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Mob-Sourcing — the Prejudice of Crowds
An anonymous reader writes "ZDNet takes a look at how crowd-moderation can capture and reflect the prejudice of individuals. 'As more web content is crowd-sourced and crowd-moderated, are we seeing only the wisdom of crowds? No, we're also seeing their prejudice. The Internet reflects both the good and ugly in human nature. ... Any system relying on people implicitly encodes prejudices as well. In a world where one politician with a call girl is forced to resign and another is handily reelected, there is no hope for moral or intellectual consistency in crowd-sourced or moderated content.'"
Anyone who needed ZDNet to tell them this clearly hasn't been on Slashdot very long.
Welcome back to reality newbs!
Who, ANYPLACE, promised you prejudice-free surfing on any site on the Internet?
And did you buy a bridge from them?
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
After giving it a bit of thought, I don't think consistency is too much of a problem. Things that 100% of people like will be up 100% of the time. Things 99% of people like will be up 99% of the time. If only half of people think it is proper, it will be removed half the time. And so on, until we reach the things everybody hates, which will be immediately removed. What happens is that things some people dislike will be reduced, but still available, giving us a compromise - people who disapprove will not encounter it as often, but those who desire it can still seek it out and obtain it. Sure, edge cases may be problematic - if only one in a thousand people considers something acceptable, it will be difficult to find; people who are easily offended will still be often offended. But those are the outliers - for the majority of the probability distribution, it will be relatively fair. Much more so than letting a select few moderate all the content, at any rate - by increasing the number of moderators, you decrease the effect any one has.
...not having RTFA, that the article is bogus.
Who's with me?
Shocked, I tell you, to find humanity in here!
And another great quote: a person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it.
More and more it appears the so called voice of the crowd is becoming the voice of the organization paying the spammers.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2010/11/02/follow-the-%E2%80%9Ctruthy%E2%80%9D-tweets-to-find-twitter%E2%80%99s-political-spammers/
Yes the system you used to post your comment was created by a singular fisherman, that's why it's called the "net". /sarcasm
I'd hazard a guess that your karma is in the cellar because your Gallileo complex prevents you from fully thinking thru what you are saying.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I think politics has its own brand of crowd sourcing. This sums things up nicely.
Does having a witty signature really indicate normality?
I disagree with the crowd all the time on slashdot, and yet my karma's pretty good. If you can express your point of view intelligently, it doesn't matter so much if you agree or disagree with "the masses". Slashdot's system is far from perfect, but if you compare it to other online forums, it's clear that a well designed karma system can mine the intelligence from crowds. The fact that wikipedia is pretty good, and that it is hard to out-guess prediction markets are other examples.
I disagree with people all the time and am a downright asshole on here quite often. My karma is still high.
Of course, karma is an aggregate measure of reputation in a way. If your karma is low than you're likely a useless asshole to the community who is best gotten rid off. Not always but it's a good rule of thumb I'd say. Disagreeing with people all the time across every topic also likely means you're insane and delusional. Plus not contributing anything worthwhile, trivial to gain karma in various utterly neutral discussions, indicates you're here just as an ego trip and have no desire to help the community.
In general I found slashdot users actually quite good at moderating up intelligent and logical posts.
That is precisely why an my karma is in the cellar. Anyone who disagrees with the crowd anywhere, even on Slashdot, will get moderated into oblivion.
The reason why you have your karma in the cellar on Slashdot is because you're a creationist with a long posting history. The first time someone is seen making posts like that, they usually get a reply explaining why they're wrong. But when they persist in posting exact same arguments, already thoroughly debunked in countless past discussions, again and again - yeah, you'll get a Troll mod or whatever pretty soon.
Not from me, since I haven't seen mod points in years now (I think I post too much). But I'm not exactly surprised.
And, yeah, it's "groupthink" for sure. I don't see a problem with it, though. "Murder is bad" is also groupthink, and I'm certainly fine with that one.
The reason we live in a Republic is because a true Democracy almost always degrades into mob rule and eventually an Oligarchy.
Any form of government where all citizens have a say can degrade into a mob rule - you can only try to increase the size of the mob that it takes to make it happen (by creating laws such as "need 3/4 votes to amend Constitution" etc), but you cannot avoid it except for a benevolent dictatorship (and those things stop being benevolent real quick IRL, even where they start as such).
Was? Is? Whatever, I don't go there.
I noticed this effect the first time I saw Digg. A topic that started to trend would stay toward the top, and be seen my many more people, so it tended to trend even more, which means it stays near the top even more... and soon this bias becomes not just obvious, but enormous.
Theoretically it could happen even to a topic that was voted up by only a very few people, if they did it at about the same time. Which means that there is a certain amount of Chaotic nature to trending topics on Digg, and the eventual trends may bear very little resemblance to peoples' actual preferences, were a simple vote or some other measure taken for comparison.
Dissenting opinions are fine when they are substantiated. However, when the same opinion is repeatedly expressed without being substantiated, or when the arguments given in favor are obviously false (as they were reviewed and debunked when they first appeared a long time ago), and nothing new is added - such an opinion becomes mere boring drivel, and will get modded accordingly.
Interesting how you stretch what he said beyond it's meaning in an attempt to support your own point. Good example of how not to post.
OK, I got it - as long as the dissenting opinions are acceptable and not debunked, they are acceptable.
Yes, if it's been debunked then it's wrong and as such of low value. Glad to see we're on the same page.
Of course, if they were acceptable and had been approved by the authorities, they wouldn't be dissenting opinions, would they?
Yes, the mysterious secret alien authorities running slashdot and sucking out our brains wish to keep you in your place. Now shut up and stand still while they insert the straw.
He's not the resurrected Lord and Life giving Spirit - he's a very naughty boy!
(1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
"Murder is bad" is also groupthink, and I'm certainly fine with that one.
Actually, that's not groupthink but a religious commandment.
One thing with those ten commandments, though. Of those that deal with human-human relationships and not the human-god relationship, they sure have stood the test of time. Lots of things were important then that aren't important now, but that list is pretty universal.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
I guess so! I must have been wrong, and the crowd here loves the Lord! Honestly though, it doesn't matter to me how it's modded - I win either way.
Humans are terrible replicators of Godly things.