Site:Policies

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Feast upon the Word<u> aims to create an environment where members of the Church of Jesus Christ learn more about the scriptures through the process of reading about them, writing about them and editing other's writing.

In <u>Feast upon the Word's view, enforcing the policies below will facilitate this environment. If you have any questions or comments about these policies you are welcome to note them on the discussion page.

General policies

These policies are applicable to all content on Feast upon the Word.

  1. Respect other contributors. Feast upon the Word contributors may come from different countries or cultures and hold widely different views. Treating others with respect is key to collaborating effectively. Though its purpose and focus is different, Wikipedia provides a model. See that site's articles on etiquette, writers rules of engagement and civility.
  2. Don't infringe copyrights. Submitting someone else's work without their agreement to our contribution terms infringes copyrights and could lead to legal problems.
  3. Don't add offensive content.

Policies for commentary pages

The commentary pages are the primary vehicle for achieving the aim of this site.

  1. Don't write commentary that is inconsistent with being a believing member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
  2. Keep commentary centered on the text.
  3. Write commentary from a neutral position. The commentary is a single text written by us all. So, for example, don't use the first person or sign your name to your commentary. Above all, writing commentary from a neutral position means that you reflect the differing points of view among believing members of the Church fairly and sympathetically. See Wikipedia's explanation of a neutral point of view for a good discussion of how to address a variety of points of view without bias.
  4. Add only original commentary to these pages. This includes questions about the text, original exegesis of the text and lexical notes about the text. Do not place other content on these pages. For example, do not put personal experiences or quotes on these page. Note that you are free to place such relevant content on a user page or an external site and then link to it from the "relevant links" section of the content page. (See the Relevant links and User pages policies below.)
  5. Except for links to other commentary pages, no links should be placed in the questions or exegesis section of the commentary pages. Other links should only be placed in the section titled "relevant links." Note that where a specific link is directly relevant to a lexical note, you may embed the link in that section.
  6. Content regarding views inconsistent with being a believing member are off-topic. Just as this site is not a place to promote such views (see policy 1) it is also not a place to find fault with them.

Policies for relevant links

Reading the commentary pages and working to improve their content is a great way to learn about the scriptures. But the commentary pages are focused on a very specific set of content. There are other types of content which, though they do not belong on the commentary pages, can be very useful to understanding the scriptures. For example, it is very important to apply the scriptures to our own lives. But because of the nature of the commentary pages, a personal story about how a certain scripture helped someone in their life doesn't belong on them. One reason that such a story doesn't belong is that the commentary pages are meant to be edited and improved, and it doesn't really make sense for others to try to improve on your spiritiual experience.

This content should be put on either an external site or on a user page of Feast upon the Word. If you want to put this content on an external site, that's great. If you don't have access to post things on an external site, or would simply prefer putting this content on Feast upon the Word then you can do that by posting the content to a sub-page of your own user page. This is a good place to put quotations and personal experiences. (See the policies related to Feast upon the Word's user pages below.)

  1. Do not link to something unless it is directly relevant to the text.
  2. Provide a short description of what content the link will provide to the person who follows it. 1-2 sentences is a good length for this.
  3. Do not link to content that is offensive.

Policies for user pages

Though the commentary pages are the focus of this site, user pages play an important role. These pages allow users to post content which is important to the site but does not belong on the commentary pages. For help on using user pages see help:user pages.

  1. You are not only free, but also encouraged, to post some information about yourself on your personal page.
  2. Do not post more than a couple of pages of content which is unrelated to the Standard Works of the Church of Jesus Christ. As a general principle, active contributors will be given more leeway on this rule. Note: If you are simply looking for somewhere to host a home page about yourself, please go somewhere else.
  3. You are encouraged to create subpages of your own page to post information relevant to the scriptures that doesn't belong on the commentary pages. Examples of such content include personal stories relevant to the scriptures and quotations.
  4. Create sub-pages only of your own user page. Note: an exception is allowed if you are creating the sub-page to move content someone placed incorrectly on a commentary page and you are moving the content to where it belongs.
  5. In general it is not appropriate to make large changes to someone else's user pages unless you are invited to do so. There are exceptions to this rule. One reason to edit someone else pages would be to remove vandalism. Another reason would be to remove copyrighted material that clearly violates the doctrine of fair use. Another reason would be to move content someone posted to the commentary page which is relevant to the scriptures but not appropriate for the commentary pages. In this case you would move the content to a sub-page of that user and link to it from the commentary page.
  6. You are welcome to add quotes to a sub-page of your user page that you can then link to from a commentary page. Note however that quoting any source not in the public domain requires that you abide by fair use. You are responsible for making sure that quotations on your sub-pages are legitimate uses of someone else's work. Feast upon the word may remove part or all of your user pages if you do not abide within the law.

Review period

After an initial review period, it will not be possible to edit this page. Now is the time to make changes to improve policies. You may add, edit, change or delete policy through April 15, 2005. After that, at some point a formal process will be developed for determining policy. (You could help create that if you wish.) Until such a process is created Matthew Faulconer will have final say on policy matters.

Note: special thanks to Wikipedia. Many of the policies above are based in part on their policies.