Andre Engels wrote:
Wikipedia does not have some kind of weighted vote between the various ideas.
I would argue that every single article is a weighted vote between 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.
Every single edit has to stand up the scrutiny of every single person (collectively, a crowd) who reads the article for the rest of time
No "wisdom of the crowd" here, just "wisdom of different people".
Isn't a crowd just a group of people? A wise crowd is a group of individuals who make a better decision than the smartest individual could have made on their own. A dumb crowd is one that compromises to the lowest common denominator.
Thinking about it, the title of the book is actually misleading because according to the author the way to get a group of individuals to make wise decisions is to prevent them from being anthropomorphized into a crowd and adopting groupthink. So the "wisdom of the crowd" is really just the "wisdom of different people", as you say. That is why WP has the success it does, because it is just "wisdom of different people."
Alex Krupp http://www.alexkrupp.com