Web Geniuses Or Web Dimwits? · Slashdot Mirror

Posted by ryuzaki0 on Thursday October 19, 2006 @07:35AM from the nothing-but-geniuses-here dept.

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."

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Or... by jo42 · 2006-10-19 07:37 · Score: 5, Funny

Just get a chimp to throw darts at the wall...
Why didn't they test Slashdot? by garcia · 2006-10-19 07:40 · Score: 5, Funny

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 ;)