The theory behind "wisdom of the crowds" depends on the crowd members forming their independent opinion without reference to the opinion of others. There is research that shows that "wisdom of the crowds" does not hold when the "crowd" knows one another's opinions (the "lets go around the room and hear what people have to say" approach heavily biases the later responses to match the consensus of the earlier responses), that is, you get "group think". Experts are likely to have studied a range of evidence and other sources, so hopefully less likely to be engaged in "group think", but scientific theories now widely accepted have been ridiculed and/or suppressed when first introduced because they were contrary to the views widely held by other experts in the same field, so even experts are not immune to "group think". Nobody is automatically right and nobody is automatically wrong. We just have to do our best to be careful in our assessment of the reliability of sources. Kerry _____ From: wiki-research-l-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wiki-research-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of ENWP Pine Sent: Sunday, 8 July 2012 9:19 AM To: Research-l Wikimedia; wikimedia-l Subject: [Wiki-research-l] Wisdom of the crowd vs. wisdom of the experts andinsiders I thought this was interesting so I'm passing it along. This sentence particularly caught my attention: "The answer, I think, is to take the best of what both experts and markets have to offer, realizing that the combination of the two offers a better window onto the future than either alone." Substitute the word "crowds" for "markets", and perhaps there is something here that could be applied to Wikipedia in our quest for quality, mixing the best of expertise and crowdsourcing. I'd be very interested in hearing comments from other Wikipedians. <https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/08/sunday-review/when-the-crowd-isnt-wise.h tml> https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/08/sunday-review/when-the-crowd-isnt-wise.ht ml Cheers, Pine