Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia was founded for OR

2009-08-10 Thread 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

Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia was founded for OR

2009-08-09 Thread Steve Bennett
On Sat, Aug 8, 2009 at 3:51 AM, wjhon...@aol.com wrote: Skepticism rears it's ugly head. I just don't think that motivations are ever that straight forward. Everyone loves to tell a simple tale like The idea came to me one day when X, so that night I decided to Y. Usually, though, we all have

[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia was founded for OR

2009-08-07 Thread gwern0
http://business.in.com/column/zen-garden/daddy-has-kira-to-thank/812/0 'Daddy has Kira to Thank: The world's most democratic storehouse of knowledge really began in a one-room school in Alabama; it took shape in a little girl's hospital bed' I decide to ask him that one question: Tell us about

Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia was founded for OR

2009-08-07 Thread Charles Matthews
gwe...@gmail.com wrote: I'm a little skeptical that this is any of the real reasons, given the fallibility of human memory, and never seeing anything like this mentioned in materials from the early days - but this would be a great reason, because this doctor is not described as publishing