Debunking The Wikipedia 'Brain Surgery' Myth

from the please,-please,-please-make-it-stop dept

Back in 2004, I ended up getting into an argument with a "technology columnist" from a newspaper over just how "repugnant" Wikipedia is (his viewpoint). After a series of emails back and forth, he trotted out the "brain surgeon" question, that seems to be standard fare among Wikipedia-haters. It goes something like this: "If you needed brain surgery, would you trust someone who was trained as a brain surgeon, or someone who learned brain surgery from Wikipedia?" An alternative version of the question is "would you allow a 'crowd' of people to perform brain surgery on you."

Since then the brain surgery "proof" of Wikipedia's problem has shown up plenty of times, with the latest one being pointed out by Slashdot quoting a professor who dislikes Wikipedia so much that she fails to see the problems in what she (supposedly an "expert") is saying. As she notes: If you are faced with the prospect of having brain surgery, who would you rather it be performed by - a surgeon trained at medical school or someone who has read Wikipedia?

So let's debunk this once and for all. First off, no one would want a brain surgery based on someone who just learned how to do brain surgery from Wikipedia, but that proves absolutely nothing. No one would want brain surgery done by someone who just learned how to do brain surgery from Encyclopedia Britannica either -- but you don't see this professor freaking out and trashing Britannica, do you? Wikipedia is a tool, just like Britannica, and it's not designed to be a reference on how to do brain surgery.

The second problem with the "brain surgery" example is the suggestion that experts and the folks working on Wikipedia are somehow mutually exclusive. It's this idea that no one who actually knows anything inputs information on Wikipedia, and the only people who do contribute know nothing. That's pretty clearly been proven untrue, so it's difficult to take this complaint particularly seriously.

As for the professor in question, let's take a look at some of her other statements:

"People are unwittingly trusting the information they find on Wikipedia, yet experience has shown it can be wrong, incomplete, biased, or misleading."

This has to be one of the funniest statements she makes, because every point that she makes can be equally applied to so-called "expert" resources or publications. And, there's a pretty big difference with most of those publications and Wikipedia: with those other sources, most of them can't or won't be changed when the "wrong, incomplete, biased or misleading" info is found. That's not the case with Wikipedia. Furthermore, in a bit of pure irony, this professor doesn't seem to realize that by making all of these incorrect statements, she's showing just how little you can trust supposed "experts" in the first place. After all, she's going on and on about trusting "experts" over the masses, while showing that she doesn't even understand how Wikipedia works at all, showing her own wrong, incomplete, biased and misleading positions.

This isn't to say that Wikipedia is perfect. It's not. It's got plenty of problems. But the lesson that this professor should be teaching is that you can't trust any source by itself, and you should double-check and confirm any information you find, whether it's from Wikipedia, a supposed "professor" or anyone else. It's not brain surgery to understand such a lesson.

Filed Under: brain surgery, experts, trust, wikipedia

Talking About Tapping Into The Insight Community

from the get-some-insight-now dept

Brian Deagon from Investor's Business Daily spoke to me last week to discuss the details behind the Techdirt Insight Community, and IBD has now published the interview. The interview gives a good overview of the Techdirt Insight Community and the different ways companies are getting insight and analysis from the various experts in the Community, focusing mainly on how we help open up the market to allow companies (or individuals at companies) who might never otherwise have tapped into a research or analysis firm to get useful analysis from multiple perspectives.

Filed Under: experts, interview, investor's business daily, techdirt, techdirt insight community

Abundance And Scarcity In The Insight Market

from the it-all-fits-together dept

Last week, after I wrote about some of the theory behind the Insight Community and the Smart Dossiers offering (which is a subset of the Insight Community), someone asked how my writings on economics fit into the equation. It's rather straightforward: In any market there are likely to be various scarcities and various abundances. You should always look at the scarcities as problems that need to be solved and the abundances as the resources you can use to solve those problems.

So, as we were building out Techdirt's business, working with various Fortune 500 companies to better understand various technology trends, we again began to notice an interesting set of scarcities and abundances. On the scarcity side, companies were really hungry for useful and actionable insight about their biggest challenges. At best, they could hire a big analyst firm or a big consulting firm, which would be excessively expensive, and often wouldn't give particularly useful information. In fact, it was a huge risk, since they would only receive a single answer, as if handed down from a wise man on the mountain, with no idea if it was accurate or not. At worst, they could have internal people try to do the analysis, often passing it off to a junior person to handle the work. Again, this would result in a single opinion (often from someone not very experienced) providing an important analysis that was also biased by coming from inside the company, rather than with an outsider's perspective.

