've become more than a little frustrated with this situation, and I should probably withdraw from further comment on this topic for awhile. -- 208.81.184.4 (talk) 18:16, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

If there's no rule that image captions have to illustrate what's already in the article, could someone else compose a short compromise phrase to be added to the caption indicating that the Ensign has never portrayed Joseph Smith translating the Book of Mormon while staring into his hat? We all agree it's true, and I think that course would be preferable to dragging the question through dispute resolution.--John Foxe (talk) 20:35, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

Why don't you try asking the question at WP:Village pump (policy)? That's not dispute resolution, and there are plenty of voices there who could probably answer the question for you. I expect the answer will be something along the lines of what I said: that there's no specific rule, but it's a general Wikipedia norm that image captions should reflect the article text. It's worth a shot, no?. (Replying to your comment earlier, I already understood what you want to do, I'm just not clear on why it's important, notable, relevant, representative of the sources, etc.) ~Adjwilley (talk) 05:20, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

I sincerely appreciate that thought, but I know the answer to the question as you've framed it without asking. The question "Do image captions generally reflect the article text?" is like asking a nisi prius judge, "Are most people indicted for crimes guilty as charged?" In both cases, it's easy to reply, "Certainly." And we would not want it any other way. The real question here is "Is it possible to include in a caption of an image a phrase not otherwise mentioned in the text?" (Or, to return to the legal parallel, "Is it possible that someone indicted for a crime might be innocent?")

The reason the additional information in that caption is important, notable, and relevant is that it visually demonstrates the ambivalent relationship between Mormonism and history, which after all, is the emphasis of the article. (Of course, it would be better to compare both images: the historically incorrect picture of Joseph Smith studying the plates like a scholar and the religiously incorrect one of him staring into his hat.)--John Foxe (talk) 19:03, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

(not so) arbitrary break

Because there's been a very extensive Talk discussion about the caption, I wanted to post this first before making the edit. I think the edit I'm proposing runs along a bit of a different track than what's been said above, though, since I'm not proposing removing the image or caption, but rather adjusting it to be clearer to readers and more in line with the totality of what can be verified.

Joseph Smith's use of seer stones in translation has been discussed openly in official church publications as early as 1974, in this Friend article, a publication meant for children. The seer stone being specifically placed in a hat appears in Ensign articles from 1977 and1993. I am not sure it is accurate to broadly say "The LDS Church magazine Ensign instead depicts Smith 'studying the plates much like an archaeologist or classicist.'" "Depict" isn't clearly describing art (written narratives are a "depiction" of things), and a reader might get the impression from the text that the quote comes from an Ensign article, and would only realize otherwise by specifically checking the footnote. (Though even that doesn't completely clear up the confusion, as I am still wondering if the quote might be from an Ensign article cited in Insider's View, or if it's quoting Palmer himself from Insider's View.)

This is not to discount the church's divergent artistic portrayals, which were probably much better known than the articles were. (Perhaps what's most curious is that only one, from a church-produced children's picture book I think, actually includes the Urim and Thummim, which was central to the long-standing, sans-stone, traditional church narrative, but I digress.) But I do still think the caption could be worded better, as it makes it sound like Ensign has always, continues to always, and in the immediate present always depicts the translation process without the seer stone and hat. As above discussed, that can be verified as not being the case. I think the more accurate and better point to make is to focus on how and specify that the seer stone and hat are absent from official church-produced art from before the early-twenty-first century.* And that is a claim which can definitely be verified as being the case.

I propose this revised caption (change italicized):

"An independently created 21st-century representation, based on eye-witness accounts, of Joseph Smith translating the golden plates by examining seer stones in his hat. Church-produced artistic depictions of Smith's translation process did not include the stones or hat until the early-21st century.'^[23][24]"

Footnote 23 would be the same footnote that's in the article as of this writing: Palmer's An Insider's View of Mormon Origins, pages 1–2. Footnote 24 could be this video, which provides an additional and accessible corroboration of the claim and specifically attests there being no official church art including the seer stone and hat (0:00–0:22, "For a long time [this is where we can get the 'from before the early-twenty-first century' claim], church art tended to depict the translation of the Book of Mormon as Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdrey sitting around a table, sometimes with the gold plates on the table, but that's not really the best match for what we know about the translation process [this, plus the rest of the video discussing the seer stone and hat technique and its absence from official church art, is where we can get the 'did not include the stones or hat' claim]."). Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 07:26, 14 May 2021 (UTC)

