Forwarded per request. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Joseph Reagle <joseph.2...@reagle.org> Date: Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 6:45 PM Subject: Fwd: Re: [Foundation-l] "The problem with Wikipedia..." To: foundation-l-ow...@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-19990709.html [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Gareth_Owen&oldid=35978744 [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Raul654/Raul%27s_laws&oldid=44834502 [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 _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l