Webstock 2009, New Zealand, Thursday 19th Feb. The Wisdom of Crowds is an economic principle (Google "James Surowiecki") that proves groups can be wise when acting in concert. So why are the comments on your site so stupid? In this talk, Derek will explore how this principle can be applied to online communities to make us all more wise (or at least less dumb).

1. Wisdom of Communities
Derek Powazek
James Surowiecki is a genius.

3. Elements of Wise Crowds
Diversity
Independence
Decentralization
Aggregation

4. Bringing WOC Online
Small, Simple Tasks
Large Diverse Groups
Design for Selfishness
Result Aggregation

5. Small Simple Tasks

6. hotornot.com

7. threadless.com/submission/197749

8. newsassignment.net

9. Large Diverse Groups

11. Design for Selfishness

12. google.com/search?q=apple

13. flickr.com/photos/tags/apple/clusters

14. Result Aggregation

15. favrd.com

16. This is where I plug Fray.com

17. Real Life

18. The Heisenberg Problem

19. flickr.com/explore/interesting/2009/02/17

20. flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days

21. threadless.com/submission/197131

22. io9.com/5148604

23. Popularity Does Not Have to Rule

24. Trolls

25. Identifying Trolls
Repeated Disruptions
Steering Conversation
Server Logs

26. Stopping Trolls
Silent Treatment
Disable Puppets
Timeouts

27. Seeing Things

28. www.powazek.com