On 12/17/06, Stephen Bain stephen.bain@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/17/06, zero 0000 nought_0000@yahoo.com wrote:
Ok, so now I am itching to write in Wikipedia something like: "The consensus amongst legal scholars is that opinion A is correct" (or similar), with a footnote stating the evidence.
Can I do that? My sources were the best that exist, and everything I did can be verified easily by anyone with a good library. On the other hand, I have drawn my own conclusions from these observations so maybe I'm afoul of the No Original Research policy.
Of course that's ok. Original research in that scenario would be to say "the consensus among legal scholars is A, but they haven't considered C, and therefore D is the correct position."
Original research is about posing new theories, or making new inferences, or drawing new conclusions that are your own opinions and involve some element of analysis or synthesis. Fundamentally, original research is introducing your own original thought into articles.
And, of course, drawing your own conclusions and stating that there is a "legal consensus" on this matter, based on your own research into what various legal scholars have said, is a prime example of original research. Quote the scholars, list their names, state that there are a number of them, but don't introduce your own original thought that these selected sources have created a "legal consensus".
Jay.
Here you're simply stating an obvious fact: all sources support A. Drawing conclusions from this in a way that amounts to original thought would be something like "all sources support A and as a result E, F and G".
-- Stephen Bain stephen.bain@gmail.com _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l