Anthere wrote:

A year later, ''the apple is a fruit'' had become a real article. The pirannah affect was born.

I must admit, something called the "piranha effect" prompted a rather different image in my mind. Instead of an effect produced by editors swarming to a new article and improving it, my first thought was of the current discussions on en: about the problems with Votes for deletion. The concern there is that perhaps the swarm devours and destroys, and not just destroying articles (some of the articles warrant destruction), but also sometimes damaging people's self-esteem and the community atmosphere.

I suppose most swarms that I can think of in nature tend to be pretty destructive (locusts, sharks, wasps, crickets, etc.). Perhaps we should consider that we've accomplished a lot just in being able to generate positive results from swarming behavior at all. We may not be perfect at harnessing the swarm yet - sometimes the "smart mob" reverts to being a plain old mob - but it's pretty impressive nonetheless.

--Michael Snow