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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.
Someone needs to give it a mathematical treatment.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
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.
Also called the illusion of confidence.
...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/
I'll prove your first point, watch.
Jesus Christ is the resurrected Lord and Life giving Spirit.
Humans are terrible replicators of Godly things.
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.
Wait, so someone actually used crowd sourcing as a way to gather information for a study against the common wisdom of crowd sourcing -- which reveals that crowd sourcing is prejudiced?
They expect us to believe that their "wisdom" gained from "crowd" sourcing shows "'the wisdom of the crowd' is prejudiced", and theirs isn't?
40 points for claiming that the "scientific establishment" is engaged in a "conspiracy" to prevent your work from gaining its well-deserved fame, or suchlike.
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).
I call BS here. I don't think you got modded into oblivion for "mentioning that logic should dictate the outcome of a decision and not political motivations." Hell - I'm an extreme liberal and I agree 100% with that statement. I'm thinking it was probably something else that you said.
Show us the post that got you modded out of existence.
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.
"Measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority.
Alert to the dangers of majoritarian tyranny, the Constitution's framers inserted several anti-majority rules.
http://www.capitalismmagazine.com/politics/democracy/5496-Abhorrence-Democracy-and-Mob-Rule.html
Sanity is the trademark of a weak mind. -- Mark Harrold
Are you sure that Clinton lied under oath?
Clinton was asked, under oath, if he had a sexual relationship with Lewinsky. Clinton did not immediately answer the question, but instead asked what was meant by a "sexual relationship". He was told that a sexual relationship was a relationship where they had sexual intercourse. Clinton then said that he did not have a sexual relationship with Lewinsky.
Clinton and Lewinsky had oral sex, but they did not have sexual intercourse. Clinton was slippery, but he does not seem to have lied.
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
Now, I have no idea who the poster is that you're replying to, but the moderation here is often unthinking groupthink. A majority of people here start from a common basic premise for their thinking/logic on many issues. Anyone who begins with an opposing basic premise, even though they are a logical person, will end up at a much different conclusion than the majority. Groupthink then kicks in and that person is derided as illogical and stupid because because they ended up at a conclusion that seems illogical to those who started from an opposing basic premise, and the moderation around here reflects that attitude.
Around here Christians and conservatives are stupid, irrational, etc... and ad hominen attacks against them are commonplace. Those posts are modded down sometimes, but more often than not are modded up on nothing stronger than prejudice as the common basic premise between the poster and the moderator. Logical fallacies, such as ad hominen attacks, are not good examples of rational thinking and should never be promoted as such. Yet, here they are on a regular basis if you devote the attack toward what is a minority opinion on this site..
I've also been on sites where just the opposite is true for who is seen as irrational and illogical. The secularist is modded as troll and illogical, and ad hominen attacks against them are modded up on those sites. Neither group of mods is doing a good job, and neither group of posters show tolerance for logic that has its origins in a basic premise that opposes their own.
What does it say about our society when we, as a society, are eating our own because of our differences in basic premises? How is this sustainable? How is this good for society? If this keeps on in the same direction it will end in some type of civil war as civility between opposing points of view is rapidly deteriorating. Both sides will have their own thought police. Is that really a society any of us want to live in? If you don't like that society you're the only one who can change our current direction as the only way the current direction our society is taking can change is for individuals to change. Government can't do anything about it, other than try to legislate what point of view is allowed, and I don't really think anyone wants to go there.
"while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." de Tocqueville
"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.
Morality is entirely subjective, although it often seems objective to the individual. So hoping for moral consistency is a pipe dream. Why even bring it up? A politician with a call girl is not really thrown out due purely to morality reasons -- voters make a judgment about their ability to lead them and whether they trust them to make good judgments and be the kind of person they want to have lead them, which are not moral judgments.
Currently hooked on AMP
Yeah, some items are so universal that they were even agree upon BEFORE Moses came down the hill. Like murder. I'm pretty sure murder was bad before Moses, and I'm pretty sure that murder was bad in China and India. So it didn't really originate as a religious commandment. Don't get me wrong, I think it's swell that it got made official and written down. "In stone" so to speak. For that little group.
But your statement makes you a troll for trying to claim that something as universal as "murder is bad" is the sole domain of one particular religious group. Actually, the "badness" of murder is kind of built into the term. So the first creator was really whoever first came up with the concept to differentiate different kinds of killing. Although it might have been a group effort, and it was certainly recreated by others.
You're religious, that's fine. You're christian, that's fine too. But the point you start making factual errors and claim ownership of a universal concept? And then get modded up for it? That's the point I have to call bullshit. So as to not ruffle your feathers too much, let me put it this way: There are the Mandarin, Indian, and Summarion words for murder. None of those peoples had any interaction with Moses or the commandments, so how did these groups of people know how to define murder?
The hell with parties -- parties have little effect on public opinion -- they just game opinion so they can stay in power. People vote for what they fear and what they want. In some areas, it seems significant that their guy screws hookers, especially if they are married. In some areas, it does not. If districts were not gerrymandered to protect incumbents, maybe we could even find out what really matters to people.
Currently hooked on AMP