It's dangerous to apply the notion of "original research" too literally outside of its original context (dealing with crackpot theories, or simply novel ones, student essays, and so on). Beyond that context, I'm not literalistic, and I don't need a lot of guidlines. I think I know it when I see it, and I think I know what is not intended to be covered by the expression when I see it, even if it could be brought under the literal description that is used. Common sense has to prevail, I think, which is why we have all these processes involving shared community perceptions.
An example of something that is probably NOT "original research": "Bloggs has approvingly cited the work of Derrida to attack the philosophy of bohemian snarkism. According to Bloggs, it is all 'words, words, words.' <reference, Joe Bloggs, Anti-Snark, p. 300>"
An example of something that certainly IS original research: "Bloggs, who has attacked the philosophy of bohemian snarkism, could have found further support for his view by applying certain claims famously made by Derrida. <reference, Jacques Derrida, Words/ Words/ Words, p. 300>"
We all make these kinds of distinctions reasonably confidently, don't we? When in doubt, at the margins, we do indeed want to call on our collective wisdom. The process seems straightforward enough to me, though I suppose I might change my mind if I got caught in an edit war over it.
As for notability, I'm not sure I properly understand the argument. It seems to me that we have a (loose and largely unofficial) body of criteria to apply to decide whether or not something is notable. We don't apply novel theories, we just find the facts and apply the criteria. The facts should be publicly available ones. The criteria themselves get clarified and developed from case to case, with commonsense input from the community to resolve doubts in individual hard cases. That seems like the right way to go about it to me. I'm not sure whether I'm in disagreement with anyone here or not, but it just doesn't seem all that complicated at my end.
Russell Blackford (a.k.a. Metamagician3000)
----- Original Message ----- From: "charles matthews" charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com To: "English Wikipedia" wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Sent: Monday, May 01, 2006 7:35 PM Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Verifiability equating to notability
"Steve Block" wrote
It attempts to close the door on the possibility of allowing wikipedians to decide what is and isn't notable, something I believe is against both the original research and POV policies. We should seek to summarise claims of importance, where those claims are verifiable.
Err ... why? This may be what we resort to in some cases (garage bands). But it is a bad idea in other cases (e.g. academics). And I think we all should be allowed to express opinions on notability. In some areas, for example the arts, poetry, if you go by tallying up awards and honours and suchlike 'objective' credits, you will only reproduce the contours of the 'academic art' of the time. Thus missing what is coming up, for example.
Further, there could hardly be a better example of how 'original research', launched by Jimbo as a way to deal with crank theories, has been spandexed as an argument.
Charles