Talk:Oliver Cowdery/Archive 1

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Citation clean-up

The citations for this page are a mess. The formatting for citations is often sparse, often just a poorly known acronym (for those unfamiliar with Mormon works). Citations are also treated as footnotes and contain discussion. Please help improve the citations with more details of the cited work, and moving discussion in the talk page, or the article itself (if justified). Deaddebate (talk) 12:24, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

I don't see any acronyms that are used that are not fully explained in the citations and footnotes in accordance with a standard citation style. Perhaps it is just using a style of citation that you are not familiar with – there are a number of different ones that are used in Wikipedia. And as far as I know, there's no guideline that suggests that articles may not contain discussion in footnotes. In many cases, having the detail in footnotes is appropriate, and in many cases, doing so has been the result of a consensus decision. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 04:06, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

Without a cited source for this quote, it borders on libel.

"had some conversation in which in every instance I did not fail to affirm that which I had said was strictly true. A dirty, nasty, filthy affair of his and Fanny Alger's was talked over in which I strictly declared that I had never deserted from the truth in the matter, and as I supposed was admitted by himself." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 104.243.63.16 (talk) 05:16, 18 December 2019 (UTC)

Dowser and Money Digging Business

There is no reason given in the article for why this would be significant. It seems apropos of nothing. I believe that some seque of some sort should be given or else it begs the question why this is being told. In essence, it assumes a prior knowledge of why this is being said, when I don't know that most people would actually know that. 184.170.72.12 (talk) 22:58, 25 August 2022 (UTC)

Easy enough to fix. Just write "In his youth, Cowdery, like Joseph Smith, hunted for buried treasure—in Cowdery's case by using a divining rod." John Foxe (talk) 00:48, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

Affair vs. Scrape

Some LDS apologists use the citation of Oliver's letter to Warren as "A dirty, nasty, filthy affair" in articles like these to illegitimize them.. As far back as 2014, at least one apologist debunker quoted it as "'dirty, nasty, filthy scrape affair,'" due to the word "affair" being written over another word, which was purportedly "scrape." This clarification basically changes nothing about the quote (aside from the level of formality and the slightly different connotations of the two words), but it would lend some legitimacy to the section as a whole if there was at least a note about it. There's also a scan of the copy of the letter (the copy being quoted in this article) which does clearly show that there's something weird about the written word "affair" on page 81. Beyond reaching out to Don Bradley/Chris Smith directly (the people who allegedly have clear evidence that the underlying word is in fact "scrape"), I don't really have a way to produce evidence for that. Thoughts are appreciated. NullKatana (talk) 03:47, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

Image reconstruction of the the underlying word ("scrape"): . Spoke too soon. NullKatana (talk) 04:00, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

The most prominent scholar on LDS polygamy that I'm aware of, Chris Hales, has a page that also asserts that "scrape" is underlying "affair." NullKatana (talk) 06:49, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

References