Conference Proceedings
Is the crowd's wisdom biased?: A quantitative analysis of three online communities
V Kostakos
Proceedings 12th IEEE International Conference on Computational Science and Engineering Cse 2009 | Published : 2009
DOI: 10.1109/CSE.2009.491
Abstract
We present a study of user voting on three websites: Imdb, Amazon and BookCrossings. Here we report on an expert evaluation of the voting mechanisms of each website and a quantitative data analysis of users' aggregate voting behavior. Our results suggest that the websites with higher barrier to vote introduce a relatively high number of one-off voters, and they appear to attract mostly experts. We also find that one-off voters tend to vote on popular items, while experts mostly vote for obscure, low-rated items. We conclude with design suggestions to address the "wisdom of the crowd" bias. © 2009 IEEE.