On Monday 02 May 2005 10:11, Stirling Newberry wrote:
> 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.
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.
I don't feel as if I need to defend Surowiecki, and I don't understand your
point, but I think he's made a useful contribution as your own example
demonstrates. If the asynchronous and bite-sized character of Open
contributions contribute to their success (Benkler "fine-grained", Sproull
"microcontributions"), is that all? What *kind* of micro-contributions are
necessary? *If* the contributions are crap, if they they aren't coming from
diverse participants (e.g., not "group think"), independent (e.g., not
"herding"), and decentralized and filtered/aggregated well (e.g., not "US
intelligence" ;) ) then they might be useful.