The Wisdom of Community

by Derek Powazek

18 Reader Comments

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  1. Remember the movie defiance? They were able to conquer odds with their ability to stay as community.

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  2. I think WOC does reflect upon our society to some extent. I don’t think that it’s necessarily mirroring the best qualities of society either. I’m inclined to agree with zeptimius @ comment #3 about the ‘Blandness of Crowds’. The parallel for that in real life would be the phenomenon of undiscovered talent, people who are valuable (everyone is valuable) yet their value or talent, despite their effort, remains unrealized & under utilized in society; call it the Susan Boyle effect (prior to her stardom).

    Businesses make advertisements and promotions for things like “restaurant coupons”:http://www.restaurantcouponsrelief.com/ based on the fact that the ‘Crowd’ will never take advantage of these incentives in a meaningful way. I guess for somethings with the right circumstances the crowd can be wise but there might be hidden gems in areas ignored by the WOC consensus.

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  3. I’ve been running my community website, “Eye on Spain”:http://www.eyeonspain.com for 5 years and the wisdom of the crowds never ceases to amaze me.  Great article, thanks.

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  4. I agree with Maneet Puri, web 2.0 is to me all about social networking and been favourable to build an online reputation.

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  5. I like this community article,interesting. I love strong community.

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  6. I think tools which exploit WOC are yet to be found, there is real room to move in this space.

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  7. It is the one thing that makes or breaks a social community. If you know what your crowd is looking for you can dominate any niche in the internet today. But how??

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  8. I agree that for a group to work as best it can, the individuals who make up the group must ‘vote’ in a manner that reflects their own interests.  It’s not a perfect system (I’m thinking about the US and democracy right now) because some people choose not to have their opinion heard (which I guess is a vote in a way); however, I think it’s probably the best way to find wisdom in a community.

    Nice article!  Thanks!

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