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Journal pudge's Journal: Crowds 22

Quoth Jeremy Zawodny in criticizing Slashdot's editorial model, "Haven't we figured out that the crowd is generally smarter than any one individual in the crowd?"

No, it isn't. I don't know where he got that ridiculous idea, let alone why he thinks it's true, when centuries of history have shown that it's not. It is, after all, the reason we have a republic here in the U.S. and not a democracy: we don't trust the fickle whims of the masses. Nor should we.

Raise your hand if you really think the Perl community is better suited to make the design decisions for Perl 6 than Larry Wall is. The community can, should, and did have significant input, but in the end, someone who is smarter and wiser and so on should make the decisions.

The question is not whether the individual can be smarter and better suited to doing a certain task than the crowd is, because it's obviously true. The only questions have to do with which individuals we're talking about, for which crowds, and so on. The specifics matter.

So I'm not saying the Slashdot editors are necessarily better than the crowd, just because they are the Slashdot editors. It's a given that this isn't true. But it's also a given that they *could* be.

That's also not to say that crowds should be ignored. To stick with the government theme, most politicians think well-conducted public opinion polls are useful tools for providing effective government, but, as Edmund Burke said:

Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.

Maybe there's more room for "public participation" in the editorial process, but the public should never serve as a replacement for the personal editorial process.

At the end of the day, though, he has a point, though he doesn't bring it out very well: if the crowds don't get stories they want at Slashdot, they will stop reading Slashdot. It's quite simple. There are other reasons to stop reading Slashdot too, of course, but if Slashdot really doesn't post the "right" stories, Slashdot will die. Conversely, if Slashdot remains alive and prosperous, then it obviously is posting the "right" stories.

The problem with Jeremy's argument is that this is all true regardless of whether those stories are chosen by a crowd or by individuals, and as someone who's been in the story-posting business for many years, I can confidently say that -- depending on who they are -- you've got a much better chance with the individuals than the crowd.

This discussion was created by pudge (3605) for no Foes, but now has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Crowds

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  • The issue isn't whether the crowds here at /. are smarter than the editors. The issue is that the editors don't seem to appreciate feedback. They take it as complaining rather than as a suggested improvement. I wrote Taco recently to point out that /. was repeatedly posting articles from a known crack-pot. When I say "known crackpot" I mean that if you read his website you will find that he claims to be God and is serious about his claim. I wasn't doing this to be critical or to poke fun. I was doing
    • The issue isn't whether the crowds here at /. are smarter than the editors. The issue is that the editors don't seem to appreciate feedback.

      No, it's not. The issue, specifically, is whether crowds are smarter than any one individual in the crowd. That is what Zawodny was primarily writing about, and it is what I was directly responding to.

      What you're talking about is a separate issue.
      • My point is that /. could leverage the smarts of the crowd that is here better than it does. There are good ideas in the crowd that /. conciously decides to ignore. There is a huge resource here that is only being utilized in very specific ways. So no, I don't think that the issue is a separate one.

        What might be a separate issue is how big the crowd of current plus former editors is. Are any of the current editors actually former editors using new names?
        • My point is that /. could leverage the smarts of the crowd that is here better than it does.

          Sure. And that's something I mentioned in my journal entry, when I wrote, "Maybe there's more room for 'public participation' in the editorial process ... ."

          So no, I don't think that the issue is a separate one.

          Well, it is a separate one. Related, but separate. The primary issue is whether crowds are better suited for the task than individuals. The answer is No. The related, but separate, issue is whether crowds
          • Not as far as I know ... why would we do that?

            I have very little idea what goes into who works at /. and who leaves and why. You guys come across as rather secretive some times. Has anyone ever even admitted that Katz isn't around anymore? When Chris DiBona left there was at least an announcement.
            • When Katz "left," it was far more informal, I believe. DiBona was an employee who had regular shifts; Katz was someone who just posted things from time to time. Eventually he stopped, but it wasn't an official thing, from what I understand.
      • It seems that half of my concern is getting addressed on the front page suddenly. The other half (about editors with new names) is never going to get answered, is it?
    • Republic...

      According to various world domination strategy games, they all seem to think that 'democracy' is the final frontier.

      Me think, Republic is the answer... just as long as we learn from the Roman Empire's mistake.
    • are any of the relatively new editors simply old editors with new names?

      No.

  • Jay: Why the big secret? People are smart, they can handle it.
    Kay: A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it.

    Yeah, that pretty much sums it up for me whether it's software users, protesters at my local school board, or the herd at Slashdot.
    • Great comment. I completely agree.
    • This is a popular idea but it really falls apart if you think it through. What really happens, is that when a person looks at a group as a whole, they have no problem considering them all to be idiots. When they are detached, they judge the actions of the others in a critical way.

      But often if they have an opportunity to get to know the individuals involved, or they are a part of similar circumstances themselves, they gain new insight and become less judgmental.

      This kind of thought process
  • You get a certain style (or lack thereof) with slashdot, but I prefer it to the groupthink and general wankery that is the now completely unreadable K5 (for example).

    Ah.. slashdot v. K5 .. it's like 2000 all over again! Where's Adequacy when you need it?

  • No, it isn't. I don't know where he got that ridiculous idea, let alone why he thinks it's true,

    My family and I were at a conference this summer and they had all kinds of give-aways and drawings. One drawing I entered was one of these- guess how many m&ms are in the jar deals. It was done by a group within our organization (campus crusade for christ) that does i.t. type stuff. After the conference they sent out a deal with the results of the contest. They gave the lowest, highest, closest a
    • In aggregate we did better than any individual. ...

      I think that in terms of specific skill sets, that a group can do no better than an individual. And if of the 5,000 or so at the conference, there had been an expert m&m counter, he could have crushed us all, but there wasn't one. And so our collective effort was better than any individual.

      Exactly.

      There are other things like this, where really, there are no outstanding individuals and the group can probably outperform an individual. I would venture to s
      • Yeah, I could see arguments for it going either way-- but then, I've never seen it from the other side. So I can't really have an informed opinion on the matter. And I've had a 2 or 3 submissions accepted so I'm not complaining.

        I think it is interesting that a meta-story was posted to the front page today. Every once in a while I'll get into an extended thread and it can get really hard to keep track of it all. I can't imagine trying to dig through and maintain discussion through an entire post

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