Wikipedia:No original research/proposed wp-syn major revision apr 2010

Intro to proposed major revision of WP:SYN

The following text is a proposed major redraft of WP:SYN policy. To take part in the ongoing discussion about this proposed redraft, please visit WP:NOR-WP:SYN talk. If you might personally feel you might have some revisions you'd like to make to this proposed draft, please feel free to do so here and to discuss the reasons for your edits at WP:NOR-WP:SYN talk. Thanks Scott P. (talk) 16:32, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Text of the proposed major revision of WP:SYN

Synthesis of published material that explicitly advances a new position

When juxtaposing two or more citations in an article next to one another, if the combination of these two or more citations may seem to imply a conclusion that may not already be explicitly stated by any of the sources already used for the article, then a Wikipedia editor must take extra precautions to avoid falling under the category of WP:SYN. Particularly if a Wikipedia editor is trying to actually use new references to make a specific point that the editor has not yet found in any previously published works, then before these citations can be used in this fashion, the editor must make certain that his new insertion of the citations into the article does not fall under any of the definitions of WP:SYN, before he uses these citations in the article to make such a 'new' point.

WP:SYN is a type of original research, in which a Wikipedia editor uses biased or slanted wording in his or her "explication" of two or more citations in an effort to "assist" a reader to derive a conclusion from the sources that may not already be self-apparent from the sources themselves.

Let us say for example that a Wikipedia editor has happened to stumble upon three citations, that when combined might lead one to a rather surprising and perhaps "new" conclusion. Let us say for example that this Wikipedia editor might happen to have first done a thorough search to find that to the best of that editor's knowledge, nobody else has apparently ever before published anything that might so clearly point out that particular rather startling conclusion. Under such circumstances, that editor must be especially careful to word his or her "explication" of these citations in a neutral and unbiased way, otherwise that editor's explication will be considered to be WP:SYN. Following is a specific example of how to avoid WP:SYN:

An editor has stumbled upon the following three references:

• Reference A: From 1890 - 1945 there were 36 officially declared international wars.
• Reference B: From 1945 - 2010, there were 18 officially declared international wars.
• Reference C: The United Nations was established in 1945 to reduce international wars.

In order to avoid WP:SYN to use these citations, WP:SYN guidelines must be followed. A good insertion of these three facts might be:

"Some may see a trend in the incidence of wars before and since the founding of the UN. In the 65 years prior to the 1945 founding of the UN there were 36 declared international wars. In the 65 years since the founding of the UN the incidence of international wars went down by 50% to 18."

In the case above, the editor has followed each of the following guidelines:

1. Before using the proposed citations to possibly point out how effective the UN may or may not have been, the Wikipedia editor in question has made a thorough 'good faith' effort to first seek out a reference source in which the 'new' conclusion may have already been published elsewhere. After this, it appeared that there was no previously published literature to make the point that the UN seems to have reduced the frequency of declared international wars. So the editor then:
2. As always, he made certain that his underlying supporting citations were sound, and properly documented.
3. His "explication" of the citations was entirely neutral and objective, and was not biased or slanted in any way to "assist" a reader towards such a "new" conclusion. Any reasonably intelligent reader can easily derive the implied conclusion here without any need of any biased or slanted "assistance" from the editor, of which there was really none.
4. His "new" conclusion that the citations seemed to point to was sound and beyond a reasonable argument or a logical objection.

Here is how these same references might have been inserted into an article using wording in the citations that amounted to a WP:SYN explication:

"The role of the UN in preventing wars may seem to have been effective. In the 65 years prior to the 1945 founding of the UN there were 36 declared international wars. In the 65 years since the founding of the UN the incidence of international wars was reduced to half, at only 18 declared international wars."

In this case, the editor was perhaps a bit too anxious to "assist" the reader with his or her own "take" on how to interpret the citations. He was explicitly advancing his own previously unpublished position here. The first sentence clearly voiced only the editor's opinion of the newly discovered trend, and must be reworded to be neutral. The editor's choices to use the words reduced and only implied that the UN was reducing the incidence of wars, and served to focus the reader's attention more than necessary upon this "reducing trend". When two or more citations are juxtaposed to point out something new and previously unpublished, the implication of the citations must be able to stand on its own without any "help words". The implied trend as pointed to by the three citations listed above would clearly be able to be naturally and easily derived by a typical reader, and would not require any outside "help words" from an editor to "assist" a reader to derive it.

In this second citation above, the Wikipedia editor already knew that there was apparently no prior citation that laid these two facts side by side to point out this trend. In his desire to use Wikipedia as a personal publishing platform, he may have become too anxious to be the first one to take the credit for "discovering" this significant trend. Instead, as humble Wikipedia editors, we are not in a race to "discover things", though that may occasionally happen, we are here to merely report the discoveries of others. If you might happen to "discover" something first, you cannot use Wikipedia to expound upon your "discovery". You may be able to post your well documented citations in a tangential way on Wikipedia, but you must then wait for some other researcher to then "discover" the ramifications of the juxtaposed citations and to then publish such ramifications elsewhere. Only then can you as a Wikipedia editor report on such ramifications as found in that "discoverer's" publication. Meanwhile, in Wikipedia you may only write perhaps a vague suggestion that a reader should carefully review your juxtaposed citations side by side.

Editorial notes

1. One logical objection that might be raised at a later date to the use of these particular quotes about war and the UN might be how to define an "officially declared war". There may be a more objective way to analyze the amount of international aggression before and after the founding of the UN. Still such a later argument would only possibly serve to refine this type of research by subsequent Wikipedia editors to the article where the quotes might be used. Such an objection would not disprove the proposed logic of this proposed revision to WP:SYN, it would only serve to disprove the logic of the specific citations used here by example.Scott P. (talk) 16:32, 15 April 2010 (UTC)