Charles: The devil may be in the details, but Wikipedia's warning against primary sources is very clear indeed. And this is precisely one of the rather important things at stake in this discussion.
The short version: Wikipedia is not a place for anyone to publish (or publicize) their own research. Which does not of course meant that academics (or other researchers) cannot or should not edit Wikipedia in the areas of their expertise. Of course they can! Me, I'm not particularly concerned with telling Jennifer what to do. But I am worried about a more or less organized attempt to tell academics to violate Wikipedia policies, and/or delegate others to do so "on their behalf." And no, this mailing list isn't really the place for this discussion. Which is why I repeatedly asked Jennifer where (or whether) she had proposed this initiative on Wikipedia itself. Take care Jon On Jul 10, 2014, at 10:15 PM, Charles Matthews <[email protected]> wrote: > On 11 July 2014 06:02, Jon Beasley-Murray <[email protected]> wrote: > I'm not sure where you're looking, but I'm thinking of > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:PRIMARY, which is indeed clear enough: > > "All interpretive claims, analyses, or synthetic claims about primary sources > must be referenced to a secondary source, rather than to an original analysis > of the primary-source material by Wikipedia editors." > > I was reading from the next para, which qualifies what you have copied it > here. If you had taken a couple more minutes to reply ... > > Now this (along perhaps with [[WP:OR]] can indeed be a change from how many > academics and researchers see their role. But then that's because they're > forgetting that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, rather than (say) an academic > journal. > > "Interpretive" is the crux here. Since you are more concerned to tell > Jennifer what to do, I think it should be explained that the reason not to > use "primary" sources is that, for example, old historical documents are > treacherous from the point of view of interpretation. > > In common parlance, "spin" is what is to be excluded. We are now talking > about subsections of [[Wikipedia:No original research]]; which does not > exclude "research" done properly, just research with added spin. I would say > it is fairly much off-topic for this thread, actually. > > Charles > _______________________________________________ > Education mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education _______________________________________________ Education mailing list [email protected] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
