[WikiEN-l] The vexed issue of sources

[charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com]

"Thomas Dalton" wrote 
> I think it's best to stop talking in terms of original research and
> talk about reliability of sources (which is the main reason the OR
> rule exists, it's a special case of WP:RS).

Historically that's quite wrong. 'Original research' came into policyland as a Jimbo intervention against cranks on the science pages. 'Citing sources' was one of things that floats up from the frontline areas of highly contentious pages. 'Verifiability' was an attempt to amalgamate NOR and 'cite sources'; and RS is a needed guideline to support our notion of verifiability. 

It is not exactly satisfactory that our policies have this kind of path-dependence (in some sense one has to understand why they got there). But the history does have a role to play in explaining things. Especially because consensus on policies is hardly perfect.

Charles

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