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the good life in a digital age

wisdom of the chaperones

In Slate last month, The Wisdom of the Chaperones was not exactly the first article to suggest that a lot of the rhetoric around social media sites is not borne out by reality. The title however is probably the best attempt to coin a rival turn of phrase.

“Social-media sites like Wikipedia and Digg are celebrated as shining examples of Web democracy, places built by millions of Web users who all act as writers, editors, and voters. In reality, a small number of people are running the show. According to researchers in Palo Alto, 1 percent of Wikipedia users are responsible for about half of the site’s edits. The site also deploys bots—supervised by a special caste of devoted users—that help standardize format, prevent vandalism, and root out folks who flood the site with obscenities. This is not the wisdom of the crowd. This is the wisdom of the chaperones.”

“While both sites effectively function as oligarchies, they are still democratic in one important sense. Digg and Wikipedia’s elite users aren’t chosen by a corporate board of directors or by divine right. They’re the people who participate the most. Despite the fairy tales about the participatory culture of Web 2.0, direct democracy isn’t feasible at the scale on which these sites operate. Still, it’s curious to note that these sites seem to have the hierarchical structure of the old-guard institutions they’ve sought to supplant.”

This doesn’t surprise me at all. But that’s because it is more evidence to support my prejudice of ‘new technology, same old people’.

Written by Karen

March 4th, 2008 at 8:48 pm

Posted in digital