Wise Crowds

Internet postings are created through several different formulas. There is the traditional news report, such as a New York Times Article. There are blog postings, which are usually opinion-based, and are not meant to be necessarily "correct". Then there are open-source sites like Wikipedia and Digg, which are infamously known for being widely sourced, but not entirely reliable. Does the fact that Wikipedia's content is editable by anyone and everyone make it a less valid source than Encyclopedia Britannica, even though Wikipedia is strictly monitored and edited by a group of editors?

James Surowieki brings up a lot of good points within his speech titled "Independent Individuals and Wise Crowds". One argument that I think specifically relates to the Wikipedia/Britannica argument is a test of group thinking. A study was constructed in which four groups were told to solve some sort of problem in the fastest and most efficient way possible. The four groups were categorized as follows: dumb, mediocre, smart, and random. Of course, the smart group was overall more successful than the dumb group in doing whatever task it was at hand, but the random group almost always outperformed the smart group. Why was this? It was the group dynamic, the same idea that makes Wikipedia possible. The information may not come from one specialist, but it comes from all kinds of sources with different levels of knowledge and experience of the subject to create one cumulative outcome. The group is almost always smarter than the smartest person in the group.

Wikipedia, according to Alexa.com, is the second most trafficked website in the US. There must be a reason why it is such a hugely popular site. In other words, there must be some level of validity to most of the information on the site. If Wikipedia were not looked at by administrators, I am almost positive that it would have turned into a sort of Urban Dictionary or Encyclopedia Dramatica by now. The perks that Wikipedia has that Encyclopedia Britannica cannot ever grasp is the idea of the now. For example, whenever Michael Jackson died Wikipedia was updated with the news almost immediately. In conclusion, I must agree with the previous posting: In a matter of ten year, I do not know what Wikipedia will be, but it will surely out-live Encyclopedia Britannica.

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