3 ms·

The newspaper problem I agree is a problem. I would generally not consider newspapers to be "secondary sources" (or "reliable sources"), though, but actually so

by mjn 14y ago

The newspaper problem I agree is a problem. I would generally not consider newspapers to be "secondary sources" (or "reliable sources"), though, but actually something closer to primary sources. Historians typically treat them as primary sources, one source of contemporary information that needs to be carefully interpreted in order to determine what happened. But for recent events they might be the best that's available. For example, Wikipedia's articles on World War II should be mainly based on existing WW2 scholarship, not on Wikipedians individually doing research into newspaper or military archives (many of which are now online so this is easy to do), because assessing contemporary newspaper accounts of WW2 for reliability is a difficult job, and Wikipedia isn't the place to peer-review attempts to do so when there is already so much good historical work on the subject, and better-suited venues to vet proposed revisions to the historical consensus. So Wikipedia's job should be to summarize the current historical literature on the subject, not to attempt a novel historical synthesis from primary sources. With scientific articles it's a bit trickier. Individual articles are citeable, but I typically prefer meta-analyses or review papers. Since the goal of Wikipedia is to summarize existing consensus in a field (while also documenting any significant divergent views), those are the strongest indicators. An individual article sometimes indicates the existing state of scientific knowledge, but has to be used carefully, because it might already have been refuted by another article, or it might be a proposal that, while considered good enough to pass peer-review and be worth publishing, is so far only accepted as conclusive by a small minority of the relevant scientific community. (Some journals publish commentary/responses along with controversial articles, which can be useful to help determine if that's the case.) I guess that's also true in history: just because Speculum published an article where someone proposes a large-scale revision to our understanding of 13th-century France doesn't mean that medievalists generally agree with the new proposal. So if it's a recent article and there isn't indication of it having been taken up into the new consensus, I'd cite it in support of a "but some historians argue..." statement rather than in support of an unqualified statement. This rule also, pragmatically, avoids re-litigating whole areas, like fringe physics and holocaust denial. Maybe someone has great original arguments for their physics theory, or for why the holocaust never happened, but because of "NoR", Wikipedia isn't the place to make those arguments.

saurik 14y ago
I am not in any way arguing that people should do "original research"; can you point out where I have done so? You also seem to be taking a non-Wikipedia view of the definitions of these various varieties of "source". o Wikipedia makes it clear that articles should be based on secondary sources, using primary sources only sparingly and preferably only when backed up by secondary sources. o Wikipedia makes it clear that research in a field, such as the results of an experiment or the proof of a theorem in a field such as mathematics, is a primary source. o Wikipedia makes it clear that for their purposes a newspaper article is a secondary source (not a primary one), and in fact is an example of "the most reliable sources" available. o Wikipedia also, at least, makes it clear that a summary article written in an academic journal is a secondary source. This is really not that bad, but I demonstrate in another thread how summary articles are a painful limitation. Yes: in the field of history, these are defined differently, and even Wikipedia drops their notion of "secondary source" and instead comes up with something different. However, I am not talking about scrounging up ancient newspapers when I say "primary source": I mean either bypassing the error-laden filter of the New York Times or citing the actual experiments when discussing those experiments, rather than citing summaries or even journalism.

by mjn 14y ago

saurik 14y ago

I am not in any way arguing that people should do "original research"; can you point out where I have done so? You also seem to be taking a non-Wikipedia view of the definitions of these various varieties of "source". o Wikipedia makes it clear that articles should be based on secondary sources, using primary sources only sparingly and preferably only when backed up by secondary sources. o Wikipedia makes it clear that research in a field, such as the results of an experiment or the proof of a theorem in a field such as mathematics, is a primary source. o Wikipedia makes it clear that for their purposes a newspaper article is a secondary source (not a primary one), and in fact is an example of "the most reliable sources" available. o Wikipedia also, at least, makes it clear that a summary article written in an academic journal is a secondary source. This is really not that bad, but I demonstrate in another thread how summary articles are a painful limitation. Yes: in the field of history, these are defined differently, and even Wikipedia drops their notion of "secondary source" and instead comes up with something different. However, I am not talking about scrounging up ancient newspapers when I say "primary source": I mean either bypassing the error-laden filter of the New York Times or citing the actual experiments when discussing those experiments, rather than citing summaries or even journalism.