[WikiEN-l] Using Wikipedia unlikely to result in collapse of knowledge

[Oldak Quill]

2008/10/7 Ken Arromdee <arromdee at rahul.net>:
> On Tue, 7 Oct 2008, Thomas Dalton wrote:
>> > Is this the same David Gerard that not only spearheaded
>> > the drive but even personally removed spoiler warnings...
>> There is a big difference between a quality warning and a spoiler warning.
>
> Yeah, spoiler warnings are easy to delete by not-technically-but-pretty-much-
> automated methods.
>
> Wasn't one of the rationales for taking out spoiler warnings that it was
> original research to decide that something is a spoiler?  Wouldn't it be
> original research to determine something's quality too?

If it were original research to determine that information is missing
from an article, it would logically follow that compiling an article
in the first place is original research. When writing an article one
determines what information should be included, or what information
should be added. If this is considered original research as you
suggest, then writing articles for Wikipedia would be original
research and therefore against our own rules.

Writing an article is a creative act, and it is original. No two
editors would write the same article from the same set of sources.
That does not make writing an article "original research" since none
of the information in the article is original. It seems that "original
research" applies to content and information, rather than compilation
and expression.

-- 
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)