Talk:The Wisdom of Crowds

On 2007-07-24, The Wisdom of Crowds was linked from Slashdot, a high-traffic website. (Traffic)

All prior and subsequent edits to the article are noted in its revision history.

Remove the tag

I support the view that the article is in no way written like an advertisement but it has a very good potential. Instead of destructive removal suggestions by those who have neither time nor motivation to improve it by editing the text on the basis of many good suggestions in this TALK up to now, we need to do exactly such a task. For instance: avoid starting the article by referring to only one main book, relating it to historical literature (like in the section "I suggest to enrich the article" in this TALK) and philosophy of science (like the reference in "Further reading" to the doctoral dissertation on Quality-control of information), and by finding a better main title than "wisdom of the crowds" since crowds have too vague and vulgar connotations. Perhaps something like group think, collaborative knowledge, or such. Stefanson (talk) 18:55, 14 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Article is fawning

Crowdism is a menace to society and individuals. The reason this article was (correctly) tagged as looking like an advertisement is that it has no neutral point of view, but describes the book in the kind of language used by press secretaries without pointing out that it's batshiat insane. death metal maniac (talk) 14:18, 12 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Remove the tag

This article is in no way written like an advertisement. It is neutral, presents arguments for and against the book's premise, and does not promote the book itself as a thing to be purchased. Perhaps at one time the article was written like an advertisement, but the many contributions of Wikipedians have cleaned it up substantially. Please promptly remove the tag. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 18.90.6.59 (talk) 20:43, 13 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Fair and Concise summary of the book

As of this date, I don't believe that this article is "written like an advertisement". It is simply a summary of the book and it includes references to the book's own counterpoints. It is a very informative book which I recommend to anyone interested in this subject.

In any case, the link to "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds" provides the counter-theory, if you will. And any additional counter-perspectives can be further referenced under "External Links".

My interest in the "Wisdom of Crowds" is that it supports one of the contentions of Thirty-Thousand.org. The Thirty-Thousand.org web pamphlet argues that the size of U.S. congressional districts should be drastically reduced for several reasons. One result of this will be a large federal House comprised of true citizen-representatives who will bring to the national forum an extraordinary diversity of views, ideologies and knowledge.

JEQuidam (talk) 16:03, 12 April 2008 (UTC)JEQuidam[reply]

Nothing to do

http://www.flylittlebird.org is nothing to do with The Wisdom of Crowds. Please remove the reference! It does not ask a crowd anything, it asks a small and self-select group in one country what they think. They have no incentive structures to guess correctly and no penalty if they do not. It makes no account of speakers tailoring speeches to current events or a particular audience. It does not belong here, it dilutes the article and the meaning of the concept. --Rossjamesparker 09:28, 25 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed - this bears little resemblance to Surowiecki's concept; it's just some people doing some research. Rd232 ^talk 13:37, 25 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The article reads sometimes more as an essay or a critique of the book. It needs a lot of work to be NPOV. I will work on it a little bit, please join in and make the wisdom of crowds work for this article... ≈ jossi fresco ≈ t • @ 04:10, 16 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Counterpoint

Umm... this is fine and all... but is there any counterpoint floating out there... thoughtful criticism of this "mobs know best method" ?... -anon

I would like to know... when I first heard of this "wisdom of crowds," I was dubious, because even though I love the idea of people coming together to form a vast and powerful neural network (I know, it's kind of John Lennon meets William Gibson, but stay with me, and watch Serial Experiments Lain if you haven't), I've always been under the impression that enough people in a group can wipe out one of the most important aspects of the individual mind: the conscience. "Moral man, immoral men," the saying goes, and people can convince themselves easily of being in the right if they can share the guilt with a group. Thus, heinous acts of corporate crime are justified by people who say they are merely "influenced by a corrupt corporate culture" (okay, that's from a Dilbert comic, but you get the idea), or a military commander can order his soldiers to fire upon innocent civilians and convince himself that it's "for the greater good," even if he himself would never be able to bring himself to do the deed of killing even one civilian.

Of course, perhaps such acts of collective immorality are only carried out by evil men who surround themselves with syncophants, which is the "diversity of opinion" issue that Surowiecki rightfully brings up. I just can't help but think of the 1964 murder of Kitty Genovese that I learned about here: [1]

In 1964, a woman named Kitty Genovese was stabbed to death in front of her apartment in the Kew Gardens section of Queens, N.Y., while about 40 people who saw or heard the 45-minute attack did nothing to help. Admittedly, our little experiment was nowhere near so extreme as that famous example, but two social psychology professors say the reasons no one did anything remain the same. The phenomenon is known as "bystander apathy," and it's been the subject of numerous studies over the past 40 years.

...

"If no one else is reacting, people question their own idea of what's going on," Hodges says. People often don't want to be embarrassed if they size up a situation wrong—like accusing someone who lost their keys of stealing a bike—or have the spotlight turned on them as they get involved.

Also, the more people who are around, the more diffused the responsibility to intervene becomes, she says. If you're the only one there, it's up to you to stop a mugger, but if there are 30 people, it's easier not to act because each shares only a little slice of the onus.

