Wisdom of the crowd

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The wisdom of the crowd refers to the process of taking into account the collective opinion of a group of individuals rather than a single expert to answer a question. This process, while not new to the information age, has been pushed into the mainstream spotlight by social information sites such as Wikipedia and Yahoo! Answers, and other web resources that rely on human opinion[1]. The process, in the business world at least, was written about in detail by James Surowiecki in his book The Wisdom of Crowds[2].

Contents

[edit] Definition of Crowd

The term crowd, in this usage, refers to any group of people, such as a corporation, a group of researchers, or simply the entire general public. The group itself does not have to be cohesive; for example, a group of people answering questions on Yahoo! Answers may not know each other outside of that forum, or a group of people betting on a horse race may not know each others bets, but they nevertheless form a crowd under this definition.

[edit] Benefits

When used in the right way, the wisdom of the crowd can be extremely beneficial to society. One of the best examples of this phenomenon is the online encyclopedia Wikipedia. Millions of people contribute to the collective wisdom of Wikipedia, making it one of the most popular information websites on the internet[3].

The wisdom of the crowd applies to democratic journalism in that a group of non-experts determine what news is important, and then people outside the group can view the news based on those rankings. The social news sites Digg and Newsvine both fall into this category and rely heavily upon the wisdom of the crowd in creating their content.

[edit] Problems

The crowd tends to make its best decisions if it is made up of diverse opinions and ideologies. A crowd of like-minded individuals may contain bias, which can cloud their judgment and cause a less useful response to a given question. Crowds tend to work best when there is a correct answer to the question being posed, such as a question about geography or mathematics[4].

The reliability of the crowd can be somewhat altered by the internet. While many articles on Wikipedia may be of a high quality and edited by multiple people (therefore taking advantage of the crowd's collective wisdom), other articles may be maintained by a single editor, whose ethics and opinions may be questionable. In the anonymous domain of the internet it can be difficult to detect a difference between the two articles, but the same amount of reliability and correctness may incorrectly be expected from both.

The other issue with the wisdom of the crowd is that while the crowd's opinion may be valid, individuals within the crowd may have vastly differing opinions. In the case of Yahoo! Answers, some answers given may be ill informed or biased, while others may be of high quality. The average opinion may be the more valid one, but getting it out of the crowd may be challenging.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Baase, Sara. A Gift of Fire: Social, Legal, and Ethical Issues for Computing and the Internet. 3. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2007. Pages 351-357. ISBN 0-13-600848-8.
  2. ^ Surowiecki, James. The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations. Doubleday, 2004. ISBN 978-0385503860.
  3. ^ http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3504061
  4. ^ http://www.randomhouse.com/features/wisdomofcrowds/Q&A.html
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