[WikiEN-l] The boundaries of OR (contd)

Wed Dec 20 14:35:08 UTC 2006

> 3. Sarah points out the following text from WP:NOR :
>       "anyone--without specialist knowledge--who reads the
>       primary source should be able to verify that the Wikipedia
>       passage agrees with the primary source. Any interpretation
>       of primary source material requires a secondary source."
>   That seems to be broken.  Examples of specialist knowledge
>   which might be required are the ability to read a foreign
>   language and the ability to understand mathematical notation.
>
>   Someone who can read music should be able to report from
>   a musical score that it is in E-flat, even though that requires
>   specialist knowledge.  What the policy *should* require
>   (somehow) is that anyone who can read music will agree that
>   the score is in E-flat.  The fundamental skills of the field
>   should be assumed, and the policy should reflect that, imo.

I agree, that needs to be changed, but I'm not sure what to. We need
to define what kind of specialist knowledge is ok, and what isn't. For
example, is being able to speak Latin acceptable specialist knowledge
to use, basically meaning Latin speakers can translate the primary
source in the article? (It's definately preferable to cite a
translation, but if there isn't one, it may or may not be ok for a
Wikipedian to translate it, we need to decide.)

> 4. Sarah wrote: "We use writers as sources, not databases and
>   libraries."  Nobody suggested libraries.  I don't see that
>   databases are excluded by any existing policy, provided that
>   the process of extraction of the information from the database
>   is verifiable.
>
>   Suppose I have a book about a serial killer, which lists all the
>   victims one by one.  I think it is perfectly ok to write "all the
>   victims were women" after looking up each case in the book.
>   It comes under "research that consists of collecting and
>   organizing information from existing primary and/or secondary
>   sources is, of course, strongly encouraged."(WP:NOR)  I can't
>   see how that is different *in principle* from reporting that all
>   the articles on a particular subject in a particular database
>   give the same story about something, provided that that
>   observation is one that anyone can verify.  Of course this
>   criterion might not always be satisfied, but that shouldn't
>   eliminate the cases where it is.

The key point here is that your source for the statement that all the
papers say the same thing isn't just the papers, it's the database. If
there is a way to reliable cite the database, rather than just the
sources it contains (a link to the search results page, perhaps), then
it might be ok, but just citing the papers definately isn't.