So, that's the sort of thing I'm interested in, and I want to know if there's any material like that that we can use for the article. Do our moral impulses get smoothed over in a crowd? (I don't mean to reframe what Mr. Anon was saying, though; any useful counterpoint to Surowieck's wonderful ideas is, you know, useful.)

Also, I have to wonder: if crowds are so wise, how on Earth did we in America elect George W. Bush? (Republicans can feel free to flame me to death for that one; and besides, it would be valid enough to argue that, even if Bush and Co. painted Bush's electoral nemesis John Kerry as a panty-waisted loser, perhaps someone who wouldn't fight back against that portrayal shouldn't be President. That's not my opinion at all, but it's valid.) 67.100.45.134 02:40, 6 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Never mind Bush, how do socialist governments ever get elected?

What about technology designed by committees? Design-by-committee is a favorite laughing stock in tech, marked by overly complex solutions which try to cater to conflicting design goals, take forever to implement and fail user acceptance in the end. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.139.122.66 (talk) 23:12, 27 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Garrett Hardin's article Tragedy of the Commons makes a counterpoint to WOC. It discusses the commons dilemma in which a crowd of individuals acting in short-sighted self interest ultimately destroy a shared resource such as grazing land in spite of that avoidable outcome not being in anyone's long term interest. Cuddlyable3 (talk) 10:09, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I do not agree that Tragedy of the Commons offers a counterpoint to WOC. The central thesis presented in both are not mutually exclusive and can sit quite comfortably together. The reasons why collective wisdom can fail as presented in WOC are an underlying current to Tragedy of the Commons —Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.95.190.2 (talk) 08:22, 5 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Laugh

The U.S. Intelligence community failed to prevent the September 11, 2001 attacks partly because information held by one subdivision was not accessible by another

Oh, come on, don't make me laugh... Anon2 18:06, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well, this is a pretty commonly promoted idea. If we have an article with discussion (including criticism) of this idea (and I wouldn't be surprised), then you could link to it from this article. —Toby Bartels 20:33, 11 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I suggest to enriched the article.

The aspect of “The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few ….” Is a very interesting one. However it seems to me the article suggest with the statement “first published in 2004, is a book written by James Surowiecki” that this aspect is a new one.

It surely isn’t. Please compare Title: Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius from Creator: Machiavelli, Niccolò, 1469-1527, (Translator: Thomson, Ninian Hill, 1830-1921). Can be found under http://www.gutenberg.org/files/10827/10827.txt.

The CHAPTER LVIII.--_That a People is wiser and more constant than a Prince_ addresses this aspect already some hundred years ago.

The main aspect seems to me that this rule is most relevant in cases where no guiding law is established under which both, the people and the prince live and act. Free people balancing there own movements and developments them self, which gets viewed as wise. That sounds quite ideal to me, as special in current days. Reading Machiavelli empirical based considerations it doesn’t offers a scientific explanation, but he identified the subject as such long time ago.Volker Mielke 19:12, 5 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I do agree, Surowwiecki has been picking up an idea that was already developped by others. For example by Condorcet in his jury theorem [[2]] It would be great also to cites the research by Sunstein in HBR (link to article: when crowd aren't wise [3] Paquita; 7 dec 2006.

I propose that all the material in this "enrichment" section be added to the main article. If it wasn't half past midnight here now I'd do it myself. 220.253.8.29 13:26, 28 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Why wikipedia's mod system does not work ;)

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/kevinmaney/2006-09-12-wisdom-of-crowds_x.htm

Techies hot on concept of 'wisdom of crowds,' but it has some pitfalls... Posted 9/12/2006 9:40 PM ET

Internet types love sweeping ideas that come in the form of book titles that morph into catchphrases that can be dropped like little bombs into conversations to show how smart they are. "Well, you know, his company was vulnerable to The Innovator's Dilemma, especially because he didn't have a World Is Flat strategy, although he could've seen it coming if he'd tapped into a Wisdom of Crowds approach."

This is at its most grating when said with a Thurston Howell III accent.

Anyway, the 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?

At its most basic level, the wisdom of crowds — let's call it WOC, so I don't have to type as much — means that the aggregated thought and knowledge of thousands or millions of people can be smarter than trained individual experts.

The WOC has been around forever — it's what democratic elections try to tap into. But the Net takes it to a whole new level. "The Internet provides a mechanism to get lots of diverse opinions and aggregate it in a quick and cost-effective way," Surowiecki tells me.

So if a company can use the Net to tap the collected intelligence of its employees, the employees will make better decisions than the CEO. IBM, Google and others have tried this. Wikipedia, written and edited by tens of thousands of unpaid contributors, should be better than an encyclopedia written and edited by specialists. News sites such as Digg, which lets users vote stories to the front page, should surface the best stuff more effectively than professional editors.

Except it doesn't always work that way. Pointing specifically at Wikipedia, Lauren Weinstein of the People for Internet Responsibility says that the Net has propagated a "basic fallacy that a wisdom-of-crowds approach could ever work, even theoretically."

