[Foundation-l] Oral Citations project: People are Knowledge

[Wjhonson]

All sources can be cited without falling afoul of "original research"
Original research only covers claims without sources at all, or claims made from yourself as the source.
Any source, including citing to a video interviews, is never original research.

I don't really get by the way, why this is considered revolutionary.
These aren't "oral citations" in the standard sense, these are citations to a published video.










-----Original Message-----
From: Thomas Morton <morton.thomas at googlemail.com>
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
Sent: Wed, Jul 27, 2011 2:33 am
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Oral Citations project: People are Knowledge


This is a really interesting and thoughtfully complete project.
As an editor I am cautious of how well these could be used as citations
ithout falling afoul of "original research".
The first problem I see is that presentation becomes difficult:
> "Interviews with members of the Sk8r
 tribe in 2011 indicated that they have a deep animosity towards the
 neighbouring Emos
Clearly marks the source, but does not clarify who made the interviews,
here the indication came from (i.e. did they say this outright, or did they
ust moan about the Emos constantly - the latter, of course, being a
roblematic conclusion), or who drew the interpretation (if applicable). On
op of that it is not a *great* way to write content - better to stick to
traight facts where possible ("the Sk8r tribe have a deep animosity toward
he Emos").
This can probably be addressed by working out a good way to cite oral
aterial.
The second issue I touched on above; in that editors may have difficulty
rawing purely factual material from the source, rather
han making interpretations. Whilst I could see an argument for a little
eeway on oral material being interpreted, I also think it is a bad idea to
ncourage too much.
Of course, material from academically qualified people (as much of this
articular project seems to be) could happily be treated in the same way as,
ay, an academic writing a book or an article (with the slight caveat of no
ndependent review). But from unqualified people - who is going to draw it
ogether? I've always been in favour of giving experts in a field some
eeway in how they record/report/source/present material in Wikipedia.
owever shifting that to an oral citation is not necessarily a simple task.
*What I do think is incredibly important though is that this material has
uge value in itself - and every effort to encourage more of the same should
e taken! *
In fact we should get as much material such as this as possible, host it,
ranslate it, make it accessible - and encourage secondary academic sources
o make use of it. This could work both as a "hack" to get around the issues
f citing oral material directly as well as contributing to the effort to
xpand knowledge of these areas of study.
I'm excited to see the next step for this... is there going to be more of
his work? Can we get some publicity for this in the relevant academic
ircles? Is there potential for the foundation to fund efforts to collect
ore and more material? Can we look at expanding it to other areas (for
xample - although I appreciate the focus is areas not covered by written
aterial, this would be equally valuable in some parts of the global north;
ven in the UK I could see advantages to recording interviews with different
eople).
Long term we could perhaps even consider a new project that is intended
pecifically to collect oral evidence, host it (through commons), translate
t and make it easy to cite/use. Such a project would be horrendously
aluable and provide insight into all manner of cultures.
Tom
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