When the 'wisdom of crowds' turns on itself: IMDB edition

The concept of the "wisdom of crowds" is a fundamental building block of a lot of the Web 2.0 services that we see today. While not all of them are built on this core concept, major sites like Digg, Wikipedia, and Mahalo rely heavily on crowds being wise. There have been several instances of this system breaking down in the past, one notable occurrence being the infamous Digg HD-DVD revolt. On occasions like this, a mob mentality tends to take over a very vocal and active segment of a community, greatly skewing the product of their collective "wisdom." We are seeing the latest meltdown of crowd wisdom over at IMDB, the popular movie information database as we speak.

(Credit: Warner Bros.)

Since the release of The Dark Knight, the film has made an incredible surge to the No. 1 position on IMDB's Top 250 list, a spot that has only been held by The Godfather for the last decade or so. While most serious movie watchers would argue that claiming that The Dark Knight is the best movie of all time is ridiculous, we might be able to chalk the massive surge up to the unparalleled amount of hype that surrounded this movie, particularly in Internet communities.

Since The Dark Knight's initial rise, an even more interesting trend has revealed itself. /Film is reporting that, in an attempt to keep the movie on top, fans of The Dark Knight have been voting down The Godfather. The movie has gotten hammered so badly by Batman fans that it has fallen to the No. 3 spot. So, not only has The Godfather dropped out of the No. 1 spot for the first time in a decade, but now it has dropped from the second spot as well. This sort of drastic shift hardly seems the work of a wise crowd.

The Dark Knight has taken the top spot on IMDB, while The Godfather, the previous top film for the last 10 years, dropped to third.

(Credit: IMDB.com)

We are seeing a similar effect here to what happened with the Digg HD-DVD debacle. This mob mentality, brought on by a significant event (in this case, the release of The Dark Knight), causes a total breakdown in a system that is otherwise fairly accurate, useful, and trustworthy. The original theory of the wisdom of crowds discusses this sort of failure. A quotation from Wikipedia on the topic reads, "...in these types of situations their cognition or cooperation failed because the members of the crowd were too conscious of the opinions of others and began to emulate each other and conform rather than think differently."

Cases like what is happening on IMDB's Top 250 right now are not the fault of the users of the site. They are just acting how humans have always acted. Mob mentality is in our nature. We are always being influenced heavily by these outside sources. Sites like IMDB and Digg need to be set up to deal with and process the effects of an eventual mob action.

I am still a firm believer in the wisdom of crowds. I think that it is a tremendously powerful concept that can be applied to a variety of areas. However, if it is not implemented correctly, you will occasionally get breakdowns like we see here. In the cases of Digg and IMDB, these breakdowns happen infrequently enough that it is not a major concern and does not usually disrupt the use of the site. That said, we have seen, with some consistency, that the system can be broken or manipulated by the actions of a passionate group of individuals, acting as a mob. If these incidents are not largely prevented in the future and become commonplace, we risk a lot of people losing faith in this otherwise very useful system.

[lmasanti]

"Eat sh*t. Billions of flies couldn't be wrong!"

One thing is democracy, another one, quite not related, is the "crowd".

[ArgentOwl]

?It is not worth an intelligent man's time to be in the majority. By definition, there are already enough people to do that.? ? Godfrey Harold Hardy

[The_Decider]

What a bunch of tripe.

For starters, there is no such thing as "Web 2.0", it is a meaningless marketing buzzword.

The crowd has not and never will be based on wisdom. It is based on the least common denominator, path of least resistance, insert another cliche here. One only has to look at popular music, TV, movies, sports, etc to realize that neither wisdom or intelligence factors into it except on the rarest of occasions.

For more proof, look at Windows, Office, console games, etc.

[ghostofitpast]

As "Web 2.0" is used more as a marketing lure than as a concept that communicates anything, "wisdom" is used more because it sounds nice without describing anything with specificity. The whole area of judgment and decision making has been contaminated with confusion for centuries (and Kant's attempt to straighten things out did not help much). There is even confusion over the difference between EFFICIENCY and EFFECTIVENESS of judgment. There is no general rule as to whether or not the judgment of a crowd is better or worse than that of an isolated individual. There are only those who peddle their snake oil and those gullible enough to buy it!

