"Hard to track down a reliable source" sounds like a perfectly valid reason not to post an idea.
Just hard to find the original interview. You're welcome to search yourself, or perhaps discuss something else?
oh wait, there is!
I don't think discussing rumors is inherently bad in moderation, but I guess moderation is a tough problem for us in many parts of society today.
The claim "Allegedly they used Markus Wolf (ex-Stasi chief) as a consultant in the formative days" is not merely a "novel idea" but an allegation, in other words, an idea that aspires to fact. The likely validity of this statement depends on its source.
To assert that the above claim requires no source in order to be valid as fact simply because it is an "idea" is to ban the distinction between truth and fiction.
All sources are ideas in itself and If all "ideas" under your definition have a source, this means every source also has a source because they are ideas themselves. By induction this leads to the existence of ideas with an infinite chain of sources... Which is impossible.
By logic, the Chain must terminate at an idea without a source. Thus it can be said that:
All ideas are built from an idea without a source.
The exception to this rule is the existence of a cycle in this chain:
An initial idea that refers to another idea that refers to the initial idea as its source; A closed loop.
What the poster means by "novel idea" as opposed to "idea" is the terminal idea at the end of these source chains.
In short, the inception of all "novel ideas" begin without a source. Again, we call this "novel idea" The axiom or the assumption.
The strange thing about the axiom itself is an entity that "bans the distinction between truth and fiction" and is ironically the foundation of all human logic.
Another word for this is a "paradox" something we both shun and use as the foundation for all human logic.