This was one of the most insightful, thoughtful pieces on crowdsourcing that I've ever read. Reddit's an easy target to bash, but the OP is right that the expectations, on both sides, were too high given the disparity of information between the crowdsource and traditional investigators. Until there's a situation in which both groups have roughly the same access to available information, there's not much point in arguing which way is more effective.
This, of course, is a different argument than whether crowdsourcing, in its pursuit, ends up causing too much collateral damage. The voting scheme proposed by the OP seems like a possible way to mitigate the herd mentality...but I also agree with the OP that the feeling of community is what makes Reddit so engaging, for better or worse.
I wasn't watching terribly closely, but it was a bit disappointing to see people circling backpacks, rather than say, establishing a set of photos/videos that were in close proximity to the bombs, in both time and location.
Much of the time, the context people were putting around photos they were linking was observably false (that is, contradicted by glancing at the photos). Stuff like saying a backpack was gone, when a strap was clearly visible...
A WaPo article [1] about the bombings mentions that negative consequences from internet speculation factored into the decision to release the photos of the suspects.
The potential to do some good certainly seems to be there, but I'm not sure the efforts to do things in a careful and organized manner will ever be able to keep up with the excited speculation. Of course, the careful and organized effort may still useful if it can be separated from the excited speculation.
>Much of the time, the context people were putting around photos they were linking was observably false
The most obvious case I saw of that was the number of times photos like this[1] were posted (and others of the same people without one of the backpacks) as 'proof' of their involvement, despite one of the photos being from after the explosions[2]
I didn't read that WaPo article but that's an interesting assertion...because the release of the photos almost certainly spurred the bombers into action. Tragically, it resulted in the death of the police officer, but had they slipped away, the damage may have been worse (I'm assuming that even if photos were distributed to officials only, the bombers could have had an opportunity to escape notice).
This, of course, is a different argument than whether crowdsourcing, in its pursuit, ends up causing too much collateral damage. The voting scheme proposed by the OP seems like a possible way to mitigate the herd mentality...but I also agree with the OP that the feeling of community is what makes Reddit so engaging, for better or worse.