[WikiEN-l] Arbitration Committee Seeking Comment

Wed Jun 8 17:27:25 UTC 2005

Geoff Burling wrote:

>On Mon, 6 Jun 2005, Sean Barrett wrote:
>
>  
>
>>Ray Saintonge stated for the record:
>>
>>    
>>
>>>Iif you use the old Soviet records somebody is bound to bring up the "No
>>>original research" rule.
>>>      
>>>
>>Why are old Soviet records "original research" while old US records
>>(NVR, DANFS, &c.) are okay?
>>    
>>
>Ease of verification?
>
>In theory, many old US records are accessible by the Freedom of Information
>Act; I believe something similar exists for many national archives.
>
There's a gold mine of material available before even needing FOI.  For 
example, all US patent applications made since their big fire are 
available on line.  In about 1970 I remember wandering in a section of 
university stacks where they were storing booklets received at a rapid 
rate from various US government agencies.  There was no way that any 
library  could keep up with maintaining a subject catalogue of this 
stuff. My favourite was a pamphlet from the US Army, "The Toxic Effect 
of Burning Chicken Feathers." 

>Years ago, when this topic was raised on this list, I seem to remember
>that there was a consensus towards requiring all sources cited or used
>to be *published*. Not only did that mean that the material received
>some token degree of review, & did not depend on Wikipedia for dissemination
>into the larger public discussion (which was one reason for the No Original
>Research rule), but it also allowed a Wikipedia user to verify the
>citation for her/himself. Thus an unpublished memo from a national or
>corporate archive written in 1955 should not be cited; but a letter
>between two ancient rulers that has been translated & published as
>part of _The Armana Letters_ (published by John Hopkins Press, & for
>sale on Amazon) can be cited.
>
"Years ago" is wonderfully hyperbolic considering that in most 
jurisdictions the project is not old enough to attend kindergarten. 
"Published", in most cases, is a solid objective criterion to use as a 
starting point.  There may still be arguments about whether something 
really was published.  Is a doctoral thesis "published" when it is 
simply put on University library shelves and made available through 
interlibrary loan? 

>I am always happily surprised at what I can access through my local
>public library's Interlibrary Loan services -- often at no cost to me.
>
Half the problem faced by many of our contributors is in not knowing the 
extent of available resources, and how to get at them.

>Of course, this requirement leads to other questions. What about rare
>books or ephemera? For example, if one wanted to write articles on
>Grunge rock in Seattle (home of Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarten & other
>well-known bands), _The Rocket_ is an invaluable & authoritative
>source to cite. However, that newspaper went out of business years ago,
>& I wouldn't have a clue where I could find copies of specific -- or
>any -- issues. (It was a free weekly newspaper that could be found at
>all of the local record stores in Seattle & Portland.) If there is a
>library with a run of its issues, I doubt that they would share either
>the originals or a photocopy thru ILL; but then, coming thru old
>issues of _The Rocket_ or 16th century incunabula seems to me close to
>performing original research.
>
To the extent that it can be found, protecting this ephemeral material 
is a big problem.  Copyright permissions would be a nightmare, but in 95 
years the newsprint is likely to be so crumbly as to be unusable.  Maybe 
there's a need to be more agressive about building on-line pdf files of 
this stuff.  There is a strong argument for considering such actions to 
be fair use.  The fourth of the factors to be considered is the effect 
on the copyright holder's market.

>Another question is citing untranslated, non-English sources in a
>English-language Wikipedia. Obviously, many experts write in languages
>other than English, & some topics cannot be developed beyond a stub
>without use of non-English sources; however, when a contributor writes
>an article & only cites, say, Russian or Georgian-language sources
>for her/his article, I have to take it on faith that not only are
>the references reported correstly, but that the works even exist.
>
>And I'm sure that there are other issues one could discuss. However,
>if we could agree that published sources -- either primary or secondary --
>can be cited, but unpublished works can not be, this would solve
>most of the problem.
>
It's a good starting point, as long as we don't start imposing 
qualifications on the published material.  "Peer reviewed" is a common 
one that is mentioned.  The problem with that is that it's a subjective 
judgement; determining whether a publication is peer-reviewed requires a 
significant exercise of POV.

In theory we could go beyond the "published" criterion, but I would 
approach that with extreme caution.  We've been known to have a few anal 
editors for whom ANY measure of flexibility sets us on the road to chaos 
and confusion.

Ec