

Digg, Wikipedia, and the myth of web 2.0 democracy - sethjohn
http://www.slate.com/id/2184487/
Should YC news empower 'super-users' too?
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mercurio
Even in a real world democracy, there are people whose opinions have a
disproportionate influence. Why do we think that democracy would work
differently in an online community?

Further, one would expect to see a power law distribution in things such as no
of submissions, karma, edits etc. If somebody choses to spend 10 hours a day
submitting links to digg, I don't think that is anybody's business.

What the article seems to be wishing for is a socialist utopia, not a
democracy.

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m0nty
It's not really possible to introduce a Surowiecki-style "Wisdom of the
Crowds" model to online news sites. In his book, James Surowiecki is very
specific about what makes for a good "WOTC" poll, and what doesn't. In
particular, he mentions cascade-effect where people tend to accept social
proof about what is good or not, hence what is worth promoting on a social
news site.

The question asked has to be very specific, and preferably incentivised to
avoid flippant answers. "Guess the weight of this calf and take home some
meat", in one case, or "Help find this missing submarine and get a case of
champagne" in another. Social media sites have none of this, and they should
stop invoking "Wisdom of the Crowds" in defence of their many eccentricities
and aberrations. Google's internal futures market is much closer to what
Surowiecki was writing about - it has incentives, it avoids publishing other
people's votes prior to the outcome, and it asks specific questions.

