Geoff Burling wrote:
Well, it's against my role as 'the Jimbo' around here to call people crackpots, so I'll avoid that word here. But you'll all know what I mean anyway. ;-)
Isn't it the policy of Wikipedia NOT to include original research?
Yes, that's exactly right. I forgot to mention that, but that's another perfectly good reason for excluding at least some of that.
However, in defense of the fellow who wrote in to complain, he did make reference to some book or other published in the past, and so at least as far as *that* complaint goes, 'this is original research' wouldn't really be a good comeback.
I'm wondering if the proper crieria for inclusion/exclusion is the fact that any theory, beit mainstream, minority or other, is whether or not it is available in print.
I think that's a very valid way to look at it, yes, absolutely. And this helps to tie the policy here in with parallel policies in other areas, i.e. 'verifiability' has long been accepted as a decision rule. Writing about a 'religion' that has exactly one prophet and exactly one follower, who happens to be the same guy, presents NPOV problems because it's just too small to verify.
I'm sorry, but a post to Usenet or a statement on a webpage just isn't convincing enough for little old me.
That's right, although I can imagine some hypertechnical sticklers abusing this notion. Some facts can be found more or less only online, particular facts about contemporary Internet culture. Who is the current maintainer of BIND? Probably that isn't in a book, but it's an uncontroversial fact that could be looked up online.
--Jimbo