Editorial Policy

scholars-map indexes how serious scholars engage the contested questions around the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: what they argue, where they argue it, and where a reader should start. The question is the primary unit; people are indexed through the positions they have published.

This file is the rulebook. Every entry, human- or agent-written, is held to it.

1. Purpose, stated openly

The site exists because "people only believe what they were raised in" deserves a substantive answer, and the substantive answer is the arguments themselves, not a head count. The About page says so. Everywhere else the site describes; the sources argue.

2. Inclusion

A question is included if it is commonly raised against Latter-day Saint truth claims or history and has a body of serious published argument on more than one side.

A person is included if they have published a substantive argument on an included question in one of:

• a peer-reviewed journal or edited scholarly venue (e.g. BYU Studies Quarterly, Journal of Mormon History, Dialogue, Interpreter, Mormon Studies Review, Journal of Book of Mormon Studies, discipline journals);
• a book from an established press (university or trade press, Deseret Book, Kofford, Signature, Greg Kofford, BYU Religious Studies Center, etc.);
• a long-form essay or lecture of comparable depth published by an institution with editorial review.

Credentials are recorded, never required. Belief is never a criterion: critics and sympathetic outsiders are included on the same terms as believers.

Not included: anonymous authors, forum and social-media posts, podcasts as the sole venue, and people whose engagement is only a testimony or a credential with no argument on a listed question.

Every exclusion decision that someone might ask about goes in docs/inclusion-log.md with a one-line reason.

3. Sourcing

Every factual claim about a person (degree, affiliation, relationship to the Church, path to belief, life years) carries a source, an exact snippet from that source, and the date it was accessed. Each source has an archived copy (Wayback Machine or archive.today) where one can be made.

A claim may be marked verified only when:

1. the verify-sources script has found the snippet in the archived (or, if no archive exists, the live) source; and
2. a reviewer has read the snippet in context and confirmed it supports the claim as written, not merely contains the words.

Never link to or quote from an unauthorized copy of a copyrighted work (pirated PDF scans, unofficial uploads). Use the publisher's page, an author-posted copy, a library record, a lawful preview, or the public domain text; if none carries the passage, don't quote it.

Agents may find and draft sources. Agents may not mark anything verified; that is the principal reviewer's call (see AGENTS.md).

4. Living people: the conservative bio rule

No subject is contacted for review. That makes the bio rules strict:

• Relationship to the Church and path to belief are recorded only from the person's own words (their writing, a recorded interview, a talk, a first-person essay such as a Mormon Scholars Testify entry). Never from employment, publisher, reputation, a third party's description, or inference. If the person has not said it publicly, the field is omitted, and an omitted field is not a statement about the person.
• Path to belief values require the snippet to state the fact directly. "Adult convert" requires the person's own statement that they joined as an adult (or an age/stage that makes it unambiguous). When in doubt, use the less specific value or omit.
• Stance claims carry as_of: the date of the statement, not the date we read it. People change; the site records what they said and when.
• People are never removed because their stance changed. The entry is updated with the new self-description and its date.
• No birth dates, home locations, family details, or photographs of living people. Degree, affiliation, and publications only.
• Excommunication, discipline, or disaffiliation is mentioned only if the person has discussed it publicly and it bears on their published argument; it is stated in their framing, with a source.

5. Describing positions

• Steelman test. Every position summary should be one its author would sign off on. Critics get the same care as believers.
• Neutral verbs. argues, proposes, contends, concludes, holds, suggests. Never: refutes, debunks, proves, demonstrates, destroys, admits, concedes, exposes, claims (as a sneer). The build lints for these.
• No scoring. No verdicts, no "strongest argument" labels, no counts of how many scholars hold a model.
• Summaries are 1–3 sentences, in plain language, and paraphrase rather than quote. Direct quotes are optional, must express the author's own view (not a theory they are describing or rebutting), at most 50 words, always attributed with a locator, and only from a source the verifier (or GSA) can check.
• Each question's models are named the way their proponents name them where possible ("catalyst theory", "limited geography"), with a neutral one-line description.

6. Question framing

Questions are phrased as open questions, never as verdicts ("What is the relationship between the papyri and the Book of Abraham?", not "Does the Book of Abraham fail as a translation?"). The framing paragraph states what is agreed by all sides first, then what is disputed.

7. Reading paths

Each question has a three-item "start here" path:

• accessible: an entry point a non-specialist can read in an evening;
• scholarly: the most substantial treatment;
• critical: the strongest case from the other side of the most common believing view (or, where the main dispute is among believers, the strongest alternative).

The accessible and scholarly picks are chosen without regard to which side the author takes; across the site, neither side should always come first.

8. Paths to belief on the site

Path to belief is a small tag on a person page and a filter on the index. It is never a headline, never counted, never featured.

9. Corrections

Every person page links to a corrections address. A correction from the subject is applied promptly; a factual correction from anyone is applied once sourced. The git history is the changelog.

10. Freshness

Every entry carries last_verified. Entries older than 12 months appear in the staleness report and are re-verified before the next release.