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The zeroeth law of Wikipedia – The problem with Wikipedia is that it only works in practice. In theory, it can never work.

IAmBroom 1y ago
Clever. I had to read that repeatedly to get it. Cf: The difference between theory and practice is: "Practice works, in theory."
- alpaca128 1y ago
  I heard it as "in theory, theory and practice are the same"
  - Izkata 1y ago
    I've heard that style too, with the addendum "in practice, not".
- SlowTao 1y ago
  I have heard the same thing from Grid based electrical engineers. The grids fails in theory but works in practice.
- gnerd00 1y ago
  "In theory, theory is ninety percent of practice; in practice, theory is ten percent of practice"
Kim_Bruning 1y ago
Uh.. <raises hand> I might be one of the few people who actually knows a bunch of the theory on why wikipedia works (properly). I had to do a bunch of research while working on wikipedia mediation and policies stuff, a long time ago. I never got around to writing it all out though. Bits of it can be found in old policy discussions on bold-reverse-discuss, consensus, and etc. I guess the first thing to realize is that wikipedia is split into a lot of pages, and n_editors for most pages in the long tail is very very low, so most definitely below n_dunbar[]; and really can be edited almost the same way wikipeida used to be back in 2002. At the same time a small number of pages above n_dunbar get the most attention and are the most messy to deal with. Aaron Swartz actually did a bunch of research into some of the base statistics too, and he DID publish stuff online... let me look that up... http://www.aaronsw.com/2002/whowriteswikipedia/ http://www.aaronsw.com/2002/whowriteswikipedia/ and especially * http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/whowriteswikipedia http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/whowriteswikipedia [*] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number (note I'm using lossely in empirical sense, where an online page might have a much lower actual limit than 150)
knowitnone2 1y ago
Same with Communism. It works in practice, in theory, it can never work. /s

IAmBroom 1y ago

Clever. I had to read that repeatedly to get it. Cf: The difference between theory and practice is: "Practice works, in theory."

alpaca128 1y ago
I heard it as "in theory, theory and practice are the same"
- Izkata 1y ago
  I've heard that style too, with the addendum "in practice, not".
SlowTao 1y ago
I have heard the same thing from Grid based electrical engineers. The grids fails in theory but works in practice.
gnerd00 1y ago
"In theory, theory is ninety percent of practice; in practice, theory is ten percent of practice"

Kim_Bruning 1y ago

Uh.. <raises hand> I might be one of the few people who actually knows a bunch of the theory on why wikipedia works (properly). I had to do a bunch of research while working on wikipedia mediation and policies stuff, a long time ago. I never got around to writing it all out though. Bits of it can be found in old policy discussions on bold-reverse-discuss, consensus, and etc. I guess the first thing to realize is that wikipedia is split into a lot of pages, and n_editors for most pages in the long tail is very very low, so most definitely below n_dunbar[]; and really can be edited almost the same way wikipeida used to be back in 2002. At the same time a small number of pages above n_dunbar get the most attention and are the most messy to deal with. Aaron Swartz actually did a bunch of research into some of the base statistics too, and he DID publish stuff online... let me look that up... http://www.aaronsw.com/2002/whowriteswikipedia/ http://www.aaronsw.com/2002/whowriteswikipedia/ and especially * http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/whowriteswikipedia http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/whowriteswikipedia [*] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number (note I'm using lossely in empirical sense, where an online page might have a much lower actual limit than 150)

knowitnone2 1y ago

Same with Communism. It works in practice, in theory, it can never work. /s