Dave's Mormon Inquiry

Facebook Content Comes and Goes, but Blog Content Lasts Forever

Which is why I continue to maintain this solo blog and periodically post new content, although I now use it primarily to archive content that I first post at other sites such as T&S and WWE. Facebook news feeds and groups are fine for social conversation, even meaningful conversation on religious topics as found in various LDS Facebook groups, but that content has a half-life of about one day. Think about that the next time you write a six-paragraph Facebook post or response. Then, if you think those six paragraphs are worth reading by you or anyone else beyond a single 24-hour period, get serious and go make a blog.

Blog Addiction

Addiction has become a central concept for the ills of society. Oddly, addiction has also become a keyword in modern LDS discourse, occupying a vaguely defined middle ground between sin (we don't approve of addictive behaviors) and illness (we want to cure them). So this morning I'm just a few pages into Hubert Drefus and Sean Dorrance Kelley's All Things Shining: Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age (Free Press, 2011) when up pops this entirely unexpected critique of blogging as an addiction.

FPR Mulls Mormon Acronyms

Faith-Promoting Rumor is generally a fairly quiet group blog populated by pseudonymous theology bloggers putting up sophisticated posts. Definitely on my A-list. Then, suddenly, this recent orgy of confessional self-categorization: one proclaims himself a TBML (True Believing Mormon Liberal); another coins for himself the moniker HASM (Hopeful Agnostic Sympathetic Mormon); and a third adopts an inverse definition by declaring that he is not one of those people who uses the seemingly derogatory term TBM (True Believing Mormon) or even associates with groups that use the term. Maybe the world really is ending on Saturday. The FPR-types would be the ones to know. The rest of the crew better self-identify before they miss their chance!

Big Orange is Back

For reasons known only to that composite persona known as "BT Editors," The Bloggernacle Times roared back to life last week. The move achieved complete tactical surprise — I used to edit the thing, and I didn't even know. This is an odd counterpoint to the recent renaissance of another classic, Mormon Stories: where MS will talk to anyone and everyone with something to say about Mormonism, the new BT hopes to set the standard for Bloggernacle navel-gazing. So I might as well dust off my dormant weekly Best of the Box series for the new BT. Coming soon to a big orange blog near you.

Here, Have a Niblet

Mormon Matters is hosting the 2009 Niblets event. Vote here. DMI was nominated in three categories (thank you, whoever you are): Best Solo Blog, Best Blog Layout/Graphics, and Best Overall Blogger. It's nice that the folks at Mormon Matters inserted links to all the candidate blogs, posts, and comments — I know that must have taken a nice chunk of someone's Sunday afternoon. So what's good or bad about the Niblets?

2009 Blog Year in Review ... and What's Ahead For 2010

I posted at Beliefnet and T&S for most of the year, so the 16 posts in my Greatest Hits 09 list (about seven clicks down the right sidebar) are from all over: ten from T&S, four from Beliefnet, and two originally posted here at DMI. [Note: I have archived most of my posts from other sites here at DMI, so all the sidebar links are to the DMI version of the post.]

Blogging the holiday

Apparently some people spent a lot of time over Thanksgiving blogging. Me, I focused on eating, shopping, and reading. Here are links and comments on a few of the posts that caught my eye as I slogged through my Google Reader queue this morning.

What's Hot

It's been a little slow here lately, but here are a few posts from around the 'nacle that are worth reading. These and others are listed on my Recommended Posts feed.

• How Maine Is Different From Prop 8 at LDS Law: "For Mormons, one of the biggest differences in the two campaigns is that the LDS Church has not taken an active role in the Maine initiative like it did in California."
• Commandments and Revelations at the RSC Blog, praising the latest JSP volume and noting several articles on the volume in the latest issue of BYU Studies.
• The Church of the Big Bang at Mormon Matters. Because astronomy is always cool.

To Link or Not to Link

I know blogrolls are kind of passé, but I still update them. I do have to cull the bloated lists from time to time, but I'm not really the cleansing type. Rather than encourage a discussion of the ethics of blogrolling, I'll just say that those who are sensitive about where they link should be cleansers, and those who think a link is just a link (often those who get cleansed) shouldn't worry about it.

