I don't want to sound like I am channeling Nick Carr again or anything, but my recent conversion to mash-up skeptic has got me thinking about the role of experts in a world looking for wisdom from crowds. While most discussions of this debate are related to public, non-business oriented sites and services, a lot of people (myself included) often look for applications of Web 2.0 principles and techniques in the business arena. Mash-ups are one such technique which seem to be making the jump; while they in themselves aren't necessarily vulnerable to the exact issue I am about to point out, they are a venue where the amateur is being given some sway in matters which have commonly been left to experts in the past.

The story illustrated in this Read/Write/Web article is typical of the sort of anecdote challenging the "wisdom of crowds." Briefly, it discusses a story posted on Digg which was then subject to a single libelous comment which apparently quickly drove down the ranking of the story. I think the argument from the "wise crowd" perspective would be that eventually the inaccuracy was caught and questioned, and that may be satisfactory from some perspectives, but if this were a business scenario, and timing was important (and it often is in today's high speed world), that's not much reassurance.

While, as I said, mash-ups aren't necessarily subject to that particular sort of inaccuracy, it seems as though they are susceptible to others; say, a bad data flow put together by a secretary who didn't quite understand the underlying information architecture. Would the consumers of the results catch the issue in time?

Of course, the Enterprise 2.0 fan in me wants to say, hey, "experts" make exactly that sort of mistake all the time; if there is a difference, it may be that the "expert" issue is even less likely to be questioned than that of the amateur. Read/Write/Web has some guidelines in the linked post which make sense to me for restricting the "crowds" and perhaps improving their results. I think at the end of the day, with prudent restrictions, there is no reason that crowdsourcing theory is inherently flawed.

On the other hand, neither is it inherently correct. There are places where it may be used effectively and appropriately and others where the experts may yet have their place. I would suggest that this is a determination that markets will make. Speaking again to Nick's arguments against crowds (particularly with respect to Wikipedia, one of the more famous examples: take your pick of various Carr critiques), I would say that if you come to a point where your objections amount to telling consumers they are wrong, you've probably found an argument that has already been mooted.