[Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia, Emergence, and The Wisdom of Crowds

[Delirium]

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".
>
> That's not to say that there isn't a lot to the notions of how a group 
> collaboration can improve on what an individual can do.  My point is 
> just that Wikipedia functions a lot more like a traditional 
> organization than most people realize -- it's a community of 
> thoughtful people who know each other, not a colony of ants.

This might be the case in some portions, and on smaller Wikis, but in 
general I don't think it is.  When I edit articles, 90%+ of the time the 
other editors are people I have never conversed with, and often people I 
have never seen edit other articles before.  We work together in ad-hoc 
fashion on a single article for maybe 10 minutes, and then never see 
each other again.  When I write an article, it's usually improved in a 
similar way by people I have never seen, and often never see again after 
they've made their contributions, often on the order of a single sentence.

That seems a lot more like the "wisdom of crowds" thing... a few people 
stopping by and adding a sentence, fixing a punctuation mark, etc., and 
then disappearing.  Well, not literally disappearing, but there are 
enough people editing the en: Wikipedia that it might as well be the same.

In a few areas where there are prolific editors, you run into the same 
people over and over (a few of the history areas are like this, as is 
math), but the vast majority of articles don't have any recognizable 
editors.

-Mark