[WikiEN-l] Re: Original Research

[Geoff Burling]

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.

Take, for example, David Gerard's example of Indie Australian bands.
>From my reading, most of our articles about music bands mostly set
forth verifiable facts such as when the date the band was formed, who
was in it, & what records it reelased. For matters like these, I have
little to no concern about where these facts came from, because one
could always find a way to verify them.

But when the article goes beyond these dry facts to the matter of
inspiration, the motivation of its members, etc., then I get concerned.
As an example, suppose in the article about fictional band
"Mestruating Men" the following appears: "After the release of the
first album, differences over the band's direction led to personel
changes: according to lead singer Wally, "When Harry said he had been
influenced by 'Men without Hats' & said we ought to try to sound more
like them, we kicked the wanker out of the band & found Bruce to replace
him." Now if the quotation came from a reasonably easy source to verify --
say either the Australian equivalent of Rolling Stone or New Music Review --
I would keep it, whether this was original research or not. However, if
this came from a primary source that was had to verify -- a personal
interview, or a newsletter or publication that is not reasonably
accessible -- then I would raise the question of "original research."

(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.)

I feel this kind of objection ought to apply both to well-known bands
like "The Rolling Stones" as well as Australian Indie bands.

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.

(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.)

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.

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.

Geoff