Groupthink and transactive memory
groupthink allows consensus to be reached through the path of least resistance: individuals only argue over issues where there is disagreement. people may give in to pressures from the rest of the group when there is conflict, which explains how it is possible for a group that possesses the right answer from one person, to get the wrong answer overall. Groupthink can't be greater than the sum of its parts: the group may get more answers correct than any one individual, but there are things that nobody in a group knows, so those issues won't ever get resolved. the web 2.0 solution is to get everyone involved: the more people who contribute, the more knowledge. in terms of fact-based or objective standards, this gets outcomes that are better and have more information. however, subjective things like 'which of these photos is best?' usually don't work well with groupthink. Flickr has a feature called 'explore' which selects the most interesting photos based on algorithms that point to which photos receive the most attention from the most users. what this tends to do is select photos that oftentimes have limited artistic merit but appeal to wide audiences: photos of kittens or scantily clad women. more serious photographers on flickr dislike 'explore' because it doesn't reward artistic merit, but rather mass appeal.

Transactive memory is a way by which an individual is able to remember things in a group setting that they could not have on their own. it's like when something jogs your memory: someone says a fact that you wouldn't remember off the top of your head, but it causes associations in your brain to kick in and cause you to remember things. it can also happen when someone says a statement like "all Xs are Ys". you might not have ordinarily remembered it as being true, but when mentioned, you might remember learning that all Xs are Ys.