It looks obvious

Yesterday, when I wrote why I don’t use Google News and alike, I wrote:

While in newspaper I entrusted the editorial decisions to someone else on the internet I make my own editorial decision. The decisions, of what important or interesting, are too complicated and are based on many variables. Any attempt to build algorithm that aggregate and filter information to create “New Media News service” is doomed to failure. It is impossible to quantify principal decision making or to attempt to automate the decision process with mathematical process.

I don’t think that the value of the crowd has anything more than the value of popularity. And it is, as important as it may be, only one parameter in my personal editorial decision. As objectivist I do not accept the right of the crowd to make decisions about my life, liberty and property and I have no intention to let the crowd make decision about what news I should consume.  

While writing this I wasn’t aware that others over the blogosphere are writing about the same subject. And today I run across this post delivering the same point, much more eloquently:

But that’s also why algorithms don’t work very well as editors. With an editor, you don’t want mindlessness; you want mindfulness. A good editor combines an understanding of what the audience wants with a healthy respect for the idiosyncracies of his own mind and the minds of others. A good editor doesn’t aim to provide a bland "average result"; he wants to wander widely around the average, at times even to strike out in the opposite direction altogether. The mindless crowd filters out personality along with idiosyncracy and bias. The mindful editor is all about personality. "It’s just more fun that way," as Malda says.

Of course, such distinctions may not matter all that much in the future. Running an algorithm, after all, tends to be a lot cheaper than paying a staff of idiosyncratic editors, particularly when you’re trying to corral something with the vastness of the web. As Memeorandum’s popularity shows, moreover, an algorithm may often be "good enough." For distracted people looking for a quick fix of information, a mindless average may be just what the doctor ordered. And if we can give that mindless average a sexy name like "collective intelligence," it can start to look downright attractive. As we adapt to the internet, we may just learn to forget that an algorithm, no matter how elegantly conceived, is no substitute for a person, and that a crowd, no matter how full of "wisdom," is no substitute for an editor.

But I hope we don’t.