Does crowdsourcing work? is the question posed by a blogger on the Guardian’s Comment Is Free site after a government website asked the electorate to post their views on spending cuts and was barraged with offensive and cretinous comments.

The Guardian piece refers to the Conservative-Lib Dem’s  Spending Challenge Website, which asks voters (in risible management speak): “How can we re-think government to deliver more for less?” (or how can we save money?). Some of the suggestions include administering contraceptive vaccinations to people on benefits (I guess so that they get back to work and stop receiving benefits rather than pop out yet more benefit-scrounging sprogs), cutting child benefits, cutting overseas aid and deporting illegal immigrants.

The Guardian piece, written by Chris Dillow, quotes Winston Churchill, who said that the “best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter”. Dillow adds: “The best argument against crowd-sourcing is a five-minute browse of the Treasury’s Spending Challenge website…”

He makes some thought-provoking and well-expressed points, a key one being that the government is not using the site to ask people what should be done on a micro-scale to cut spending, but is asking them how they feel. Deliberately. The Tories welcome comments about stopping immigration and cutting benefits: they tell them what they want to hear.

Dillow makes another interesting point: “This problem is compounded by a couple of adverse selection mechanisms,” he says. “One is the Dunning-Kruger effect – the same stupidity that causes people to have idiotic opinions also causes them to exaggerate their own ability, with the result that they are overly keen to express their opinion…

“The counterpart to this is that people with good ideas are loathe to express them. There’s a Gresham’s law in the public domain: bad ideas drive out good…”

The idea of democracy is that everyone should have a say, and that includes the idiots; and nothing represents democracy more succinctly than the internet. Accordingly, plenty of the comments you will read on websites that invite discussion are less than considered and are often knee-jerk or just offensive. There’s something also to be said for the fact that – like a voter in a polling booth – most people who have their say online do so anonymously, allowing them to comfortably post vicious remarks without fear of being personally redressed (that’s why the story about the Massachusetts local newspaper The Sun Chronicle charging to comment is so interesting).

While the government website clearly illustrates that many in the electorate are morons, it does not discount the concept of crowdsourcing per se. Of course what’s said and how constructive it is depends on what and who you ask. Effective crowdsourcing must have a clear goal in sight and it must be asking the right people. And anyway, who’s to say that the Treasury’s site isn’t achieving its goal?