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

Fri Dec 29 13:23:49 UTC 2006

On 29/12/06, Steve Block <steve.block at myrealbox.com> wrote:
> zero 0000 wrote:

> >   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.

> Agree with you.  But Wikipedia isn't the place for them to report that.
>   We aren't a place for original research.  The place for them to report
> that is in their criticism of the score published in some other source.
>   We summarise it.  That's how it works.

That *is* summarising it. Summarising the obvious should not require
teaching J. Random Querulous the basics of your field because they
want a source for your observation that "the sky is blue" based on the
wavelength of the light from it tending to be more like 400nm than
700nm.

> >  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.

> No, again that isn't right.  We don't record the truth, we summarise
> sources.  What we do is allow the reader to check we have summarised the
> source accurately.

This may be the case in some extreme interpretation, but I really
don't see that it is in this one.

- d.