At the same time, we were discovering an immense abundance in the ability to find and communicate with smart, knowledgeable passionate experts, many of whom we got to know via their participation on Techdirt itself, or via their own websites and blogs. At first we began to tap that group informally, to help us with the work we were doing with existing clients -- but we realized it was better to formalize the system, which is how we came up with the Insight Community, helping to eliminate the middle man and solve the scarcity (relevant, timely insight) with the abundance (lots of knowledgeable folks). The trick was coming up with a system that allowed the best, most useful insights to bubble to the top. In other words, figuring out not just how to connect companies to smart people, but to make sure that those companies could get the best, most relevant and insightful analysis out of the most qualified folks in that group of experts. To do that, we put in place a competitive system, that allowed experts in the community to compete to show they could provide the best insight. The end result has worked quite well, making it incredibly easy for companies, both big and small, to tap into this network of experts in order to get the best, most relevant insights into the challenges they face, gaining multiple expert opinions -- and doing so at a price the company gets to set.

Of course, while the "name your own price" model works well in some cases, it doesn't work for all. It can sometimes be an impediment for a company that knows they want something specific and isn't sure how much to bid for it. So, to help with those situations, we wanted to focus on common types of cases that the Insight Community was being used for and start to launch more packaged solutions -- the first of which is Smart Dossiers. Many of the customers using the Insight Community, had used it to get a straight analysis of a company. Sometimes of themselves (to get a quick snapshot of multiple outsider expert viewpoints), but more often of other companies they were dealing with: customers, competitors, partners, investments and investors. For example, we had one company use the Insight Community to create detailed "dossiers" on the company's top customer targets, so that its sales people could be better informed while calling on them. Another firm needed a competitive landscape of a new market it was about to enter, and was able to get a bunch of experts to all weigh in on the competitors in just over a week.

So, yes, we are putting into practice the economics that get discussed here all the time. It's all about taking an abundance and helping them "solve" a scarcity that companies desperately are looking for help solving.

Filed Under: abundance, experts, scarcity, smart dossiers, techdirt, techdirt insight community
Companies: techdirt

Looking For A Few Big Brains

from the calling-all-experts... dept

If you're knowledgeable about technology, business or finance and aren't already a member of the Techdirt Insight Community, then you're missing out on plenty of chances to make serious cash for being smart. We've got a bunch of open cases looking for good analysis and there's plenty of money available to be earned. Just a few of the open cases, for example:

• Dow Jones wants to know about social media in the enterprise.
• An investment firm wants to know how WiMax's troubles are going to impact the wider technology ecosystem.
• Another firm is trying to understand how the subprime mortgage mess is going to impact the technology business.

There are a bunch more along those lines. We're always looking for more smart, insightful people, so if you think you've got something valuable to add, apply to be an expert today. Alternatively, if your company wants to tap into a community of really smart folks, who can provide you with some of the most useful insight and analysis you can get, check out the details and sign up.

Filed Under: experts, techdirt, techdirt insight community
Companies: techdirt

If You're So Smart... Why Don't You Prove It (And Make Some Money While You're At It)?

from the calling-all-experts... dept

It's been a little while since we've spoken about the Techdirt Insight Community service that we launched earlier this year. If you're not familiar with it, you can see a quick two minute video explaining what it is. It's been going great, as the experts in the community have been providing fantastic insight to all sorts of companies worldwide, helping those companies make important strategic decisions, filling in key knowledge gaps and or (in some cases) helping to validate certain ideas and plans. It's been a great way for some really smart folks to get companies to listen to their advice, to find out about the challenges facing companies in their space, to validate their insight... and also to make quite a bit of money for being smart.

Some of the open cases are displayed in a running ticker on the front page of Techdirt.com, but in case you haven't been watching, here are a few that recently opened where top insights can earn between $400 to $600 -- as well as validate your own insights into these areas. If you think you have the expertise to provide valuable insight to the companies presenting these cases, feel free to apply.

• Forecasting Trends In Digital Entertainment. Where is this important market heading? How will the economic trends play out? Who will be impacted and how?
• How To Index Multimedia Files For Fun And Profit. Help a company design its latest product by giving some advice on the current landscape for digital asset management offerings.
• Taking Jajah to the Next Level. Jajah's been getting plenty of attention this week for launching its Jajah buttons allowing any site to easily add a "click-to-call" option -- and for having that very same feature quickly banned on eBay who is apparently still grumpy over the Skype writedown. Now help Jajah continue to improve its product and marketing strategy.

There are a bunch more in the system, with even more on the way, so if you ever felt that companies should be paying your for all your smart ideas, why not prove it?

Filed Under: experts, techdirt, techdirt insight community
Companies: jajah, techdirt