Crowdsourcing. Pro-am journalism. Collaborative journalism. Great examples of Collective Intelligence. But Collective Intelligence requires tools for proper execution. Few tools exist. AssignmentZero, the recent collaborative pro-am journalism experiment by newassignment.net and Wired magazine, was deemed a failure by both organizations. Why?
Collective Intelligence is simple in concept, difficult in execution. Collective Intelligence tools are a paradox: they must allow free expression of solutions to a problem while providing the means for the group to make unbiased decisions on the best of those solutions. That's where the problems start: everyone wants their opinion to be "the best". Without removing information cascades - things that bias voting - the group can't make a decision. They might as well just let a small group of people make the final decisions. So that's what's been happening in most experiments with Collective Intelligence.
Historically, small groups of people have always made the final decisions. They're called Executive Committees. Boards of Directors. Editorial Boards. Record label A & R directors. And so on. Yet in the era of user generated content, small groups of people quickly become overwhelmed with the multitude of choices. That's what's happening now. And that's why Collective Intelligence tools are so important; without them, effective and reliable decisions involving more than a few choices can't be made. Instead, the people with the loudest or most influential voices once again make the decisions. Like bloggers. Does might make right? Does loud make right? While that's what often passes for Democracy in the United States, would you trust the outcome?
Building simple, easy-to-use tools to facilitate Collective Intelligence is the next mandate for the web. Perhaps it's what Web 3.0 will be all about: turning collections of people into collective decision-making groups of people. Yet without effective tools, it will just be yesterday's news - and newsrooms - in a new wrapper. And that's the simple reason why AssignmentZero failed: they used old tools to try to do something new.
AssignmentZero was - and is - an inspiring look at the future of journalism. I look forward to the next iteration, and hope that they will seek solutions that will truly empower their participants.
Disclaimer: CrowdRules was offered as a solution to help power AssignmentZero.
Dave @ CrowdRules
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