

The people formerly known as informed - davidw
http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2007/09/the_people_form.php

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davidw
I think his conclusions are perhaps off - reddit/digg/etc aren't "wise crowds"
in terms of how the book describes them. Rather than independently voting,
it's a cascade - most people only vote on things that have already been voted
up by a lot of people.

It's interesting reading the snippets of the article he quotes, though.

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jdvolz
His conclusions are off.

First, for his evidence he is using a study from the Project for Excellence in
Journalism. Do you think the study might be biased? The crowd mentality
threatens the entire profession of Journalism (I'm not saying it's going away,
but they are less and less in control of what people read hear and see).

Second, he argument assumes the dividing line is "hard news" vs. "soft news"
when it is really "I care" or "I don't." The problem is that nobody cares
what's on the news. If we are to believe the study, the news is more
consistent in what it shows. That means they are showing us the same thing
over and over again. People care about things that are relevant to them or
that provide some form of entertainment. Surprisingly, the mainstream news is
just picking up on the fact that their product at the very best under-serves
the needs of their market.

Third, the article paints the mainstream media as "informed" and everyone else
as "uninformed." No bias there. Even if we assume they are right, it just
points out that they aren't providing their customers with the information
they want. If Google can target ads to me based on search, how come news can't
be tailored to my desires.

Finally, the crowd based sites know the mainstream news exists. They don't
have to cover the Iraq war for the 10,000,000,000th time. That's what the news
is for. If you wanted to see information about Iraq you'd go to a mainstream
news distribution channel. Haven't they considered that maybe there is no
reason to rehash those stories already beaten to death in the mainstream
media?

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Tichy
I have to beg to differ big time here. Just because people choose other
interests than the media doesn't make the news dumb. For one thing, the
reports of the media of allegedly important events are usually not that
informative: usually they milk a subject for as much as possible, typically by
endless repetitions of hollow facts. I doubt anybody would be able to
understand what is going on in Irak just by watching the news, for example.
Also, arguably many allegedly important topics don't bear any relevance to the
average person at all. Like if some other state has been flooded, that
information is pretty useless to me, unless I was just about to travel there.

Rather than concluding that crowds are dumb, perhaps the media should take
this study as an incentive to rethink their program.

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awt
This article completely misses the point of social news -- it is news people
WANT to read, not news you think people should read for their own good.

