Moving Forward

If you're new here, read more about the More Good Foundation. We help members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormon church) share their beliefs on the Internet. Learn more about what Mormons believe or talk with Mormons at LDS.net.

We are moving forward with several projects (mormonwiki.com, askgramps.com, oaklandtemple.org, aboutmormonism.com, 14lds.com, blacklds.org, turin2006games.org, and others) but we would like to move forward at a faster pace and start many new projects. For this to happen we really need more members who can help by writing articles and designing websites.

If you are a graphic designer and have some spare time please contact me at gmartinengo@moregoodfoundation.org. We have some simple sites that need designing, and we have some designs that need to be implemented. This is where your skills can really shine and help to put pro-LDS sites “on the map,” so to speak.

If you like to write but you are concerned about your skills or you think you don’t have enough time, remember that we don’t need complicated or perfect articles, but simple basic articles that can explain some principle of the Gospel. Probably you can write one in less than an hour. The easiest way to start is by writing an article for MormonWiki.com, or collaborative site. Try it yourself: write a 500-700 word article on any of the subjects listed at the site. (Visit MormonWiki.com and click on Articles that Need to be Written.) You can also propose a new article topic and others will be able to edit it, if necessary. If you have questions you can contact me.

Editing

Quite a few Foundation members have indicated that they are interested in editing articles. I thought that it could be useful to explain a few different meanings of editing in our case.

If you search for the word “edit” in the dictionary, you’ll find the following three definitions:

A: to prepare (as literary material) for publication or public presentation B: to assemble (as a moving picture or tape recording) by cutting and rearranging C: to alter, adapt, or refine especially to bring about conformity to a standard or to suit a particular purpose.

In our case when we ask people to edit an article we also mean three different things:

A: to review the grammar and other stylistic aspects of the article.

B: to rewrite an existing article for a different audience: in our case, to make the article particularly understandable and useful to non-members of the Church. This means, for example, to modify an article that was written mostly for an LDS audience and rearrange or simplify it in a way that the final product can be more specific for a non-LDS audience.

C: to optimize an article to help increase its ranking in the search engines (see previous newsletter for more details about this).

While “A” is probably what most people think of when they agree to edit information, we need members who are willing to help with “B” and “C” also.

For more detailed information about writing and editing please go to:

* http://www.mormonwiki.com/mormonism/MormonWiki:About * http://www.mormonwiki.com/mormonism/MormonWiki:Style_Guide

The information you will find there can be applied not only to articles written for the MormonWiki.com but also to most of the articles you will ever write for More Good Foundation.