Talk:Preamble to the United States Constitution/GA1

GA Review

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I am failing this article due to a complete lack of secondary sources. WP:RS states that "Wikipedia articles should rely primarily on reliable, third-party, published sources". WP:OR states that "Wikipedia articles should rely mainly on published reliable secondary sources and, to a lesser extent, on tertiary sources. All interpretive claims, analyses, or synthetic claims about primary sources must be referenced to a secondary source, rather than original analysis of the primary-source material by Wikipedia editors." WP:V also makes it clear that secondary sources are to be preferred. There is no doubt that there are extensive secondary sources available on this subject; in light of that, the exclusive reliance on primary sources is not reasonable.

I gather from comments earlier on this talk page that some people may disagree with my decision. If so, you are welcome to bring it up at WP:GAR (in which case please leave me a note so that I may participate there). I did not enjoy failing this article, as there is much to like in it; however, it is essentially a secondary source itself, and not the tertiary source that Wikipedia articles are supposed to be. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 22:52, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

This doesn't really make a lot of sense to me. The primary source is the Preamble itself; there are dozens of secondary sources (Court opinions) that are expounding on what it means, properly understood. At any rate, the distinction between a "primary" and "secondary" source doesn't seem applicable to this type of article, in the same way that it would be for an article about a scientific subject. The rationale, as I see it, for secondary sources is to synthesize authoritative interpretations of underlying data in order to make it comprehensible to a lay audience. But in the law, there is no (or at least, much less) "raw data" that needs to be sorted out; the creation of it is its interpretation, if you are inclined to view court opinions as "primary sources." I worked on it a lot, though, and I like it the way it is. MrArticleOne (talk) 22:00, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Court rulings are clearly primary sources as they pertain to legal writing since, in a common law system like the United States, those rulings are the law in the same way that statutes are. And yes, you're quite correct (in my view) about the reason secondary sources are required; however, I cannot agree with you that those reasons are inapplicable to legal articles. Court rulings are raw data, from which scholars writing secondary sources attempt to synthesize interpretations. Indeed, that seems to be what you've done in this article (and, so far as I can tell given my limited familiarity with the subject, you seem to have done it quite well), which is why I've failed it. In any event, if you think I erred in doing so, I will take no offense whatsoever from a decision to list this at [WP:GAR]]. However, I am confident that my decision was the correct one and will be endorsed there. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 22:50, 19 June 2009 (UTC)