Wikibooks talk:Original research

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Contents 1 What is the aim of this proposal? 2 Rewording 3 revolution 4 Edits 5 Reasons for "No Original Research"

[edit] What is the aim of this proposal?

Or, perhaps more clearly; what type of material is it supposed to keep out of Wikibooks?

As User:SB Johnny mentioned in Wikibooks:Staff lounge#Original research: how to interpret this?, there is a problem with the lack of clarification of the phrase "No Original Research" since the Wikipedia definition would imply that many Wikibooks don't belong here.

I'm just wondering what exactly the aim of it is. We currently exclude "original works of fiction or literature" and "primary research in any field". From this proposal's current text it seems that it is the latter definition that is too strict. It is currently clarified as "proposing theories and solutions, original ideas, defining terms, coining words, et cetera." which is very similar to the opening text of this proposal. Could this text be modified?

I'm going to go out on a limb and throw the idea out there that we limit the "original research" clause to scientific research. Might all non-fiction, non-scientific works that don't belong here be covered by WB:NPOV? --Swift 17:16, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Actually, the reason I'm bringing it up is quite the opposite concern: defending what is permitted in wikibooks. Not everything has to be about "restricting freedoms", so this is more along the lines of a "bill of rights" than a "censor's guide" (except in the hypothetical case where it might be used to tell a censor-oriented person that there are a lot of things here that shouldn't be censored).

There is a lot of interesting material on wikibooks which I think is perfectly appropriate, but would fall under wikipedia's definition of "OR". Examples include:

• Most, if not all of the cookbook recipes (many of these are the results of the authors' culinary experiments)
• Most, if not all of the "unofficial user's guide" books (the only one I can think of at the moment is AEM EMS Guidebook, which I've done some structural work on and copyediting, but honestly I have no idea what an AEM EMS actually is, but is obviously not "peer reviewed", otherwise the company would probably have it in the official manual).
• My own happy project, A Wikimanual of Gardening, includes stuff about controlling particular weeds that don't appear in any peer-reviewed source, but I know they work because it's my job (in real life) to control them.
• Software manuals such as C++ Programming would either have to be mere exegeses of "official" manuals or just plain old copyvios, rather than the "sharing from experience" sorts of books that they are.
• Just about any book that doesn't have at least 5 footnotes per page.

SO, in a nutshell, this is meant to be a positive statement of what's good and acceptable, as opposed to a dictum saying what's not allowed. Does that sort of clear it up? --SB_Johnny | ^talk 17:57, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification. I, actually, already understood that it is not to weed out books that we have, but to plant them in the definition of the scope of the project. My suggestion was not to introduce any restrictive measures, but to ease the ones that we already have.

We do need some restrictions. One of the current ones is that of "original works". Rather than make exceptions for all the things we'd like included, could we just modify the current clause?

I like everything on your list of good original works projects and agree that they, at least partially, fall under original research. None of these are, however, scientific. I admit that I didn't give it terribly much thought, but the only kind of research that wouldn't be suited (and so, by my own oppinion) would be scientific. If we modify the current definition to make it less restrictive, we allow for the inclusion of current works that we agree are useful for the project — including every item on your list. --Swift 20:07, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Rewording

Given the discussion above, perhaps it would be prudent to reword some of this policy to show that some facts that are not referenced, but which are readily verifiable (killing weeds is a good example) should fit under this proposal. Also, there are only certain types of "original research" that we really do remove from the project historically, and we should probably mention that only certain types of them need to be worried about? I'm going to monkey around in the text of this proposal, and try to put some of these changes into effect. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 21:41, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I take that back, I am not going to make any changes right now. However, I would like to list a few points that should probably be addressed in the final text of this proposal:

• New conclusions that are drawn directly from pre-existing and verifiable data are probably acceptable. Just because nobody ever jumped to a particular conclusion doesn't mean that the conclusion is obvious and justified from the given information.
• Just because nobody has ever stated a particular fact doesnt mean that it isn't true, that it can't be verified, or that it is "original".
• Common knowledge isn't original research (but it should be demonstratable).
• New ways of teaching old subjects do not constitute "original research". For instance, new styles of writing a book, so long as the information in the book are verifiable, do not constitute OR.
• Research that is performed by a wikibookian outside of wikibooks, and is appropriately published and peer-reviewed externally, can be used here.

The last point is a vanity point for me, because I am doing some "original research" as part of my thesis work, and once I get my things published, I would like to be able to share those results here. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 21:50, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

That's a special case though... successful theses and dissertations would always, I assume, be considered verifiable sources since they have passed the muster of peer review. OTOH, your actual thesis should probably go on wikisource, with a copy of it here for further development. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 15:50, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] revolution