Anonymity as Virtue or Vice

Online anonymity is a topic that comes up regularly. Does if facilitate public discussion of controversial issues or just allow anonymous commenters to spread rumor and innuendo with no accountability? Does real-name posting or commenting improve quality via reputation effects or lead to self-censoring? These are valid questions for all online forums, not just blogs or the Bloggernacle.

Does Blogging Make You a Better Person?

Does it further the philosophical (or ethical or religious) goal of promoting human flourishing? Have you learned anything? Or is it just a waste of time? These questions come up for discussion from time to time, most recently in light of remarks at LDS General Conference (reviewed in this Nine Moons post) suggesting blogging is a distraction from more important things (which would probably include just about anything except playing video games or watching television). Nine Moons disagrees, and suggests this defense (of blogging, not gaming): "I'm doing a great work and cannot come down."

A Few Good Posts

In case you've been distracted by election news (I think I have), here are a few good posts you might have missed.

Blogging and the Decline of Authority

At LDS & Evangelical Conversations: "Blogging: The End of Religion," summarizing discussion at the recent God Blog Conference about decentralization and the decline of media authority. The post notes that the effect also extends to religious authority. So what exactly is the effect on religion and religious authority of easily available online information relating to everything you ever wanted to know about your denomination (or anyone else's), but were afraid to ask? That seems like a huge question that gets touched on here and there but is rarely faced squarely.

Daily B'nacle Digest

The Today in the Bloggernacle feature at the Mormon Times is now providing daily highlights from Mormon weblogs. I know you scan it just to see if you are mentioned, but you are allowed to pretend you are just keeping up on the latest posts.

Comments and Mormonism

Nothing like riding shotgun on comments at a Mormon blog to learn that people either love us or hate us, and they're not shy about broadcasting their opinions on the subject. Thus in the recent "Commenters, can't live with 'em ..." post at Get Religion, the best example the author could come up with of the ubiquitous difficulty of managing comments on a busy website was the GR posts on Mormon media stories. Well, at least someone out there understands the challenges of Mormon blogging. My admiration and gratitude to the GR bloggers for their excellent coverage and discussion of Mormon stories in the media.

Arrival of the Scripted Marriage Comment

As on display at T&S here. This virus seems to start at Focus on the Family here. Blog comments are for visiting humans to express their own thoughts, not for comment bots, ad spam, or viral marketing campaigns, whether commercial or political.

BCC Featured in BYU NewsNet Story

Maybe it was just a slow news day. The last three paragraphs of today's story "Church Members Blog to Defend Church" consisted of quotes and comments about BCC. Here's what the story said:

Mormons Encouraged to Use New Media

As noted by Geoff at New Cool Thang, the Newsroom at LDS.org highlighted a recent talk by Elder Ballard encouraging graduating LDS students at BYU-Hawaii to participate in online conversations about the LDS Church. Here's the actual passage from Elder Ballard's talk:

Now, to you who are graduating today, along with the other students at this wonderful university, may I ask that you join the conversation by participating on the Internet, particularly the New Media, to share the gospel and to explain in simple and clear terms the message of the Restoration. Most of you already know that if you have access to the Internet you can start a blog in minutes and begin sharing what you know to be true.

Spotlight on the Bloggernacle

The Sunstone Symposium starts Wednesday. The most interesting talks might be by Helen Whitney, the producer of the PBS series "The Mormons," including one session recounting her experience over several years putting the documentary together, and another showing footage on a section entitled "Faith and Doubt" that did not make the final cut and was not aired. Other interesting program items:

• "Inoculating the Saints: The Pros and Cons of Proactively Teaching Church Members About Difficult Issues," featuring BCC blogger Kevin Barney and frequent commenter Blake Ostler on the panel.
• "Staying in the Church After Becoming Disaffected," with John Dehlin of Mormon Stories (and Sunstone's new Executive Director) arguing for a "middle way" in Mormonism, a judicious mixture of faith and doubt.
• "How Effectively Does the Bloggernacle Represent Mormonism?", featuring Sunstone Blog's Matt Thurston (as a stand-in for ABEV's John Fowles, who couldn't make it) as moderator and a panel of four bloggers (two from T&S and one each from BCC and FMH). [Note: the audio of this session was subsequently (and generously) provided for free at this link by Sunstone.]
• There's a paper on reparations presented by Kaimi of T&S, and I saw pretty much every blogger from the Sunstone Blog on the program somewhere.

