From: Matt
Brown <morven(a)gmail.com>
?
On 6/6/05, Ray Saintonge
<saintonge(a)telus.net> wrote:
Sean Barrett wrote:
Why are old Soviet records "original
research" while old US records
(NVR, DANFS, &c.) are okay?
I'm not saying that they are, just that somebody is bound to try to
make
that point.
It disturbs me that "No original research", originally intended to
prevent crackpot theories with no following being pushed on Wikipedia,
is starting to mutate into something quite different.
It hasn't started to mutate into anything different, though some
people pretend it has. What typically happens is this: An editor sees
a cited POV they strongly disagree with in some article, so they
construct a novel argument to counter that POV, often even citing
sources for the various facts used to construct the argument. When
challenged on the grounds that they are doing Original Research, they
either counter by saying each of the facts used to create the argument
is properly cited, or (if they've been around Wikipedia for a while)
they grumble on Wikien-l that the arguments is obvious, and that the
NOR policy is being stretched to cover areas for which it was never
intended. When it is pointed out that obvious arguments will be cited
*somewhere*, the response is that some things are so obvious (e.g.
"like the fact that the sun rises in the east") that it would actually
be hard to find someone specifically stating them! Then e-mails fly
back and forth on the list, eventually everything dies down for two
months, rinse and repeat.
This argument sounds like its original research. :-)
Ec