User talk:C4A6

Original reseach: a difficult issue.
I noticed your question on the talk page. You are asking all the right questions, and the answers are not easy.

Some background, which your helpdesk question shows that you understand already: We must depend on a fairly bizarre notion of reliable sources because we let anybody edit and we do not have our own professional paid department of reliable source checkers. We prohibit original research because otherwise any nutcase whacko could publish anything here. This prohibition extends to citing "unreliable" original research published in non-reliable sources for obvious reasons.

In your case, I think we can perhaps meet the spirit of the OR rules, but we will unfortunately break the letter of the rules. This means that we might still get some hostile reversions of your edits. Here is how I would proceed: First, establish a non-wikipedia venue on the net to publish the police reports. If you do not have your own web site, you can probably find an appropriate host. Next, publish the police reports at that site, and publish a factual summary, with NO "synthesis." Then, you can edit the Wikipedia article and cite the external web site.

This violates the letter of the "Original research" stricture against citing your own work, but it satisfies the spirit, because you have not performed a synthesis. If the Wikipedia article is not contentious, I doubt that anyone will revert your edit.

If this is really important for you and you expect problems at Wikipedia, your alternative is a bit harder. After creating the web site, send a letter to the editor to each of the publications that published incorrect information. Cite the web site and request a retraction of the original published story. On Wikipedia, you can then cite the published retraction in a reliable source, which satisfies the letter of the policy. -Arch dude (talk) 01:49, 6 December 2007 (UTC)