Wise crowd

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    A wise crowd is a wiki ideology based on a book:

    The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations by James Surowiecki

    "To Wikipedians, this merely reinforces what we've all know and have experienced firsthand. But it is interesting that the theme of the "power of many" is being picked up by the mainstream and it may prove a useful reference for folks who just "don't get wiki." It's a more general book than Rheingold's "Smart Mobs," which could be dismissed as too technocentric and focusing on mobile devices

    Instead, Surowiecki's "Wise crowds" are described as having (1) diversity of opinion; (2) independence of members from one another; (3) decentralization; and (4) a good method for aggregating opinions. (four points quoted from Amazon.com's review)." - [1]

    Till Westermayer correctly points out that this ideology is wrong: "everything I know from studying psychology hints in the other direction (okay, depending on the task). But especially for cognitive taks, the performance of the group is (1) mostly worse than that of the best group member, if they act single, and (2), there is Groupthink (or maybe Group think), the phenomen that group disciplina and dynamics led to hindrances for new ideas in groups."