Linus's Law
Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow. Applied to Wikipedia, this many-eyes principle suggests that popular articles can attract more monitoring and faster correction.
THE IDEA
What about the Mistakes?
Aren’t there still mistakes on a site with fifty million articles written in three hundred different languages? Well, uh, yes. Wikipedia is written by human beings, and last we heard, human beings make mistakes. The book describes Wikipedia as armed with sophisticated mechanisms for weeding out errors, both technological (automated bots that gobble up changes from unidentified contributors) and human (hawk-eyed administrators who monitor lists of controversial pages). These procedures go a long way in catching problems before they turn scandalous. Instead of festering on the site for 132 days, as in John Seigenthaler’s case, the book reports removal of vandalized content in about thirty minutes.[7] The more popular an article, the more eyeballs that track it and the faster malicious content is vaporized.
When to use it
Open source software development: Bugs are found and fixed faster when many developers review code.
Community fact-checking: News outlets can invite readers to report errors, speeding up corrections.
Wikipedia editing: Popular articles are monitored by many editors, reducing the lifespan of vandalism.
FROM THEORY TO EVERYDAY LIFE
In practice
John Seigenthaler Incident
In 2005, a Wikipedia article falsely implicated John Seigenthaler in a crime, and the error remained for 132 days before correction. The book contrasts this with a reported removal time of about 30 minutes.
Popular Article Vandalism
The more popular an article, the more eyeballs track it, and the faster malicious content is removed.
A MOMENT TO REFLECT
Put it to work.
How could the 'many eyes' principle be applied to improve quality in your own projects or organizations?
What are the limitations of relying on crowds to catch errors, and when might it fail?
Think of a system you use daily—could it benefit from more transparency and community oversight to reduce mistakes?
CONTINUE THE CONVERSATION
Source texts
- Verified How to Think Straight, Get Duped Less, and Make Better Decisions about What to Believe Online (Mike Caulfield, Sam Wineburg)