James Surowiecki’s The Wisdom of Crowds became popular in the same general time frame as Web 2.0 morphed into a major buzzword for a more interactive, user-involving Web. The main premise of Surowiecki’s book is that groups often “know” more than even expert individuals and hence make better decisions. This dovetailed perfectly with Web 2.0 sites that let large numbers of users add content as well as decide what content should be most prominently displayed (by ratings, rankings, etc.). An interesting post at the Enfact blog exposes a bit of the nasty reality underlying the utopian democracy of Web 2.0 sites. In short, an analysis of community-driven news site Digg.com found that two thirds of the stories that made the home page were posted by a mere 60 of Digg’s many thousands of members - 0.03% of the registered user base. In essence, the post notes, Digg is less driven by community than by a core of five dozen unpaid editors who select stories, and, by virtue of the self-reinforcing interests and preferences of this core group, the same kinds of stories rise to the top. New arrivals at Digg may lose interest if they find that it’s almost impossible for their posts to gain traction. And, rather than one of Surowiecki’s supernaturally wise crowds driving the best stories to the top, it’s a small cadre of committed (but potentially biased) individuals.
This seems like a major indictment of user-driven websites, and perhaps in a certain way, it is. Nevertheless, to some degree this type of stratification occurs in every online community. Review sites tend to have a large number of very sporadic contributors and a few very prolific, well-respected reviewers. Discussion forums have a small number of members who make thousands of posts, and vastly more who make small numbers of posts or who read but don’t post at all. Even in real-world communities, the same dynamic applies. If you take any neighborhood association, church group, etc. you’ll find a few dominant members who do much of the work and influence the decision-making process along with a larger number of members who are content to play a minor role or simply hang out passively.
Still, the dominance of the top 60 contributors at Digg seems like an unusually lopsided condition. More importantly, the featuring of a story on the home page is a form of feedback to the member who posted it, and, if a member finds that her high quality posts never seem to get there, that member may feel like there’s a problem with the community.
What’s the solution? I think community architecture is one key factor. It should be established to avoid individuals or groups from becoming so powerful within the community that new members are discouraged or disenfranchised. It’s even more important to monitor what’s actually happening in the community and, if necessary, alter the architecture to avoid some of the inevitable flaws that will be found as the community grows. In addition, human interaction is still a key part of community building. While much of a community’s technical plumbing needs to be automated, a tiny amount of human intervention, whether it’s welcoming a new member, giving their contribution a boost, or reining in a clique, can make a big difference in the long term health of that community.
Should Digg worry about this bifurcation between a tiny number of key contributors and everyone else? Perhaps just a bit. While some of this split is almost inevitable (members who spend a lot of time hunting for news and posting it as it breaks will always have more popular stories than less committed users), Digg should check its voting procedures and limits, and the way stories are displayed, to be sure that contributions from new members have as much chance of getting viewed initially as those posted by old hands. For example, Zac’s Tech Blog alleges that the current setup is rigged: “That .03% member gets 10-15 free diggs when their story enters queue by the rigging group which submits all the stories, making it almost impossible for good stories by other users to have any chance.”
Once the playing field is level, let the “crowd” decide…
(See other coverage of this topic at the Paradigm Shift blog (Digg sucks, Netscape digg clone not much better), at the MIT Advertising Lab Blog (Reality Check: Community-Governed News Sites), and at FutureLab)
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[…] Communities tend to need a small number of very active members to interact with a much larger number of less active participants to create a vibrant community. For example, we recently described the tiny, tiny number of Digg members who are responsible for two thirds of that site’s front page stories. If you look at many communities, you’ll find a core group who does a disproportionate share of the posting. While not all sites are as concentrated as Digg.com, most are much skewed than Pareto’s 80/20 rule would suggest. […]
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