On Sep 8, 2008, at 4:29 PM, Doyle Saylor wrote:
Let's take Wikipedia which is totally volunteer, it vets it's
content by an elaborate editing criteria or protocol. The key issue
being that it surpassed commercial endeavors and is more a used
source than encyclopedias of yore, because the variable amateur
content actually is more value producing than the commercial
efforts. But for now these are isolated reference points in a
debate about what is a networking really going to do in the long run.
It was amusing (for me) to note the glee with which major-domos on
both the Left and Right jumped on and propagated the story that almost
all Wikipedia content was generated by a handful of expert editors. I
presume the possibility of a people (including experts, of course)
powered system of knowledge didn't suit their plans and theories all
too well. Of course, as they would have realised had they stopped to
apply common sense to this claim, the story turned out to be wrong.
However, I do tend to agree with Doug's response. Live content
generated by an arbitrary and miniscule subset of amateurs is
typically not fit for structured consumption. IMHO, highly distributed
input adds value when it draws from a large set of individuals and is
filtered and revised and vetted and so on. In essence, it makes an
expert of the crowd. Which is a great thing, indeed.
NPR was just given a few billion dollars to play with, by the
McDonald's widow, yes?
--ravi
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