Slate has a piece up about how supposedly “democratic” web apps like Digg and Wikipedia are actually undemocratic, because a smaller number of users is responsible for a large amount of the activity on them. This is representative:

Social-media sites like Wikipedia and Digg are celebrated as shining examples of Web democracy, places built by millions of Web users who all act as writers, editors, and voters. In reality, a small number of people are running the show. According to researchers in Palo Alto, 1 percent of Wikipedia users are responsible for about half of the site’s edits. The site also deploys bots—supervised by a special caste of devoted users—that help standardize format, prevent vandalism, and root out folks who flood the site with obscenities. This is not the wisdom of the crowd. This is the wisdom of the chaperones.

I disagree with the basic premise here - that these sites are meant to be democratic, if that means each user has an equal voice. The vast majority of us will use Wikipedia as a resource, rather than being contributors to it, and we’re absolutely fine with that. We have no interest in contributing articles to it, and would be annoyed if we were required to do so in order to make use of the material that’s already there. Think about the profile of those who do contribute - they have to fall into one or more of the following categories:

• they are particularly knowledgeable about a particular subject or subjects - which is a category restricted to a minority of the population for starters
• alternatively, or as well, they have time to spend creating and editing articles on Wikipedia - again, most of us don’t
• they feel strongly enough about a subject that they are willing to use what time they do have (or time they don’t, when they should really be working / studying / watching the kids etc.) to engage in this activity
• they are willing to go through the painstaking process of adding content to Wikipedia, which is not all that user-friendly and requires ever more familiarity with the rules and regulations that apply there, as well as the possibility that everything they write could be deleted or edited beyond recognition.

There’s no way that any of these alone, and certainly the combination of two or three of them, is ever going to cover anything other than a small percentage of the population. And that’s reflected in the number of people who actually contribute articles to Wikipedia. Should this surprise us? No. Is it a bad thing? No - why should it be? Is the merit of Wikipedia that it is “democratic” in the sense this article’s author has in mind? No - it’s that it brings together vast resources from across the web and elsewhere to answer questions and provide information. I can’t remember the last time I had a question about something I couldn’t get at least a cursory answer from Wikipedia on (Joe Torre’s age? Check. A definition of SOA? Check. When the first time was Ralph Nader ran for President? Check).

As for Digg, the author may have more of a point there, since it does seem there is at least some evidence of super-users. I’m not a fan of Digg - I find the interface really unattractive and non user-friendly (others have done better on both those counts) and the range of stories which appear there too diverse to be useful. I prefer filtering my own news through Google Reader and other sources.

On the whole, though, the article feels like it sets up a strawman in order to knock it down - holding these sites up to a standard they have never aspired to. And in the process it misses the point - these sites are phenomenally useful, at least in part because they are more “representative democracy” than direct democracy (much like the US system itself), with most of us willing to delegate authority to others who are better placed and willing to dedicate their time and effort to something we ourselves are not.