Jun 28 2007
The Five Patterns of Social Media: Part 2 of 5
Pattern #2: Peer Adjudication
With the creation of knowledge – especially in cases where there’s a great deal of knowledge – comes the responsibility to decide what is useful and what is not. In the old model – e.g., the corporate information portal – the decision-making process was the responsibility of the few who either had the formal authority or the technical skill to make and execute on recommendations. A few case studies illustrate how the social-media approach – involving many more people – might be a more effective.
Giovanni tipped me to one of the less well known but, certainly one of the more interesting example’s of Peer Adjudication; a CIA project called “Intellipedia“. Its covered at length in this New York Times Magazine story entitled, Open Source Spying, by Clive Thompson.
Its a long read but well worth it. This case shines light on the broader potential of social media to use the wisdom of crowds to refine and adjudicate the value of data. It’s something that’s often noted in case studies filed by the leading enterprise wiki companies (ATLASSIAN & Socialtext) – it’s a key benefit and the implementation of wikis and blogs in the enterprise is helping businesses to better understand the concept. Social-media environments can be used to enlist many qualified people to assess and even correct important information.
