[Foundation-l] "The problem with Wikipedia..."

Ziko van Dijk zvandijk at googlemail.com
Thu Jun 17 21:18:35 UTC 2010


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 at gmail.com>:
> On 17 June 2010 21:37, phoebe ayers <phoebe.wiki at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 1:19 PM, David Gerard <dgerard at 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
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>



-- 
Ziko van Dijk
Niederlande



More information about the foundation-l mailing list