In his blog post, "New Approaches Put the 'Crowd' in Crowdsourcing," Rob Salkowitz (author of Young World Rising: How Youth, Technology and Entrepreneurship Are Transforming the Global Economy) discusses the challenges involved in effective crowd sourcing and later gives examples of initiatives that have overcome them.
“How important is sustained participation versus early participation?" asks Salkowitz. "How much of the reputation system should be transparent in the form of badges, levels, and expert ratings? What’s the optimum number for a well functioning community versus the power of scale? These are important questions. The race is on to find the answers.”
But these are really a form of Groogle questions, because most these questions have already been resolved, and they ignore a much more pressing consideration, such as: "How do you measure the quality of the work?"
In other words, the measure off success in a crowd sourcing model is (a) speed of response, (b) quality of response, and (c) quantity (that is, number of fresh perspectives). If you achieve these three, you achieve "collective intelligence" -- a much more useful application of Internet communities than pure crowd feedback.
“How important is sustained participation versus early participation?" asks Salkowitz. "How much of the reputation system should be transparent in the form of badges, levels, and expert ratings? What’s the optimum number for a well functioning community versus the power of scale? These are important questions. The race is on to find the answers.”
But these are really a form of Groogle questions, because most these questions have already been resolved, and they ignore a much more pressing consideration, such as: "How do you measure the quality of the work?"
In other words, the measure off success in a crowd sourcing model is (a) speed of response, (b) quality of response, and (c) quantity (that is, number of fresh perspectives). If you achieve these three, you achieve "collective intelligence" -- a much more useful application of Internet communities than pure crowd feedback.
