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113 Comments
- Ahnteis, on 10/12/2007, -2/+37It also needs all members of the crowd working toward a common goal. (In the example in the article, this was achieved by offering a reward that all participants wanted.) In the case of Digg, we DON'T all want the same thing. Some people want fame, some want a great site, some want to promote a commercial product, and some just want to ruin your day.
If we all wanted a great site, we'd probably end up with that even though each of us individually might not know how to create one. However, due to differing goals, the whole thing can fall apart. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -4/+29Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
(Present company excluded.) - gwjc, on 10/12/2007, -10/+32The "county fair" experiment is sloppy and anecdotal; it ignores the fact that at the guessing competition many people would be listening to friends and expert guesses and basing their own opinion on that 'expert wisdom'. Besides any, self respecting scientist would laugh at his 'method', you could use the same experiment to 'prove' the hypothesis that large crowds are luckier than individuals because they have more luck molecules when massed in groups and that was why the weight guessed was accurate. As for this line "you can see, Digg relies heavily on the wisdom of crowds", says who? It's specious reasoning at best... if Kevin submits an post saying the Purple Nano is the coolest Nano ever, it will make the frontpage because Kevin posted it, it doesn't mean diggs collective wisdom believes that it's true, it's because many of us will promote Kevin's story because of who he is; if I post the same story it will get buried as lame in minutes, that's part of what makes digg "social", it has nothing to do with wisdom. Also, the whole portion on information cascade is somewhat one dimensional.. it assumes that people will decide to digg a story, or not, because it's "objectively" good or bad. For example, I think his blog entry is a fluff piece with an anti-digg agenda but I'll digg it because I think it stirs up discussion and helps clear the air, besides which it looks like he put some time and effort into writing it; regardless, my decision is more complex than whether or not I think this digg is good or bad.
I think this line is the funniest: "If they can cripple the social ties between the Diggers", LMAO, maybe he should click on this link http://digg.com/about and read the first line: "Digg is a user driven social content website". Sounds like basically he just doesn't like what digg _is_. - PAJK, on 10/12/2007, -6/+26LOL. Did anyone else notice that the article has a "Submit to Netscape" button, and not one for Digg? That's the first time I've seen that...coincidence? Na.
EDIT: Yep, just checked the site out. It's staunchly anti-Digg. - daldredge, on 10/12/2007, -8/+22Now that is the sort of well thought out, intelligent, and well written post I have come to expect from most of the users of this site.
- schnitzi, on 10/12/2007, -1/+15I'm digging this post, but only because a lot of other people did.
- cliffzdude, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13Digg has become a "me too" place.
Don't like Macs? Digg down.
Like Bush? Digg Down.
Don't love Comedy Central Left Leaning Political Satire? Digg down. Somebody will smugly point out that you've been "blocked" from their view. Wow, color me tearful.
Concerned about radical Muslim threat? Digg down. "Ain't nobody going to scare ME, the world is OK-FINE and little things like Islamic Radicals getting nukes they intend to share with other radical Islamics is just not real.
Make a truly compelling, possibly very valid point that disagrees with the group-think? It won't be debated intellectually, you'll be called a "*****" this or a "full of *****" that. And immediately Dugg down. Or my favorite recently, a "*****-tard". Nice...
My guess is the average age on Digg is high school range, so it makes total sense.
To me, Digg used to be the BEST place to find breaking cool news about cool technology. We were all brothers in arms, computer geeks who liked a lot of the same stuff. Digg has been become less and less appealing as time goes on. Sure, I don't have to Digg as I do but there is still some compelling stuff here. I hope that Digg becomes a little less nasty and volatile and a bit more geek centric again. - Vryz, on 10/12/2007, -4/+13You should check out the actual county fair experiments. The point is that the average is actually BETTER than the experts, and that it only works because people are NOT listening to experts. If you run the experiment and have people discuss their guesses, peer pressure will skew the answer farther away from the correct one. Yes, it's surprising that it works that way... but it's true. Try it. Run the experiment. This isn't pop psychology, you can actually test this stuff.
That's not to say Digg should work one way or the other, but it is often repeated that Digg is an example of the Wisdom of crowds, and it really isn't. There are specific requirements for systems to produce the wisdom 'effect'. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -4/+13This article tastes like a book which mentions itself. Too many Digg articles are about Digg and it's lame.
- HappyScrappy, on 10/12/2007, -3/+11Because there's no Wisdom of the Crowds.
- jotux, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10I love digg(ex-slashdot reader), but the site is definitely not as "social" as many people think it is. Many of the stories come from a small group(as has been presented here previously).....
