This is the required reading for class on Wednesday, March 12, 2008 for class discussion
http://www.slate.com/id/2184487
The Wisdom of the Chaperones
Digg, Wikipedia, and the myth of Web 2.0 democracy.It’s getting harder to be a Wikipedia-hater. The user-generated and -edited online encyclopedia—which doesn’t even require contributors to register—somehow holds its own against the Encyclopedia Britannica in accuracy, a Nature study concluded, and has many times more entries. But even though people are catching up to the idea that Wikipedia is a force for good, there are still huge misconceptions about what makes the encyclopedia tick. While Wikipedia does show the creative potential of online communities, it’s a mistake to assume the site owes its success to the wisdom of the online crowd.
