[WikiEN-l] Arbitration Committee Seeking Comment

[Geoff Burling]

On Mon, 6 Jun 2005, Sean Barrett wrote:

> Ray Saintonge stated for the record:
>
> > Iif you use the old Soviet records somebody is bound to bring up the "No
> > original research" rule.
>
> Why are old Soviet records "original research" while old US records
> (NVR, DANFS, &c.) are okay?
>
Ease of verification?

In theory, many old US records are accessible by the Freedom of Information
Act; I believe something similar exists for many national archives.

Note that I wrote above the words "in theory": in practice, the US government
often refuses to release copies of records, or redacts them to remove
some or all information -- & sometimes not consistently. The movie
_Fahrenheit 911_ has a memorable example where one document was given to
a journalist with some information removed -- but not to another.

(I do not have any reliable knowledge about how other governments handle
releasing their records, so I won't comment on those cases.)

Years ago, when this topic was raised on this list, I seem to remember
that there was a consensus towards requiring all sources cited or used
to be *published*. Not only did that mean that the material received
some token degree of review, & did not depend on Wikipedia for dissemination
into the larger public discussion (which was one reason for the No Original
Research rule), but it also allowed a Wikipedia user to verify the
citation for her/himself. Thus an unpublished memo from a national or
corporate archive written in 1955 should not be cited; but a letter
between two ancient rulers that has been translated & published as
part of _The Armana Letters_ (published by John Hopkins Press, & for
sale on Amazon) can be cited.

I am always happily surprised at what I can access through my local
public library's Interlibrary Loan services -- often at no cost to me.

Of course, this requirement leads to other questions. What about rare
books or ephemera? For example, if one wanted to write articles on
Grunge rock in Seattle (home of Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarten & other
well-known bands), _The Rocket_ is an invaluable & authoritative
source to cite. However, that newspaper went out of business years ago,
& I wouldn't have a clue where I could find copies of specific -- or
any -- issues. (It was a free weekly newspaper that could be found at
all of the local record stores in Seattle & Portland.) If there is a
library with a run of its issues, I doubt that they would share either
the originals or a photocopy thru ILL; but then, coming thru old
issues of _The Rocket_ or 16th century incunabula seems to me close to
performing original research.

Another question is citing untranslated, non-English sources in a
English-language Wikipedia. Obviously, many experts write in languages
other than English, & some topics cannot be developed beyond a stub
without use of non-English sources; however, when a contributor writes
an article & only cites, say, Russian or Georgian-language sources
for her/his article, I have to take it on faith that not only are
the references reported correstly, but that the works even exist.

And I'm sure that there are other issues one could discuss. However,
if we could agree that published sources -- either primary or secondary --
can be cited, but unpublished works can not be, this would solve
most of the problem.

Geoff