This is an older draft entry which was seemingly never published, but is still relevant, in the context of our discussion of governance in Wikipedia, and its lowest-common-denominator effects.

Here it is:

There is a very important blog entry in Joshua Porter’s Bokardo blog, which monitors social design issues, i.e. how design influences social behaviour.

It refers to a study by noted network researcher Duncan Watts, which was reported on in the New York Times.

It summarizes the important finding: in sites which aggregate collective judgment, such as Digg, the rating and the download figures influence the decisions of users. In other words, it creates a feedback loop and bandwagon effect, so that people are not choosing quality, but popularity, and so early entrants have an advantage.

Please do read that summary in full.