[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia was founded for OR

[Joseph Reagle]

On Friday 07 August 2009, Charles Matthews wrote:
> The story about Kira fills in something Jimbo mentioned before, though. 
> I gave up a while ago on thinking the early history of WP was something 
> a historian could completely elucidate. This story adds another layer to 
> the question of the motivations of one of the principal actors 
> (something the historians will eventually have to deal with).


This question of when the first significant history of Wikipedia can be written very much intrigues me. I am not intending to slight Lih's book, nor my work of course, but when you look at award-winning historical biographies, the scholars typically had access to friends and family of the subjects, their personal papers and records, etc. There is this ironic tension that one typically never gets access to personal archives until after their death. And, I don't think we have yet seen a work on a subject in which the predominant media of discourse is digital. I know in my own work I would have loved to have access to some early e-mails that apparently do not exist anymore.