* Jimmy Wales wrote:
I think the point about privacy is that (as far as I know) there is a general consensus that someone sysematically going through court records to write articles about people who were convicted of drunk driving, or who were involved in a lawsuit, is a bad idea. We need to have some kind of independent verification (i.e. WP:NOR) that the incident or lawsuit is notable and worthy of inclusion in an article, and that in the case of people of very minor notability, there is no very good reason to include it.
I cringe when I see people equating 'primary sources' with 'original research'. What they are really talking about is a concept of 'notability of facts'... if a scientific theory is notable/relevant then it logically will have been judged so by neutral third-parties. If (to address THIS instance) a court case is notable/relevant then it would presumably be reported on by the media.
It is (I hope obviously) a bad idea for Wikipedia to promote information more widely/prominently than any other source has done. We are not disseminators (and thereby perforce arbiters) of 'truth' or 'relevance', but rather recorders of things which OTHERS have judged to be worthy of note. When we place ourselves in the position of saying, 'this information is important to make known... even though no one else has done so' we are inherently tossing 'neutral point of view' out the window.
However, the long growing trend of seeking to exclude this kind of thing as 'original research' is itself extremely damaging. I've seen people argue that we have to use ONLY imprecise media accounts of scientific discoveries because citing the actual published findings would be 'original research'. Likewise, people have actually argued that citing a book as reference for the CONTENTS of that book is 'original research'... you need to get a third party source to say what was in the book. In short, it has gotten to the point where many people think 'primary sources' are to be avoided at all costs... and that is a travesty.
Wikipedia USED to have a concept that,
"However, research that consists of collecting and organizing information from existing primary and/or secondary sources is, of course, strongly encouraged. All articles on Wikipedia should be based on information collected from published primary and secondary sources. This is not "original research"; it is "source-based research", and it is fundamental to writing an encyclopedia."
Indeed, that text still appears in our 'No original research' policy. However, efforts to stamp out use of 'primary sources' to spread information that no other national (or international) 'news' / 'reporting' entity has deemed worthy of commenting on have led to a wide-spread view that 'primary sources' in general are bad. They aren't. Once something has been verified as notable we should often take primary sources OVER secondary ones.