[WikiEN-l] Radical redefinition of OR

[Ray Saintonge]

Conrad Dunkerson wrote:

>* Jimmy Wales wrote:
>  
>
>>I think the point about privacy is that (as far as I know) there is a 
>>general consensus that someone sysematically going through court records 
>>to write articles about people who were convicted of drunk driving, or 
>>who were involved in a lawsuit, is a bad idea.  We need to have some 
>>kind of independent verification (i.e. WP:NOR) that the incident or 
>>lawsuit is notable and worthy of inclusion in an article, and that in 
>>the case of people of very minor notability, there is no very good 
>>reason to include it.
>>    
>>
>I cringe when I see people equating 'primary sources' with 'original 
>research'. What they are really talking about is a concept of 'notability 
>of facts'... if a scientific theory is notable/relevant then it logically 
>will have been judged so by neutral third-parties. If (to address THIS 
>instance) a court case is notable/relevant then it would presumably be 
>reported on by the media.
>
>It is (I hope obviously) a bad idea for Wikipedia to promote information 
>more widely/prominently than any other source has done. We are not 
>disseminators (and thereby perforce arbiters) of 'truth' or 'relevance', 
>but rather recorders of things which OTHERS have judged to be worthy of 
>note. When we place ourselves in the position of saying, 'this information 
>is important to make known... even though no one else has done so' we are 
>inherently tossing 'neutral point of view' out the window.
>
The difficulty with this comes when we run into the maxim that the wiki 
is not paper.  If scientific theories depended on being published in the 
mainstream media that part of Wikipedia would be very skimpy indeed.  
NOR in science was intended to counteract the influence of crackpot 
theories.

I really don't know whether Mega Society v. Langan was ever reported in 
neutral media though I suspect it probably was not.  It may still be 
there in a service to lawyers.  I certainly have no inclination to spend 
a lot of time looking for a needle in a haystack when the needle may not 
even be there.  A default judgement is not very exciting, and often goes 
by unnoticed.  When the matter comes up for hearing there are no 
fireworks.  Even if a journalist is in the courtroom at the time of the 
decision he would be disinclined to say anything because he would need 
to put a lot of work into figuring out what led to that point.  Most 
cases that go through the courts are not reported by the media, and 
among those that are there is an overwhelming predominance of criminal 
matters or giant damage awards.  Cases in many aspects of law go right 
off the radar, so the absence of coverage says nothing about notability.

I think that we need more sophisticated criteria for notability if we 
are ever going to consider that as a valid criterion.  They should be 
positive ones rather than negative ones that depend on something not 
being found implying its non-existence.  As I said before, I don't think 
it helps to make this an NPOV issue, because by their nature court 
judgements tend to represent the neutral view between two warring 
parties.  NPOV allows both parties to have their views expressed in a 
dispute.  If one party refuses to express his side of the story that's 
as much as we can say about that side; it is not an excuse for 
suppressing the other side's views.

Notability of facts in an article needs a context.  We need to ask 
whether the point at issue is important to the general picture that we 
are painting about the person or other subject.

>However, the long growing trend of seeking to exclude this kind of thing 
>as 'original research' is itself extremely damaging. I've seen people 
>argue that we have to use ONLY imprecise media accounts of scientific 
>discoveries because citing the actual published findings would be 
>'original research'. Likewise, people have actually argued that citing a 
>book as reference for the CONTENTS of that book is 'original research'... 
>you need to get a third party source to say what was in the book. In 
>short, it has gotten to the point where many people think 'primary 
>sources' are to be avoided at all costs... and that is a travesty.
>
>Wikipedia USED to have a concept that,
>
>"However, research that consists of collecting and organizing information 
>from existing primary and/or secondary sources is, of course, strongly 
>encouraged. All articles on Wikipedia should be based on information 
>collected from published primary and secondary sources. This is not 
>"original research"; it is "source-based research", and it is fundamental 
>to writing an encyclopedia."
>
>Indeed, that text still appears in our 'No original research' policy. 
>However, efforts to stamp out use of 'primary sources' to spread 
>information that no other national (or international) 'news' / 'reporting' 
>entity has deemed worthy of commenting on have led to a wide-spread view 
>that 'primary sources' in general are bad. They aren't. Once something has 
>been verified as notable we should often take primary sources OVER 
>secondary ones.
>
I very much agree with your second discussion.  At this point I best 
express myself on it by saying nothing.

Ec