I think it'd be neat to implement adaptive digg counting, whereas the more people digg the same users the less their digg counts toward that user. - gypsi, on 10/12/2007, -5/+13I'm not sure large numbers are required so long as a given crowd is greater than a few, which digg is, but digg certainly fails the anonymity/independence test.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -15/+23"Wisdom of the Crowd" needs anonymity and "large number theory" (something over, say, 100 million) to work.
Digg has neither. - hackwrench, on 10/12/2007, -7/+14Who says it has failed. For the most part, for me, the summaries that make it to the front page aren't a waste of time to read, even if it isn't worth reading the entire article. I then dip into the near-front page articles, and articles that people dugg that I marked as "friend" because I liked their taste in articles.
Digg works.
There are some things that crowds and various forms of groups are better at than individuals, and some things individuals are better at, and to top it off various ways of grouping people are better at certain tasks than others,. - hackwrench, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Then there's the matter of defining crowd. A crowd at a political rally, a crowd walking down city streets, a crowd of farm workers, and a crowd of people at an amusement park are completely different things with different dynamics and expectations of the individuals within those groups.
- robsonde, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Quote from Men in Black...
Jay: Why the big secret? People are smart, they can handle it.
Kay: A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it. - mfokkelman, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Large numbers are not needed, it also works with, say for instance, 100 people (i.e. they have more "wisdom" combined, than one person if the other requirements (e.g. independence) are satisfied).
Read the book, before you comment with "your" wisdom. - rebrad, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5If they could only stop the dupes it would be great. How many stories about the new iPod can one take? A small group of people pushing an agenda have taken over digg because the dupe check function does not work. I'd rather see more comments on a subject than 50 headlines on the same subject. Laborious at best.
- UberC, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6There's probably some truth to that but who cares really? Digg is just a fun website that can be informative. It's not like it's being used to rule the world.
- GnuTzu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Finally, a good chuckle
--and on topic as well. - ThirdPrize, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Its the users posting the stories not the site.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5"If you run the experiment and have people discuss their guesses, peer pressure will skew the answer farther away from the correct one. Yes, it's surprising that it works that way"
I think you fail to forget one thing about that method of sociology, Its been tested in real world relations as it pertains to the physical interactions of society but when you add the Internet into the mix it becomes an whole new equation altogether. The Internet is a fairly recent development and I think from the example of a wide range of opinions that you can presently see just by scrolling your current browser up and down that peer pressure doesn't apply as well as it would if say we making real world judgments together. I in reality would probably break down to public opinion in a public forum but on the Internet which is one of the only mediums that is public yet anonymous at the same time, my judgments is shielded by the comfort of my surroundings and the strength of anonymity and I can easily go against the grain of public opinion. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5What value does this supposed "crowd wisdom" have in history. For example, name some great discoveries, inventions, theories, or really anything "great" that was developed using "crowd wisdom". Guessing the weight of cows and voting for the next Rock Star doesn't fall under the Significant column to me.
- paintist, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7I'd wager it's because the "wisdom of crowds" isn't much of a rigorous theory.
- sdevoid, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Crowds can be more intelligent that the people that make them up, but only if the right conditions exist. A mob of people trampling each other in a stadium are "unwise" because of what economists call an "information cascade" where a small amount of bad information (Hey, everybody should run for the door NOW!!) infects everyone and creates bad outcomes.
Examples of very intelligent crowds:
NYSE: can reasonably predict the value of individual companies as well as the market as a whole.
Iowa Electronic Market: Stock market for US presidential candidates; +/-1.5% accuracy in deciding the winning candidate (compared to Gallup polls +/-3%, by professional statisticians).
So, Yes, crowds can be smart. - motoole22, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4This should have been titled "Why lack of foreground/background contrast fails in web design"
- Stonekeeper, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4The fundamental flaw with democracy is that it assumes the majority are right.
- ThirdPrize, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Couldn't we just lose the "Top Digg Users" page? That would solve the problem wouldn't it? If there is no ranking then there is nothing to be gained by cheating.
- marthaphoebe, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6Who cares about wisdom of the crowds, I'm more interested in "popularity of the geeks".
- sdevoid, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4What are you talking about? The whole reason this debacle started was because some guy posted it on his blog. (And got to the frontpage, might I add.)
http://jesusphreak.infogami.com/blog/is_digg_rigged - applepro, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5you folks are thinking waaaay too hard. the creator of digg and his buddy drink beer and yak about mostly tech news on a podcast. nuff' said — enjoy digg for what it is.
digg does not equal a scientific paper website - talmaximus, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4I disagree on all counts...vague generalizations about random sized groups of people are unfounded, unsubstantiated and can possibly lead to decisions based on these vague generalizations about random sized groups of people. Blind leading the blind.
- HappyScrappy, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5I disagree with you. Smart people in large numbers are stupid.
Do you think anyone at Riverfont Coliseum at that Who concert said "let's trample some people to death today"?