It looks like an interesting revolution might be starting here, quite a change of pace for Wikibooks since there has always in the past been a stated strict claim of adherence to NOR and NPOV. Since it might become possible for Wikiversity to include some original research activities, there has recently been some discussion at Wikiversity of different types of original research (here and here).....possibly some of that discussion might also be relevant to Wikibooks. In many active fields of biology it is not possible for a textbook to avoid a form of original research that involves the textbook author being selective about which results to include and describe, which to emphasize, and, generally, what kind of strategic approach to take to a subject. Further, very few biology textbook authors follow a NPOV policy. Successful and influential biology textbooks tend to be iconoclastic and define a particular novel POV that attempts to selectively exclude mistaken views, particularly views that are still well-known and "popular" but not supported by newer and better research results. In my opinion, for any active field of biology, a textbook that is constructed according to NOR and NPOV will be an artificial construct that nobody who truly knows the field would want to write or recommend to a student. It would be great if Wikibooks is finally open to discussion of these kinds of issues. --JWSurf 05:00, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Edits

I see this proposal kind of slowed down and then sped up again. I edited the lead. View my edits here. I intended mostly to tighten the prose and clarify a few things. --Iamunknown 01:26, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Reasons for "No Original Research"

I'm not making any dispute with any of the above discussions that have taken place on this page, but I would like to mention two "unofficial" reasons why the original "no original research" policy was created on Wikipedia, and inherited on Wikibooks for many of the same reasons:

• Becoming a Vanity Press - In spite of some problems in the area of philosophy/theology Wikibooks, this project has not really had too many problems with books becoming or being viewed as a sort of vanity press, as would be suspected from an initial overview of the main goals and aims of this project. Still, this is something that we need to be ever vigilant about keeping a perception of Wikibooks as an easy way to stroke your ego as a published author. While it goes beyond the scope of this policy, having a strong (and genuine) editorial peer review of the content of each Wikibook is one way to help filter out the garbage.

• Telling UFO and Paranormal Researchers to find another forum to publish their ideas. While I will say that there are some books that are borderline problems such as Making an Island and Colonising Mars, the no original research policy has been largely responsibile for keeping even these kinds of books under control. I will note that for the Colonising Mars book in particular, I explained very early to the author/contributors of this book what the original research policies were and why some of their projects (like collaboratively writing a constitution for the government of Mars and social structures like Martian currency and banking systems) needed to be written somewhere else other than Wikibooks. It amazes me to no end that people are still coming up with Perpetual motion machines and trying to justify them in the face of centuries of hard science to prove they can't exist. Obviously a "no original research" policy is a more polite way of telling people to take a hike instead of being more blunt and telling them that they are stupid and scientifically ignorant.

• A Free Web Hosting Service. I can't emphasis this enough. Particularly because of how open Wikibooks can be for allowing you to add and create content, there are always people who try to use Wikibooks simply as a way to simply throw some web pages up without having to pay for them. I got into a bit of a mess about a year ago when I tried to remove the Wikimania Presentations from here, citing the no original research policy as a reason to remove the content. I will note in particular one of the major rationales being used to keep the presentations here on Wikibooks was that they were being cited in scholarly literature and referencing Wikibooks. I countered that this was a problem precisely because it was original research. In this particular case, one of the telling signs that it was original research was that the nature of the content would keep you from making substantial changes to the content except for the original author. The Wikimania organizers openly admitted that the only real reason for using Wikibooks was that they needed a spot to host the content, and acknowledged that had they tried the same thing on Wikipedia it would have been deleted right from the beginning. While not so much a common occurance on Wikibooks at the moment, many individuals who have had ideas that would likely become a seperate sister project (using Wikijunior and Wikiversity as prime examples) have used Wikibooks as an incubator to host these ideas. Quite often, in addition to other issues related with being an incubator, original research has also been a frequent theme, or at least a less offensive way to tell people to find alternatives for things that simply don't have to deal with content creation of books at all, much less textbooks.

None of this is suggesting that these points ought to be mentioned specifically within this policy. But at the same time, these are all underlying issues that really are the reasons why the "no original research" provisions have been established in the first place. To pretend that there are higher motives involved is only a way to add dressing to the policy and not addressing these root causes and concerns. --Rob Horning 07:32, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Many of these ideas that you mention here are part of the current text of WB:WIW, although several people have high-hopes that the unstable branch will be accepted soon (even though interest in that project has waned lately). There is a tendency to move away from the core ideas in many of the policy rewrites, not because anybody disagrees with them, but usually because a good succinct explanation beats a chant or a mantra any day. Saying something like "Wikibooks does not host Original Research" is far less helpful then saying "Wikibooks does not host new or original information, or information that is inaccurate or unverifiable".

With all of that said, this page exists to help flesh out the details on the unstable WB:WIW branch. I'm generally of the opinion that policy documents should be short and sweet, and the details should be handled by a series of supporting guideline documents. There is a school of people who believe that the number of policy/guideline pages should be minimized, thereby creating a small set of monolithic policy documents that are all self-contained. There is yet a third school of people who believe that there should be almost no official policy whatsoever, except for a "use good judgement" guideline, and an "assume good faith" one as well. My point with this digression is that specific issues like those you mentioned above are easy to integrate into this proposal, while they would likely be difficult to mention explicitly in the text of WB:WIW/Unstable. If you feel that these should be mentioned more explicitly then they are, you should try to add that text to this proposal. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 14:00, 6 March 2007 (UTC)