On 13/04/06, Guettarda guettarda@gmail.com wrote:
Unpublished primary sources can only be valid sources about the content they contain ("his birth certificate says..."). In the hands of an amateur, they really can't be taken to say anything more, we can't evaluate how good the source is, we can't determine how much weight to give to one source as opposed to another...
I like your approach here. Proposal for NOR summary: "Leave original research to the experts. If you are an expert, leave it to a different expert."
Seriously, that's the basic problem isn't it - amateurs trying to do the work of experts. That was exactly the issue at [[Safe Speed]] - editors were attempting to debunk the claims of this group themselves, by digging up scientific papers and applying them directly to the data. Which wound up with a Wikipedia amateur scientist going head to head with a Safe Speed amateur scientist - totally pointless. The few "professional" refutations of their claims were totally acceptable and encyclopaedia-worthy, of course.
Steve