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

[Matthew Woodcraft]

Seraphim Blade wrote:
 > NOR helps to preserve relevance and importance of information as well
 > as correctness of it. If no one else has seen fit to investigate this
 > matter or publish that conclusion, why should we be the first?

Giving the original research rule a double role in this way is bad for
two reasons:

- it is hard enough to work out where we want the boundary of this rule
   to be considering either one of the jobs separately;

- using the existence of published sources as a central way to judge
   relevance and importance is a recipe for systematic bias.

That isn't to say that the existence of published sources isn't a
sensible way to help make decisions about relevance and importance. But
there's no good reason to suppose that we should be using the same
criteria for the decision about when a statement is sufficiently obvious
that we can make it without giving a reference and the decision about
when a statement is significant enough to mention.

-M-