Comments on: Wisdom of the crowds? It helps if they can see each other… http://molecularvoices.molecular.com/2008/wisdom-of-the-crowds-it-helps-if-they-can-see-each-other%e2%80%a6/ where conversation and digital minds meet Thu, 22 Jul 2010 23:20:37 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=abc By: Craig Andrews http://molecularvoices.molecular.com/2008/wisdom-of-the-crowds-it-helps-if-they-can-see-each-other%e2%80%a6/comment-page-1/#comment-4511 Craig Andrews Mon, 29 Sep 2008 14:56:42 +0000 http://molecularvoices.molecular.com/?p=1018#comment-4511 I watched the debate on the local CBS affiliate (you watched it on ABC) and they did take care of a few of your suggestions. They had instant feedback - they did a large telephone based poll right when the debate ended, and had live results. They also interviewed random people at a few locations. Also, I think your assessment of how the "American Idol" style polling would be done is a bit over complicated. TV stations already belong to networks, and they are the ones that actually handle the debate coverage, so naturally, they would be the ones to handle the polling. That would make result aggregation and interpretation far simpler, and much more uniform (for example, I doubt the Springfield, MA ABC affiliate has the same budget as the Boston one, so naturally their polling capabilities would be diminished which reduce the poll accuracy). As for Ron Paul... the media doesn't really care. I hope not to start a flame war about this (for the record, I'm not a Ron Paul supporter), but the media didn't cover his (huge) anti-GOP convention right outside the real GOP convention, nor do they cover any of his speeches. So this isn't a question of better polling or better technology - lack of data about Ron Paul is a result of media disinterest. I watched the debate on the local CBS affiliate (you watched it on ABC) and they did take care of a few of your suggestions. They had instant feedback – they did a large telephone based poll right when the debate ended, and had live results. They also interviewed random people at a few locations.
Also, I think your assessment of how the “American Idol” style polling would be done is a bit over complicated. TV stations already belong to networks, and they are the ones that actually handle the debate coverage, so naturally, they would be the ones to handle the polling. That would make result aggregation and interpretation far simpler, and much more uniform (for example, I doubt the Springfield, MA ABC affiliate has the same budget as the Boston one, so naturally their polling capabilities would be diminished which reduce the poll accuracy).
As for Ron Paul… the media doesn’t really care. I hope not to start a flame war about this (for the record, I’m not a Ron Paul supporter), but the media didn’t cover his (huge) anti-GOP convention right outside the real GOP convention, nor do they cover any of his speeches. So this isn’t a question of better polling or better technology – lack of data about Ron Paul is a result of media disinterest. ]]> By: Emile Daigle http://molecularvoices.molecular.com/2008/wisdom-of-the-crowds-it-helps-if-they-can-see-each-other%e2%80%a6/comment-page-1/#comment-4509 Emile Daigle Mon, 29 Sep 2008 14:49:40 +0000 http://molecularvoices.molecular.com/?p=1018#comment-4509 http://www.neoformix.com/Projects/TwitterStreamGraphs/view.php?q=debate a rolling view of the last 200 tweets mentioning "debate". invaluable resource during the debate itself to watch the explosion of microblogging. http://www.neoformix.com/Projects/TwitterStreamGraphs/view.php?q=debate

a rolling view of the last 200 tweets mentioning “debate”. invaluable resource during the debate itself to watch the explosion of microblogging.

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