Wisdom of crowds in USA Today
Last week's technology column by Kevin Maney in USA Today discussed Wisdom of Crowds as an idea and the book: Techies hot on concept of 'wisdom of crowds,' but it has some pitfalls
[T]he concept of "the wisdom of crowds" — the title of a popular 2004 book by James Surowiecki — is particularly hot among tech companies right now. Yet in the past week, the concept has run into a couple of potholes. One is a rhubarb at Internet darling Digg.com; the other, the U.K. government's case of the hijacked wiki.
Both have people wondering if crowds are really all that wise, and what conditions have to exist to make them wise. Why is it that some crowds seem smart, while others turn into ugly mobs?
The article seemed fairly well-balanced to me. The idea behind Wisdom of Crowds is that people as a collective can be very smart. The danger is that the collective can also be very dumb (mob mentality). Unfortunately, Maney didn't answer the big question: when can you expect to get wisdom and when an unruly mob?
I'd wager that when the collective behavior turns from being rewarded in goodwill to when it moves towards measurement and compensation.
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The following is from the site: http://www.randomhouse.com/features/wisdomofcrowds/Q&A.html
Under what circumstances is the crowd smarter?
There are four key qualities that make a crowd smart. It needs to be diverse, so that people are bringing different pieces of information to the table. It needs to be decentralized, so that no one at the top is dictating the crowd's answer. It needs a way of summarizing people's opinions into one collective verdict. And the people in the crowd need to be independent, so that they pay attention mostly to their own information, and not worrying about what everyone around them thinks.
The book really tells the story in quite a compelling fashion.
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"Why is it that some crowds seem smart, while others turn into ugly mobs?"
Isn't this answered in the book? I got the sense that Maney only read the book title and not the book.