On May 2, 2005, at 10:01 AM, Joseph Reagle wrote:
On Monday 02 May 2005 08:54, Jimmy Wales wrote:
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
It's probably interesting to note that a central theme when I give
public talks is precisely that Wikipedia is _not_ run this way, and
that
wikipedia is _not_ an instance of "The Wisdom of Crowds".
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:
[[[
I've read it, it is the "Dow 36,000" for the 90s. Some of his specific
examples I know, for a fact, are bunkum. He confuses cause and effect
consistently. Crowds aren't smart, it is that if a system is set up
where most people do the wrong thing, the system breaks. Wikipedia,
when and where it works (which is most of it at the moment) works
because it is guided towards people making the right, rather than the
wrong, decisions.