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

Fri Dec 29 18:55:28 UTC 2006

David Gerard wrote:

>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.
>
An NOR extremist could likely ask for a citation that would convince 
those who believe that light is in particles rather than waves. :-)

Saying that a musical work is in E-flat is not criticism; it's meta-data 
where there is a high degree of probability that subject-educated 
readers will draw the same conclusion from identical data contained in 
the musical score.  Other information that could constitute original 
research in a musical context when it is not put there by the composer 
would be terms like "andante" or "allegro" to indicate the speed of the work

>>> 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.
>
Yes.  The fact is that most situations are not extreme.  We put in a lot 
of effort arguing about the extremes when the reality is that most of 
the extremes are of limited consequence.  The entire anal process of 
building a unified field theory of epistemology results in a 
considerable waste of time.

Ec