USA Today takes a pop at internet techies citing the Wisdom of Crowds, suggesting that the recent digg and wikipedia controversies may show the idea is fallacious. David Freedman takes another swipe in ‘What’s Next: The Idiocy of Crowds’ published at Inc.com, saying that on the internet, “the scum tends to rise to the top”.
As usual, the criticism is based on a misunderstanding of what the book actually says. It does not say that big groups of people make the best decisions. It says that they are likely to, under the correct conditions. The crowd needs to consist of people who are:
diverse
qualified
independent
self-interested
The interactions between the crowd needs to be carefully managed to avoid social factors distorting an individual’s best judgement. In addition, some problems — crossword puzzles, guess the weight of a prize bull, sports results, open-source software — are a lot more tractable to the approach than others — the most interesting news or the best pop album.
The old digg — which allowed bloc votes from groups of friends and pressure groups — fell down on more than one of these criteria. The book’s author, James Surowiecki, comments: “The thing that makes the wisdom of crowds work is lots of diverse opinions and independent judgments … Digg acknowledged it wanted more diversity of input.”
Personally, I think that at best digg can produce a front page that’s interesting to its typical user, which is fine. Similarly, the hit charts are only going to show what most people like, not necessarily what’s best for everyone. Problems like these involving qualitative judgements can only be solved when you have a crowd of people with similar tastes to you — which is why last.fm works for music recommendations and why a different news-voting community such as reddit or a CrispyNews group might be better for you.
Wikipedia is an interesting case and whatever problems it has aren’t going to be solved by tweaking an algorithm. I liked Jimmy Wales’ comment in the Wall Street Journal, though, that “…it is a misunderstanding to think of ‘openness’ as antithetical to quality. ‘Openness’ is going to be necessary in order to reach the highest levels of quality.”
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Trusting Wikipedia is a decision to discard the current paradigm of what we know and how we know. Its a choice to adopt a methodology spawned from a technological advancement rather than a methodology proven by centuries of scientific advancement.
Wikipedia and openness are attrative. Create your own knowledge is enticing and plays well to Internet users who believe that the web changes everything –opening doors and bringing down the gates of hierarchy.
But when it comes to actually determining facts, we, as a society, have generally recognized a certain pool of experts as the keepers of Knowledge (capital K), as it were. These are people who specialize in a particular area of research or knowledge and therefore are regarded as experts.
If we want to now say everyone should have input into the general body of Knowledge, we are opting to ignore truth and embrace truthiness.
I’ve blogged further on this at http://www.vertabase.com/blog/wikipedia-knowledge-or-hype/
There is a paradigm shift and Wikipedia is at the forefront. No longer is correct and vast amounts of information locked up behind prices. It is free on Wikipedia allowing everyone to be a part of it, with an internet connection, that the majority of Americans at least have. There are many experts that display facts based on a biased opinion.. makes you wonder, are they really facts or just data selectively used to publish. This can be said about wikipedia too, however the open atmosphere allows for more than one expert opinion which sometimes in other sources ie: britannica may not be the case.
Guess it boils down to the question of who we’re going to trust with fact checking/editing. Is it going to be an editorial board whose credentials we can check and about whom we can do research anytime? Or is it going to be anyone who wants to post?
Over time, inaccuracies on Wikipedia may get corrected. But that only helps people who actively follow the subject/thread. Someone who is looking for quick background or research for a book report will believe that inaccuracy as fact.
Ross Mayfield of Socialtext (and lately the Daily Telegraph) points to a very interesting post Aaron Swartz made on the evolving Wikipedia situation, based on some preliminary research. It seems to have opened a hornet’s nest…
Mark/Tony,
It’s an absolutely fascinating debate. I use wikipedia on a regular basis. What I find is that if something is wrong, you can usually tell from the way it’s written.
@ Deidre,
You mean the one I wrote about here? ;) It is a really interesting post and perhaps shows some ways the system could be refined to bring more experts into the ‘management’.
[…] 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 reputations and rumour holds sway; success breeds success and vice-versa, but they come close in some respects. […]