On Jun 8, 2005, at 8:46 PM, Stephen Forrest wrote:
On 6/8/05, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
Eh, it's quite possible, .. for example in making a example for a math article you might stumble on something somewhat novel, but often in mathematics we can empirically confirm the truth of something in a way which doesn't assert POV. So you might say that NOR is less important in articles about math. ... but at the same time, it's not like placing something in an article gets people to test the proof, so NOR is still potentially valuable there because the majority of 'great new mathematical ideas' are actually wrong. :
If you do find something new, then publish. Once published it can be included.
The creative effort of wikipedia is the synthesis - it is that which is our "original research", namely, the creation of a consensus statement of the state of knowledge as it can be documented. This is original - it does not exist any place else. If working on wikipedia advances original research, then channel that into the appropriate place, namely the testing ground for knoweldge. If it then comes back, it is a success.
It might even be interesting to document cases of publishable material whose origin was on wikipedia as the author did his background work in preparation.