[WikiEN-l] The onward march of the meaning of "original research"

[Steve Bennett]

On 02/05/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/2/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I don't see what's original research about this.
>
> It's all a matter of definition. Under some definitions, Wikipedia
> thrives on original research and could not exist without it. We are
> all researchers the moment we decide to pick a topic, study the
> sources, evaluate them carefully, weigh expert against expert and make
> decisions about what to include and what to omit, how to arrange the
> text, which "NPOV" terms to use, and so on.

Can someone summarise the case for considering photos of
Wikipedian-identified animals as OR, though? I sort of feel that, for
a start, images are just decoration in any case. If an editor wanted
to say "According to official sources, Green-horned Bats are only
found in Transylvania, whereas this example was photographed in
Gippsland" that might be one thing. But since we can't use copyrighted
images, it seems absolutely necessary that we allow images taken by
amateur photographers. We, or the reader, can then compare the photo
to photos in published sources to confirm that they are close enough
to be considered an accurate representation of the subject.

Which leads me to think: It actually doesn't matter if our photo is
genuinely of a Green-horned Bat, or whether it's actually a
Yellow-horned Bat with a bit of photoshop work. It is simply a
representation after all.

Steve