Yes, it's communism that works in theory but not in practice. :-)

2010/6/17 Dan Rosenthal swatjester@gmail.com

Isn't the quote backwards? "The problem with Wikipedia is that it only works in practice. It could never work in theory"?

-Dan On Jun 17, 2010, at 4:03 PM, Sue Gardner wrote:

...

"The problem with Wikipedia is that it only works in theory. It could never work in practice."

I've seen that quote attributed to Jimmy, and also to Miikka Ryokas, quoted by Noam Cohen in his NY Times story about Virginia Tech. But neither of them, I think, originated it.

Does anyone have a good attribution for first use of that quote? (I'm using it in a presentation and want to attribute if I can.)

Thanks, Sue

-- Sue Gardner Executive Director Wikimedia Foundation

415 839 6885 office 415 816 9967 cell

Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate

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Pharos wrote:

This is the best source of the "zeroth law" of Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Raul654/Raul%27s_laws#Laws_by_others

I believe people have tried to track down the original coiner, but noone really knows.

The "original" original of the concept itself is of course "The Flight of the Bumblebee", with a related concept being the centipede losing track of it's legs, when it begins trying to "think through" what it is doing with them.

<old skool anecdote warning>

In actual fact I employed this kind of formulation to rebut New Media pundit Teppo Turkki (think of him as the Finnish equivalent of Andrew Keene, and you won't go too far wrong) in a debate here in Finland, in the mid 1990's, on the subject of the future of the Internet.

My opinion was that eventually, with the passage of time the Internet would not be "The Net of a Million Lies" anymore, at least in terms of any idea that had been debated exhaustively on the web, though new lies would regularly sprout of course.

Teppo Turkki attempted to just completely pooh-pooh the very idea, saying "That might be the way it works in theory, but in practise... "

To which I replied lightning fast that in fact, "It could never in fact work in theory, but practical experience has showed otherwise."

</old skool>

Yours,

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen

On 18 June 2010 08:53, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonavaro@gmail.com wrote:

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote:

...

The "original" original of the concept itself is of course "The Flight of the Bumblebee", with a related concept being the centipede losing track of it's legs, when it begins trying to "think through" what it is doing with them.

The concept of "Information Wants to be Free" has been authoritatively shown to have roots in thinkers as ancient as Aristotle. I would guess here too, that the instance of scientists calculating the amount of energy it took to keep the bumblebee up in the air, and measuring the amount of food it actually consumed, is likely not the earliest form of this paradox.

Not really. All they ever calculated was weather it could glide. It couldn't. In this they were correct.

On 17 June 2010 21:07, Dan Rosenthal swatjester@gmail.com wrote:

Isn't the quote backwards? "The problem with Wikipedia is that it only works in practice. It could never work in theory"?

I vaguely remember it on wikien-l many years ago. I have no idea if that was its first use.

- d.

Here's the phrase in a 1988 sociology paper:

http://jpart.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/pdf_extract/1/1/19

I'd call it a pretty obvious play on words, though, so I really doubt we got it from that.

Anyone got a complete wikien-l archive to grovel through?

- d.

On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 1:37 PM, phoebe ayers phoebe.wiki@gmail.com wrote:

On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 1:19 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:

...

Here's the phrase in a 1988 sociology paper:

http://jpart.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/pdf_extract/1/1/19

I'd call it a pretty obvious play on words, though, so I really doubt we got it from that.

Anyone got a complete wikien-l archive to grovel through?

• d.

going back that far it might be on wikipedia-l, I think, and Joseph Reagle has done quite a bit of work analyzing that -- maybe he can help. We're looking for the orgins of the quote: "The problem with Wikipedia is that it only works in theory. It could never work in practice."

:) -- phoebe

Actually, the other way around, as others have stated.

Now that you mention it, I've seen that quote attributed to Gareth Owen before, so that may actually be the origin of it. I think it's quite a bit older than 2006 though.

-- phoebe

Hello,

I could imagine that such a statement, in a different form, comes originally from socialist or anti-socialist circles.

By the way, I am not such a big fan of this seemingly witty remark. If there is a conflict between theory and practice, that means that your theory is bad and has to be adjusted to practice. (In Soviet Union it was the other way round, reality had to be shaped conforming to the theory, that's why I believe the idea comes from somewhere there.)

If your theory is that Wikipedia is anarchy and creative chaos and swarm intelligence etc., then, of course, Wikipedia does not work in theory. :-)

Kind regards Ziko

2010/6/17 geni geniice@gmail.com:

On 17 June 2010 21:37, phoebe ayers phoebe.wiki@gmail.com wrote:

...

On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 1:19 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:

...

Here's the phrase in a 1988 sociology paper:

http://jpart.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/pdf_extract/1/1/19

I'd call it a pretty obvious play on words, though, so I really doubt we got it from that.

Anyone got a complete wikien-l archive to grovel through?

• d.

going back that far it might be on wikipedia-l, I think, and Joseph Reagle has done quite a bit of work analyzing that -- maybe he can help. We're looking for the orgins of the quote: "The problem with Wikipedia is that it only works in theory. It could never work in practice."

Well I can search wikipedia-en-l as far back as 13.09.04 and I'm not coming up with anything. Running google searches for mentions pre 2006 doesn't turn up anything however use explodes in 2006 which is rather fast if than jan 2006 use is the first.

-- geni

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Platonides wrote:

geni wrote:

...

Well I can search wikipedia-en-l as far back as 13.09.04 and I'm not coming up with anything. Running google searches for mentions pre 2006 doesn't turn up anything however use explodes in 2006 which is rather fast if than jan 2006 use is the first.

I grepped for it in foundation-l, wikien-l and wikipedia-l archives but found nothing.

BTW, it seems we dropped our archives of intlwiki-l. Info-de-l, spamtest-l and the odd jason-l and jason2-l lists.

My guess would be anyway that it wasn't on the lists, but in an IRC chat.

Might even have been by me, since I had used a similar formulation about the internet as a whole, over a decade before. But I am certainly not claiming affirmatively to be the originator, since as others have said, the play on words is pretty obvious.

Yours,

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen

Ha. Yes, of course :-)

-----Original Message----- From: Dan Rosenthal swatjester@gmail.com Date: Thu, 17 Jun 2010 16:07:59 To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing Listfoundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] "The problem with Wikipedia..."

Isn't the quote backwards? "The problem with Wikipedia is that it only works in practice. It could never work in theory"?

-Dan On Jun 17, 2010, at 4:03 PM, Sue Gardner wrote:

"The problem with Wikipedia is that it only works in theory. It could never work in practice."

I've seen that quote attributed to Jimmy, and also to Miikka Ryokas, quoted by Noam Cohen in his NY Times story about Virginia Tech. But neither of them, I think, originated it.

Does anyone have a good attribution for first use of that quote? (I'm using it in a presentation and want to attribute if I can.)

Thanks, Sue

-- Sue Gardner Executive Director Wikimedia Foundation

415 839 6885 office 415 816 9967 cell

Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate

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