Wisdom of the Crowd vs. Collective Intelligence

When I search the Internet for material on CI, I frequently come across the term "Wisdom of the Crowd" (WoC). Can these terms be interchangeably used? I think there is a significant difference between the two term. In my earlier post I had elaborated on Collective Intelligence as "the characteristics of a complex system to organize itself and appears to be more intelligent than its constituent parts". It is been a property of any complex system, both man made as well as in the nature.

The principle behind WoC is that a conclusion reached in collaboration with and from competition among multiple individuals will be more intelligent than any conclusion reached by an individual, no matter how smart. The focuses on aggregating isolated inputs. For this to work, an algorithm for summarizing the individual input into one collective verdict is needed. I can not think of an example of this in the nature. It is devised by us human being.

The whole Open Source movement is an example of CI, where as the Google search is an example of WoC. I leave it to you to decide what the following phenomenon are?

• Wikipedia
• Free market economy
• Holding election in democracy
• SecondLife
• Stock market
• Scientific research

That leads us to the next question. Which of these are more effective. The answer obviously "it depends". Normally they applicable in different circumstances. But I am curious to compare the two. Can we think of a situation where both are applicable?

Would you consider del.icio.us an example of CI or WoC? I think it is an example of CI. At least it is much closer to CI than Google search. I have the following experiment in mind. I will take a term say "Web 2.0" and search in Google and del.icio.us. I will compare the relevance of the result rating the top 10 hits in a scale of 1-5. It will be subjective, that is it will be my opinion. I will also repeat this experiment after some time to examine the stability of the result. Let me do the experiment ...

The Google hits are:

1. O'Reilly -- What Is Web 2.0 (5)
2. Web 2.0 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (5)
3. Web 2.0 Conference - November 7-9, 2006 - San Francisco, CA (3)
4. Web 2.0 (5)
5. Web 2.0 Workgroup - A network of Web 2.0 resources (4)
6. Digital Web Magazine - Web 2.0 for Designers (3)
7. Go2Web20.net - The complete Web 2.0 directory (4)
8. Web 2.0 Validator : We're the dot in Web 2.0 (2)
9. SEOmoz's Web 2.0 Awards (3)
10. WEB 2.0 JOURNAL (3)

Average = 3.7

The del.icio.us hits are:

1. script.aculo.us - web 2.0 javascript (3)
2. The Best Web 2.0 Software of 2005 (web2.wsj2.com) (3)
3. O'Reilly -- What Is Web 2.0 (5)
4. Web 2.0 Directory : 900+ Web 2.0 Sites in 50+ categories : eConsultant (4)
5. Go2Web20.net - The complete Web 2.0 directory (4)
6. Web 2.0 Workgroup - A network of Web 2.0 resources (4)
7. Sacred Cow Dung: All Things Web 2.0 - "THE LIST"(4)
8. SEOmoz's Web 2.0 Awards (3)
9. Web 2.0 how-to design style guide (3)
10. Software Development in the Real World: Best of the Best Web 2.0 Web Sites (4)

Average = 3.7

They are same!!! Believe me, I did not manipulate the result.

What is interesting is del.icio.us has thrown up more sites which will appeal to techies. Google sites are more of general interest.

I will repeat this experiment after a few days.