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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.'"
...math and physics articles will forever be incomprehensible to mere enthusiasts.
I would also like to point out that this is a very common pattern of how things freaking actually work in the real world. You can find probably on the order of tens of millions of examples for this disparity in the real world. It's the Pareto Principle (aka, the 80/20 rule), and the concentration is basically fractal in nature. The smaller the sample you choose, the greater the disproportionality is likely to be.
Some possible examples (this is a thought experiment. I don't know the actual stats, but all of these are believable, at least on the face of it):
This does not a scandal make. In fact, it would be a hell of a lot more surprising if something of Wikipedia's nature didn't follow this statistical pattern. To me, it only proves that Wikipedia is genuinely organic, instead of an artificial system of quotas and coercion that tries to force everyone to submit equally. Would we even want a Wikipedia where the apathetic masses are forced or paid to submit information?
True science means that when you re-evaluate the evidence, you re-evaluate your faith.
He has just a slight vested interest in pimping his wares, here.
While I would very much like to publish dead-tree books, I provide all my material online, free at least as-in-beer, so more readers can benefit from it than would be the case if I charged money for it. Another reason is that most traditional publishers would require that I assign them the copyrights to my books, something that I'm loathe to do.
But a fellow Kuro5hin member named lonelyhobo said:
I find his position perplexing. The only difference, in terms of accomplishment, between what I do now and traditional publication, is that a publisher's editor might stamp his seal of approval on my essays, and bookstore patrons might pay money for what they now can get for free.But is that what it really means for writing to be notable? I claim that it's not. For one thing, there are many, many books published every year, that even manage to earn their publishers and authors some good money, but that are in no way notable or memorable. At best they're a pleasant way to pass the time.
In my writing, I aim to make a positive difference in the lives of others, whether they are fellow software engineers or fellow mentally ill people. And I have plenty of reason to believe that I have accomplished just that, and many times over.
A little while ago someone attempted to write up a Wikipedia article about me. Of course my many troll friends from Kuro5hin jumped all over it, vandalizing it - it seems I attended "the Batman school of junk touching" - and recommending it for deletion. In the deletion discussion the case was made that I wasn't notable, because not many publications written by others could be found in which my writing was discussed.
I mostly stayed out of the debate, but I did jump in a couple times to point out how hard I work to educate the public about mental illness. I have receved literally thousands of grateful email messages as a result - but for reasons that must be obvious, I couldn't post them.
The consensus of the debaters is that, because few others have discussed my work, I must not be notable enough to merit a Wikipedia article. Considering the difference I know my essays and articles have made in the lives of others, I assert that that is just plain wrong.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
Why is it users vs. experts? Couldn't some of the users also be experts? It is my understanding that this is generally how things like Slashdot and Wikipedia work. There are a large number of users using these sites, each of which have their own area of expertise (or none). When you come across something you know to be incorrect, you amend it. On Slashdot, by posting a reply. On Wikipedia, by editing the text.
I think the users _vs._ experts is based on a false dichotomy. There isn't a group of experts that is distinct from the group of users. The users are potentially all people, including the experts. If anything, a system that uses a select number of "experts" is _limiting_ the total expertise they have, compared to an open-to-all system. And I think it shows. I find Wikipedia a lot more informative than any traditional encyclopedia I remember using, and Slashdot to give much more accurate information than, say, computer magazines sold in stores here.
Sure, Slashdot gives you a lot of misguided and downright wrong posts, but at least you get many people's input on the issue, and, often, a correct post, as well. By contrast, something written by a single "expert" is, in my experience, just as often wrong or misguided, but you don't get the benefit of seeing other people's input, let alone corrections. It annoys me no end when I read ignorant or factually false statements in computer magazines or news papers. These folks are misinforming the masses, under the guise of being experts!
In the end, of course, it depends on how good your "experts" and your "users" are. But it is certainly not a given that "experts" will do better than "users". In fact, many user-driven sites are built in such a way that wrong statements can be pointed out and corrected, which, in my experience, makes them do _better_ than a system where you trust the experts.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
It's simply a case of grouping people by their own choices. You put all the flat earthers together and sell them flat earth compasses and pretty crystals.
Those who actually go out and observe the real world will realise the truth, can if they wish, manufacture flat earth compasses and pretty crystals to sell to the flat earthers. Then head off for a cruise on their yacht knowing they aren't going to fall off the end of the world.
You see, you don't have to worry about who the experts are. Everyone has their own experts.
Deleted
In that case, you might be a bit surprised by the kind of person who is responsible for peer review. I was asked to review a couple of papers in a field only tangentially related to my own work while I was studying for my PhD. Of course, I have the advantage of being omniscient (I do, after all, have excellent karma, and so my omniscience is endorsed by the groupthink) but other less-fortunate people (who don't read Slashdot at all) are almost certainly in the same position.
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