[WikiEN-l] Copyright question

[John Lee]

On 4/3/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
>
> On Mon, 2 Apr 2007 12:11:49 -0400, Phil Sandifer
> <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >Personally, I advocate following the last good version here, which is
> >to say, continuing as we were instead of paying heed to people who
> >nitpicked this important qualification out of existence in favor of a
> >guideline on how to write a bad encyclopedia.
>
> In other words, you prefer to be able to draw entirely from primary
> sources where no reliable secondary sources exist.  Which we already
> know, of course.  That is a matter of Wikiphilosophy.


Wait a minute. As I understand it, the policy Phil is defending in his
present post states that primary sources are acceptable where the
interpretation drawn is not novel (i.e. new). This is how I understand our
policy, although Phil in another post seems to have criticised this
interpretation (that primary sources should not be cited unless there are
secondary sources available).

If there are no extant secondary sources, any interpretation whatsoever of
the primary source is novel. I suppose one could argue for the face-value,
literal meaning interpretation as non-novel, but it's suprising how often
people can disagree on a literal reading of a source.

Johnleemk