CZ Talk:Original Research Policy/HVL proposal

First draft based on Wikipedia, not exactly a proposal

This "first draft" version was taken from Wikipedia, and although already adapted it still conforms to Wikipedia's policy. It was therefore not meant to be a proposed final version for Citizendium, but a starting point - a first draft, meant to be reworked to better match the Citizendium requirements. I provided an overview of possible issues for modifications on what was the corresponding Talk page: http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/CZ_Talk:Original_Research_Policy

Harald van Lintel 05:41, 28 November 2007 (CST)

Second draft

I now reworked it so as to allow for "original" syntheses where necessary or unavoidable. Harald van Lintel 11:53, 12 January 2008 (CST)

Note: I'm very busy right now, and I don't feel like I have something such as ownership of the draft - anyone who has better ideas, please improve the text until the point that someone carries it over to the proper place! Harald van Lintel 17:31, 30 January 2008 (CST)

I think you've done a very valuable job here, congratulations and thanks. If I may offer one comment though, for thought for now. Personally I dislike over-referenced articles, for many reasons. First, it's hard to check all reeferences, and very hard to be sure that each is representative or optimal. Second, they need updating. Third, where do you stop? To an impoprtant extent we can avoid that, just as the authors of the concise reviews that appear in scholarly journals do, by an implicit reliance on our authority and expertise for what we judge to be "background" knowledge - i.e. things that we don't expect to be disputed. So what's important is the sense of who might dispute the fact - if another expert might, yes we need a citation. If a non-expert would query it? Well, only sometimes wouldwe need a citation.

I think we want to encourage synthesis, reason, rationality, analysis, when applied to the end of making sense of a subject, but not when applied to the end of promoting one particular view. What we definitely don't want for example, is to use the policy of no original research to suppress the clear exposition of a particular viewpoint .Gareth Leng 08:29, 15 February 2008 (CST)

Sure, I think we all agree on the importance of neutral articles.

Meanwhile, Larry has started a basic (rudimentary) version of the No Original Research policy on the policy page. Some elements of my draft may serve as suggestion for elaborations. Harald van Lintel 11:28, 12 April 2008 (CDT)