I am an avid reader of RSS feeds, Digg.com in particular. Not because I think anything truly new or revolutionary starts at Digg, but because it’s sort of entertaining to see some of the off-the-wall items that do appear. I have to be upfront; I abhor Digg.com itself. Why? The comments are ridiculous.
Ninety-nine percent of all the comments are a variant of general rubbish or rudeness. It shouldn’t be a shock to anyone but Digg is an internet mob with all of the intelligence of ten-thousand crazed European football (soccer) fans. Second place for Internet idiocy are the comments from many of the “stalkers” on YouTube. I will apologize to the well-mannered and well-intentioned users, BOTH of them.
Bored out of my skull with these thoughts on my brain I did some quick research on the wisdom of crowds to find out why, as a whole, if many people working together are smarter than one, are sites like Digg the exact opposite.
There are four main elements to having a “wise” crowd:
- Diversity of opinion – having your own private judgements
- Independence – ability to make a decision without others
- Decentralization – able to draw on local knowledge about a situation
- Aggregation – A way to collect the information
When these elements are not combined a “crowd” or group will fail. So let’s compare these to the average Digg.com user mentality. There are some unofficial charts that are out there that show the average age of Digg.com users, the majority of which are between 17 and 24 years of age. Now, just because you’re a user doesn’t mean you leave comments. There’s also no way to verify that everyone voted for themselves honestly either.
Diversity of opinion – Digg.com users are generally younger people, teens or pre-teens and low-20’s. Members of the age group do not generally have enough experience to form their own INFORMED opinion on a subject.
Independence – Peer pressure, anyone? Most comments on Digg.com tend to “follow-the-leader.”
Decentralization – The major demographic of Digg.com users don’t have a wide experience to draw from, hampering their ability to draw on any personal experience to make decisions about a particular situation.
One main failure, according to James Surowiecki, author of The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations, why “crowds” (groups) fail is that they are too imitative.
Do a search at Digg.com for “George W. Bush” and you’ll see what I mean. Search for “athiest” and you’ll get another feeling for the consensus of enlightened Digg.com users. It’s either eat-what-CNN.com fed you or what “that other guy” said above you in the comments.
Does Digg.com fit any purpose? Sure, I think it’s a good source of information that should be taken with a grain of salt. There are many informative articles that show up as well as pictures, images, photographs, anecdotes, news clips, et etc. If you’re looking for actual interesting conversation find somewhere else.
