How do you harness collective intelligence? What is collective intelligence and how is it applied to web 2.0?

Perhaps a more familiar term is ‘The wisdom of the crowd’. The idea is that many people can do more than one, a collection of opinions can construct a better opinion than that of an individual. For example, if you had a problem with the brakes on your car but weren’t sure why you could ask someone. They might respond that it could be they need replacing, while if I ask another person they may suggestion to check the brake fluid in the car. Another person may give another solution, and before you know it you have a list of 5 things to look at which is more helpful than before. You have started to hardness a collective knowledge and have a much better opinion than if you had of asked one person.

Continuing on with this metaphor, problems can happen. The people I might have asked could be all Holden mechanics and showed a bias against my Ford. The range of people who I asked might be very wide – as in some opinions were very qualified as they have been an mechanic for 30 years and another person may have never drove a car before yet their opinions get valued the same (as I might not know there background).

So how can this be applied to the internet? Are there any examples?

Wikipedia – It hardness collective intelligence as multiple people can contribute and edit articles to provide better answers and once that are more up to date. In many cases it does better than many encyclopaedias.

Yahoo! Answers – A way to ask questions and find answers. You can post a question and then people can answer (similar to my example above).

E-How – A place where you can find how to do something, or tell the world how to do something you know. From E-How’s home page, “What would you like to do? How to Attract Consumers? How to Lose Weight? How to Make Money in a Bear Market? eHow is the world’s most popular place to find step-by-step instructions on how to do just about everything.”

So is anything on the web an example of collective intelligence?

No, information must be presented or processed in some sort of way, otherwise it is a collection of opinions and not knowledge. This information must flow freely and not be censored.

The collective or group needs to also have some attributes to. Opinions to be as diverse and independent of one another (a persons opinion shouldn’t be a reflection of someone else opinion), aggregation (a way of hardness opinions to make a decision or judgement).