Crowd-sourced Topical Guide

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rickytheory
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Crowd-sourced Topical Guide

Post by rickytheory »

Anyone who has begun their personal conversion process to liberty, has felt the intense spiritual promptings to share their knowledge and testimony of liberty with others. Those opportunities come unexpectedly in many instances. I would guess that many of us have found ourselves in a situation where we wish we could remember the exact source of some scripture, prophetic quote, or founding father on a certain subject.

I am so grateful for this forum and the many members that have contributed their studies. This forum is filled with many precious gems of knowledge and citable quotes, this is due to the many members who have sincerely studied these principles for years. The collective wisdom is immense.

What if there was a place on the internet where one could search the principles of liberty, the proper role of government, foreign policy, economics, secret combinations, etc by topic and get an exhaustive list of all that the prophets have said concerning such topics. What if one could filter the results by source type (e.g. standard works, latter-day prophets, founding fathers, other gospel scholars, etc.)

Many times I search this forum to find those quotes and sources that I hadn't yet discovered. While the conversations, discussions, and commentaries are wonderful, one has to wade through a ton of material searching through various discussions and topics to find those gems and precious quotes.

Imagine how rapidly the knowledge of liberty could spread with this kind of resource. Just as this forum has been instrumental in helping others awake to our situation and our responsibilities, I believe a tool like this could exponentially accelerate this process.

There are so many sincere latter-day saints that want to follow the savior, but they haven't taken the initiative to search what God has said concerning the pressing matters of preserving freedom. Imagine being able to send a link to a friend or relative that shows that your ideas of foreign policy, monetary policy, social policy, secret combinations, zion, prophecy etc are not your opinions but are actually the words of God.

I know this idea is different than a suggestion for this forum, but I envision it as a type of companion site to this. If I was capable I would have already built it by now, but I'm not. So, I figured I'd throw the idea out there and hope that a few of us with the means could pull it together.

With the collective knowledge of the freedom forum members we could get a pretty thorough LDS topical guide to freedom pretty quickly. We would need a system to verify any citations to ensure that everything posted is true. Possibly a method for adding categories and subcategories. And as there may be hundreds of quotes regarding the same subject we could use a system for weighting the citations so that the most relevant and informative will rise to top. I have some more specific details to the idea and how it could work, but first wanted to see if anyone would be interested. By contributing to this topical guide the participants will be seeking and sharing truth together.

If something like this already exists, please let me know where it is. If it doesn't yet exist, it needs to.

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mes5464
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Re: Crowd-sourced Topical Guide

Post by mes5464 »

The sister site

Latterdayconservative.com

rickytheory
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Re: Crowd-sourced Topical Guide

Post by rickytheory »

I'm aware of Latterdayconservative.com . I love that one can search quotes by prophets and I think the course on liberty and many other resources are great. However, there is no place where one can search a comprehensive list of sources by topic.

Mormon
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Re: Crowd-sourced Topical Guide

Post by Mormon »

ldsliberty.org is a good one

rickytheory
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Location: Boston, MA
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Re: Crowd-sourced Topical Guide

Post by rickytheory »

Yes, ldsliberty is a fantastic site. I have a couple of articles on there myself. http://www.ldsliberty.org/author/rickyvaladez/
Regardless of the logical simplicity, the eloquence, or the strength of the argument made by the authors of those articles, there seems to be a power that reaches deeper into the soul and understanding when we get truth from the mouths of prophets. And when we personally discover the answers ourselves by making our own connections between scriptures. I have seen many great sites and forums with articles that help connect ideas, but I haven't seen any site that has a comprehensive topically based compilation of source material from scriptures and prophets.

From the few responses on here, I think I may not have explained correctly what I have in mind.

An extremely useful tool for learning from the scriptures is the topical guide in the Bible or the index for the triple combination. Through those, one can search every scripture that has a certain word or topic. It is not organized by prophet, but by topic. It does not have any other information linking the scriptures together, it just points the student to the source.

The scriptures and latter-day prophets have spoken so specifically about God's doctrine of government, liberty, economics etc. If all of those words could be organized by topics into categories and subcategories, then people wouldn't have to wade through the endless forums, debates, articles, opinions, etc to find the gems of source material that make us say "I didn't know that that was God's doctrine about such and such government policy!". It would be a great resource for learning and for teaching. Many times when I am sharing the gospel of liberty to my fellow saints I have to refer to the topical guide to find a scripture that came to my mind, but I can't quite remember the reference. There are also many times when I have to paraphrase what I have read by the prophets and I forget where the source is. How much more quickly could they be converted if they saw that it isn't my opinion, but that it is the clearly explained doctrine of the God in whom they believe?

This tool would help people find truth about liberty more rapidly. It is really a question of the transmission of information. Through the various sites that already exist, it is like a scavenger hunt trying to piece it all together concerning one topic. Why not create pathways through which these topics can be immediately found and immensely researched. e.g. Every statement made by a prophet concerning fiat currency, standing armies, or tax funded public education. The more directly people can get to the source material (scriptures & prophets), the more rapidly light and truth will spread. This site is an example of the general direction http://www.warlikepeople.com. Except instead of being brief and having commentary, it will be comprehensive with no commentary, and of course, cover many other important topics.

There are many people on this forum who have scoured the scriptures and prophets to know the very points of these doctrines. We already have the people that know the stuff, we just need the platform to organize it in this topical manner. The flow of light and truth will surge exponentially. It is our privilege to be part of the prophesied revolution of light and truth that will sweep the earth as with a flood.

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