The "Wikipedia can't work in theory only in practice" quote is an old joke in the Wikipedia community. A lot of Wikipedia researchers use it in talks, etc, but the first reference to it I have found in MSM is this New York Times article: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/23/world/americas/23iht-wiki.1.5405005.html Joe attributes it to Raul's laws, I think. But even there it was attributed to anonymous. If anyone has a clearer idea of the joke's origin, I'd love to update my slides. :) Also, re: theories for thinking about WP. Benkler, yes. I also like Ostrom's principles that guide self-governing communities. She was working with data about communities that manage common-pool resources and there are a lot of nice insights to be had, I think. There are at least a couple papers that examine this relationship - Viegas et al's "Hidden Order of Wikipedia" and my own "Decentralization in Wikipedia Governance." Best, Andrea :: Andrea Forte :: Assistant Professor, :: College of Information Science and Technology, Drexel University :: http://www.andreaforte.net On 1/20/11 5:01 PM, Kevin Guidry wrote:
2011/1/20 Yu-Hao Lee(李育豪）<minke33@gmail.com>:
I would suggest Yochai Benkler's "The Wealth of Networks: How social production transforms markets and freedom". That's always a good recommendation.
I also recommend Reagle's "Good Faith Collaboration: The Culture of Wikipedia." It's not deeply philosophical or theoretical but it does capture the feeling of "screw the experts and the theories, we're just going to do this" attitude that seems important to understand as part of Wikipedia's culture. (I can't find the exact quote but somewhere in the book it mentions how Wikipedia is the kind of thing that could never work in theory, only in practice.)
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