Building the Gospel Buddy

How the Extension Works and Came to Be

The Idea for the Gospel Buddy Extension

Creating the Gospel Buddy extension all started with one question: “What is the most quoted scripture in General Conference Talks”. Asking this question led to the creation of a project titled Can a Prophet Inspire Change? This project required a data set of the text and footnotes of all General Conference talks. The initial collections process was slow as we manually copied the text and footnotes of all talks from 1970 to today.

However, the data for the Gospel Buddy was collected in a slightly different way. To learn what this collection process entails, see the section below. So, if we know what scriptures are referenced in General Conference talks how can we make this information useful to the average person? What if users could see the number of times a scripture has been referenced in General Conference talks along with links to the specific talks? That is the question that finalized the idea for the Gospel Buddy extension.

How was the Data Collected for the Gospel Buddy Extension

The Gospel Buddy is meant to be of much more use than a simple report. The extension is intended to be a cross-reference tool between General Conference talks and the scriptures. Conference talks include many footnotes - both in the paragraphs and the reference tab - to create links to scriptures that are related to what the speaker has said. However, when users read scriptures there are no links to going the other way. The Gospel Buddy is meant to bridge that gap. But the question remains, “How does it know what Conference talks to display?”

Through a process called web-scraping a script is run every 6 months that updates our footnote data. The code will search through publicly available General Conference talks on the Church’s website and identify any links to scriptures. The script will then extract the links and run a process to clean and organize the data. The result is a data set that contains each scripture listed as a footnote on every Conference Talk. Using this information we can bridge the gap between scriptures and General Conference.

How does the Gospel Buddy Create Buttons in the Scriptures?

The Gospel Buddy extension, once installed in Chrome or Edge, will run when the user is on the Church’s website. The extension will search the webpage for scripture verses, and then for any verse numbers therein. If verse numbers are found the extension will identify what Book and Chapter that verse belongs to and generate a new Verse Button. This Verse Button will display the verse number and the number of times that verse has been used as a footnote in General Conference talks.

Once the Verse Buttons are generated the extension will watch for a user’s click. When a button is clicked a new script will identify exactly which talks have used that verse as a footnote. It is important to note that the number on the Verse Buttons represents the number of times the verse has been used as a footnote and NOT the number of talks in which that verse appears. These two numbers will likely be different. The tables display each talk uniquely which means talks that use a verse as a footnote more than once will only be displayed once in the list.

This process can identify verse numbers and replace them with Verse Buttons in the main body of the webpage, the Footnotes Sidebar, and in Chapter Navigators generated by Come Follow Me webpages. This means the buttons will appear anywhere a verse number can be found. Users can improve their study of scriptures, conference talks, and come follow me using one extension!

Where to Download the Gospel Buddy Extension

Add to Chrome Add to Edge