[WikiEN-l] The new verifiability policy

[Stan Shebs]

The Cunctator wrote:

>On 2/28/06, slimvirgin at gmail.com <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>On 2/28/06, charles matthews <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
>>
>>>Slim Virgin wrote
>>>
>>>
>>>>WP:V is supported by WP:NOR, a longstanding, established policy. The
>>>>only way to show you're not doing OR is to produce a reliable source.
>>>>If you can't produce one, your edit may be removed, because OR is
>>>>never allowed.
>>>>
>>>Yes, but this doesn't override some other things, like trying to get
>>>consensus.
>>>
>>The editors on a page are not allowed to reach a consensus to include
>>original research, just as they're not allowed to decide to ditch
>>NPOV. NOR and NPOV do override consensus.
>>
>
>You're a bit of a hardliner. Any form of analysis or recombination of
>ideas, any reformulation of content is original research to some
>degree. If there were no original research allowed at all, then the
>work on Wikipedia would not be copyrightable, because copyright
>requires some kind of creativity.
>
Let's not mix up "original content" with "original research". Listing
statements A, B, and C in the order B, A, C because I think it's more
readable or a better explanation that way is original composition, but
there are still only three statements, so there is no research involved,
original or otherwise. Verifiability and NOR can't even come into play
until I go to add a new statement D.

I think where people get (sometimes justifiably) paranoid is that
the writing does have to be careful not to introduce new statements
inadvertantly. For instance, "B, A, and therefore C" is not just
a rhetorical improvement on "B, A, and C". It's an interesting
exercise, for instance, to update the carefully-chosen words of an
old 1911EB entry without changing the original author's meaning.

Stan