Thank you all! Very helpful. I'll attribute it to Gareth, and note that it's passed into widespread use.
Thanks, Sue -----Original Message----- From: Joseph Reagle joseph.nyu@reagle.org Date: Thu, 17 Jun 2010 18:39:41 To: phoebe ayersphoebe.wiki@gmail.com Cc: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing Listfoundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org; Sage Rossragesoss@gmail.com; Sue Gardnersgardner@wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] "The problem with Wikipedia..."
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
On Fri, Jun 18, 2010 at 8:51 AM, susanpgardner@gmail.com wrote:
Thank you all! Very helpful. I'll attribute it to Gareth, and note that it's passed into widespread use.
"The popular observation is that Wikipedia only works in practice. In theory, it can never work."
Sheizaf Rafaeli and Yaron Ariel, "Online Motivation Factors: Incentives for Participation and Contribution in Wikipedia", published in "Psychological aspects of cyberspace", Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521694647 p.243
http://gsb.haifa.ac.il/~sheizaf/cyberpsych/11-Rafaeli&Ariel.pdf http://books.google.com.au/books?id=2NaSFhCAU0oC&q=%22Wikipedia+only+wor..."
-- John Vandenberg
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