Three lies about social software is a great piece in which JP Rangaswami examines three lies about social software that need to be debunked. To the idea that social software causes groupthink, Rangaswami counters that social software actually relies on the aggregation of ideas from people with common interests, but not necessarily common views. He says, “Much of what I learn from comments on my blog is from the extensions, the qualifiers, the provisos, even the complete disagreements. This is not groupthink, it’s anything but.”

Rangaswami moves on to examine the lie that social software is full of inaccuracies and downright lies. He says, “If anything, social software is more honest than MSM when it comes to factual errors. With MSM on the other hand, the lie is printed and continues to be an archived lie.” When a newspaper makes a mistake, they usually print the correction at the bottom of the least looked-at page in 2pt font so only an ant with glasses can see it. By contrast, a wiki can be corrected immediately, and the error is replaced, relegated to the page revision history while the correct information is the first thing people see. One needs to only look at the Wikipedia/Britannica comparison conducted by Nature in 2005 to see this principle in action. In Nature’s account of the study and its conclusions, Internet encyclopaedias go head to head, “Michael Twidale, an information scientist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, says that Wikipedia’s strongest suit is the speed at which it can updated.”

The third lie Rangaswami examines is that social software destroys privacy. To this, he counters, “People who don’t want to share openly still use social software. There are passworded wikis, closed-loop IM systems, even things like Orkut Crush. Openness is primarily a choice and not a condition.” In my experience, this is the lie that stops most faculty from using the wiki. They mistakenly think that to use a wiki is to make all of one’s work open to anyone else to edit, but once this point is clarified and they realize they can choose what is editable (i.e. group project, collaborative paper) and what is only readable (i.e. syllabus, course schedule) they become very willing to use the tool.
[via Kristine Lowe]