February 25, 2008

Wisdom of Crowds

I've been reading and working a lot with the concept of the "Wisdom of Crowds" and how can you apply it to several fields. I'm to write more about that (including about a study I contributed to). Curiously, and absent-mindedly, I've just used the wisdom of crowds, and only after noticed what I just did.

There are two musical styles I've been a lot into lately: "neofolk" and "dark folk". Both are relatively new terms, so they still lack "general acceptance" (like a common definition or agreement of what's neofolk and what's not). Still, and a lot thanks to the effort of Prophecy Productions with their "Looking for Europe" CD/Book, the style is nowadays generaly defined, and no one nowadays thinks that it is spelled in other way but "neofolk". Now, "dark folk" is a way more vague term, with a preety loose definition (or, some may argue, no definition at all). Nowadays use of the term seems to refer to a neofolk subgenre, but some people still use it with other meanings (for instance, as a synonym of neofolk). With such a "indefinition" of the term (thypical on new genres, and some older ones, like "experimental"), it's so surprise that there are also a lot of ways to actually spell it. Some write "darkfolk", others "dark folk" and others "dark-folk". So, I decided to find out how should I spell it. It was quite simple:

From http://www.last.fm/tag/dark+folk:
This station has been created by 1,251 people that have used this tag 4,012 times. (Last used 12 days ago.)
From http://www.last.fm/tag/darkfolk:
This station has been created by 116 people that have used this tag 340 times. (Last used last month.)
From http://www.last.fm/tag/dark-folk:
This station has been created by 53 people that have used this tag 97 times. (Last used last month.)

Et voilá
, I now know that from now on "dark folk" is written this way. You know who decided it? The Wisdom of Crowds.


PS -> BTW, this is also a good example of why choosing a good URL scheme matters.

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