1. Trust and credibility is going to be the most important issue. All systems that are anonymous as the Web are prone to distrust and the validity of the information comes to question. Here is one example that seems analogous. Take email and the trust on emails you have. Today if you receive a (very legitimate looking) email stating that the widowed wife of a Nigerian oil tycoon wants to do business with you, there is a good chance you'll not read it past the first few words and you won't hesitate to push it to trash. However if this happened 10 years back [I got my first email account about that time :) ] there would have been some responses - and even I might have answered it [saying "I'm sorry - Don't have that much money" ;)]. The point to note is that this happens solely due to the trust we have on the medium which transfers to the credibility of information that medium brings to us. The trust is definitely influenced by the experience of the user - for example my mother who is somewhat new to email would tell me that some Nigerian person has emailed her and what she should do about it if she finds this email in her inbox. It may not occur to her immediately that this could be something like mail spam. (Luckily gmail does a great job in spam filtering and only a few of these would actually show up in her inbox. Also when I explained the analogy of snail mail spam and email spam she immediately got the picture)
The point of the matter is that the WWW is becoming (or has already become) a place of mistrust. When I come across something I do not know , I immediately Google for it - but I perceive the information very carefully ! As I mentioned in one of my earlier posts - the only way to make an honest opinion is to understand that information has their mutilations.
2. "History is written in the eyes of winners" This is an issue even with traditional media. In fact one can argue that the Web has diluted the bias towards the winners view point. But still what gets hailed and accepted is the popular fact which may not necessarily reflect the truth. For example (disclaimer - contraversial example. Does not reflect authors view point) let us say that Genetically Modified Food (GMF) has been found not to have health consequences. [ I believe that knowingly or unknowingly we consume GMF every day. But that's a separate discussion :)] Since this is not the popular belief these facts gets labeled 'bogus','questionable' or just 'made up' by others - even if they reflect the rightful state. Ultimately more people will end up forming wrongful opinions. Unlike with traditional media, it is extremely easy to promote the popular view in the Web!
I think what this drills down to is the human psychology. Even when it is not so obvious - Web is a human web. The Web reflects what we as humans do and think as groups/societies. All that applies to human societies applies to Web as well.
How does all this relate to mass collaboration ? Well the point is that harnessing knowledge from the Web (which has been put up there by collaborating humans. Usually a very large number as opposed to a traditional collaboration group which may not exceed a handful of people) runs into these obstacles. Is this the right knowledge ? Do I know the right things ? - These are the questions that gets asked with mass collaboration (rightfully so I would say)
Other opinions welcome :)
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