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

Tue Mar 8 16:21:37 UTC 2005

Jay JG:

>>  "Deductive reasoning" becomes
> > original research when it is used to build a case against a position
> > presented in an article, not when used to do unit conversions.  Now if
> > you were to assert that based on genetics and "simple deductive
> > reasoning" that uncles were more closely related to nephews than aunts
> > were to nieces, that would be original research, and you'd have to
> > find some source which supported it.

Ray Saintonge:

> That's certainly an extremist view.  It implies that a crackpot theory
> is acceptable as long as it has previously been published somewhere
> else.

 I was grateful for the clarification later given by Jay JG.  Where I
differ, myself, is in not taking "idea" from the policy page to mean any
proposition, however concrete or factual, but to have some debatable general
or abstract content (e.g. the theory of relativity).

Charles