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