From: Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell(a)gmail.com>
'No original research' is a useful idea but it's not a crowing
achievement like NPOV, we'd be fools to follow it blindly, and I'm
glad to see that we do not. Often the cost of finding a citation (if
indeed one is available) for a particular point which is obvious to
anyone who has studied the references, is just too great.
In my experience, it is far more often ignored because an editor wants to
draw some original conclusions about something, and is unaware of the
policy, unable to comprehend it, or simply doesn't care. Currently the risk
that Wikipedia will be damaged by "blindly following" the NOR policy is far
less than the risk that it will be damaged by *not* following it.
Jay.