• To: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <len.bullard@i...>
• Subject: Re: Invitation to metadata dictionary wiki - meaningfuel.org
• From: Elliotte Harold <elharo@m...>
• Date: Sat, 28 Jan 2006 08:34:21 -0500
• Cc: xml-dev@l...
• In-reply-to: <15725CF6AFE2F34DB8A5B4770B7334EE0BB1FDC7@h...>
• References: <15725CF6AFE2F34DB8A5B4770B7334EE0BB1FDC7@h...>
• User-agent: Thunderbird 1.5 (Macintosh/20051201)

Bullard, Claude L (Len) wrote:
> Which makes it suitable for picking the contestants on 
> American Idol but probably not for picking tools to 
> use in surgery.
> 
> The problem of the 'wisdom of crowds' is knowing 
> 'crowds of what?' in advance of applying the wisdom.
> 

One of the revelations of Wikipedia is that crowds are pretty effective 
at self-selecting and self-policing. A random crowd would not be 
effective at picking surgical tools. A self-selected group of people 
interested enough in surgical tools to participate in a discussion of 
surgical tools likely would be; and in fact probably would do better 
than any one individual would, no matter well educated and credentialed.

-- 
Elliotte Rusty Harold  elharo@m...
XML in a Nutshell 3rd Edition Just Published!
http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/xian3/
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0596007647/cafeaulaitA/ref=nosim

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  • RE: Invitation to metadata dictionary wiki - meaningfuel.org
    • From: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <len.bullard@i...>

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