Comments on: Who owns ‘the wisdom of crowds’

By: sonagi’s blog! » Ten Ways To Take Advantage of Web 2.0 by Dion Hinchcliffe

Thu, 23 Feb 2006 23:44:31 +0000

[…] 2. Make Content Editable Whenever Possible. The read/write Web is about making users co-creators of content on a massive scale. Armed with foreknowledge of the effectiveness of the Wisdom of Crowds, you can take advantage of the fact that none of us is as smart as all of us. Wiki sites turn this editable dial all the way to the right for example, and let every page be editable by anyone who is allowed. Far too many sites don’t take advantage of the fact that you can give people an ownership stake, and get them immersed in working on improving what you offer, all just by letting them have the ability to change an appropriate level of content. The better wiki software keeps a copy of all versions so that no permanent damage can ever be done and that all information contributed is ultimately shareable. Note that there are still some barriers to fully exploiting this, including preventing mischievious users from causing havoc. But there are ways to limit and control this now emerging as I’ve written about before. […]

By: P2P Foundation » Blog Archive » Conference: Class composition in Cognitive Capitalism

Wed, 08 Feb 2006 11:45:20 +0000

[…] – the debate on ‘who owns the wisdom of crowds‘ […]

By: Ten Ways To Take Advantage of Web 2.0 at Justin Lee’s Blog

Ten Ways To Take Advantage of Web 2.0 at Justin Lee’s Blog — Sun, 05 Feb 2006 14:58:54 +0000

[…] Make Content Editable Whenever Possible. The read/write Web is about making users co-creators of content on a massive scale. Armed with foreknowledge of the effectiveness of the Wisdom of Crowds, you can take advantage of the fact that none of us is as smart as all of us. Wiki sites turn this editable dial all the way to the right for example, and let every page be editable by anyone who is allowed. Far too many sites don’t take advantage of the fact that you can give people an ownership stake, and get them immersed in working on improving what you offer, all just by letting them have the ability to change an appropriate level of content. The better wiki software keeps a copy of all versions so that no permanent damage can ever be done and that all information contributed is ultimately shareable. Note that there are still some barriers to fully exploiting this, including preventing mischievious users from causing havoc. But there are ways to limit and control this now emerging as I’ve written about before. […]

By: web2.wsj2.com

web2.wsj2.com — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 05:03:42 +0000

Ten Ways To Take Advantage of Web 2.0…

One of the questions I get asked fairly frequently is how people can leverage Web 2.0 techniques in their applications and infrastructure today. Now that it’s getting more well known, many people are now growing interested on making immediate,…

By: P2P Foundation » Blog Archive » P2P, non-reciprocity, and the wisdom of crowds

Tue, 31 Jan 2006 05:21:47 +0000

[…] Regarding to our earlier entry, The Wisdom of Crowds, David Bollier send us an interesting comment, part of a continuing conversation on the relationship between P2P as a process, and the Commons as an institution, see here (part 1) and here (part 2): […]

By: David Bollier

David Bollier — Sat, 28 Jan 2006 19:58:45 +0000

Who owns the wisdom of the crowd? Whomever is able to capture it. The key to the sustainability of a user-based commons (such as a free software community) is a legal or institutional mechanism such as the GPL, which assures that the “surplus value” created by the commons stays WITHIN the commons (or at least is not over-exploited by private appropriators). If user-based communities are going to be able to acquire long-term equity in their own production, we will need to create innovative instruments to assure that private capital cannot own and control it. An exemplary battle in this regard may be massively multiplayer online games, in which users who create avatars, rooms, props, etc., do not legally own their own virtual creations; the corporation that created the game does.

Social norms can go a long way toward “punishing” corporate owners who misbehave. Witness the user outrage when Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. started to censor posts and web links on its recently acquired MySpace site. But whether smart mobs can necessarily prevail or find suitable alternatives is an open question, to my mind, despite the long-term trendline in their favor.

By: P2P Foundation » Blog Archive » Continuing the dialogue with David Bollier: P2P, the Commons, the Market

Sat, 28 Jan 2006 04:01:25 +0000

[...] Iâ€m not sure I can be convinced that such technological developments are as crucial as they are said to be. The reason is that, first of all, P2P processes function very well already without them, and secondly, that reputations and identity are not easily transferable amongst projects,the whole process is very contextual, you may be very good in one environment, and less so in another. I think we should resist the urge to apply purely instrumental reason, â€˜whatâ€s in it for me, strategically and tacticallyâ€, to the new commons, where such reasoning is subsumed in the larger field of cooperation. Communal reputation and rating systems are more important for successfulll cooperation than individualist technologies. The reason is that the former are necessary means to avoid a power transcendence, i.e. they avoid that a minority can represent the common and place itself above it, they are an insurance against private appropriation. I think this is why we see a rapid development of the former, while the latter technologies fail to take off. The market answers the question, what’s in it for me, and needs individualist technologies, P2P processes answer the question, what’s in it for us, and need communal technologies. [...]