[WikiEN-l] Rules, expertise, and encyclopedic standards

Mon Mar 7 16:36:31 UTC 2005

JAY JG wrote

> Perhaps the [[Wikipedia:No original research]] page needs to be updated
with
> examples which make that point that if it really is that simple, someone
> else will have done the work for you already, and all you need to do is
> quote them.

Literally speaking, conversion of temperatures from Fahrenheit to Celsius
would fall foul of this.  And numerous other things: such as conversion of
dates out of one calendar system into another, metrication, currency
conversion, inverting family relationships from 'nephew' to 'uncle' ...

It is far from obvious that _every instance_ of every such low-level
operation can be supported as a literal quote.  I don't expect this to have
much effect on editors.  But surely drawing up such a policy that is drafted
in too sweeping a way is going to inhibit something valuable, sometime,
somewhere.

There was an argument brought forward on the Featured Article status
discussion for [[The Cantos]], that everything said about the interpretation
for this poem should be drawn from the secondary literature.  Now, the
argument had some merit: the article was amended in specific ways.  But
considering that the article itself summarised (expertly, and that part was
nothing to do with me) all 107-odd cantos of this 500 page poem, there was
also a slightly ridiculous quality to arguing that you couldn't just provide
a helpful summary of themes extracted from all that, to help the reader get
into 80K of text.

And I honestly think the article might never have got started at all, if NOR
had clouded my judgement about getting some scaffolding in place.

Charles