crowdsourcing - digg
In my lead-in post, I briefly described the roles of the many and the few when it comes to software development. Volumes have been written on this topic, and it continues to be debated in conferences and whatnot. I’m trying to drag that Cathedral and Bazaar analogy to similar many/few situations and see if it still makes sense.
About a year ago, there was major hype on the tech scene about sites like digg and netscape because for as much as it was the full crowd saying what links and stories they liked, it wasn’t. It was revealed that digg has a tiny group of users that in the end are responsible for 90% of their digging, and with Netscape, Calacanis was paying people to contribute and vote on stories. Not everyone, but a choice few. Specifically, the top users of digg.
It was assumed by the ignorant populace that digg was in fact democratic, and that it was controlled by the crowd democratically, evenly and fairly, and indeed, the stories that deserved attention were lifted to the top of the pile by the masses. Much like democracy in other arenas, this proved to be a total illusion.
What all of this proved was that it takes the masses to do the massive worker bee legwork of seeking out stories and links online, but in the end, it’s a small circle of dedicated elite who keep it running. Without their day-to-day focus and effort, consistent traffic would wane, the cycle of new stories would stutter, and the video of Sean Preston being dropped on his head for the nth time would never leave the #1 spot. It would be the classic case of the inmates running the asylum.
At this point, I could try and raise this discussion to another, more important level, but I’ll resist the urge.