Research on the wisdom of crowds (WOC) identifies two paradoxical effects of communication. The social influence effect hampers the WOC, whereas the collective learning effect improves crowd wisdom. Yet it remains unclear under what conditions such communication impedes or enhances collective wisdom. The current study examined two features characterizing communication in online communities, communication network centralization and shared task experience, and their effect on the WOC. Both these features can serve as indicators of the likelihood that underlying communication may facilitate either social influence or collective learning. With an 8-year longitudinal behavioral-trace data set of 269,871 participants and 1,971 crowds, we showed that communication network centralization negatively affected the WOC. By contrast, shared task experience positively predicted the WOC. Shared task experience also moderated the effect of communication network centralization such that centralized communication networks became more beneficial for crowd performance as shared task experience increased.

对人群智慧（WOC）的研究确定了交流的两种悖论效应。社会影响力影响WOC，而集体学习效果则提高了人群的智慧。然而，尚不清楚在何种情况下这种交流会阻碍或增强集体智慧。当前的研究检查了在线社区中交流的两个特征，交流网络的集中化和共享任务的经验，以及它们对WOC的影响。这两个功能都可以用作基础沟通可能促进社会影响或集体学习的可能性的指标。使用269,871名参与者和1,971名人群的8年纵向行为追踪数据集，我们显示通信网络的集中化对WOC产生了负面影响。相比之下，共享的任务经验积极地预测了WOC。共享任务经验还减轻了通信网络集中化的影响，使得随着共享任务经验的增加，集中通信网络对人群性能变得更加有利。