Jeff Raymond wrote:
The difference is that a book/album/movie is published in a way that observing a machine isn't.
A common "middle ground" along this spectrum would be computer games, which are published in the way of books and such but which are played in the manner of a mechanical pinball game (and are often much more complex). It is very common in Wikipedia to use computer games as primary sources, so the requirement that they be "played" is evidently not a major concern.
The answer, of course, is to adjust the original research policy to allow for such reasonable situations, not simply rely on IAR to muddle through.
Indeed. I'm not sure what real difference there should be, from a wikilegalistic perspective, between a pinball machine with a manufacturing run of a thousand and a book with a publishing run of a thousand.