Web Geniuses Or Web Dimwits?

ScribeCity writes "The Washington Post has a provocative piece about online experiments at identifying experts. One wonders when someone will come up with a truly effective formula for measuring human intelligence — or take a stab at doing so — that exploits all the stuff people are publishing online." From the article: "This wisdom of the crowd could be outsmarted by what Michael Arrington, editor of the TechCrunch blog, recently dubbed the 'wisdom of the few.' Sites like PicksPal rely on input from the masses chiefly as a venue for auditioning prospective experts, on the theory that these virtuosos could provide even more accurate information and predictions than the crowd. 'If you figure out which ones did the best and get rid of the ones who have no idea, you'd do even better. Distill it down to the people who really know,' Arrington said."

Comments

Or...

[jo42]

Just get a chimp to throw darts at the wall...

Why didn't they test Slashdot?

[garcia]

In order to effectively determine the rate of experts vs. everyone else, you could simply scan through all previous Slashdot posts (while removing those prefaced by IANAL) and easily determine those that are experts.

Make sure you are browsing at -1, *those* people are the real experts ;)

IANAL, but

[RealProgrammer]

... you sound like you could be an expert.

Re::o\

[supersnail]

If about nothing he everything knew then truly the force would be with him!

Re:Perverse Incentives

[morgan_greywolf]

...and then disappear everyone who knows what they're doing, so you can hire clueless sycophants whose loyalty can be guaranteed.

Ooh! Just like U.S. Federal Government! Good idea!

Re:Simple

[karlto]

and it identifies experts.... maybe even political candidates

I wasn't aware that it was possible to be both of those