[WikiEN-l] While we're at it, NOR line-by-line

[Philip Sandifer]

Because this is a definite case where TL, DNR is a reasonable  
response, I encourage people who are less interested in the full  
analysis to skip to the few paragraphs following the line "If the  
sources cited do not explicitly reach the same conclusion, or if the  
sources cited are not directly related to the subject of the article,  
then the editor is engaged in original research."

As a counterpart to my line-by-line reading of WP:V, I've had a look  
at NOR. It is, for the most part, and mercifully, not as bad as WP:V.  
That said, it still has some serious problems, including what is  
probably the worst sentence ever put into a Wikipedia policy.

But for the most part, unlike WP:V, it doesn't need a top-down  
reconsideration, except in one area - it fundamentally misunderstands  
the relationship between sources and research. But even this can  
probably be solved through addition rather than deletion.

In any case, the specifics (again, cross-posted to WT:NOR):

* ""Original research" is material for which no reliable source can be  
found. The only way you can show that your edit is not original  
research is to produce a reliable published source that contains that  
material."

Certainly reliable sources are our best practice, and are the simplest  
way to show that something is not original research. But I know of few  
areas that have reliable, encyclopedia-like published sources that  
cover their details to the degree we want to. Certainly my field,  
literary studies, has a mass of conventional wisdom that is passed  
around via oral tradition, not written tradition. There are topics  
that we unquestionably should have articles about that one cannot  
write a general overview of without relying on that oral tradition.  
And we should not consider that original research - generally speaking  
it's the opposite - the stuff that is part of the oral tradition is  
often the most obvious and basic stuff that is just so obvious that  
it's not worth anybody's while to publish a book saying it, because  
everyone would go "Yes, of course, we knew that."

* "Article statements generally should not rely on unclear or  
inconsistent passages, nor on passing comments. Passages open to  
interpretation should be precisely cited or avoided"

Oh dear. Now, admittedly, part of my objection here is that, as a good  
and mainstream literary scholar, I have no idea what a passage that is  
not open to interpretation would be.  Assuming a passage is written in  
language, it is open for interpretation, and for all but the driest  
technical literature this opening is significant.

* "Drawing conclusions not evident in the reference is original  
research regardless of the type of source."

And here we get the sentence that most of our actual practice falls  
into - not evident to who? We have articles on very hard, very  
technical topics in multiple fields. How are references in these  
fields meant to be used? The problem here is *not* the lack of a clear  
standard, but rather the word "evident." We would do better even with  
"If the cited source does not clearly support the claim being made, it  
is original research."

* "For that reason, anyone—without specialist knowledge—who reads the  
primary source should be able to verify that the Wikipedia passage  
agrees with the primary source."

This is very possibly the single worst sentence ever enshrined as  
Wikipedia policy. This sentence is where the first and third problems  
I identified come to a terrible head. Because secondary source  
publication is generally a commercial act, what gets published in a  
secondary source is heavily determined by what is financially viable.  
That is a very, very different concern from what is useful or  
important. As a result, primary sources are vital to research - not  
just scholarly research, but all research. And this becomes even more  
true as you get to more and more specialist topics - this sentence  
effectively guts our coverage of science and mathematics.

Let me be clear here, and using a credible expert (my wife, a PhD  
student in chemistry). It is simply not possible to write an article  
on [[Single molecule magnets]] from overview-providing secondary  
sources. Any such article would be badly out of date. Specialist- 
requiring primary sources are *necessary* to write these articles.

* "All interpretive claims, analyses, or synthetic claims about  
primary sources must be referenced to a secondary source, rather than  
original analysis of the primary-source material by Wikipedia editors."

Secondarily, this sentence sets up a distinction that just makes no  
sense. taking a topic from my field this time, yes, secondary sources  
exist and are plentiful on [[Jacques Lacan]]. But the good ones are  
hard too - often just as hard as Lacan's primary texts. Nothing is  
gained by limiting "interpetive" claims (which, again, I think is a  
deeply meaningless term) to primary sources only - it's an arbitrary  
distinction that requires arbitrary source usage that, more to the  
point, is not in line with respected practices or with how people  
actually use sources.

