Here’s the first WordPress Best of the Box selections, drawn from the list of posts at Mormon Archipelago. For variety, I’ll start with the lower boxes and work up to the top this time.
Even More Islands – Go view Why People Leave the LDS Church at Mormon Stories, and learn a new word: “screencast.” A screencast is basically a podcast with pictures and a soundtrack, I’m told. It might be the Next Big Thing.
More Islands – You Know They’re Just Trying to Convert You, Right? An in-your-face post by D-Train takes on the problem of Mormons who find any official contact with other Christian denominations threatening as just a sneaky campaign to convert Mormons. But these same people think it’s just great to invite Christians over for FHE, or to the ward house for a potluck, or to send the missionaries to visit them in their own home. Maybe we need to open up a little. PS: What do you think of the inverted color scheme at Unofficial Manifesto? I hate it.
Isles of the Sea – Go read The Idiot’s Guide to Orthodox Christianity, Part 1, a post designed to teach Mormons some simple differences between LDS vocabulary and standard Christian terms. Sometimes the same word means something much different. The poster is a Protestant blogging on an LDS blog, so he’s had some hands-on experience communicating with Mormons.
The Mainland – Always a challenge with so many interesting posts. I’ll go with Nate’s post on relationship-maintaining norms versus end-game norms, which he applies to explain the distaste most people feel when a Mormon somehow ends up suing the Church. Sounds like repeated games versus one-shot games from game theory to me, with repeated interactions giving more incentive for cooperative outcomes. It’s a thought-provoking post: What do we expect from the Church? How do our expectations change if pleasantness is displaced by conflict? It strikes me that our values shouldn’t change just because we face a challenge or a conflict, but plainly we often do change our values or norms when the context or time horizon of our interactions changes. Honorable mention for The Burden of Leadership.
Founders – Try Plight of the Smart LDS Woman at that DMI blog. This post had some of the best comment participation I’ve ever seen; comments reflect experience from all across the spectrum on this touchy and sometimes personal topic.
By Common Consent, a Mormon Blog 
The poster is a Protestant blogging on an LDS blog
That’s funny! Dave’s Mormon born and bred. He just acts like a Protestant! Ha!!
Uh, a Protestant is presuming to tell us about Orthodox Christianity? What about 1517 and all that?
A prostestant is not telling anything – he’s LDS!
Rebecca, you’re right — I’m not sure where I got that impression. Here’s a short bio of David J., the author of the post (and a permablogger at Faith-Promoting Rumor).
He just acts like a Protestant!
You know it, Ronan! You guys make me laugh.
Wait! Maybe I act like a “peeping wizard”??? ;)
J. Green – Protestants consider themselves orthodox so long as they believe the Creeds. The feeling I’m getting is that most Mormons think the term only refers to the Greek church, in which case (Methodists at least) don’t use the term like that. They consider themselves starkly orthodox. This’ll be in Part 2 of the same post.
Dave,
Thanks for the props. Sorry to hear that you hate the color scheme. Did you like the old format or was that bad too?
I like the new colors OK, but didn’t dislike the old format either. Let us know, either here or at UoM, if there are others out there with an opinion.
And, by the by, that smart LDS woman post is the best thing ever. The problem I have in my ward is that there are the few smart girls and then….well….
Seriously, this is an issue worth talking about. I’m not sure that it’s so much that men aren’t attracted to the intelligent (I certainly am), but that our culture just doesn’t stress female intelligence all that much, thus making sure that men that are attracted to cultural norms don’t want the smart ones. Also, since the Church isn’t all that much of an intellectual community where I am (Oklahoma), I can’t really tell how smart the girls are. There could be twenty Einsteinettes in my ward and I’d never know. Intellectual discussion just isn’t part of the culture.
D-Train, yes I liked the old color scheme … not that I’m the last word in blog fashion, of course. Maybe I just have a particular distaste for the inverted style. I think UM’s very nice banner looked better with the old colors.
Any others like to chime in with an opinion?