User-Generated Content Vs. Experts

Jay points out a Newsweek piece which suggests that the era of user-generated content is going to change in favor of fact-checking and more rigorous standards. The author points to Google's Knol and the "people-powered" search engine Mahalo as examples of the demand for more accurate information sharing. Quoting: "User-generated sites like Wikipedia, for all the stuff they get right, still find themselves in frequent dust-ups over inaccuracies, while community-posting boards like Craigslist have never been able to keep out scammers and frauds. Beyond performance, a series of miniscandals has called the whole "bring your own content" ethic into question. Last summer researchers in Palo Alto, Calif., uncovered secret elitism at Wikipedia when they found that 1 percent of the reference site's users make more than 50 percent of its edits. Perhaps more notoriously, four years ago a computer glitch revealed that Amazon.com's customer-written book reviews are often written by the book's author or a shill for the publisher. 'The wisdom of the crowds has peaked,' says Calacanis. 'Web 3.0 is taking what we've built in Web 2.0--the wisdom of the crowds--and putting an editorial layer on it of truly talented, compensated people to make the product more trusted and refined.'"

Comments

Ya

[moogied]

Because experts are never wrong. Infact, did you know experts always completly agree?

Re:Ya

[Alexx K]

OK, I'll bite.

Although experts may disagree, and there is the occasional fraud or corperate shill in the science community, at least they are more likely to use the scientific method and choose facts over opinions.

Imho, while user-generated content may, in some cases, be more accurate or up-to-date, it is all to easy to encounter this situation.

Scientist: The Earth is round.
DragonBallZFan: It looks flat to me.
AnnCoulter: The Earth is flat, you godless, anti-American, terrorist-supporting liberals! And you know why? Science said it's not flat, and science is always wrong because it conflicts with the Bible!
QB253X2: Get a year's supply of Viagra for just $14.95 at htttp://www.stealyouridentity.info

Re:Ya

[CopaceticOpus]

The understudy of Aldus Manutius, a young editor named Herberg McParagy, came up with something better too: the sentence grouping. His invention is nowadays called a "paragraph" - a set of perhaps 3-4 logically connected sentences, set apart with the use of line breaks to prevent the reader from losing interest, or simply going mad and jamming a spoon in his eye.

Good idea!

[ncryptd]

Maybe someone will start a tech news site where users can submit stories, and editors pick the most accurate ones for posting... It can even feature user-run moderation for comments -- kinda like "digg up" and "digg down".

Anyone wanna start such a site?

Re:Good idea!

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the stupidest idea I've ever heard of. It could never work.

web 3.0?

[a10_es]

web 3.0? is the web 2.0 hype over already? Now that I was starting to get into the bandwagon and to enjoy it..........

Re:web 3.0?

[pnevin]

Web 4.0 will be built with sticks and stones.

Re:web 3.0?

[Anonymous Coward]

So... when do we get Web 3.11 For Workgroups? And what about Web 95 and Web NT?

/me ducks

Re:Wtf

[ksandom]

Agreed. You forgot one though!

• More than 50% of slashdot comments are created using less than 1% of their intellegence

;)