Forwarded per request.
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Joseph Reagle joseph.2008@reagle.org Date: Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 6:45 PM Subject: Fwd: Re: [Foundation-l] "The problem with Wikipedia..." To: foundation-l-owner@lists.wikimedia.org
On Thursday, June 17, 2010, phoebe ayers wrote:
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.
A wonderful question and one I've been interested in since I think such aphorisms have an interesting normative power (e.g., some others include [a]). Of course scholars, at least, like it so much because it shows that the theory is incomplete and hence is grist for their mills, i.e., new theory! :-)
I can't provide a provenance any more specific than already noted (i.e., appearing on Gareth Owen's user page) and I always found it ironically apt that such a prominent statement about Wikipedia is attributed to an anonymous. (If anyone knows Owen, please ask!) However, here's a bit of a time-line, I think it certainly spread as a meme in wider circles thanks to Cohen at the NYT.
20060120: Gareth Owen's user page [1]. 20060321: Raul654's adds it to his laws [2]. 20070423: Noam Cohen reference in NYT [3]. 20070501: Quoted in Wikizine [4]. 20070613: Sage Ross refers to it as old hat a few months later in response to popular Britannica blog entry [5]. 20080106: Cohen references it again [6].
[a]: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/archived_content/people/reagle/inet-quotations-... [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Gareth_Owen&oldid=3597874... [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Raul654/Raul%27s_laws&old... [3]: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/23/technology/23link.html [4]: http://en.wikizine.org/2007/05/year-2007-week-18-number-69.html [5]: http://www.britannica.com/blogs/2007/06/authority-of-a-new-kind/ [6]: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/06/books/06cohenintro.html
Ryan Lomonaco wrote:
Forwarded per request.
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Joseph Reagle joseph.2008@reagle.org Date: Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 6:45 PM Subject: Fwd: Re: [Foundation-l] "The problem with Wikipedia..." To: foundation-l-owner@lists.wikimedia.org
On Thursday, June 17, 2010, phoebe ayers wrote:
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.
A wonderful question and one I've been interested in since I think such aphorisms have an interesting normative power (e.g., some others include [a]). Of course scholars, at least, like it so much because it shows that the theory is incomplete and hence is grist for their mills, i.e., new theory! :-)
I can't provide a provenance any more specific than already noted (i.e., appearing on Gareth Owen's user page) and I always found it ironically apt that such a prominent statement about Wikipedia is attributed to an anonymous. (If anyone knows Owen, please ask!) However, here's a bit of a time-line, I think it certainly spread as a meme in wider circles thanks to Cohen at the NYT.
20060120: Gareth Owen's user page [1]. 20060321: Raul654's adds it to his laws [2]. 20070423: Noam Cohen reference in NYT [3]. 20070501: Quoted in Wikizine [4]. 20070613: Sage Ross refers to it as old hat a few months later in response to popular Britannica blog entry [5]. 20080106: Cohen references it again [6].
I would suggest that if anyone has a good set of logs of the various IRC channels, grepping the pre 20th of January 2006 logs might suggest an earlier usage. Or it might not.
Yours,
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org