From: Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell(a)gmail.com>
On 5/18/05, JAY JG <jayjg(a)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.