I modified the caption, eliminating the Grant Palmer reference to Ensign. Looking through Google images for "Joseph Smith translating the Book of Mormon," I noted a hat in some recent LDS portrayals, but they look nothing like what we would expect to see from the testimony of eye witnesses, for instance, this very nicely drawn illustration that shows Smith with one hand on a hat and another on the covered golden plates.John Foxe (talk) 15:06, 14 May 2021 (UTC)

The new caption does eliminate the previous confusion, though it also loses the sense of direct relevance to the article. You didn't provide an objection to the proposed revision; may I ask why you preferred your modification over the revision above I proposed in my message?

For clarity on the talk page, I'd note that Robert Pack's piece is high production, but I believe it's an independent piece rather than a church-produced piece. Book of Mormon Central, the independent nonprofit, seems to have commissioned it from Pack. (When they use church-produced art, Book of Mormon Central usually references it as "via lds.org" or "via churchofjesuschrist.org.") Additionally, I'm not sure one could say Pack's art looks nothing like one would expect from witnesses, as it still aligns descriptions of the process in which Joseph Smith looks at the hat while the plates lie covered on the table (Richard Bushman, Rough Stone Rolling, 71, 578n54). Though the hand-on-the-covered-plates is not specifically attested, and while witnesses say the plates covered up were sometimes on the table, witnesses also say that in plenty of cases Smith didn't have the plates on the table at all, linen cloth or no.

The earliest church-produced visual art of Smith with the seer stones and hat are likely these five pieces, all by Anthony Sweat in 2015 (this page can serve as secondary source verification of the pieces' dates and church-production provenances), and they're also the first church-produced visual art to show the sans-plates process with Smith's face close to the hat. These appeared in the BYU Religious Studies Center book From Darkness Unto Light: Joseph Smith's Translation and Publication of the Book of Mormon.

Probably the only other church-produced visual art showing Smith with the hat (though perhaps his face isn't as close to the hat as ought to be) is the previously linked video at 2:00 (released in 2015 on the church's Media Library and in 2018 on YouTube). Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 16:44, 14 May 2021 (UTC)

Right. His face should be right in the hat, blocking the light, which is why I preferred my own edit to your proposal. LDS are now willing to include a hat in the illustration so long as the portrayal doesn't really communicate how Smith used it--to translate the (usually) non-present golden plates by staring into a darkened space.

I realize my edit no longer makes a contrast between eye-witness reports and how the translation has traditionally been portrayed by the Church, but I thought the vast number of article readers would understand the implication anyway. I'm certainly willing to add a comparison though.John Foxe (talk) 15:05, 15 May 2021 (UTC)

In these pieces produced for the church-sponsored Religious Studies Center, Joseph Smith's face indeed is portrayed as buried right in the hat to block out the light.

I'm still somewhat confused by the reticence toward the proposed edit, as the proposal seemed to do exactly what you said: "make a contrast between eye-witness reports and how the translation has traditionally been portrayed by the Church." Article readers may understand this by implication if they're familiar with the history of church artwork of the translation, but that's just one of many potential topics that would draw a reader to the Wikipedia page. I've made an edit on the page with some adjustments that I think captures the main thrust of the sources, which is that in the last 200 years, the vast majority of church-produced art depicting Smith's translation process has not accurately reflected eyewitness descriptions of the process.

Independently-made art representing Joseph Smith translating the golden plates by examining seer stones in a hat. Eyewitnesses described this as Smith's primary dictation method, but very little church-produced visual art portrays this specific process.

I specify that the art on the Wikipedia page was independently made in order to clarify that it was not church-produced. I realize it's a lot of footnotes, but given the past controversy (even if eight years old), it seems worthwhile to rigorously cite everything in the sentence. Palmer, Sweat, Taves, and Goble all confirm the absence of visual art depicting Smith's seer-stones-in-hat translation process; the other two references confirm that such visual art is non-zero but still highly limited in number. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 20:29, 15 May 2021 (UTC)

I like what you did, though I tweaked the wording some. See what you think. John Foxe (talk) 19:47, 16 May 2021 (UTC)

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