More resources are becoming available where members can publish information regarding such questions. To learn more visit http://www.mormonwiki.com, and the More Good Foundation at http://www.moregoodfoundation.org/. As for polygamy you can visit http://www.mormon-polygamy.org yet there is no reason to send people who are interested in the Church to these websites when the Church website will suffice to get them in contact with the missionaries. That is the entire purpose of the missionary program. For the majority Mormon.org will suffice. We want to expose them to the gospel and to get them in contact with the missionaries and not further expose them to topics focused on by anti-Mormons. They are quite effective at that and don’t need our help.

[Joel: It's released now. Thank you!]

I just wanted to add that this is a new thought for me. I am usually one who doesn’t want to distract from our core message, and especially from the Savior and our focus on Him. I want the world to know HE is the reason the Church exists and HE is the focus of everything we believe in. I’m just lately thinking that perhaps there are people who would be more willing to listen if they had some of the “classic misunderstandings” addressed…removing some questions and concerns. But then again, perhaps I have it all backwards and we should just keep pressing forward with our core messages. As such, I think that Mario had some good ideas earlier in the comments section about being sure we really, really communicate that Christ is the center, and everything else that we believe in is there to point us and bring us to Him.

Thank you for being willing to listen. I hope that in giving feedback I don’t come across as overly critical. Like people have said, there are some neat features like the video that add such a wonderful personal touch (and maybe I have that backwards too….personal touch first then more info?) I dunno. This is why you are the expert working on all of this and we’re just out here throwing out ideas.

[Joel: Always willing to listen. We appreciate your feedback.]

Kevin

I am always a little disappointed with the performance of our pages; I am especially disappointed that we are making it difficult for our dial-up friends to access our sites and learn more about the Gospel. Are these sites designed only for those blessed with high speed Internet?

My numbers on lds.org showed that it was 26 seconds until I started to see elements loading in the window and it was a total of 85 seconds until the page finished loading. Beta.mormon.org didn’t show elements until 53 seconds had passed and the page didn’t completely load until 80 seconds had passed.

In our last user connectivity audit in Continuing Education we had 60% of our customers still using a dialup connection. I believe we reflect more the rule than the exception. I am curious to see why we are building pages that require more and more bandwidth? Is our customer base shifting to indicate that trend?

Honestly, the site is beautiful, reverent, and the flash is incredible. But in building such large site did we alienate our less fortunate users and make it impossible for them to access this information?

My two cents

Kevin

In addition, I also think that we might need a little more info on some of the harder questions, like polygamy and other things that are getting attention. I’d love to see a search feature that leads investigators to find more good and correct information about things that are often distorted by the press and enemies of the Church, or even about people who are simply misinformed.

If such an approach were taken, we also would have the burden of finding a balance between giving enough information to answer their questions while still steering people toward the doctrine and seeking spiritual truth (not just intellectual information). (All the information in the world about our history won’t help someone find the truth. But if we help remove barriers of misunderstanding, we might help them be more willing to listen to the core message of the gospel.)

I don’t think the fear of chat transcripts should be anything to keep us from spreading the gospel in whatever way is most effective to each investigator. After all, almost all missionary discussions are actually edifying and uplifting and by the spirit. The more those get out, the better! =)

There’s an online tutoring company called tutor.com who handle this sort of situation really well. Tutors connect one-on-one with students over the internet. Each tutor has a mentor, who reviews the tutor’s chat logs week by week for a few weeks, then monthly thereafter. (They pick random chat logs to review from the month.) The mentors give their tutors feedback on how tough situations can best be handled, and specific areas they need to work on. I think online missionaries could be handled the same way, with training, guidelines, and then a mentoring system. It would be an awesome calling! I so want to be the one who sets up this program and gets it started. =) Maybe I’ll do that when I retire and serve a full time mission.

Sorry for the many comments…just have been mulling over some of these things for a while….

[Joel: Don't apologize! I appreciate the feedback, Michelle!]

[Joel: Yes, slightly easier to manage. But more complicated for the user. We tried to be very simple with this web site.]