Technovia has an interesting article "Why Digg is doomed, and why the wisdom of crowds is mob rule"
"... the fundamental problem with the whole 'wisdom of crowds' approach. It makes the assumption that online debate is largely rational, when - in fact - an awful lot of it is simply emotional. There is very little quality debate on the open internet on any topic that attracts a large level of attention. Yes, there are small communities that remain coherant and reasoned - but these are rare."
2 comments:
That is very insightful -- thanks! I have had the experience of nurturing an online community where we insisted on civilized behavior, working hard at it, and seeing the community flourish for many months, only to see it destroyed eventually by mob mentality. People lashing out emotionally at those who would disagree with them does not result in reasoned debate and increased understanding. Great efforts at community-building can be quickly destroyed by trolls.
I found the article interesting because I am constantly questioning how real this new web 2.0 phenomenon is.
We all have very full lives as is and it is difficult to find time to maintain an ongoing presense in online communities, let alone post comments on other blogs etc.
When we do post it is usually not very well thought out and may be just posted as a passing remark or something that is a gut reaction without much understanding of the entire story or issue.
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