On 7/21/06, Bkonrad <bkonrad123(a)sbcglobal.net>
wrote:
On 7/21/06, Anthony <wikilegal(a)inbox.org>
wrote:
If you are writing about Shakespeare, the primary source is the text of
Shakespeare's work. If you are writing about an episode of Friends, the
primary source is the episode itself.
No, if you are writing about Shakespeare, the primary source is the
text of Shakespeare's work. If you are writing about the author of
Friends, the primary source is an episode of Friends. If you're
writing about the play Hamlet, the play itself would not be a primary
source. If you're writing about an episode of Friends, the episode
itself would not be a primary source.
No, sorry. I used "writing about Shakespeare" as a shorthand for writing
about Shakespeare's works. I'm not sure how it is these days, but it used to
be a pretty common school exercise to write essays about one or another of
the bards works. It was considerably less common to write essays about the
bard himself. And it IMO is completely ass-backwards to say "If you're
writing about the play Hamlet, the play itself would not be a primary
source." The inverse of that is very nearly the definition of primary
source, at least in the world beyond Wikipedia's somewhat idiosyncratic
usage in discussions of OR.
Now all of
this is really somewhat distinct from whether something is
original research (at least in the context of what that means on
Wikipedia).
In my opinion it confuses the point. Original research is much more
simply stated as writing from direct observation, as opposed to
writing from someone else's observations.
That is one type of OR, but it is not usage intended by the OR policy on
Wikipedia (or at least as it was originally formulated).
If writing about an episode of Friends and using that
episode isn't
original research, I'd have to ask, what is? What is original
research in the context of writing about a published work, or is there
no such thing as original research in that case?
As I wrote earlier (now a bit further down), OR in that context would be
putting forward ideas that were not explicitly in the episode itself, such
as trying to explain a character's motivation or making comparisons with
other works.
If you are
writing a simply plot summary, there is not much OR
involved--as
others have pointed out, every article on Wikipedia involves selecting
which
details to include and which to omit. There may be disagreement about
which
details are significant, but to be a simple plot summary, the details
must
be explicitly present (verifiable) in the primary source.
I never said that the act of selecting which details to include and
which to omit is original research. It was others who brought that
up.
Yes, but presenting a simple plot summary is little more than selecting
details from the primary source.
Where things
cross the line into OR is when the summary starts to put
forward some sort of analytical synthesis--such as attempting to explain
WHY
a character may have taken a certain action or comparing the plot to that
of
some other work. OR occurs when one starts to advance ideas that are not
explicitly present in the source material, but are based on inference or
synthesis or other techniques.
I agree with this to a large extent. But I think when you write about
a work using only the work itself as a source you necessarily *do* put
forward this sort of synthesis. Otherwise, what is the point of
mentioning the fact?
Now, whether there is a point to mentioning any specific detail (or even an
assembly of details) is a valid consideration, but that is separate from
either OR or verifiability. As to whether you "necessarily" put forward an
original synthesis when writing about a work using only the work itself -- I
disagree. It is a fine line and one easily crossed, but so long as any such
use of a primary source sticks to reporting only what is explicitly in the
source and avoids making derivative observations, it is both verifiable and
not OR. Whether it is worth including in an encyclopedia is another matter.
I guess the exception would be when you just list out
facts in random
order and don't make any attempt to make them relevant. And I suppose
you could argue that's what the Trivia section of an article does.
But otherwise, analytical synthesis is a necessary part of every
article.
Frankly, I think such a limited exception is not enough to restrict
what is OR, since listing out random facts is not a good thing either.
Why would they have to be in random order? We order things all the time in
extracting details from other sources in writing articles. The details in a
simple plot summary should reflect the order of presentation in the show.
The trivia sections in articles have nothing to do with plot summaries. I'm
not sure why you bring that up here.
Bkonrad