Glen -
I took an early interest in social networking and in the potential power
of crowd sourcing but got burned out looking for the needle in the
haystack or the gem in the coal-bin as it were. I am highly motivated
to believe it can work but the dearth of good examples seems to continue.
Wikipedia and Google Search are the closest things to success stories I
know of, but I may not be thinking hard enough. Search, of course,
mostly doesn't depend on "smart usage", though I am surprised sometimes
when the rank ordering of results reflects some aspect of pop culture
that I am clueless about (which is many)... Wikipedia is so much more
intentional and despite the crowd-source for content, I think the
somewhat hierarchical control of style and nature provided by the
network of paid and volunteer staff keeps it (somewhat) coherent beyond
what a true anarchy might.
My wife and daughters are big on Pinterest but I've never taken the
plunge... I get some good "forwards" from them in their respective
domains. It seems as if the mail-list or group paradigm is still
generally the best "referral" service for me. Despite my snarkiness now
and again on FRIAM I think I do get more signal/noise than many other
places.
I think one of the things I'm contemplating on this general topic is
what does it take to transcend the mundane in these environments?
There must be precedent in analog systems for noise cancellation, etc.?
On your implied recommendation, I've just joined Quora and was pleased
to find right away a colleague who I highly respect (someone I would
"follow" on nearly any forum) there already. We'll see how it all works out.
- Steve
Steve Smith wrote at 06/28/2013 11:56 AM:
These all seem like good tools *in principle*, I wonder what it takes to
make them good tools *in practice*? I suppose an easy, trite answer
is, *good participation*, and maybe it really is that simple? Kind of
like (presumably) democracy, the free market, and innovation.
Yeah, I agree with you. I particularly enjoyed trial 156:
http://randomiseme.org/trials/156
"As you know, people in Britain are often anaemic. Sometimes this is due
to poor diet, but most often it's due to vampires.
We need people who live in the vampire infested counties of British
isles (consult Wikipedia for your local prevalence) to consume garlic on
a daily basis, or not."
I had a similar feeling about Quora when it started. A friend of mine
gave me an account before it went public and I tried interacting, asking
and answering questions to my best ability. I was put off by the snarky
answers and inane questions. So I killed my account. But now it seems
to be somewhat interesting, though far less successful than
stackoverflow, I suppose.
In the end, we have the age-old aphorism: "You get what you put in" or
"you reap what you sow." I expect that if randomiseme.org were _used_
by people who know and care about the difference between good data and
bad, then it would become useful. Not surprisingly, this is why I still
use Google+, but avoid Facebook like the plague. And, just like the
transition from the internet to the WWW, I expect I'll soon have to
abandon G+ as well.
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