Continuation of this two-comment thread: http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,1153976,1154035#msg-1154035

I also have a script that checks, but it does so hourly, and it does check for removals as well. It picked up the BoM/DNA article addition, and I can confirm that nothing was removed.

I can also confirm that Spirit of Truth was swapped places with Spirit of the Lord to get the alphabetization correct. I don't know how The Spirit let them get away with that in the first place.

HYT, if you're interested in collaborating on this at all, let me know.

do you have logs that confirm all of this too? Is it date stamped? Then if they make an argument like "we never posted that" or "that has been up on the site for eons" (when it really wasn't), they wouldn't have a leg to stand on.

...kinda like when the guy on some detective show says he didn't kill his wife because he was 50 miles away and he has calls bouncing off the cell tower near the crime scene :)

Eh, logs can be faked, so no one can ever KNOW based on my records if I'm right. I am archiving the topic list every time it changes with a date stamp, but I only started at the beginning of the year, so I only have this one change. If TSCC ever tried to say "we never had that up", waybackmachine could more than likely prove them wrong.

Cool...sounds like you have a good system going :)

Mine checker is date stamped too but I don't check for removals, I suppose I can add that.

I briefly considered putting a site together that would send email or text notifications when new articles come out but I wasn't sure there would be much interest. People check here anyway.

Technically, it's really simple. Just a little ruby script that crawls the alphabetical listing at lds.org/topics and then updates a sqlite database, it emails me if anything is added. It runs as a cron job every afternoon.

I agree, most people won't care. What's important is that we're making TSCC accountable for their ever-changing unchanging eternal doctrines.

My script sounds very similar to yours. I want to add functionality to watch the content of each topic page as well since I saw a blog post the other day about how TSCC removed a section from one of the pages. It would be especially interesting to see if they're tweaking any of the new essays as they watch the stream of criticism flow in.

YES...I agree that accountability is key. Good use for technology!

whitethunder Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I want to add functionality to watch the content of each
> topic page as well since I saw a blog post the
> other day about how TSCC removed a section from
> one of the pages.

Tracking changes in the content would be interesting. I may add that if I have some spare time tomorrow.