Herd mentality, it is real. And it makes people act real stupid, even smart people. - talmaximus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I like the phrase 'opinion of the masses' a bit more than the term 'wisdom'. The end results of the mass decisions will dictate whether or not any wisdom was involved or just mob mentality.
- PAJK, on 10/12/2007, -9/+12There are certain people that are making it seem as though Digg is going down, it is failing, it does not work. This is not true. It works just fine, and nothing is any different now than it was 4 weeks ago. Remember that.
Remember that when they tell you Digg doesn't work, they'll ask you to visit Netscape.
Calacanis is one desperate bitch. - captaincc, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4A general aphorism is that the IQ of a group is that of the smartest person, minus one for each additional person :)
The difference with Digg though is that we are not coming up with a "group" decision, but rather an aggregation of seperate individual decisions.
The argument that we (Diggers) are engaging in groupthink is a bit of an exageration. That there is no doubt that the popularity of a story affects our preconception of a story, I would argue this has a minimal effect, no greater than the source of the information does, the ads on the page, the quality of the site design, or 100's of other factors that influence our decisions. - GnuTzu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3So, what is needed to encourage a crowd of independent thinkers
and discourage a bandwagon of blind and over zealous followers?
How is any social interaction going to eliminate the sequencing problem?
I think the article has the wrong title. It should have been:
"The Limitations of Social Systems" rather then a poke at Digg.
Admittedly, the article was thought provoking, but I don't see that it shows
how some other system might work better in practice. - jonrobenator, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I don't see the problem. As far as I'm aware the idea of digg is for people to vote on articles and sites that they think are interesting in the hope that someone else will see it and also find it interesting; in the case of digg it's not a matter of right or wrong (as in the case of the weight of the pig) but of personal taste. I, personally, read every article before I decide whether or not to digg it: if I find it interesting I'll digg it; if not I won't.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4[insert one-liner here that tells you to f-off and get 100 diggs]
Hey, its true. - gwjc, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3@Vryz said:
"You should check out the actual county fair experiments. The point is that the average is actually BETTER than the experts, and that it only works because people are NOT listening to experts."
I did "check out the actual county fair experiments" as best I could, his 'experiment' lacked any controls to isolate the 800 people from one an another. Amongst the 800 people in a farming community in 1906, there would be a plethora of 'experts' who could accurately guess the weight difference between an animal on the hoof and it's butchered weight. Many of these people would be talking and overhearing each others guesses, and deciding which 'experts' they thought were closer as well as factoring in the evidence of their senses. A lack of controls and adherence to scientific discipline are the shortcoming of most pop-psych experiments. All Galton did was a statistical analysis of the entries from the fair, and then decided that this 'proved' the 'wisdom of the crowd'. - kolop1, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6 Actually, you dont need a 100 million people. You just need a large enough crowd to influence a medium.
- Twango, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3"Wisdom of crowds"? Human history itself seems to refute that assertion.
Crowds are only wise to the extent that they're not driven by ideologies created by the man. In any of his many guises. Tribes come to own a lot of wisdom; congregations, on the other hand ... - dloko, on 10/12/2007, -4/+7Wisdom of the Crowd is applied in democratic nations, most democratic nations do not have over 100M voters yet succeed in the electing a leader.
- rebrad, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Slashdot doesn't allow negative comments about itself but neither does it allow the same story worded slightly different either. Fix dupe checking on digg.
- shavato, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2 I personally think Digg is closer to "Wisdom of the Masses" than any other site out there today. No other site compares and I also believe Digg users are probably smarter than the average person, which makes it even more" Wise"
- rebrad, on 10/12/2007, -4/+6I have to agree with the article. Digg of late has become just another propaganda site for the "Hate America" crowd and "Love Apple" crowd. Both continue to submit the same stories again and again of which a large percentage reach the front page. So much for dupe checking.
I'm all for free speech but when I get a choice of the same thing again and again I don't have a choice. I can ban a user but I can't ban a users submission so I get to see the agenda they are pushing whether I like it or not.
I've been on Digg since it began but I'm seriously thinking of deleting the link and finding another site that gives me a diversity of views. I'm open to other viewpoints but when I continue to see one viewpoint over and over I get suspicious and reject the agenda being pushed. TV does this and that's why viewers are abandoning traditional TV in droves and don't bother to tune in their clones.
Digg was once a great site but like TV I'm close to saying "sayonara" for something good. I know Digg wants to make money but for me Digg is going in the wrong direction. - paulcooper, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2This article creates a paradox. Think about the logic behind a theory suggesting the masses vote correctly compared to a person saying the system is broken.
Which one is right? It goes around in circles, no? - lebaige, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Hah, Digg users are smarter than average eh? That theory right there is half the problem with Digg.
- talmaximus, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3better not read any more like that then. ;)
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