Let's talk about that Bloggernacle topic a bit.

The Busy Bloggernacle

I was offline for five days last week -- no Internet, no email, no Yahoo. How did people live like this? Anyway, when I finally accessed my Google Reader there were 100+ posts in my "Bloggernacle" queue. Granted, 90% of it is trash, but, as writer Theodore Sturgeon once said, 90% of everything is trash. It's that other 10% that makes the world turn. So what'd I miss? What happened in the Bloggernacle this week?

Ten Years Gone By

The Wall Street Journal ran a short retrospective on blogging over the weekend, "Happy Blogiversary." It dates the roots of the word "weblog" to early postings in 1997 by this guy. One of the first real weblogs was Scripting News, authored by tech wizard Dave Winer. He also founded Userland Software in 1988, which went on to release one of the first blogging platforms, Radio Userland. I launched this weblog in 2003 as a Radio blog (which site, for no apparent reason, is still up and running).

Links to New LDS Blogs

Still on blog vacation, but I have been updating the sidebars in my few spare moments and I thought I'd post links to a few new blogs I've run across (listed in the New LDS Blogs list in sidebar 1). [Oh, and I redesigned my template too.] Here are the new blogs:

• Mormon Chronicles gathers LDS news stories and posts them, sometimes verbatim and sometimes as a summary.
• Mormon Momma blogs on "the life and times of LDS women."
• Learn By Faith is one of those slick but unattributed sites that feel like they are written by a human but carry no trace of an identity anywhere on the site. (A link to a business site by the same blogger does show two real people, though). I wonder about these depersonalized personal blogs.
• Latter-day Saints Focusing on Jesus Christ is written by an LDS Director of Interfaith Relations for Orange County (where there is plenty of interfaith to relate to). It's a nice contrast to Learn By Faith. His post about an upcoming book by Robert Millet, apparently modeled on How Wide the Divide, is interesting.

Four Five New LDS Blogs

I try and keep track of new blogs that post on Mormon topics in my New LDS Blogs list (two clicks down on the right sidebar). Here are four recent additions, along with a link to one post from each new blog. Go check them out and leave a comment or two:

• Whitney's "The Mormons": Reactions by JKC at We Might Be Windmills (using Blogger). Really nice photo image with that post. I didn't know people blogged in Minnesota.
• He's No Apostle But He's Got Influence by Dando (the Evangelical half of the team) at Mormon and Evangelical Conversation (using WordPress), noting with approval the evident influence of Robert Millet reflected in the new LDS press release on LDS doctrine.
• Neutrality in an Era of Inequity by Natalie at Mormon Rhetoric (using Blogger), expressing the opinion that VP Cheney's visit to BYU undermines the LDS claim to political neutrality. As one would expect from the name of the blog, the point is well argued.
• Solemn Responsibilities (using Blogger) promises posts on raising your kids and getting along with your spouse. Something like that, anyway.
• Late entry: Adventures in Mormonism, by a veteran IT guy who gives new meaning to the term "go the extra mile."

Nice to see some new solo LDS blogs coming online again. Remember, Rodney Stark thinks there will be 265 million Mormon blogs by 2080. Something like that, anyway.

Sidebar Additions

Rather than search for bloggable nuggets of wisdom tonight, I made two sidebar changes. First, I'm moving my "Post of the Day" posts from the center column to the "Post of the Day" list at the top of the left sidebar (and yes, they will get radically shorter). It won't show up in the MA box anymore, so you'll have to come here to see it.

New Bloggers Sneak In by the Back Door

BCC announced M. Norbert as a new permablogger, a Californian transplanted to Finland. Top that, T&S! I have noticed that new bloggers increasingly just pop up at group blogs rather than serving an initial apprenticeship as a solo blogger. Others taking this fast lane to permablogger status recently include Tagore at Mormon Mentality, Mike Wilson at Purim Blog, and Anneke and Eric at AMV. Even M-Star signed up a newbie: Sarah, an aspiring LDS law student with Unitarian roots.