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

[Andre Engels]

On 5/2/05, Joseph Reagle <reagle at mit.edu> wrote:

> It's important to understand *why* he argues there is wisdom in crowds. I
> don't know if you've read it and disagree with the fundamentals, but it
> requires three specific conditions: diversity, independence, and
> decentralization within the group. This seems very appropriate to WP.
> Excerpts from my mindmap [1] on this particular note are below:
> 
> [[[
>    The wisdom of crowds
>      * p=Doubleday y=2004 a=USA  r=20040921
>        An argument that groups of people can make very good decisions
>        when there is diversity, independence, and decentralization within
>        the group. This is augmented by case studies in traffic, science,
>        committees, companies, markets and democracy.
>        The wisdom of crowds
>           + 4 In Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, the audience got it right
>             91 percent of the time, the friend/expert at right 65 percent
>             10 the stock market identified Morton Thiokol because: the
>             diversity of opinion, independence, decentralization, and
>             aggregation
>             22 bookies, Google, IEM (election's), HSX (box-office), are
>             all successful decision markets

This seems to be very unlike Wikipedia. Wikipedia does not have some
kind of weighted vote between the various ideas. It puts on one, and
then either keeps it, corrects it, or goes into a revert war.
Correction needs 1 person, revert war needs 2. No "wisdom of the
crowd" here, just "wisdom of different people".

Andre Engels