Talk:POI:The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

We might have a misunderstanding here. This is the documentation wiki for the OpenStreetMap project. The name-tag is what we use to store the name of geographical objects. An organisation is NOT a geographical object, so we will not have the name of it in a name-tag. What we do name are e.g. church buildings, if they have a name. In the US we usually get this name from the USGS Geographical Name Information System, which is the official source of geographical names in the US. --Lyx (talk) 09:11, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

Right, what I was trying to say was that this is the name to use for church buildings that are part of this church. I guess I was kind of unclear. Unfortunately, GNIS is very often wrong in this case. --Colindt (talk) 18:23, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

The name is still not the right place, this information belongs either in denomination=* or operator=*, in this content I think denomination=* is preferred. Name would be the name of the individual church, an could be name=The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints of <name of place>, though this is not very likely. --Skippern (talk) 18:49, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Okay, so here's my philosophy on this: For denomination, it seems fairly well established to use denomination=mormon (see the discussion on that page). Since the argument could be made that there are additional Mormon denominations (e.g., Community of Christ, formerly RLDS), this distinction isn't enough. If the name of the denomination is given in name=*, the confusion should be minimal since the names are so different. Church buildings should be given their own separate name only if that name is distinct and meaningful. Many Mormon church buildings do have names that are used by local congregations, but for most people, things like "Brogden Building" or "Ninth East Chapel" aren't going to be especially meaningful, particularly non-Mormons. Some buildings do have meaningful names though, mostly the Mormon temples (e.g., "Ogden Utah Temple", "Chicago Illinois Temple"). For those, put the name of the building, and the name of the church as the operator=*. When the name of a building or the congregation that meets there is known, put it as alt_name=*. You argue that this should go in loc_name=*, but then you have the problem of just what "local" means. Remember, those names would likely only be familiar to local Mormons, who might be a very small minority of the population there. Since name=* is what most will people see, it should have the value that most people will be familiar with. Something like name=The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints of <name of place> doesn't add any information; we already know it's "of <name of place>" because it's physically located there.

Something that I don't quite know what to do with are things like seminary buildings, which still fit denomination=mormon religion=christian amenity=place_of_worship (in a sense), but aren't churches. The names of those I've been mostly leaving as-is when I come across them, although adding an operator=* when I remember. --Colindt (talk) 21:55, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

The problem here is that you can't redefine the meaning and use of the tag name=* for this particular case. Some people add the tag mormon=the_church_of_jesus_christ_of_latter-day_saints (see taginfo). You must not change the name of places such as the "Brogden Building" you mentioned. Changing the name of places that are a slight variation of "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints" should be fine, however you shouldn't do it if the local community disagrees. --Jgpacker (talk) 22:13, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

I don't think it is redefining the meaning and use of name=* at all. Maybe I just don't understand what you mean by that. The Brogden Building was just one of those internally-used names that I happen to know. I don't think that name is actually referenced in the database at all (yet). I haven't seen any Mormon churches where the name is 'only' that internal name (mostly because I haven't been looking probably). --Colindt (talk) 22:26, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Ok, I think I understand now. You are not trying to use the name tag to define the place belongs to the latter-day saints church. You just want to standardize the name's exact spelling for places with this name. That's ok, but you probably shouldn't do it with a page like this (it can be confusing and most people wouldn't read it). Consider documenting this in another page, like WikiProject Latter-day Saints (already existent) or denomination=mormon. --Jgpacker (talk) 23:01, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, exactly. Searching by name directly is a lot easier than using a regex like /([Tt]he[ -])?[Cc]hurch[ -][Oo]f[ -][Jj]esus[ -][Cc]h?r?ist[ -][Oo]f[ -]([Ll]att?er[ -][Dd]ay[ -][Ss]aints?|[Ll][Dd][Ss])/. Thanks for that WikiProject link. I didn't realize that existed. I think you're right about this being the wrong page. --Colindt (talk) 23:11, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Looking at your argument, though I have little knowledge of christianity in general and mormons specifically, though my knowledge of christianity is based on Norwegian Lutheranism, you suggest that different sub denominations of Lutheran churches should be identified through name=*, resulting in most churches in Norway being named name=Statskirka, though the actual names of the churches, which you would put in alt_name=* or loc_name=* is for example name=Gjemnes Kirke. I think (remember I am not very familiar with christianity), that most people belonging to a certain denomination either have no problem going to a different sub denomination, i.e. a member of Norwegian Lutheran Statechurch would feel his or her needs met at a Lutheran Freechurch, or he/she would know that his congregation meet at a certain church building. If there is further need to distinguish between sub denominations, tags such as mormon=* is more logical, or a new tag, for example subdenomination=* is also an alternative. Remember that in most cases, the name=* are the one displayed on a map, together with a symbol, I feel that for your need you would rather see a special symbol for mormon churches on a "find your right type mormon church map", and for that denomination=mormon + mormon=The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints sounds like the right way of tagging it to me. Skippern (talk) 00:30, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, it's a little different in Mormonism, which has a strict hierarchical structure and little to (ideally) no essential variation between congregations. A Utah-Mormon likely would not be comfortable going to a Community of Christ service (and vice versa) even though they might both be seen as "Mormon" to an outsider, but they would be totally fine going to another congregation of the Utah-Mormon church. I'm totally fine with other churches having their different names on their buildings, in part because of the inter-sub-denominational fluidity that you mention which doesn't really exist in Mormonism.