[jeolmeun]

Expelled was in a similar situation. At the moment, 2,555 (58.9%) voted a rating of 1 for the movie. Google: Expelled IMDb

[dlk955]

I still agree with Tommy Lee Jone's line from Men In Black - ?A person is smart. People are dumb.?

[michaelkpate]

There have been several instances of this system breaking down in the past, one notable occurence being the infamous Digg HD-DVD revolt. On occasions like this, a mob mentality tends to take over a very vocal and active segment of a community, greatly skewing the product of their collective "wisdom."

I am not sure how a whole bunch of users pointing out the ridiculousness of a DMCA takedown notice over a set of mathematical constants is an example of a mob mentality. Digg did what they felt they had to do and the users only showed why the whole exercise was pointless.

[harrisonh1]

@michaelkpate I'm not saying that the revolt wasn't justified. I think it's pretty clear, however, that the the Digg HD-DVD example is certainly an instance of mob mentality. Someone noticed that Digg was taking those links down and the group of people grew and grew until you had a mob of people, acting together, flooding Digg with stories about the code and making the site otherwise unusable.

[PrettyStuzz]

Erm, just like The Dark Knight's rise to the top of IMDB, American Beauty also displaced The Godfather in 1999 for a few weeks only (though if I recall correctly, it displaced GF2, which was IMDB's top-rated film).

(The GF movies lost much of their sui generis beauty owing to HBO's Sopranos series, so it's not surprising, however sad, that they've declined and will continue to decline in appreciation.)

[celric]

How soon we forget. The same thing happened with Return of the King. A lot of the top 10 suffered during that period and films in the 11-20 range like pulp fiction and the good the bad, and the ugly crept into the top 10, while Citizen Kane and Dr Strangelove fell out. Eventually, this more or less corrected itself and Godfather returned to the top.

[civildisobedience]

The Digg HD-DVD revolt was justified. Civil disobedience has a long and great history in America, and it was a great way to say f you to our would-be corporate overlords.

Note: I did not participate in the Digg revolt, and wasn't even a member at the time, but I very much supported it, as Digg deserved what it got.

This and the Dark Knight IMDB crapola are hardly comparable.

[scrollinondubs]

the 4 preconditions necessary for WOC to work are Independence of Judgement, Diversity, Decentralization and Aggregation. IMDB doesn't have the first one and it's arguable that the second one is minimal. That's why you see the "mob mentality" effect.

sean

[oneoclock]

wisdom of crowds could not possibly break down because there is no such thing, that which doesn't exist in the first place cannot break down.

[xibuc]

The Godfather hasn't always occupied first place. Shawshank has held first place in the past decade, by my recollection, several times and for extended periods. Roger Ebert even wrote about it (albeit nearly a decade ago -- Oct 99) here: http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19991017/REVIEWS08/910170301/1023

"When the Wall Street Journal ran an article about the "Shawshank" groundswell in April 1999, it was occupying first place in the Internet Movie Database worldwide vote of the 250 best films; it's usually in the top five."

[Kev Orng]

Hey, go to wikipedia and look up "LYnch mob" and "The Tyranny of the Majority" and then we can move ahead with this discussion on the wisdom of crowds.

[heymikey]

The article is ********. Movies are highly subjective and people will vote for a 10 for very different reasons. It just so happens that about 75% of viewers liked it enough to vote it a 10 for whatever reason (not necessarily mob mentality).

[HeyNonnyMouse]

To be honest the whole thing was caused by The Godfather fans on that site. The Dark Knight went in at number 1 with relatively few votes but over enthusiastic voters giving it a 10, it was then you had The Godfather champions giving The Dark Knight a 1 to have their film back at number 1. I didn't take long to figure out why there was an increasing amount of 1 votes for The Dark Knight, basically its fans retaliated in kind. All very childish, but your article is inaccurate when you imply who initiated the fiasco.

[run-jimmy-run]

@HeyNonnyMouse I loved The Dark Knight and I've paid to see it several times in the theater, but the 1's given to The Dark Knight were not from "Godfather fans". The 1's were a kneejerk reaction from people everywhere who recognized that although The Dark Knight was great, it doesn't belong above great classics. It was the natural reaction of the crowd trying to correct the system. Giving 1's to The Godfather was childish.