On 11 July 2014 06:02, Jon Beasley-Murray <jon.beasley-murray@ubc.ca> wrote:

I'm not sure where you're looking, but I'm thinking of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:PRIMARY, which is indeed clear enough:

"All interpretive claims, analyses, or synthetic claims about primary sources must be referenced to a secondary source, rather than to an original analysis of the primary-source material by Wikipedia editors."

I was reading from the next para, which qualifies what you have copied it here. If you had taken a couple more minutes to reply ...

Now this (along perhaps with [[WP:OR]] can indeed be a change from how many academics and researchers see their role. But then that's because they're forgetting that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, rather than (say) an academic journal.

"Interpretive" is the crux here. Since you are more concerned to tell Jennifer what to do, I think it should be explained that the reason not to use "primary" sources is that, for example, old historical documents are treacherous from the point of view of interpretation.

In common parlance, "spin" is what is to be excluded. We are now talking about subsections of [[Wikipedia:No original research]]; which does not exclude "research" done properly, just research with added spin. I would say it is fairly much off-topic for this thread, actually.

Charles