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Using Crowdsourcing Technologies to Research Crowdsourcing
Ever since I began to take an interest in crowdsourcing as a self appointed research subject, I’m just seeing ideas pop up everywhere. Today I found an article that lists at least ten examples of how ordinary people, when properly coordinated, lead to giant leaps in scientific research, due to the ability to process a huge amount of data in ways that computers aren’t able to, and perhaps never will. It is a true testament to the power of humans working together.
Today this inherent capability of croudsourcing is apparently used to research the phenomenon itself. The article linked to this post describes an ongoing experiment run using Amazons Mecanical Turk platform, which allows any individual to either crowdsource a task or to perform others’ tasks.
The experiment tried to simulate a newsroom process using “Turks” (the crowdsouced workers) in research and editing positions. The whole task is coordinated using a computer algorithm. However rather then try to develop this as a business, the people behind the experiment are trying to better define the potential merits and limitations of the method itself.
I think this whole trend is facinating - I just hope that by the time I try to join it I’ll have something worthwhile to contribute :).
(via zeezeescorner)