Credible Web? It's where we click most

CREDIBLE WEB? IT'S WHERE WE CLICK MOST
[SOURCE: The Christian Science Monitor, AUTHOR: Tom Regan]
[Commentary] Newsweek recently published a story called "Revenge of the Expert." It argued that expertise would be the main component of "Web 3.0." "The wisdom of the crowds has peaked," says Jason Calacanis, founder of the Maholo "people-powered search engine" and a former AOL executive. "Web 3.0 is taking what we've built in Web 2.0 ­ the wisdom of the crowds ­ and putting an editorial layer on it of truly talented, compensated people to make the product more trusted and refined." Well, yes and no. Sure, it is important for people to trust the information they find online. And as the Newsweek article argues, the need for people to find trusted information online is increasing, thus the need for more expertise. But the article fails to mention the most important feature of the world of digital information. It's not expertise ­ it's choice. In many cases the sites that people come to trust are built on nontraditional models of expertise. Look at sites like Digg.com, Reddit.com, or Slashdot.com. There, users provide the expertise on which others depend. When many users select a particular story, that story accumulates votes of confidence ("diggs" in the case of digg.com), which often lead other users to choose that story. The choices of the accumulated community are seen as more trustworthy than the "gatekeeper" model of traditional news and information. Sometimes such sites highlight great reporting from traditional media. But often they bring forward bits of important information that are ignored (or missed) by "experts." It's sort of the "open source" idea of information ­ a million eyes looking on the Web for information is better than a few.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0319/p17s01-stct.html