[WikiEN-l] Radical redefinition of OR

[Ray Saintonge]

Delirium wrote:

>Conrad Dunkerson wrote:
>  
>
>>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 strongly disagree with that, and think this comes out of an 
>unfortunately widespread view that non-scientific research isn't 
>"really" research.  Gathering, interpreting, cross-referencing, and 
>checking the validity of the primary sources on an individual like, say, 
>Thomas Jefferson, in order to write a biography about him, is original 
>historical research, and best left to reputable historians.  At 
>Wikipedia, we should prefer secondary sources on his life---published 
>biographies of Thomas Jefferson written by reputable historians.  If you 
>discover some new primary sources relating to his life that have not 
>been mentioned in the existing secondary sources, that constitutes 
>original historical research, and you should publish it in a history 
>journal or book, or at the very least convince someone to write a 
>newspaper article about it, before it should go into Wikipedia.
>
>The same actually goes for too-close-to-primary secondary sources.  We 
>should not write our article on World War II by referring to 
>contemporary newspaper reports, which were often wrong and require 
>expertise to properly use, but instead should write it by referring to 
>existing, published histories of World War II written by reputable 
>historians.
>
I don't have the same faith in "reputable historians".  Being reputable 
is often nothing more than a mastery of the party line. Historians 
certainly differ on whether dropping the bomb on Hiroshima was a 
necessity or a war crime.  Of course all agree that it was in fact 
dropped.  For me NPOV is a far more important principle than NOR.  
Omitting something just because it has never been considered by 
"reputable" historians strikes me as unconscionable, and intellectually 
dishonest.  If a new primary source contradicts the "reputable" 
historians it should be mentioned in the interests of NPOV; otherwise 
NOR is nothing more than an excuse for suppressing distasteful 
information..  In the case of Jefferson, are we to avoid quoting the 
Federalist Papers just because they are a primary source?

We want readers to think for themselves.  We want them to consider 
alternative views.  We don't want them to just cut and paste into their 
school essays.  We want them to question the political correctness of 
"reputable" historians.  We want them to be aware of how distortions can 
so easily arise en route from the primary to the secondary source.

Ec