Which might be extreme. But clearly some of the WOC mechanisms in use today have shortcomings.

Take Digg. Founder Kevin Rose set it up with a simple premise: If you like a news item or blog post, you can "digg" it by voting for it. Items with the most votes move to the front of the home page. But cabals of users started working together to boost certain items. Digg became less about the WOC and more about the ambitions of 1,000 or so savvy members.

So last week, Rose changed the formula. Digg will use computer programs to try to devalue bloc voting and give more value to what appears to be independent thinking. Digg's regulars revolted, causing a big Web stink. But Surowiecki thinks the site will now be better.

"The thing that makes the wisdom of crowds work is lots of diverse opinions and independent judgments," Surowiecki says. "Digg acknowledged it wanted more diversity of input."

So WOC needs the right structure to work, something the U.K.'s Department of Environment Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) found out the hard way.

DEFRA decided to let the public help it write environmental contracts, so it posted one on the Net as a wiki. The idea of a wiki — such as Wikipedia — is that anyone can log on and add or change something. In the case of DEFRA's wiki, the public mutilated it. In one of the more printable alterations, someone changed "Who are the parties to the environmental contract" to "Where is the party for the environmental contract? Can I come? Will there be cake? Hooray!"

"These sorts of issues have permeated the Net," Weinstein says. "Part of the problem is ... it doesn't take a lot of people to cause such disruptions."

Wikis, as it turns out, are not so much tapping the WOC as they are works in constant progress. Depending on who last wrote something, at any one time the wiki might be good, or bad.

Despite hiccups, though, there's still a lot of enthusiasm for WOC.

Google, in its own way, is a WOC device. It analyzes links that millions of people put on websites to come up with the most relevant search results. The reputation system on eBay uses WOC to self-police its users.

One of the more intriguing WOC sites is Hollywood Stock Exchange, aka HSX.com. It has about 700,000 members who use pretend money to buy and sell the "stocks" of movies and stars. (Most widely held star stock: Johnny Depp.) These are basically bets on how well a movie will do or how a star's career will go. HSX now sells its results to movie studios because its forecasts are more accurate than the studios' internal forecasts.

There are other prediction market sites aimed at politics, sports and other sectors. And in 2003, if you remember, the Pentagon experimented with a prediction market for terrorist attacks. Actually, it was a market for world events, including where and how future terrorism would take place. If hundreds of thousands of people were in the market, betting on the likelihood of such events, the WOC would probably wind up making pretty accurate predictions.

But when word got out, people just heard "betting on terrorism" and had an emotional reaction. Senators denounced it. "This is just wrong!" barked then-senator Tom Daschle, a South Dakota Democrat. And the program was canned.

The thing is, it was a sound, smart WOC idea. "It went down in flames for reasons I don't think were good," Surowiecki says.

In other words, it ironically was shot down by a crowd acting unwisely. In this WOC arena, there still seems to be much to learn by the crowd.

Because of the non-independence and the lack of a good mechanism to aggregate the pieces of wisdom, the decision-making in this would indeed be an unwise one.

A reminder

remember this space is meant to be for discussion on wikipedia's article on The Wisdom of Crowds, not the book or theory themselves Nekrorider (talk) 16:55, 27 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Why in this section?

I don't understand why to place "Tim O’Reilly[1] and others also discuss the success of Google, wikis, blogging and Web 2.0 in the context of the wisdom of crowds" in the section "Is it possible to be too connected?". Rather than moving the sentence elsewhere, I would rename the section, which doesn't make much sense in the outline. Sorry, but I'm not enough familiar with the subject to do so Jérôme Flipo (talk) 03:21, 9 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Notability

Hi! The first few paragraphs should clearly state why this book is notable enough to have an encyclopedic article on it. As it stands, the article doesn't seem to give any such reason. If someone could look into this matter it would be greatly appreciated! –Zinjixmaggir 15:08, 1 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Appropriate for External Link?

The Brooklyn Museum is organizing an exhibition based on the theories of this book. Not sure if it is appropriate for this page, but thought we should post to the talk page to inform the editors. More information:

Brooklynmuseum (talk) 12:48, 22 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Including mention of Derren Brown

I have reverted a deletion by MindMatrix where he removed a reference of this theory to Derren Brown's lottery trick last night. MindMatrix is clearly a skeptic of the method. It is a good job, therefore, that this encyclopedia is open to different opinions. The Wisdom of Crowds was quoted clearly by Derren Brown as being his solution to the problem. So tell me please, is it wrong to have this mentioned on the page?

You may not believe him, MindMatrix, but you are not in charge of content here. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.140.223.166 (talk) 15:14, 12 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The claim has been heavily criticised by leading mathematicians, and having earned a degree in mathematics myself, it is almost certain (for any mathematicians out there :P) that this method cannot have been used in the event. But the mention of it is merit-worthy in the article, especially with it saying that he "claimed" to use it being italicised, which is what he did, he claimed he used it. Seems fine to me. 86.22.94.160 (talk) 20:52, 12 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]