Design considerations are crucially important in ensuring the output from discussion forums is authentic and representative of the population.
Traditional discussion forums that present comments in lists tend to hide the true diversity of opinion by favouring early birds or those with extreme views. To avoid this, Collective Intelligence tools can apply algorithms that distribute comments equally for evaluation. It is important that the evaluation system used can capture how users feel. Despite being common place in many popular forums such as those found on Facebook and Amazon, basic binary systems such as like or up-vote buttons provide no detail about what criteria a person is actually using to evaluate a comment. However, Collective Intelligence tools can use more sensitive rating mechanisms, such as attitudinal evaluation sliders, to capture this far more accurately.
Through the use of these superior mechanisms, themes which resonate most with the community can be identified, transforming private judgements into collective decisions. As a result, the output is not shaped artificially by an individual analyst or team of researchers, but authentically by members of the group.
