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I think the article quoted in the OP completely misses the point.
The idea of the collaborative and user-generated internet that occasioned the naming of "You" as person of the year doesn't mean that a guy on the street gets the same weight as a credentialed expert. It means that individual users are recognized as a source of content AND the collaborative effort of ALL users is leveraged as a filtering and taxonomic device.
On the site I posted above, for instance, adult webmasters and other owners of porn or softcore photos submit galleries with an initial category and a set of tags ("Blonde, hot, big boobs, outdoor", for instance). After a moment passes, during which my ingeniously crafted code makes thumbnails out of the images and posts the post into the CMS, the gallery shows up at the top of the "Latest" tab.
Each post has a current score, a "vote up", and a "vote down" link. Those of you who visit digg.com will find this familiar. High-scored posts end up on the front page (the "Popular" tab). Galleries with low scores get bumped from the site completely. We take a fraction of a vote for views of the content--so, clicking to the gallery page is worth a partial vote, each full size image you view up to a certain limit is worth a partial vote, etc. I actually use vote velocities, rather than raw score, to determine promotion or demotion actions.
The idea here is that the collective opinions of all the users will have the cream float to the top, as it were. And so far, it's working. The general preference of the site's visitors seems to be for professional "babe" photos and high-quality amateurs. Porn screen caps don't seem to be so highly favored. Interestingly, there hasn't been a single hardcore post promoted yet.
It's easy to get distracted by the adult content here, and think the site is about that. The important part is the relationship to the users. The site is just a structure for the user's creation. If I want to upload photo sets of my wife, and tag them with "ratbastids_girl", I can do that. Then I can link to the page that searches by that tag, and I've got my very own site within the bigger site. If those submissions get popular, I gain reputation, and my posts are looked forward to, I'm respected, my wife is lusted after, etc.
It used to be that--while making some noise about being a free forum for public publishing--the Internet was very much read-only for most lay users. It's now a read-write-submit-and-collaborate medium, and that level of interaction has developed and is developing in very interesting and novel ways. That's what's behind this "You" person of the year thing.
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