Well, the wisdom of crowds debate rages on. As Marc quite rightly points out in the comments to my last post, Google rankings depending on in-bound links means that the crowd in question has already qualified itself as a content producer rather than a consumer: it isn’t “the masses”. In the meantime, David points to the rather unwise hierarchy that exists in many crowds such as your class at school.
I’m not quite ready to throw in the towel. Here’s my effort at distinguishing between wise and unwise crowds, technological and otherwise. I’ll start with some examples of crowds that, in my humble opinion, work well and those that don’t to try to keep things practical. Some of the examples are very subjective and some from the book, but hopefully there’ll be a consensus of agreement.
Good crowds:
Google, juries, democratic government, jelly bean estimators, submarine finders, last.fm*, OSS developers, e-bay sellers, betters on horse races
* it’s an internet music community and radio player that recommends music by looking at what you play, then comparing it with the collections of the rest of the community. It can basically form a profile of the sort of stuff you like and find what people who like that also like.
Bad crowds:
ravening mobs, rioters, design by committee, phone polls in tabloid papers, votes on single issues by the entire population, traffic gridlocks
What are the distinctions between them? In the ‘good’ examples, everyone is (a) qualified intellectually or otherwise to “vote” (b) acting in their own self-interest (c) acting as intelligently as they are able and (d) acting independently – apart from juries in some respects, but people on juries presumably feel a responsibility to act as intelligently as they can, whether that’s through following others or taking a lead.
The internet, being what it is, doesn’t always allow this ‘good’ behaviour to operate – any look at the Google Zeitgeist will show you that you probably don’t have too much in common with the majority (at least if you’re reading this). Very good Web 2.0 projects, and I still count both Google and e-bay as qualifying for this, will allow for the correct conditions to form. I think that the news and bookmark sharing/voting sites can work, but maybe the groups forming them need to be far more granular?
OK. Back to cool links tomorrow, eh?
See my Notes follow-up.
Mine deals with the theory. Yours deals more with the evidence.
That’s why I feel we have a well rounded discussion between the bunch of us here.
Marc
This is another aspect of the blogosphere that deserves study, how one blog influences another, how one article influences another.
It’s more than simple comments, it’s how one author builds of another to make something more relevant to the subject at hand.
Good point, range – I’d like to think that in a reasonable number of cases, it creates dialectical thought on a mass scale, advancing us a little bit.
In truth, probably a lot of times it does and just as many times, it doesn’t, as people miscommunicate, mis-represent and dumb down the best bits. Or use someone else’s article as a filler, when they haven’t got anything to say. (*Looks guiltily down at some of my own posts*)
[...] As I’ve observed before, marshalling collective intelligence, or the wisdom of crowds, on the Internet isn’t always very easy. Social news voting sites like digg are susceptible to social influences. Wikis are also weakened by this: do you really want to edit what your boss says? One way, though, to generate the necessary conditions (independence, self-interest, diversity) is to set up a virtual stock market. [...]
[...] The market believes this can work. Long-time readers will know that I am a believer in the Wisdom of Crowds. As the book says, when they’re properly orchestrated, the masses can make better decisions than experts. Stock Markets are not ideal examples of this, I think, since success breeds success and vice-versa, but they come close in some respects. [...]