Wisdom of crowds?

I'm not sure why this story in the Wall Street Journal, "Writing a Book? Amazon Offers a Crowdsourced Critique" makes me a teeny bit uneasy.

Amazon, through its "Write On" service allows authors (or would-be authors) to receive feedback from the wider crowd of Amazon users. In the words of the WSJ, to turn manuscripts into 'salable titles'; in Amazon's words 'to make good stories great and great stories better.'

I know writer feedback groups (creative writing workshop, anyone?) and audience testing have been going on for ages, and this is just a way to use technology to do the same thing but with a wider reach.

And I know crowd-editing and direct publishing sites exist already for writers, such as Wattpad and FastPencil.

And yes, it would be great if this allows writers to discover new audiences, and new ideas can flourish.

And yet.

If too many authors disregard their internal drive and seek wide feedback before publishing, do we risk hovering around the median of consensus, rather than uncovering the unconventional voices? Isn't the internet meant to be just the thing for the long-tail, the unknown?

Then again, if you walk into any bookstore today, you can see the publishing world narrowing around blockbuster 'brand-name' authors, as it has been for years now.

So at least if a few more unknown authors can use these platforms to develop independent works and reach new readers... well... hopefully my unease will prove misplaced...