steven l. rubenstein wrote:
I think the policy "no original research" is one of our most important policies, and essential to the integrity of our project as an encyclopedia.
One of the interesting things that has been starting to emerge, and I expect will happen more and more as WP deepens its coverage, is that the integration of different subject areas is turning up inconsistencies between the specialists in those areas. For instance, the US Navy has apparently fabricated some of the "fish names" used for its submarines, a historical detail that seems to have gone mostly unnoticed for half a century, but has now been made glaringly obvious by our attempts to cross-reference with our fish articles.
This shouldn't change our policy about original research, but I can see WP *creating* a demand for new original research, to answer questions that have come up. It might be worthwhile to create an "open problems" page listing issues where we've done our best and come up dry, and advertise it to researchers looking to pump up CVs for the tenure committee. 1/2 :-)
Stan