Carcharoth wrote: > The ideal is a mix of lots of tertiary and secondary sources. We need > to use multiple and independent sources to avoid over-representing or > copying a single source (in the sense of 'light rewriting' or 'close > paraphrasing'), and to produce something that is distinct and > different from that single source. Just tertiary sources alone is not > really producing a proper encyclopedic article, and using only > secondary sources is not great either. If the secondary source used by > another encyclopedia can be accessed and confirmed, then that should > also be cited in our article. > In terms of copyright a light rewriting or close paraphrasing can still create a derivative work which can itself be an infringement. > This "looking up the sources of the sources" is a problem with some > tertiary sources that don't cite their sources. It is also a problem > with obscure articles that don't have much written about them out > there, so when we summarise here, we are not really adding much value > in terms of aggregating different sources, but more repeating what > someone else has done. > True enough. In the former circumstances, by using tertiary sources which do not themselves cite sources there is a risk of inadvertent hyper-plagiarism; maybe we should be stating that we have no idea where this other encyclopedia got its information whenever that is the case.
With obscure articles (or topics?) we can only report what we find. All we can do is report what we find. Aggregating different sources and maintaining NPOV prevents us from synthesizing some new result. If a periodical article is the only article found on the subject we should say that. There is no obligation to engage in a futile search for a counter-opinion that does not exist. Richard Burton's ''Pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina'' is evidence for what he saw or believed he saw; and how he interpreted that in his own idiosyncratic way. There are other ways of looking at these things, but we don't need to track them down before we can write anything. > But re-reading what the three of us have written here, I think we are > using slightly different senses of primary, secondary and tertiary. > Journal articles are, in many senses, primary sources. I think the > confusion arises because you can have "secondary literature", which is > different from "secondary sources". > In some ways yes, but the reality of peer review would suggest that these are not articles by some rogue mad scientist. Journal articles may in some senses be primary sources, but in other senses they are just as much not. A complete prohibition on primary sources could yield absurd results: A writer on US history would not be able to use the Constitution as a reference because it is a primary source. > But I agree entirely, that in any area where there is controversy or > doubt, defer to the best and most authoritative sources that give an > overview of an area, a summary, a text that surveys the literature and > does the work for us of giving due weight in at least a reasonably > objective fashion. This is usually, but not always, the most recent > such publication, though sometimes years of research and publications > take place before a new overview text emerges. Better to just write fairly about both sides of a controversy. Giving undue weight to the most recent publications risks giving undue weight to the latest fashions in the marketplace. Ec _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
