[WikiEN-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Schools on en: (was Do Imisunderstand Wikipedia? On notability and encyclopedic merit.)

Thu May 19 10:44:52 UTC 2005

Gregory Maxwell (gmaxwell at gmail.com) [050519 14:43]:
> On 5/18/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:

> > 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.

> We have entire areas of study which would be exceptionally difficult
> to document if we were strictly adhering to a no original research
> policy.  For example our articles on Free Software related subject
> often contain information sourced from mailing lists and form the
> editors experience, sources which would not normally be acceptable
> under the normal application of the original research standard.

For the subject, mailing list posts are probably entirely appropriate
reference material. Check [[X Window System]], particularly the "X.Org and
XFree86" section - you can be sure I'd have had lynch mobs after me if I
hadn't referenced clause by clause.

> Deciding what may be accepted as research is as difficult a problem as
> determine what is notable.

That's why we use a thing called "editorial judgement." Not everything
can be Taylorised.

I really don't see any reason to let people get away with "referencing is
haaaaard." It's work - I've written three-paragraph articles then had to
hunt around for references so people can immediately see I'm not just
making it up off the top of my head - but so are a lot of worthwhile
things.

As [[WP:CITE]] puts it: "This applies even when the information is
currently undisputed - even if there is no dispute right now, someone might
come along in five years and want to dispute, verify, or learn more about a
topic."

As [[Wikipedia:Verifiability]] (that thing I keep citing on VFD) puts it:
"Fact checking is time consuming, economically costly, and not particularly
rewarding. It is unfair to make later editors dig for sources."

When people come onto IRC saying "my article was deleted!" my standard
advice is: write three decent paragraphs with two references and it'll
stay. In fact, three paras, two refs and standard formatting will gladden
the heart of whatever pool soul encounters it on Special:Newpages patrol.

Doing it right is *not that hard*, and I find all arguments I've seen to
the contrary utterly unconvincing.

- d.