Group Authorship

I'm in the middle of reading this fascinating book, Wikinomics. It raises a lot of ideas about the phenomenon of mass collaboration, which of course gives me lots to discuss. As a demonstration of their concept, the authors created a wiki on their site and invited readers to create an extra chapter to the book.

This invitation had a measure of success, and they indeed got their chapter produced. It makes for an interesting read, and is packed with ideas and thoughts. Yet to my eyes it lacks the cohesion and clarity of thought represented in the book. The original wiki likewise exhibits the same phenomenon. Wikipedia on the other hand is relatively coherent. In order to achieve this they took advantage of a common understanding of the encyclopedia format, and made policies to guide the writers. Lots of standardized tags constantly advise readers how to improve pages, if they are so inclined.

But the real key to achieving quality is a dedicated core of editors constantly working to encourage and sometimes enforce the standards. This seems to be the the reality of wiki writing. It's good for gathering ideas, organizing ideas, and developing ideas. A bunch of people can work on a site and develop information rapidly. But when it comes to cohesion, clarity and quality, the multitude requires editors to reign in their work and bring it to order.


Yet I don't think the masses, even with editors, could have written the original book. Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems to me that there is something a small group or an individual can achieve that a group can't. I can't quite put my finger on it. Maybe it's "art". Not that the masses couldn't create art, but that it wouldn't be the same thing.