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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11009379/from/RS.4/ And I ask again, crowds of what? It is easy to construct a crowd where everyone is talking past each other (few are listening or actually logically reasoning). So crowd of what and the subject matter are important. I suspect that given some topics and some crowds, it can be very hard to get more than a clear picture of the polities and the memberships and that is created by a different set of analysts/crowd. Wikipedia and any other documented discussion has a feedback effect (that is the averaging function) if serious participants stay current and reanalyze past threads. There is a difference in PageRank functions that order a search and analysis functions that select the answer from a candidate list. That is precisely why an ontology is layered over a service (preselected choice of choices). The connectedness (density of connections) of the ontology now comes into play and has operational or scaling effects based on the criticality of a choice. Quick and don't look: what is at the upper left of the majority of menu toolbars? Would you be affected if it randomly moves to the center or right? len From: Elliotte Harold [mailto:elharo@m...] 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.
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