On 3/21/07, Ron Ritzman ritzman@gmail.com wrote:
On 3/20/07, Ron Ritzman ritzman@gmail.com wrote:
Might depend on the fact. Something neutral such as "Joe Foo" lives in "Crankytown California" might me ok
Come to think about it even a normally "neutral" fact might have some POV and OR issues. Let's take "date of birth" for example...
There is an article about a notable model named "Carmen Roe".
Carmen Roe claims to be 19 years old.
Somebody digs up a copy of her birth certificate that shows that she is 26 and updates her Wikipedia entry.
If such was done, it would be using "original research" to show that she "lied about her age". The article now violates both OR and NPOV. It would be the same as if somebody found a copy of her medical records that says she is HIV+ and added that. In both cases the article should be reverted until it's reported by a "real" news organization.
So perhaps what this whole issue boils down to is "Wikipedia doesn't do investigative journalism".
There's a big difference here. Court proceedings are published, unlike birth certificates, and are certainly not confidential, like medical records. These are both published documents. How can the use of published documents, to verify that they said what they are reported to have said, be said to be "original research" or, for that matter, "investigative journalism"?