[Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia, Emergence, and The Wisdom of Crowds

[Chad Perrin]

On Mon, May 02, 2005 at 03:06:36AM -0400, Alex Krupp wrote:
> I think all Wikipedians would enjoy the book The Wisdom of Crowds by 
> James Surowiecki. The basic premise is that crowds of relatively 
> ignorant individuals make better decisions than small groups of experts. 
> I'm sure everyone here agrees with this as Wikipedia is run this way and 
> Wikipedia is a success, but until reading this book it was a total 
> mystery why Wikipedia worked the way it did. And judging by the press 
> we've gotten, I'm not the only one who feels with way. If you'll 
> remember, the mystery of how Wikipedia works has been compared to 
> sausage, bumble bees, public bathrooms, etc.
> 

I think you'll find that making assumptions on what everyone can agree
will only get you in trouble, particularly when you haven't asked anyone
what they think on the matter.  I, for one, disagree with the "Wisdom of
Crowds" concepts as they are presented, and find most of the reasoning
therein to be flawed.  Granted, I have my information on it only from
secondary sources, but these sources include both agreement and
disagreement, and include some fairly intelligent treatments of the
subject.

In short, though, you'll probably find pretty quickly that "everyone
here" does NOT in fact agree with that, or that Wikipedia is run that
way, as several responses to your email have already illustrated.

If you really want to know why Wikipedia works, you should probably
start reading some of the more scholarly treatments of why open source
software development works -- and yes, they're written by "experts".

In truth, it seems to me that what makes Wikipedia work is exactly what
the book you mention claims is invalid: the input of experts.  We are
all experts in some things, and we all know where to find the words of
experts online.  Within our realms of knowledge, and within realms of
the knowledge we can find that is contributed to public circulation by
others, we contribute to the aggregate that is Wikipedia.  There's
nothing "emergent" about that aside from the simple fact that when a lot
of time and effort is put into collecting expert data a nice collection
of expert data emerges.  Meanwhile, there's nothing distributed about
the intelligence involved -- only about the way work is accomplished.

--
Chad Perrin
[ CCD CopyWrite | http://ccd.apotheon.org ]