Geoff Burling wrote:
One problem I see with this debate over "original
research" is that
we are trying to apply it as a uniform rule to every possible case,
when in application it will take many forms.
(By "reasonably accessible", I not only mean documents that have been
published, but can also be expected to be accessible thru a public
library; Interlibrary Loan & online databases are tools that every
Wikipedian ought to be familiar with. However, some published materials
are difficult to obtain: a valuable source for the Seattle music scene
for the late 1970s, 1980s & early 1990s -- "The Rocket" -- stopped
publication years ago. Although it was a free monthly newspaper you
could find at record stores in the Northwestern US, I confess I wouldn't
know where someone could find a specific issue of it today -- or if
anyone even thought to save any copies.)
Some people think that Google is such a credible authority that it
should be relied upon to the exclusion of all others. The techniques
that you mention are all important, That just inspired me to add a
short paragraph to the "Cairngorms" about Queen Victoria climbing what
was then thought to be the highest peak in th UK. I got that from the
"Strand Magazine" for June 1898. Out of curiosity, about how quickly I
could find information about something I found this about "The Rocket":
http://www.historylink.org/essays/output.cfm?file_id=3588 This only
goes to show that it's often easy to find out back-up material about
something even if you're not otherwise interested in the topic.
Sometimes life would go so much more smoothly if our writers could
support what they say a little better.
Moving to another topic where "original
research" will likely cause a
problem, let us consider the critical appreciation or investigation as
to motives of famous artists or politicians. Obviously, everyone will
have an opinion in this area, & doubtlessly we could argue for hours
over whether Shakespeare is a greater playwright than Sophocles or
Ibsen, & over the motivations of such public figures like Ivan the
Terrible, Ieyasu or George W. Bush. Here, there is no good reason for
original research in any form: if one knows the secondary literature
to a satisfactory degree, then one can simply quote or paraphrase
what has been written on the subject. And the average user of Wikipedia
will want to know what the published judgement of these people is
more than what some Wikipedian thinks.
Imputing motives is always dangerous. The support is often tenuous.
(And in cases like these, we should cite more than
peer-reviewed journals;
evaluation of public figures is shaped by more than degreed experts.
Poets & actors can potentially tell us more about Shakespeare than any
random tenured professor published by a university press; TV Guide's
account of Bill Clinton playing the Saxophone on the Orsinio Hall show
could tell us more than a Ph.D. working in a political think tank.)
Stepping onto the academic treadmill strikes me as everything that the
wiki is not. Peer-reviewed journals represent a certain narrow set of
POV's. They pretend to be the arbiters of right and wrong, but we don't
need for somebody to tell us that from the pulpit. The knowledge
revolution will only have succeded when people can think for themselves
without looking for a word or a sign from on high.
Then there is a third case where we confront original
research: in the
search for originality of expression, contributors will inevitably
introduce their own conclusions drawn from verifiable facts. One example
would be from my own contributions, [[Battle of the Catalaunian Plains]]:
when I wrote this about 2 years ago, I was very concerned at the time
over introducing copywritten text, so I based it on published primary
sources, such as _The Gothic History of Jordanes_. Undoubtedly in the
writing of this article, I introduced my own POV & my own conclusions
concerning the material, no matter how hard I tried not to; we all have
conscious or unconscious biasses in the areas we are profess expertise
in. However in this case, I submitted it fully aware of the Wiki philosophy,
that what gets written may be subject to ruthless revisions. And my own
attitude to the article is that if someone can improve on it by citing
the necessary experts to confirm or replace what I wrote there, then
it is a good thing. Here, calling something "original research" &
insisting that the material should be deleted does nothing more than
cause friction on Wikipedia, whereas making changes in a reasonable &
responsible manner solves the problem -- which I assume is what we all
want to do in the first place.
In some people's world original research is anything that's not a
copyvio. :-)
I don't have a clear-cut answer for the issue of
"original research" --
except to say that I know it's a problem when I see it. But my point
here was to argue that to address this issue we must also acknowledge
where it poses no problem.
Yes. But I'm afraid that that would require people to execise good
judgement and common sense. :-)
Ec