[WikiEN-l] Original research or common sense inferral?

[John Lee]

On 4/3/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 02/04/07, Seraphim Blade <seraphimbladewikipedia at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > In reply to Phil, as to how that guts NOR: The entire point of NOR is
> > that you do -not- use your own "editorial judgment" when writing an
> > article, you use information in reliable secondary sources. It also
> > helps to ensure that information is relevant-sometimes, something can
> > be technically true, but also irrelevant. I'd ask the same
> > question-why should we adopt the role of "first reporter"? If someone
> > wants to do that, isn't that what Wikinews is for?
>
>
> This appears to be the sort of obsession with replacing editorial
> judgement with rules that makes Wikipedia into a red tape obstacle
> course.
>
> Unfortunately, good sense and quality cannot in fact be Taylorised.
>
>
> - d.


It's an unfortunate truth that many of our editors aren't exactly capable of
exercising good editorial judgment. Also, while I disagree that we should
replace editorial discretion with rules, it's certainly non-contestable that
WP is never the right place for the role of "first reporter".

The solution, I think, is to stay true to NOR as it has always been: don't
use primary sources unless you are using them to present a non-novel
interpretation.

Johnleemk