On Sun, Mar 30, 2008 at 03:04:30PM -0400, ffm wrote: If we now know that the bridge is open, then rather than directly claiming the other source is wrong, we could either: 1. Not say anything about the bridge being closed, or 2. Say that the bridge "was closed," and use the reference provided. In other words, just because something was said by a reference doesn't mean we have to include it. We can simply ignore the reference. "Original reasearch" refers to the actual text written in our articles. It doesn't refer to the process by which we decide what text to include; that will always involve a great deal of editorial discretion and synthesis. For example, consider the process by which we decide the "due weight" for a particular point of view. I find it very implausible that any significant group of editors would fight to keep the wording "the bridge is closed" if someone could present compelling evidence that it isn't. - Carl

I don't see a problem, you can just obtain the guys responsible for the bridge's telephone number, and ring them, and stick the telephone number on the talk page and how you found it (the number is normally a public number anyway, so there's likely to be no privacy issues). Anybody wanting to verify it can ring the number. You have then referenced the information. There may well be websites as well you can reference. It's only OR if *you* are making a new *synthesis* of information. Merely ringing somebody or looking at something on the web to see if the bridge is open/closed isn't OR, it's just consulting a source. -- -Ian Woollard We live in an imperfectly imperfect world. If we lived in a perfectly imperfect world things would be a lot better.

On Sun, 30 Mar 2008, Carl Beckhorn wrote: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:No_original_research/Archive_13…

On 31/03/2008, Carl Beckhorn <cbeckhorn(a)fastmail.fm> wrote: In this case, it could be passable, but still legally closed (it's on private land apparently). He hasn't shown that it's legally open, or even necessarily that it's safe to cross. So his OR is that it's open. If it was a public road, and all the cones, men and speed restrictions had disappeared that would be very different though. -- -Ian Woollard We live in an imperfectly imperfect world. If we lived in a perfectly imperfect world things would be a lot better.