On 3/22/07, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
On Wed, 21 Mar 2007, Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
I do not agree that stating that A sued B, when you have a court
document
stating that A sued B, is a "matter of interpretation involving
original
research." In fact, I find this to be quite strange.
Probably because you are thinking about it the "wrong" way. Wrong in the context of a project which is explicitly conceived as a tertiary source verifiable from reliable secondary sources, that is. How hard will it be to find a newspaper report and cite that? If you can't, then it probably *is* trivial.
Fine, it's trivial. Trivial isn't the same thing as original research.
If the source makes a statement, repeating the same claim made in the statement is *not* a matter of interpretation. Stretching the definition of original research and "interpretation" to claim that repeating something verbatim or near verbatim is "interpretation" makes about as much sense as saying that growing wheat for your own use is interstate commerce. You end up with a policy that has no relation to what the words actually mean, and which can be used to cover anything and everything without limit.
Basically, as I understand it, the reason we ought not to have included the lawsuit is not because it's a novel interpretation of the facts, but because the facts have not been published by a secondary source. In theory, we could have articles about every lawsuit ever filed, but I think many people, even inclusionists, would balk at that - and for good reason. Like it or not, "notability" still plays a role (albeit a rather undefined one) in how we think about the encyclopaedia. And although we may not say it outright, it seems the present established status quo is that we establish sufficient notability by the existence of secondary sources. If it hasn't been covered by a secondary source, it probably isn't worth writing about. Encyclopaedias are tertiary sources.
Johnleemk