[WikiEN-l] Radical redefinition of OR

[Delirium]

Ray Saintonge wrote:
> 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.
>   

I don't have much to say in reply to this except that I disagree with 
basically every single sentence in your email.  You're describing an 
original-research activist encyclopedia, not Wikipedia.

-Mark