The 'democratic' web and the madness of crowds

O'Reilly Radar > Digging The Madness of Crowds

Yesterday on Digg there was a very popular libelous news artical against someone from O'Reilly. I didn't like the 'torch and pitchfork' mentality that people had in their comments. Today surprise surprise the claims are proved to false and the full story comes out. Unfortunately this reminds me of the of the less attractive side of the Web and the mob mentality.So it isn't the first time and it won't be last a community gets over zealous when the community itself feels under attack, but this blog at O'Reilly clears up the facts and reminds us of this.

Shop Talk on Radio 4 today had a chap on talking about the perceived 'digital democracy' of Web 2.0; the notion that community sites are democratic when news articles or photos are voted to be the best. They may be democratic in the sense of voting articles up to a frontpage, but who then takes responsability for the validity of that article? Democratic would be the voting of an editor to take that responsability, not the mob mentalility we see with these sites.

Can you have the best of both? A community with expert contributers without mindless follow the leader?

While there may be a great many new community sites starting up, it is only those that can make a return on investment that will last the distance. With the recent outcry on MySpace with the censorship of links to rival services we are reminded that "free" community sites often come at some price.