Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia is a work in progress

Problem of addition

From the essay: "...There are also many more thousands of one- or two-sentence stubs; adding a few more sentences ... will vastly improve that article."
Herein lies a big problem. Adding a sentence or two is almost certainly going to come from my OWN knowledge of the subject. There are three subjects I feel very knowledgeable about, in two of which I am professional. But the summation of policies and guidelines such as Wikipedia:Verifiability (especially), Wikipedia:No_original_research and even the detail of Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view effectively mean that unless the information has been copied from a professional, published in a major publication, available copyright free, then it shouldn't appear. So I can't just quickly add a sentence or two without first finding out who of my colleages might have published similar information somewhere and what the copyright situation is. Oh, and even then I might find that they made a mistake but that's OK because so long as the wrong information can be 'verified' that's what policies of Wikipedia say should appear here, and not accurate information! --Interesdom 15:00, 18 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The copyright situation is not an issue. Articles shouldn't incorporate text copied word-for-word from anywhere, regardless of copyright status (with the exception of short quotes). "No original research" doesn't mean we can only include text that has been published in its exact form. Write original text that is not excessively biased, cite one or more reliable published sources in a "References" section and there should be no problem – Gurch 04:38, 28 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]