Proposal to replace `denomination=mormon` with `denomination=latter-day_saint`

General talk Tagging general discussion
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41

I have forwarded your message to @tagging (there wasn’t a link in the voting message so I forwarded the RFC as well)

42

Following the two weeks required after this proposal was forwarded to the tagging mailing list, I have reopened voting over on the wiki page.

1 Like
43

With a few days left to the poll, the proposal appears to be headed for defeat. @dknelson9876, given previous discussions that indicated a desire to do something rather than the status quo, would it make sense for you to go back to the drawing board? The proposal process allows you to call off the vote early and restart it after incorporating more feedback.

In case it helps, here’s a summary of the opposing arguments against denomination=latter_day_saint, sorted roughly by frequency (some factual clarifications in footnotes):

  • Some voters really don’t like Mormons. I’m not sure there’s anything a tagging proposal can do about that.
  • Some are unfamiliar with the term “Latter-Day Saint” but have heard of Mormons.[1]
  • Some disagree with replacing several common tags with a single uncommon tag.[2]
  • Some disagree with the two-underscore compromise and seem to prefer latter-day_saint with the hyphen.
  • Some think the noun form latter_day_saints would be more appropriate than the adjectival form latter_day_saint, or they mistook the latter for a singular noun.[3]
  • Some think it fails to distinguish the LDS church from the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), an underground group that includes the same three words in its name.[4]

Based on these arguments, it’s unclear to me how many of the opposing voters could be swayed by a more convincing proposal text, how many prefer the status quo regardless of what you propose, and how many want to go a step further by replacing the existing alternatives with mormon.

  1. With respect to the on-the-ground principle, if anyone here has encountered a sign for a “Mormon” church, that example would be a valuable contribution to the discussion. ↩︎

  2. There seems to be a disagreement about what the most common tag is. Some consider denomination=mormon to represent the LDS church specifically, in which case it is by far the most common tag. Others consider it to represent Mormonism as a whole, requiring operator=The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but that combination isn’t as common as denomination=latter_day_saints or denomination=latter-day_saints. ↩︎

  3. As far as I can tell, adjectival forms are more common among generic values, such as buddhist, whereas proper nouns are more common among specific values, such as communities_of_christ. However, there are many exceptions to this pattern, such as united_methodist for the United Methodist Church. ↩︎

  4. The only FLDS temple hasn’t been tagged as denomination=mormon since 2012. For many reasons, this case is unlikely to become more common. ↩︎

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44

I’ve canceled the vote over on the wiki since it’s on track to fail, but I don’t want to stop the conversation. To all those who haven’t shared their opinion yet, please do so! In the meantime, I’m going to do some more work in a couple posts to address concerns that were brought up in voting.

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45

Syntax specifics poll: over on the voting period, several people expressed concerns about the switch to double underscores compromise not matching the church’s name. Since I don’t think either reasoning significantly outweighs the other, I’d rather like to know which variation more people prefer.

  • latter_day_saint
  • latter-day_saint
  • no opinion
0 voters
46

I’m a huge fan of simplicity, but there is precedent for hyphenated names in tags and it’s more accurate so latter-day_saints seems like the best possible tag in OSM, regardless of personal feelings about the tag or the organization. I don’t see many singular denominations in the wiki, they tend to be whatever the church name is minus “church of.” Since we map what’s on the ground, and people will see signs that say it’s a church of Latter-Day Saints – lowercase with underscores instead of spaces, it seems the most correct value is latter-day_saints.

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For what it’s worth, I came here because I’m working on a project to use church data from OSM and I was delighted to see the denomination tag. It’s a bit of a mess, however. I’m looking just at churches or places of worship in Arizona.[1] Here’s here are the denomination tags for churches with names like %Latter%:

select count(*), religion, denomination, name from churches where name like '%Latter%' group by religion, denomination, name  order by count(*) desc; 
 count | religion  |   denomination    |                               name                                
-------+-----------+-------------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------
    97 | christian | mormon            | The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
    40 |           |                   | The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
    23 | christian | latter-day_saints | The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
    13 | christian | latter_day_saints | The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
     7 |           | mormon            | The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
     4 | christian | mormon            | The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints - Seminary
     3 |           | latter_day_saints | The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
     2 | christian | mormon            | The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints Seminary
     2 | christian |                   | The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints Seminary
     2 |           | latter-day_saints | The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
     1 | christian |                   | The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
     1 |           |                   | Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints Seminary
     1 | christian | mormon            | The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints Seminary Building
     1 |           |                   | The Chruch of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
(14 rows)

(I’m going to hunt down the last entry to edit the obvious typo.)

If you’ve ever driven around the Western US, you will be familiar with the standard LDS building. Each has the same architecture and the same name on the signage. It’s hard to imagine a more standardized building so it’s odd to see the variety of denomination tags. Seems like an easy case.

When I’m importing this data, I’m standardizing on latter_day_saints.[2] I won’t use mormon because it’s not what my audience (people who have some interest in churches) will be comfortable with. It’s not necessarily offensive, but it’s out-of-date.

One thing I’m considering as I start this project is how I can give back to the community that’s created so much helpful data. An appropriate response, it seems to me, is editing the data I discover is inconsistent or incorrect. I must say I’m a bit discouraged by some of the comments that mention “whitewashing for a cult” as a reason not to change.

  1. I’m adapting the POI example and using the Arizona region file. I’m pretty excited to see how easy it is to use these tools! ↩︎

  2. I’m ambivalent about using a hyphen and using singular instead of plural. If that’s what this community decides, I can live with it. ↩︎

1 Like
48

yes, the “denomination” corner of our tagging is quite fragmented, ultimately most tags have a long tail of values, and we are trying to fix those that appear to be simple typos, but everything beyond this requires good knowledge, I think most mappers don’t mess with denomination tags because they are unsure which is the correct version, or don’t want to step on someone’s toes.

IMHO those who are knowledgeable about the question should agree whether it should be “Latter day Saints” or “Latter-day Saints” (or something else), document it, and align the other variations.

4 Likes
49

That makes a good deal of sense. I would also guess a lot of people don’t particularly care about it. :wink:

1 Like