Digg, Wikipedia, and the myth of web 2.0 democracy

Even in a real world democracy, there are people whose opinions have a disproportionate influence. Why do we think that democracy would work differently in an online community?

Further, one would expect to see a power law distribution in things such as no of submissions, karma, edits etc. If somebody choses to spend 10 hours a day submitting links to digg, I don't think that is anybody's business.

What the article seems to be wishing for is a socialist utopia, not a democracy.

It's not really possible to introduce a Surowiecki-style "Wisdom of the Crowds" model to online news sites. In his book, James Surowiecki is very specific about what makes for a good "WOTC" poll, and what doesn't. In particular, he mentions cascade-effect where people tend to accept social proof about what is good or not, hence what is worth promoting on a social news site.

The question asked has to be very specific, and preferably incentivised to avoid flippant answers. "Guess the weight of this calf and take home some meat", in one case, or "Help find this missing submarine and get a case of champagne" in another. Social media sites have none of this, and they should stop invoking "Wisdom of the Crowds" in defence of their many eccentricities and aberrations. Google's internal futures market is much closer to what Surowiecki was writing about - it has incentives, it avoids publishing other people's votes prior to the outcome, and it asks specific questions.