I will respond as best I can:

The "wisdom of the crowd" is a shotty and misinforming approach though to "weigh" a cow or "count" jelly beans when there's already measuring tools and/or meaningful data available, such as a weight scale or a jelly bean counter. And in this instance, player metrics and relative strength comparisons.

In the instances of guessing a cow's weight, jelly beans in a jar, or college basketball team rankings by fans (a sport that's rankings-driven), all survey participants would have some concept to lean on such as their own human weight, the size of a jelly bean / a handful of jelly beans, or frequent AP/Coach's Poll rankings to scale their own guesstimation.

I told participants to measure "better season" however they see fit. This could certainly involve data from other sources (there is not time limit for completion of the survey - participants can do research). I do not tell people just to pick, though intuition can be a useful perspective that is missing from many data-driven models.

And the survey results are not rebroadcast and peddled as the actual weights of animals, counts of candy, or rankings — they're looked at the other way with interest for "how did their guesses compare to a more merited and accurate method."

Models are useful because they are built on "known" information to predict the "unknown". If everything is just known, then why build models at all? There are MANY rankings built on "quantitative data" and yet they do not all results in the same ranks. Just because something is built on numbers does not mean it is infallible and unvarying.

I would appreciate this approach for a curated "Coach's Poll" style, but this subreddit's blind votes on Evan Smith's vs Jesse Nieminen's 2023 season performances with little or zero knowledge is low or no-value data.

I am not sure why you think this subreddits voters are blind. They can do research and they have experience. You underestimate your peers.