Interesting posts here and follow up here from Confused of Calcutta.
I’ve always believed in a simple rule-of-thumb about opensource communities:
- For every 1000 people who join a community:
- 920 are lurkers, passive observers
- 60 are watchers, active observers capable and willing to kibitz
- 15 are activists, actually doing something
- ….. and 5 are hyperactive, passionate about what they’re doing, almost to a point of obsession
Source: Confused Of Calcutta » Blog Archive » None of Us is As Smart as All of Us
His context is an online test at wearesmarter.org which is run by these folks, mainly academics.
The purpose is for the community to write a book.
We Are Smarter Than Me is here to show that a community can write a compelling book better than individual experts. The Founders have begun the writing process, but the text you see is alive. Don’t hesitate to add new thoughts or edit existing ones. That’s the whole point.
While its an interesting experiment, I am not sure what the results will prove. This will test participation in opensource community development, and I would, similar to Confused’s estimate, expect results same as a wiki that I blogged here. Wiki’s are estimated to get 1.8% of participants writing 70% of the articles.
So I don’t think this test would as I was hoping to read, help us estimate the power of community opinion.
Bankwatch 
hmmm….write a book via a group wiki? As an artist, the expression of an individual is just that, individual. It’s hard to conceive of a great novel, symphony or painting through many contributors, but I guess I may be “old school” when it comes to the arts.
ha ! Ed, spoken like a true artist. I missed that right brain nuance!