[WikiEN-l] fancruft

Sat Jul 22 12:45:59 UTC 2006

> On 7/21/06, Bkonrad <bkonrad123 at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>>
>> > On 7/21/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
>> If you are writing about Shakespeare, the primary source is the text of
>> Shakespeare's work. If you are writing about an episode of Friends, the
>> primary source is the episode itself.
>>
> No, if you are writing about Shakespeare, the primary source is the
> text of Shakespeare's work.  If you are writing about the author of
> Friends, the primary source is an episode of Friends.  If you're
> writing about the play Hamlet, the play itself would not be a primary
> source.  If you're writing about an episode of Friends, the episode
> itself would not be a primary source.

No, sorry. I used "writing about Shakespeare" as a shorthand for writing 
about Shakespeare's works. I'm not sure how it is these days, but it used to 
be a pretty common school exercise to write essays about one or another of 
the bards works. It was considerably less common to write essays about the 
bard himself.  And it IMO is completely ass-backwards to say "If you're 
writing about the play Hamlet, the play itself would not be a primary 
source." The inverse of that is very nearly the definition of primary 
source, at least in the world beyond Wikipedia's somewhat idiosyncratic 
usage in discussions of OR.

>> Now all of this is really somewhat distinct from whether something is
>> original research (at least in the context of what that means on 
>> Wikipedia).
>
> In my opinion it confuses the point.  Original research is much more
> simply stated as writing from direct observation, as opposed to
> writing from someone else's observations.

That is one type of OR, but it is not usage intended by the OR policy on 
Wikipedia (or at least as it was originally formulated).

> If writing about an episode of Friends and using that episode isn't
> original research, I'd have to ask, what is?  What is original
> research in the context of writing about a published work, or is there
> no such thing as original research in that case?

As I wrote earlier (now a bit further down), OR in that context would be 
putting forward ideas that were not explicitly in the episode itself, such 
as trying to explain a character's motivation or making comparisons with 
other works.

>> If you are writing a simply plot summary, there is not much OR 
>> involved--as
>> others have pointed out, every article on Wikipedia involves selecting 
>> which
>> details to include and which to omit. There may be disagreement about 
>> which
>> details are significant, but to be a simple plot summary, the details 
>> must
>> be explicitly present (verifiable) in the primary source.
>>
> I never said that the act of selecting which details to include and
> which to omit is original research.  It was others who brought that
> up.

Yes, but presenting a simple plot summary is little more than selecting 
details from the primary source.

>> Where things cross the line into OR is when the summary starts to put
>> forward some sort of analytical synthesis--such as attempting to explain 
>> WHY
>> a character may have taken a certain action or comparing the plot to that 
>> of
>> some other work. OR occurs when one starts to advance ideas that are not
>> explicitly present in the source material, but are based on inference or
>> synthesis or other techniques.
>>
> I agree with this to a large extent.  But I think when you write about
> a work using only the work itself as a source you necessarily *do* put
> forward this sort of synthesis.  Otherwise, what is the point of
> mentioning the fact?

Now, whether there is a point to mentioning any specific detail (or even an 
assembly of details) is a valid consideration, but that is separate from 
either OR or verifiability. As to whether you "necessarily" put forward an 
original synthesis when writing about a work using only the work itself -- I 
disagree. It is a fine line and one easily crossed, but so long as any such 
use of a primary source sticks to reporting only what is explicitly in the 
source and avoids making derivative observations, it is both verifiable and 
not OR. Whether it is worth including in an encyclopedia is another matter.

> I guess the exception would be when you just list out facts in random
> order and don't make any attempt to make them relevant.  And I suppose
> you could argue that's what the Trivia section of an article does.
> But otherwise, analytical synthesis is a necessary part of every
> article.
>
> Frankly, I think such a limited exception is not enough to restrict
> what is OR, since listing out random facts is not a good thing either.

Why would they have to be in random order? We order things all the time in 
extracting details from other sources in writing articles. The details in a 
simple plot summary should reflect the order of presentation in the show. 
The trivia sections in articles have nothing to do with plot summaries. I'm 
not sure why you bring that up here.

Bkonrad 