Tuesday, January 4, 2011

My Mormon.org profile, reprise

By Mister Curie

As some people have noticed, my Mormon.org profile has been taken down.  I was not given any warning or reason for my profile's removal.  In fact, the profile was initially completely deleted from my account.  I wrote to technical services for an explanation, but they have not responded.

After getting the profile initially approved, I was making minor changes to see what types of things could be done to a Mormon.org profile.  When you complete your profile, it tells you: "Thank you for completing your profile. You can update your profile at anytime. If parts of your profile below show "Pending Review," that means they are being reviewed before appearing on Mormon.org. We will notify you through email as soon as your profile changes are approved." (Although I must note that I never got an email telling me my profile was approved or needed revisions or anything.  I guess that functionality of the cobbage wasn't completed.) I had every intention of posting some follow-up posts about what could be changed once a profile was approved, how the process worked, and how long it took.  First, I deleted one of my more faithful answers, although I still had more than the minimum number of questions answered.  The approved profile and the deleted question remained posted for several days until the profile was finally updated with the question removed.  Because the original profile remained posted, I figured that as long as I kept all the minimum requirements I could make some larger changes.  I tried linking my facebook account to the Mormon.org profile, an optional functionality.  I changed my demographic data so that my "previous religious background" was agnostic/atheist. I also tried tweaking my answer to the question on homosexuality that had never been approved, as I previously noted.  My new answer read:

When I was young, one of our highest leaders, the prophet, then President Spencer W. Kimball, taught about homosexuality: “This perversion is defined as the sexual desire for those of the same sex or sexual relations between individuals of the same sex, whether men or women. It is the sin of the ages.” And later he uses these adjectives to describe homosexuality: repugnant, deviant, unnatural, abominable, evil, ugly, and curable.  Today the church uses less charged language but remains firm in the conviction that homosexual behavior is offensive to God and actively works to support legislation against same-sex marriage.
I also answered a new question:    My answer was:

The Holy Ghost is the third member of the Godhead and His job is to testify of truth. We experience the Holy Ghost as feelings of conviction, sincerity, and a feeling of comfort and warmth (sometimes referred to as a "burning in the bosom.") These feelings direct us in times of uncertainty and difficulty as we are seeking God's will for our life. Such firm emotional manifestations are a way to understand God's will and free us from being tied to the changing ideas and whims of the world.

I suppose I was trying to change too many things at once, but I was impatient.  I suppose that any of those things may have gotten my profile pulled.  Or perhaps so many changes caused warning flags and they looked at my profile a little more carefully.  Or perhaps a TBM friend reported my profile.  I don't have any answers.

Before publishing this post, I checked my account again and my profile has returned to my account with a note saying that I need to revise the link to my facebook account.  As far as I can tell, the link should work.  The link is: http://facebook.com/turgenev13. I would be grateful for someone who is not my facebook friend to check this link to make sure it works.  Or perhaps David Baker would like to give me some advice on how he got his mormon.org profile linked to his facebook account.

My changes to the homosexuality question and the new answer to the Holy Ghost question are still "pending review".

I will keep working to get my profile back up.

In the meantime, I've gotten several requests for the screenshots I saved of my profile.  So here they are, just in case my profile is eternally in outer darkness.

 I apologize in advance for the quality, but I hope it is legible.


6 comments:

  1. Well, I guess this experience reinforces what we already know: that the church is interested in presenting a certain kind of person, in order to attract a certain kind of person. The really sad thing is, I bet everyone who reads this post, who is, or has been, a Mormon, knows what the "correct" answer to the question on homosexuality is.

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  2. The link you provided takes you to your Facebook page. Just letting you know.

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  3. I wonder if it's just a glitch. I wouldn't be at all surprised if it wasn't, because other people have done the same and gotten lots of feedback on why their profile was unacceptable (the author of project mayhem - http://loydo38.blogspot.com).

    I checked your facebook link too, it worked for me as well.

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  4. Your facebook link didn't work for me when I was logged out of Facebook. It gave me this message "The page you requested cannot be displayed right now. It may be temporarily unavailable, the link you clicked on may have expired, or you may not have permission to view this page. "

    So perhaps your privacy settings aren't letting Mormon.org find your account. It worked fine for me with no problems

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  5. @CJ- of course we all know the "right" answer, but it wouldn't be much fun if I only put the expected answer.

    @Gay LDS Actor - thanks for checking out the link for me

    @Carla- Thanks for checking the link. I agree that it is possible that it is just a glitch. If Mormon.org still has an issue with my facebook link, I'll just try removing it and see if that fixes my profile so it can be reposted.

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  6. @David - I think you may have a point there. I can see your profile if I am not logged in to facebook, but not my profile. I'm not sure what about my privacy settings might be causing that. I have most of my privacy settings set to "Everyone". Any thoughts on which setting in particular might be the critical one so my profile will show up even if not signed into facebook?

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