On 4/3/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
On Mon, 2 Apr 2007 12:11:49 -0400, Phil Sandifer Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
Personally, I advocate following the last good version here, which is to say, continuing as we were instead of paying heed to people who nitpicked this important qualification out of existence in favor of a guideline on how to write a bad encyclopedia.
In other words, you prefer to be able to draw entirely from primary sources where no reliable secondary sources exist. Which we already know, of course. That is a matter of Wikiphilosophy.
Wait a minute. As I understand it, the policy Phil is defending in his present post states that primary sources are acceptable where the interpretation drawn is not novel (i.e. new). This is how I understand our policy, although Phil in another post seems to have criticised this interpretation (that primary sources should not be cited unless there are secondary sources available).
If there are no extant secondary sources, any interpretation whatsoever of the primary source is novel. I suppose one could argue for the face-value, literal meaning interpretation as non-novel, but it's suprising how often people can disagree on a literal reading of a source.
Johnleemk