[WikiEN-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Schools on en: (was DoImisunderstand Wikipedia?

Thu May 19 15:13:25 UTC 2005

>From: Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com>
>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.
>
>Deciding what may be accepted as research is as difficult a problem as
>determine what is notable.

That may be true for certain cutting edge topics which are not well 
documented.  But in other areas (e.g. religion, politics, current world 
conflicts, controversial people, etc.) the more typical problem is that 
people insist on inserting their own analysis.

Jay.