User generated content, who generates the content?

The web 2.0 movement creates a lot of tools for users to generate content. Content like wiki-entries, productreviews. The tools could be extremely powerful in extracting a wide range of knowledge when they are broadly used. Some have called it the democratisation of the internet.

But apparently the tools are not widely used….Recent articles are casting doubts on this. According to the Wall street Journal a third of the contributions to digg.com are being made by 30 users. Digg.com has 900.000 registered members. Altough the tools are in place, only a fraction of the users seem to use them. (for more information see: Voor de massa (dutch) )

Is this a problem? Maybe not. Maybe the contributions the users are asked to make are too big. Why not make it really easy for a user to make a small contribution. Or why not let the user do work by playing a game?
In an article called overcoming the participation inequality Nielsen gives the following suggestions:

• Make it easier to contribute
• Make participation a side effect
• Edit, don’t create (by using existing templates for example)
• Reward
• Promote quality contributers

Read the full article at: link

Digg.com (and as a mather of fact also google) also suffer from an effect called the Matthew effect (the rich will become richer). Once an article has been linked by digg, it will have a bigger chance to get digged again. Same goes for google: an article on top in google will have a bigger chance at getting linked again. Getting linked again will make the article it stay on top.

The creators of tools have a responsibility in making it easy and seemless for users to contribute. Readers should use the web 2.0 feautures cautiosly. But we should keep in mind how much progress has been made. We have stumbled on some ways to tap the wisdom of the crowds, and by accident also stumled on the ignorance and dumbness of crowds