[iDC] The wisdom of the few?

Thu Feb 28 04:51:39 UTC 2008

Excellent points, Jeff.  For what it's worth, here's the response I
posted to my blog:

Slate magazine has a piece up about Wikipedia, with the salacious
subtitle "Digg, Wikipedia and the Myth of Web 2.0 Democracy" — a
column that says it was written by editorial intern Chris Wilson, but
might as well have been written by Andrew "I Hate The Internet" Keen,
author of Cult of the Amateur and a man who never met a Web 2.0
service he couldn't first misrepresent and then eviscerate. Chris puts
his thesis in the lede:

   "While Wikipedia does show the creative potential of online
communities," he writes, "it's a mistake to assume the site owes its
success to the wisdom of the online crowd."

Why is it a mistake? Because, he says, the site has a small group of
editors (gasp!) who control things, it uses "bots" to ensure that
things look right, and most of the articles were written by 1 per cent
of the site's users, according to a widely-reported study. This is a
little like complaining that airlines hoodwink us into thinking we can
fly, when the truth is that it's the airplane and the pilots that are
doing the flying.

The existence of a so-called "power law" distribution or "long tail"
effect in social relationships is older than I am (and that's pretty
old). As one commenter points out in Slate's forum on the article,
it's hardly surprising that only a small group of people have the
time, knowledge or resources to write in-depth articles for Wikipedia.
Has the site ever said that all users contribute equally? Not as far
as I know.

   "Despite the fairy tales about the participatory culture of Web
2.0, direct democracy isn't feasible at the scale on which these sites
operate."

Wilson also throws Digg into the mix, and hints that there are dark
rumours about the existence of editors (gasp!) at the supposedly
crowd-controlled service. Of course, Kevin Rose and Jay Adelson have
said several times that there are editors who can block people or
remove links, but it's much more fun to imagine some kind of
conspiracy a la The Da Vinci Code, with albino monks killing people
and whatnot.

In fact, as another commenter on the Slate piece notes, the study
Wilson quotes from shows that the number of users who contribute small
changes to Wikipedia has been increasing for the past several years,
and now outweighs the elite group. And he also notes that while 1 per
cent of the users sounds like a small number, that's still about
65,000 people. And yet, Wilson persists in referring to Wikipedia as
an "oligarchy." Nice job with that straw man, Chris — you totally
kicked his ass.

http://www.mathewingram.com/work/2008/02/22/slate-1-wikipedia-straw-man-0/

On Wed, Feb 27, 2008 at 6:13 PM, Howe, Jeff <Jeff_Howe at wired.com> wrote:
>
>  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 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):
>
>  The results suggest that although Wikipedia was driven by the
>  influence of "elite" users early on, more recently there has
>  been a dramatic shift in workload to the "common" user.
>
>  Now that's 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.
>
>  I'd respectfully suggest you owe the good folks at PARC a correction, but
> that's 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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-- 
Mathew Ingram

mathew at mathewingram.com   |   mingram at globeandmail.com

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