On 04/04/07, Matthew Brown <morven(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
By getting them published somewhere. Unpublished
true facts are
original research by the generally accepted Wikipedia definition.
So if there were an article about, say, my grandfather, and I edited
it to add something that was true (say, that he was in the RAF during
the war) but unpublished, this information is not suitable for
inclusion? (Surely notability does not imply that all relevant facts
on a topic have been published.)
Anyway, I was under the impression that "original research" was taking
facts A, B, and C about topic X and concluding N. In the case that I
am following up, I've asked Z, an authority on X, if A is true, and
they have confirmed that it is. But according to your definition, this
proven fact A must float in limbo because it is unpublished. That
doesn't feel right.
Perhaps then one legitimate application of Ignore All Rules would be if
a constellation of rules led us into a paradox. My one concern with the
statement that initiated this thread was that "No approval was
obtained..." is a negative statement. By their nature negative
statements are mostly impossible to substantiate. Allowing personal
communications from a subject or official body that something has not
been done as prima facie evidence may be the only way to establish a
fact. Prima facie evidence is always rebuttable. Is it realistic to
expect that someone will publish a statement in an acceptable
publication for the sole reason of saying that they have not followed
trivial requirements?
Ec