The Wisdom of the Usual Suspects

I wish I could take credit for the title "The Wisdom of Chaperones," what with all the droning on about the wisdom of crowds, and ho, miraculously, they're supposed to come up with smart answers. Maybe they do, when they're not looking for a free lunch in a dot com bubble or heading off to blow each others brains to a gaseous physical state when at war. No, the credit for the title goes to Slate.com, for an article by Chris Wilson about the myth of online democracy in such "Web 2.0" sites at Wikipedia and Digg - or, I'd add, Slashdot.org. Wilson's essential point goes like this:

Social-media sites like Wikipedia and Digg are celebrated as shining examples of Web democracy, places built by millions of Web users who all act as writers, editors, and voters. In reality, a small number of people are running the show. According to researchers in Palo Alto, 1 percent of Wikipedia users are responsible for about half of the site's edits. The site also deploys bots—supervised by a special caste of devoted users—that help standardize format, prevent vandalism, and root out folks who flood the site with obscenities. This is not the wisdom of the crowd. This is the wisdom of the chaperones.

Wilson continues to point out that in 2007, 100 people at Digg were responsible for 44 percent of the site's top stories.

I'm not surprised, having noticed something similar in a practical way. I look at the story entries at Slashdot.org on a regular basis, and I notice that most of the postings are by the same group of people. In fact, I've tried on multiple occasions to suggest a story and have never had one chosen to run. The concept runs beyond Wilson's thesis. Not only does a tiny portion of people contribute the vast majority of content (or at least popular content), but I think this can become a self-fulfilling prophesy. When publications hire writers, they often rely on the same names, because those people get the tone of the publication and are proven to the editors. There's a relationship.

I suspect there are also relationships in the social media sites. It's such a human reaction, to trust those that you know and be wary about newcomers, who might bring something fresh, but who also have the possibility of upsetting the apple cart. Even though there is no money exchanging hands, you still have the comfort of the devil you know. Of course, the flip side of this situation is the movie Casablanca, in which the local police would generally look for the usual suspects in the case of a crime, even if those people had nothing to do with it. And the line between an effective oligarchy and five year Soviet planning is, perhaps, not that broadly chalked.