It's no secret that I'm not a big believer in the wisdom of crowds, at least in the form commonly demonstrated online today.
Most of the "online democracy" sites are easily manipulated by vote stuffing (only necessary at the outset, after which inertia and follow-the-leader behaviour takes over). Where it isn't obvious manipulation, the sort of content that rises to the top is generally comforting and non-challenging to the impatient reader's world view, and the percentage of clearly fictitious (but presented as fact) content is disturbingly high.
If an article or entry can't be digested in seconds, and if it challenges the stereotypes or agendas of the majority reader, it will usually sit unloved at the bottom of the pile.
It's a common tactic in the software development blog domain, for instance, to affirm that each reader is special, and must represent the cream of the crop, while pinning all of the problems in the industry/the world on "the others" (managers, dumb programmers who can't code FizzBuzz -- the other 99%, customers, architects, big oil, Republicans, white middle-aged guys, etc). An array of pond-skimmers always superficially treading the shallowest depths of technology, non-challenging to the reader's status quo.
"Oh you're just jealous that this entry won't be on the front page of [Some Meme Site]!" a naysayer might pronounce.
Aha! And that is exactly where a real-world conversation led recently: I was decrying a popular blog that I felt had descended from informative, credible information, down into Pablum-like, predigested, low barrier-to-entry prattle. This change seriously compromised the author's technical credibility, and marked a tremendous decline in the quality of the entries, yet it perplexingly came with a massive spike in their readership counts.
After expressing my frustration at this destructive influence on online content, my conversation partner asked whether I just had sour grapes because I haven't seen any such traffic spikes for a while.
After a couple of popular entries a while back, I had a natural desire to keep things rolling -- there was no real gain for me whether this sees 10 readers a day or 100,000, but it was sort of neat seeing some big numbers in the stats -- but there was a limit to how low I would sell-out. I was more interested in making a small number of peers in the industry think "this guy really knows his stuff!" than having a large number of ADD drive-by meme site users think "YES! This is exactly the simplistic, layman worldview that I want to push into other people's faces through my votes".
A gauntlet had been thrown down! I declared that I could intentionally author pieces with the specific purpose of doing well on the meme sites, and that if I did follow through they would do very well indeed. My peer disagreed. A friendly wager was made.
Over the coming period, I am going to attempt to do "well" (open to interpretation, but generally meaning >50,000 hits in a single 24-hour period) with a couple of pieces.
Due to conditions of the wager, coupled with my own lack of available time, I am going to spend absolutely minimal time on each entry. Most, if not all, of the entries will be posted on stooge accounts or blogs that I will set up elsewhere (for obvious reasons), although after they have run their course I will post a link pointing back to here and vice versa, and how well each approach and submission tactic did.
The game is afoot! We shall see if the wise crowds are as predictable, and gameable, as I believe!