Do you remember the mormon.org website?
Members were pestered relentlessly to create a profile online to share their testimony and answer gospel questions. Everyone was encouraged to share their personal url on social media too! Here are some example profiles:
Some profiles even backfired and brave disaffected members posted what they actually thought until the church introduced severe monitoring and censoring of member profiles. You may notice a resemblance comparing wasmormon.org to the previous mormon.org. This wasn’t an accident! These profiles and the fact that the profiles and site were removed from the web is the seed that planted the very idea for this site where anyone can create their own profile, someone like Matt (below) would feel right at home on wasmormon.org.
What Happened to mormon.org?
So, where is the site now?
While the term “Mormon Church” has long been publicly applied to the Church as a nickname, it is not an authorized title, and the Church discourages its use. Thus, please avoid using the abbreviation “LDS” or the nickname “Mormon” as substitutes for the name of the Church, as in “Mormon Church,” “LDS Church,” or “Church of the Latter-day Saints.”
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President Nelson has long championed the use of the Church’s divinely given name.
https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/church/news/mormon-is-out-church-releases-statement-on-how-to-refer-to-the-organization?lang=eng
Well, members (as well as the rest of the world) are now discouraged from using the term mormon! Current church leaders are bent out of shape when they hear the nickname that previously was embraced. These same church leaders were in the very quorum that brought us the site and huge ad campaign just a few years ago. After the multi-year campaign promoting the website full of testimonies and stories about the church at mormon.org, they don’t want to use the term anymore. The church is under new management. The new president has had this on his list of grievances for decades, so now that he’s in charge, he gets to make the call. Or is it that God has changed his mind in just a few years? Does God “pivot”? Either way, a collection of testimonies on a website called mormon.org wouldn’t make sense if the term and moniker ‘mormon‘ is out the window. The old site has been deleted and now redirects to the new church website comeuntochrist.org!
And if we allow nicknames to be used or adopt or even sponsor those nicknames ourselves, [the Lord] is offended.
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To remove the Lord’s name from the Lord’s Church is a major victory for Satan.
The Correct Name of the Church, President Russell M Nelson, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, October General Conference 2018
https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2018/10/the-correct-name-of-the-church?lang=eng#p14
The new church president, Russell M Nelson, goes so far as to say that people using this “offensive” church nickname (the term mormon) is a major victory for satan! We must conclude that for the decade(s) before Nelson at the helm, there were many church-sponsored victories for satan!
The church taking down the mormon.org site is actually the main inspiration for starting this wasmormon.org website. Looking for my old profile, out of curiosity about what I wrote when the church pressured me to write my “Mormon Story” online, I couldn’t find it. I realized the church would be so brash as to delete all the work from the church membership simply because the leadership changed and the new face of the church didn’t like the nickname. I asked on facebook about the old profiles and as I mulled on the fact that my profile was lost, I wanted to write a new one. Since there was no place to do that, I figured I’d make one. Learn more about wasmormon.org in the podcast interview.
People are confused and are looking for their profile
We’ve received messages from some church members who are looking for their old mormon.org profiles. These users apparently don’t notice that this site is different than the official church site and are trying to find their own content they contributed.
Help!
Example of a message received on wasmormon.org from a member looking for their original mormon.org profile
3 years ago I set up a Mormon profile and answered several questions.
I return from a senior mission and forgot my login information.
My name is ___, from ___ – my profession was ___.
I don’t want to set up a new account. I want to access the questions that I answered and share them with my family.
My email address changed. I believe it used to be ___ It is currently ___
Users want access to the answers they contributed, answers to the questions they filled out – at the incessant pressure of the church to create the profile. The church deemed it time to delete the whole site and all the member-contributed profiles as part of its “not rebranding” effort. Many members put a lot of time and effort into those profiles and now have no way to retrieve that content. Why would the church simply delete and destroy all this content? It is considered bad practice (a faux-pas even) to delete content generated by users – especially without prior warning or a way to save a copy of the content. What if facebook or instagram or even pinterest decided to delete all profiles? Imagine the uproar from people who would be upset? Surely though, when creating a profile on the mormon.org website, there was a legal waiver giving the church the right to do anything (including destroying) the user contributed content.
The church deleted all previous Mormon profiles along with the whole Mormon dot org website. This is in part the reason why we created this new wasmormon dot org website. It’s for people to create their own profiles. Mainly being used by post-mormons to tell their story of why they are no longer Mormons. Don’t worry, we don’t plan to ever remove the profiles from this site, or even the site as a whole, even if we do rebrand wasmormon.org. If the site does ever change or for some odd reason needs to be discontinued, we also promise to first send all users their profile content and give plenty of advance notice.
How to find your old mormon profile
For those looking for their old profile, one place to check is the mormon.org site on the wayback machine web archive at archive.org. Sadly, we can’t help you find your profile or answers to questions you answered on the original website. This is solely a move by the church to delete all of this user-created content without giving members a chance to retrieve it. Perhaps try asking the church for help? It seems to be part of the move away from the term “mormon” by current church leadership as seen in the church rebranding and new websites.
It’s ironic that members who have missed the memo are looking for the content they contributed and are in turn finding this wasmormon website. Feel free to create a new profile on this website though, the questions are a bit different and the purpose of the site is a bit different, but perhaps it will do more good in the world and at least it will last longer. Sign up today! Nelson may not be happy about the use of the term Mormon, but what about in the past tense? Can we say “I was Mormon”? There really no other acceptable way to say it, even for those still in the church