Delirium wrote:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
I don't have the same faith in "reputable historians". Being reputable is often nothing more than a mastery of the party line. Historians certainly differ on whether dropping the bomb on Hiroshima was a necessity or a war crime. Of course all agree that it was in fact dropped. For me NPOV is a far more important principle than NOR. Omitting something just because it has never been considered by "reputable" historians strikes me as unconscionable, and intellectually dishonest. If a new primary source contradicts the "reputable" historians it should be mentioned in the interests of NPOV; otherwise NOR is nothing more than an excuse for suppressing distasteful information.
To be a little more detailed:
No, NOR is not "an excuse for suppressing distasteful information", but fundamental to the very purpose of Wikipedia. When I go to the article [[World War II]], I expect to find any of these: --- a summary of mainstream historical consensus on the subject;- --- discussions of points where there is significant disagreements among historians; --- discussions, less prominently placed, of significant minority views; --- especially on important topics like World War II, discussions of small minority views that have nonetheless been published and attracted some at least minor attention
I have no problem with that.
But what I most emphatically *do not* expect to see a novel historical narrative that some random guy on the internet has pieced together by going through archives himself, and never published before anywhere else except Wikipedia.
I have said nothing in support of novel historical narratives. If the document is completely unpublished then put it into Wikisource. (There may still be copyright issues for the WWII period, but that's a separate matter that would need to be addressed.) We can then link to these documents on a buyer beware basis.
There are some people who would use these documents as a basis for pushing a point of view; there's no denying that. One clear fact is that the volume of archived documents is enormous, and historians at best can only deal with a small fraction of the mass. There aren't even enough historians to do it. You mentioned Jefferson before. He died in 1826, but much of his work still remains unpublished. Last summer Danny raised the issue of discussions that he had in Washington over publishing the Jefferson and other archives. If that were to happen should we ignore that material simply because no historian has considered it. Other primary documents have been published in hard-to-find 19th-century books; are we to ignore them just because they have not been referenced and interpreted by "reputable" historians?
None of this advocates original research on Wikipedia; that would imply taking sides or putting our own spin on the material. What it does say is that there are these other documents out there. It says, "Look at them, and draw your own conclusions."
If our efforts promote amateur historians that's a great accomplishment. The problem with making an obsession of reliability is that it promotes complacency among the users. I want teachers to keep rejecting Wikipedia as the sole authority for the principal facts in an essay.
That is no more useful or desirable than going to [[Neutrino]] and seeing original physical research that some physics crank has decided to publish on Wikipedia. If you've made novel historical discoveries by digging through primary sources, then great, but Wikipedia is not the place to publish them any more than it's the place to publish your novel physics discoveries.
The difference is the one betwen invention and discovery, and the physics example is one of invention, not discovery. In discovery we find what was already there, and invention only becomes a factor in historical research when the authenticity of the documents is disputed.
Ec