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arXiv:0909.0237cs.HC

Is the crowd's wisdom biased? A quantitative asessment of three online communities

Vassilis Kostakos

Early discovery. Linked by one identifiable commenter. This paper is outside the main ranking; a mention is not an endorsement.

Abstract

This paper presents a study of user voting on three websites: Imdb, Amazon and BookCrossings. It reports on an expert evaluation of the voting mechanisms of each website and a quantitative data analysis of users' aggregate voting behavior. The results suggest that voting follows different patterns across the websites, with higher barrier to vote introducing a more of one-off voters and attracting mostly experts. The results also show that that one-off voters tend to vote on popular items, while experts mostly vote for obscure, low-rated items. The study concludes with design suggestions to address the "wisdom of the crowd" bias.

arXiv comments
17 pages, 6 tagles
Journal reference
Computational Science and Engineering, p. 251-255, 2009
DOI
doi:10.1109/CSE.2009.491
Subjects
cs.HCHuman-Computer Interaction

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Linked by 1 identifiable commenter in 1 comment across 1 thread, from Sep 2009 to Sep 2009. Found in 1 HN submission from Mar 2016 to Mar 2016. Open submission discussions.

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Discussed in comments1 thread

  1. YouTube Comes To A 5-Star Realization: Its Ratings Are Useless 1 comment

    • Not quite. See http://arxiv.org/pdf/0909.0237 Page 9 Table 4. The closest I've ever seen to the "ideal" curve is the IMDB curve right next to it.

      Anon84View on HNParent context

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