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