I'll illustrate another problem with an example, drawn semi-randomly from the official map of LDS meetinghouses (I don't even know if this is in OSM at the moment): There is a congregation in the city of St George Utah called the "Washington Fields 14th Ward". The name, as with most Mormon congregation names, doesn't directly reference Mormonism at all. Unless, that is, you give the fully-qualified name that goes all the way up the hierarchy: the "Washington Fields 14th Ward of the St George Washington Fields Stake of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints". Clearly (at least it seems clear to me) that's too long. I would also argue that nobody, including Mormons, would care much which particular ward meets where, since they're all essentially the same. At least, not care enough that it has to be the most prominent feature of the building. There's also the problem that two other congregations, the 5th and 11th wards, meet in that building on different schedules, so congregation name isn't satisfactory. Congregations are also subject to splitting, boundary changes, and moving buildings on a fairly regular basis. More regular than buildings are created and destroyed anyway, and it's mapping buildings, not congregations, that's the whole point of this exercise anyway. Using the building name is also problematic because they're not really official or easy to find. The aforementioned official map makes no reference to it at all. In a lot of cases the only way to find it would be to see what's etched on the hymn books or painted on the underside of the chairs. It's also not very descriptive. In my experience, the building names are usually just the street that they're on.

Having said all that, different symbol is an idea that might be worth considering. At that point though you start running into weird theological debates and such (I can get into it if you want, but I'll leave it for now). A mormon=* tag is also a good idea, but if we're not using the congregation or building names anyway for reasons mentioned above, it does seem sort of redundant. subdenomination=* doesn't seem to me like it would work very well regardless of redundancy, since in some cases there's splinter groups of splinter groups of splinter groups, and as has been said previously, we're not here to map organizational hierarchies.

(I had no idea I'd end up writing multiple short essays getting into this. I guess I didn't realize how much organizational knowledge of Mormonism would be required to make sense of it.) --Colindt (talk) 05:08, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

If it is true that congregation have special names, why not allow for a congregation_name=* tag? A use of a mormon=* sub tag might also be adopted to other denominations/religions with a similar situation. As stated previously my knowledge of christianity is not very good, the same applies for any other religion. As such it must be up to people knowing more about them, i.e. people belonging to different religious groups and people studying them for various reasons, to make up a sensible way of mapping them. I am mostly throwing ball here to avoid polluting of tags. Skippern (talk) 09:43, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

The tag mormon=the_church_of_jesus_christ_of_latter-day_saints would definitely not be redundant (and it's already being used), especially if you want to be able to query this kind of mormon church across the world, since there can be cases where the name of the place in the name=* tag isn't the name of the denomination, or the name is in another language, or etc, etc. --Jgpacker (talk) 14:39, 2 November 2014 (UTC)