Fred,
Thank you for the reference to the WP policies which I have read.  It appears that the idea of not allowing original research was to prevent crackpot theories that had not received the stamp of approval through publication.  However, WP may have narrowed the mouth of the net too much when they indicate that a work needs to be published in order for it to have received peer review (be verifiable).  I am thinking again of papers presented to conferences that do not get "published."  It seems to me that although these are original research, they would many times still have been vetted through the peer review process to be accepted for a conference.  Also, when a CZ "author" puts together an article citing original sources, that might be construed to be "original" work but in truth it is only drawing on verifiable information.  To me, it seems that the original goal of the WP  policy is two-fold:  to eliminate crackpot articles and to post verifiable information for users.  If that is so, neither unpublished conference papers nor articles that compile information from original sources would appear to violate that standard, especially within the framework of CZ having expert editors reviewing articles.  Susan


At 06:54 AM 10/18/2006 -0600, Fred Bauder wrote:

On Oct 18, 2006, at 6:29 AM, Susan Awbrey wrote:

David and All:
I certainly agree that citing a primary source is not research and 
that it should be allowed in articles that claim verifiability and 
accuracy.  However, I'm not sure why original research has been 
banned?  First, I ask this because I thought CZ was going to be 
different from WP and it looks like we are recreating the same 
thing.  Second, if the goal truly is to allow as free an 
interchange as possible and CZ is going to have expert editors, why 
limit what can be posted?  Guess if I take the open environment 
concept of CZ to heart I would believe that all levels of articles 
(from high school through post doctorate) as well as all source 
levels of articles should be allowed....Why not, would be my 
question...what will it harm and it actually could add to both the 
learning and user mix.  Susan

Larry wrote most of the policy which guides Wikipedia; however, this  
particular policy was initiated by Jimbo, see

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php? title=Wikipedia:No_original_research&oldid=2014449

It was intended to deal with crackpot scientific theories, most of 
come not from experts, but actual crackpots. However, see

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/ Carl_Hewitt for a notable exception.

Fred Bauder

Dr. Susan M. Awbrey
Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education
520 O'Dowd Hall
Oakland University
Rochester, Michigan 48309
Phone:  248-370-2188
Fax: 248-370-2589

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