On 5/19/05, JAY JG jayjg@hotmail.com wrote:
We have entire areas of study which would be exceptionally difficult to document if we were strictly adhering to a no original research policy. For example our articles on Free Software related subject often contain information sourced from mailing lists and form the editors experience, sources which would not normally be acceptable under the normal application of the original research standard.
Deciding what may be accepted as research is as difficult a problem as determine what is notable.
That may be true for certain cutting edge topics which are not well documented. But in other areas (e.g. religion, politics, current world conflicts, controversial people, etc.) the more typical problem is that people insist on inserting their own analysis.
Right, and as I said, the no-original-research rule mostly gets applied in the case of conflict. I wasn't lamenting the current conditions, just pointing out that it's silly for us to propose a set of inclusion criteria that is ultimately limited by no-original-research.
Unlike NPOV I don't consider no-original-research to be a core (thus non-negotiable) principal of the project, rather it's just a useful rule.
Once wikipedia has dominated the known universe and has become the primary repository for all human knowledge it may become the case that the only way to get good peer review is to publish in wikipedia. It is already the case that I'd trust content vetted in wikipedia over some sources (notably the non peer-reviewed sort). I expect that we'll revise our procedures to address this when the time comes.
Speaking of research in wikipedia, it would be useful if there were a wiki-interviews project... Wiki style editing used to develop questions to be asked of interviewees, answered collected and maintained as a source. The material could then be cited in wikipedia articles. This may be a handy way to reduce the need to original research by providing an easy way to obtain targeted views by acceptable experts.