Earle Martin wrote:
On 04/04/07, Matthew Brown morven@gmail.com wrote:
By getting them published somewhere. Unpublished true facts are original research by the generally accepted Wikipedia definition.
So if there were an article about, say, my grandfather, and I edited it to add something that was true (say, that he was in the RAF during the war) but unpublished, this information is not suitable for inclusion? (Surely notability does not imply that all relevant facts on a topic have been published.)
Anyway, I was under the impression that "original research" was taking facts A, B, and C about topic X and concluding N. In the case that I am following up, I've asked Z, an authority on X, if A is true, and they have confirmed that it is. But according to your definition, this proven fact A must float in limbo because it is unpublished. That doesn't feel right.
Perhaps then one legitimate application of Ignore All Rules would be if a constellation of rules led us into a paradox. My one concern with the statement that initiated this thread was that "No approval was obtained..." is a negative statement. By their nature negative statements are mostly impossible to substantiate. Allowing personal communications from a subject or official body that something has not been done as prima facie evidence may be the only way to establish a fact. Prima facie evidence is always rebuttable. Is it realistic to expect that someone will publish a statement in an acceptable publication for the sole reason of saying that they have not followed trivial requirements?
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