[WikiEN-l] Age fabrication and original research

[FT2]

On Thu, Oct 1, 2009 at 10:47 AM, Surreptitiousness <
surreptitious.wikipedian at googlemail.com> wrote:

> And of course, it is this portion of policy that causes us issues with
> regards fiction. Since the work itself is a primary source.
>  We haven't yet worked out to what extent a article on a fictional
> subject should rely on secondary sources.  Or at least reached a
> consensus.  It's easier to tackle fiction articles by removing
> speculation and interpretation. Generally, I think that should be the
> better approach, and I'd like to see a similar policy, in terms of scope
> rather than content, created for articles on fictional subjects.  I
> think Phul Sandifer had a draft somewhere, but it's real hard to
>  organise a consensus in this area, there's real division running deep.



The issue for fiction can be summed up within with one question, almost.
Here is a nice simple book. Obviously any /analysis/ will be from good
quality sources. But what kind of sourcing is appropriate to its plot
summary? Many well-read books don't have plot summaries in reliable sources,
and yet "anyone reading the book can see what its basic plot is", and we
have hundreds of editors to reach consensus on what it says.

(Key issue: any book is a primary source on its own contents.)

FT2