Introduction
Collaborative Wisdom, also known as Collective wisdom or sometime referred as the Wisdom of the Crowd, is the ‘the aggregation of information in groups, resulting in decisions that are often better than could have been made by any single member of the group.’ Four essential elements that are required in the successful implementation of the process are Diversity (of the crowd), Independence, Decentralization and Aggregation.
Examples of Collaborative Wisdom
Example 1
A typical example of collaborative wisdom is the use of collaborative blog on the World Wide Web.1 This internet-based weblog is used widely for publishing posts and information written and viewed by multiple users. The blog “powerline” is a high profile collaborative blog based around the uniting theme of politics and news media reflection. Similar to other collaborative blogs, “powerline” has experienced the growing popularity of more collaborative efforts, it is also set up by an established blogger, John Hinderaker,2 to pool resource and time in a successful attempt to reduce the pressure of maintaining a popular website and attract wider audience.
“Powerline” is a fitting example of collaborative wisdom because it is contributed not only by Hinderaker, the main author, but numerous well-established co-bloggers who has extensive experience in legal and media industries. The collaborative blog itself is also open for non-professional users to contribute their idea in a separate forum online, but also linked to the main publishing page of founder bloggers to ensure greater information accessibility. In this example, the main advantage for the users of collaborative blog would be the diverse perspective and opinion provided on significant political issues and po ...