This points also to an issue about credentialism. The current policy  
is all but anti-expert. That is, it basically requires that articles  
be written either by people who do not know the material or by people  
who are going to act like they do not know the material. This is *not*  
what our anti-credentialist position started as, and it's a terrible  
evolution of it. The original concept of our anti-credentialism was  
that you could replace a process of credential verification with a  
high-speed (i.e. wiki-based) open peer review process. That is, a mass  
of people whose credentials you don't verify can, if given the proper  
tools, provide as good a peer review as credentialed experts. But this  
does not assume non-knowledgeable participants - it merely says that  
we don't check the credentials. The assumption can safely be made that  
if somebody is editing an article in good faith, they know stuff about  
the topic. That doesn't eliminate the need for sources (any more than  
it does in academic research), but it does mean that this "articles  
must be able to be written by a non-specialist" policy is, frankly, an  
idiotic poison.

* "If the sources cited do not explicitly reach the same conclusion,  
or if the sources cited are not directly related to the subject of the  
article, then the editor is engaged in original research."

This bit, and really the whole section it's in is where the policy  
most falls apart. What it's trying to do is clear - and the plagiarism  
example a bit further down is (mostly) spot-on. (It's not unreasonable  
to mention the Chicago Manual for context there - it's the explicit  
conclusion-drawing that is a problem)

But as it stands, this sentence describes a research practice that is  
impossible. The idea that it is possible to simply and unambiguously  
transport conclusions from a source into a piece of research would be  
rejected by any credible school of teaching research skills that I am  
aware of. It is, frankly, the rhetoric and composition equivalent of  
spontaneous generation.

Indeed, the opposite is increasingly widely accepted. One of the major  
composition texts these days is called _Everything's an Argument_, and  
makes the case, essentially, that one cannot organize information  
without advancing an argument. Research is always an interpretive and  
synthetic process, and any presentation of research advances a  
position. The position our articles try to advance is a NPOV position,  
but it is still a position. NPOV is not "No point of view."

Given all of that, this phrasing of the policy is untenable and  
inaccurate. The section should be heavily cut down, and coupled with a  
section that needs to be written. That section must explictly accept  
that the basic act of organizing information into a NPOV presentation  
is an act of synthetic research. Connections, interpretations, and  
organizations are going to have to be introduced, not all of which can  
be drawn straightforwardly from reliable sources. It should openly  
acknowledge that determining what the best NPOV presentation and what  
the most significant viewpoints are is hard and requires a process of  
open and good faith communication among editors. How to write an  
encyclopedia article is not something that can be determined  
mechanically or obviously by an absolute standard or by outsiders  
brought in to mediate or intervene.

* "This is welcomed because images generally do not propose  
unpublished ideas or arguments, the core reason behind the NOR policy. "

This is not true. Or, at least, it's no more true of images than it is  
of words. This section is a frankly bizarre hedge, and a weird moment  
of liberalness in the policy where none is warranted - especially  
because the use of images to subtly advance points of view is one of  
the most insidious and subtle problems we have in this area.

The policy ought to be something along the lines of "images are used  
to illustrate aspects of the article. Images that are modified or are  
structured so as to clearly imply or argue for a position are a subtle  
form of original research that must be watched for."

As I said, the policy is, largely, better than WP:V - it has only two  
egregious problems, both of which are closely related - its  
bewildering sense of "self-evident" sources, and its deeply flawed  
belief about the transparency of assembling information into a  
tertiary source. This can largely be fixed by new language and by  
careful rephrasing, but it is a fix that is desperately needed, as  
right now this page provides bad advice that is not and cannot be  
usefully applied towards writing an encyclopedia, and that should  
frankly be largely, if not totally, ignored by responsible editors.

-Phil