He discovered numerous aspects of crowd thinking, one is that they are generally less smart than individuals. Groups of people tends to act in the same way (conformation).
That's why the voting thing on websites doesn't work: leaders becomes unchallengeable.
(I'm not arguing against democracy, where lists are closed before each election, election are a discreet events etc.)
Moreover, what is the aim of collecting votes on this websites? If people vote or bury one of my comments, what does it means about my future or past comments? It is only a conformity problem.
You raise an interesting point, since most of what circulates about crowd wisdom these days is the Surowiecki book citing Galton's study. What you mention here is more like the Spiral of Silence. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiral_of_silence
I don't think voting in its current form is good. I am much more fond of a prediction market-esque, or virtual economy (the specific term eludes me at the moment) implementation. Nevertheless, here is a possible way to answer your question about the aim.
A hypothetical case would be, users upvote in appreciation (or to bookmark), with the side effect that more appreciated items float higher, and receive greater visibility, acting as a filter. The catch is that it's to the benefit of other users.
To that, I'm not entirely sure why it works (as in, why it became popular). I don't click arrows much. I clicked yours because I appreciate your reply, 3 days after :-)
Which shows another glaring problem. Current voting mechanisms let these votes go stale. I'm upvoting on something 7+ days old. You will receive a point but not know the context of it. Anyhow, that's another topic.
Thanks again, for following up. Don't agree entirely, but a good point nonetheless.
He discovered numerous aspects of crowd thinking, one is that they are generally less smart than individuals. Groups of people tends to act in the same way (conformation).
That's why the voting thing on websites doesn't work: leaders becomes unchallengeable.
(I'm not arguing against democracy, where lists are closed before each election, election are a discreet events etc.)
Moreover, what is the aim of collecting votes on this websites? If people vote or bury one of my comments, what does it means about my future or past comments? It is only a conformity problem.