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<TITLE>Re: [iDC] The wisdom of the few?</TITLE>
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<FONT FACE="Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:12.0px'>Attention to anyone who follows this link. Slate writer totally (and inexplicably) misrepresents the PARC study that was supposedly providing the evidence for his piece. My advice? Skip the article and go straight to the study (attached), that reveals that the tide is starting to shift again toward increasing participation on the part of the crowd, as opposed to the few. <BR>
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My email to Slate writer, fwiw:<BR>
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Chris, <BR>
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Thanks for the article. I hadn’t read the study, and found it valuable. I believe you’ve misrepresented the conclusions Chi, et. al reached though comments, my apologies. The prevalence of the 80/20 rule in social media is an old story—got heaps of ink when Wales first revealed that 2.5 percent of Wiki contribs were doing the heavy lifting back in 04, but this study actually reveals something genuinely newsworthy (and diametrically opposed to the angle on your piece):<BR>
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</SPAN></FONT><FONT SIZE="2"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:10.0px'>The results suggest that although Wikipedia was driven by the <BR>
influence of “elite” users early on, more recently there has <BR>
been a dramatic shift in workload to the “common” user.<BR>
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</SPAN></FONT></FONT><FONT FACE="Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:12.0px'>Now <I>that’s</I> worth writing about. Sort of a closing of the arc. These sites were championed as paragons of the Web’s democratic nature, then the truth came out that a tiny percentage of “elites” were responsible for most of the content, and now indications are showing that with continued usage, the crowd is indeed taking over some of that burden. <BR>
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I’d respectfully suggest you owe the good folks at PARC a correction, but that’s between you and your ed. <BR>
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All Best, <BR>
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Jeff Howe <BR>
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On 2/27/08 3:56 PM, "Steve Cisler" <sacisler@yahoo.com> wrote:<BR>
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</SPAN></FONT><BLOCKQUOTE><FONT FACE="Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:12.0px'> Here's another critical view of a some so-called Web2.0 services focusing on the dominance of the hyper-connected few:<BR>
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The Wisdom of the Chaperones Digg, Wikipedia, and the myth of Web 2.0 democracy.<BR>
By Chris Wilson<BR>
Posted Friday, Feb. 22, 2008, at 6:11 PM ET<BR>
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<a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2184487/">http://www.slate.com/id/2184487/</a><BR>
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