[iDC] The wisdom of the few?

[Howe, Jeff]

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. 

My email to Slate writer, fwiw:

Chris, 

Thanks for the article. I hadn¹t read the study, and found it valuable. I
believe you¹ve 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):

The results suggest that although Wikipedia was driven by the
influence of ³elite² users early on, more recently there has
been a dramatic shift in workload to the ³common² user.

Now that¹s worth writing about. Sort of a closing of the arc. These sites
were championed as paragons of the Web¹s democratic nature, then the truth
came out that a tiny percentage of ³elites² 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.

I¹d respectfully suggest you owe the good folks at PARC a correction, but
that¹s between you and your ed.
 
All Best, 

Jeff Howe 


On 2/27/08 3:56 PM, "Steve Cisler" <sacisler at yahoo.com> wrote:

>    Here's another critical view of a some so-called Web2.0 services focusing
> on the dominance of the hyper-connected few:
>   
>   The Wisdom of the Chaperones Digg, Wikipedia, and the myth of Web 2.0
> democracy.
>   By Chris Wilson
>   Posted Friday, Feb. 22, 2008, at 6:11 PM ET
>   
>   http://www.slate.com/id/2184487/
> 
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