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Digg, the wisdom of crowds, the hive mind, netscape, and competitors

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mouser:
let me try to explain why i think this is important.

let's contrast two (idealized) models for choosing what goes on the front page of a respectible newspaper (i know, not too many of them left).

in model A (traditional model), a small hierarchical group of "experts" decides what to put on the front page, based on a combination of what they feel from a lifetime experience is important to the world, to their readers, etc., and based on somewhat what they feel people will be interested in.  they know the content of the articles they put on the front page and they know that if it goes on the front page, it should be reliable information.

in model B, a crowd votes on potential articles for the front page, WITHOUT EVER READING THOSE ARTICLES, based entirely on a 3 second glance at the list of headlines.

---

the point is this:
leveraging the wisdom of the crowds is dangerous if the crowd individuals are making shallow judgements.

i guess i would sum up my position as being there is a role for both expert and crowd input.  but i'm very skeptical of systems like digg which claim to be able to do away with the top-level expert filtering.

not only is it prone to such wild effects as headline biases, but extremely prone to manipulation by those who want to game the system.

sure you could say "if you don't like it don't use it", but in fact i do like digg, i'm just interested in the debate about the role of crowd wisdom, and how to make it work properly.

JavaJones:
Yeah, I get what you're saying. Certainly I would agree that filtering based on headlines/titles alone is silly. I'm not sure that's entirely what's happening, but that obviously plays a big role. One would actually hope that this sort of system would result in more content being read that otherwise wouldn't (provided it's of quality) in that - if people trust the system - they ought to investigate anything that shows up in it at least to the same degree, if not more so, than they would any other source of media. That being the case as long as one person actually takes the time to read something and discover its value, despite a poor headline, they can then call other people's attention to it, potentially giving it more exposure than it otherwise might get. Perhaps even more interestingly they can choose their own headlines to encourage more viewers, which throws an interesting twist into the whole thing.

Anyway I still come back to what the root of the issue is and I think one of the problems, if there are any, is these sites claiming (are they?) that they obsolete other media. They don't, they're just supplementary. I don't think *any* one form of media or media outlet very often truly obsoletes another, and this is no different. If they're claiming otherwise, well it's in their best interest to do so, it's simply marketing, and marketing hyperbole is nothing new. But it's definitely incorrect, and it can be annoying to hear that, and worse to hear people echoing it.

Yet this is no different from things that have been going on forever. This is directly reflective of how people always react to these kinds of systems, services, phenomena, technologies. It's just like fashion, which does intensely annoy me. Sometimes I even rant about it, so I suppose I can identify.

I guess I just wonder what all the debate is accomplishing; what end it is potentially working toward. Are you (or anyone interested in this) trying to show people that the marketing is hype, are you trying to get Digg to actually change for the better, etc? It all seems kind of undirected to me, like we could argue all day about it but even if we agreed... what then?

- Oshyan

mouser:
im not interested in trying to make anyone change, i'm just interested in social networking systems in general, and understanding when collective content works and when it doesn't, and how to build a community content site which is fair.  so i tend to be curious about the advantages and disadvantages to any given model.

JavaJones:
Gotcha. That's fair enough. :D So what defines what "works"?

- Oshyan

mouser:
more from Ian Betteridge's Technovia which strikes home with me:

There's a distinction to be made here between some of the Web 2.0 sites and others.
...
The social aspects of Flickr, while great, aren't necessary for it to have value. It's an online photo service, and on that level no more or less ”Web 2.0“ than Yahoo! Photos was/is.
...
Services like Digg and Netscape, on the other hand, have precisely zero value other than as aggregators of user-generated content.
...
Kevin's hypocrisy is this: he's implying that people should and will continue to do it for love, because they feel like the site belongs to them. Yet, of course, the site doesn't belong to them - it belongs to him, and he will sooner or later make money from it. You can call that hypocrisy, or you can call it the oldest Capitalist trick in the book. Either way, it smells bad.
--- End quote ---

http://technovia.typepad.com/technovia/2006/07/a_response_to_s.html

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