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From Wikipedia to 99designs, and Google to LEGO, crowdsourcing has changed the way the world does business. By partnering with the masses through innovative campaigns, companies can benefit from a vast amount of expertise, enthusiasm and goodwill, rather than from paid labour. But what's in it for the crowd?
Why do ordinary people sign on to help design or produce a product without much compensation? Why do they volunteer their time and skills to a company that profits? And how can a firm better address the crowd's needs in order to to maximize value for all involved in the co-creation project?
Their findings are the first to show that there are four different types of members volunteering in these communities:
1. Communals build skills and community bonds;
2. Utilizers join the communities to sharpen their skills without much intention to form social bonds;
3. Aspirers lack both skills and bonds, but aim to gain more of both;
4. Tourists are minimally invested in both community and skills and infrequently participate.
https://phys.org/news/2017-04-big-businesscrowdsourcing-win-win-situation.html
[Abstract]: Managing Communities of Co-creation around Consumer Engagement Styles
Do you agree and would you be part of such crowd-sourcing initiatives ?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 13 2017, @06:38AM (4 children)
You must be kidding. Sure, Wikipedia has its issues, but I'd argue it's the single most well-known and successful example of crowdsourcing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 13 2017, @07:36AM (2 children)
I agree. Their digital panhandling campaign has been extremely successful at suckering individuals into donating, even as they were sitting on assets worth more than $77 Million in 2015. [washingtonpost.com]
Unfortunately I could not find any more recent figures, but would not be surprised if it was still in the high 8-figure range.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 13 2017, @07:40AM (1 child)
The costs to host Wikipedia are not that much and most of the contributors have not been paid. You are complaining about a separate entity called the Wikimedia Foundation that can slap banner ads onto Wikipedia for unnecessary fundraising.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 13 2017, @09:14AM
I agree. Wikipedia is 100% independent of the Wikimedia Foundation. Those ads only benefit WMF, not Wikipedia. Wikipedia makes all the money it needs from door-to-door encyclopedia sales. The WMF budget has gotten totally out of control.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by AthanasiusKircher on Thursday April 13 2017, @01:48PM
Sure, Wikipedia has its issues, but I'd argue it's the single most well-known and successful example of crowdsourcing.
I'd agree with the assertion that it's the "most well-known and successful example of crowdsourcing," at least in terms of content created so far.
But I'd also agree with the OP that it's a textbook example of social and project dysfunction created within a crowd-sourced project. Do you realize how many of the governing "policies" and practices of Wikipedia date back to the first year of the project, when there were a few hundred active people (including a lot of good folks and a lot of lunatics) just throwing out random ideas for how to make this thing work? Often there were serious debates, but ultimately a lot of the original debates weren't settled in favor of better long-term policies or community consensus, but by attrition: people who disagreed either just gave up and left the project or were at least brow-beaten enough to stop arguing.
But, having created this bureaucratic monstrosity, there was a significant growth spurt for nearly a decade. But the bad stuff eventually started to rot the project internally.
New active contributor numbers have been declining for years. The active maintaining base has been going down. New contributors are often met with hostility, with edits summarily reverted (this is a common metric used by Wikipedia insiders to pad their contribution metrics and try to work their way up the hierarchy: they know new users are easy targets and unlikely to bother arguing, so it's an easy add to your editing stats). If they get past the initial gatekeepers, they are often met by an army of Wikilawyers who quote obscure acronyms for policies rather than having debates on actual issues. Meanwhile, types and amount of vandalism, hoaxes, random manipulation (e.g., by corporations or individuals seeking to raise their status, both within Wikipedia and in the "real world") have been increasing. There are all sorts of ways they could be starting to "lock down" good content at least to prevent the easiest forms of vandalism, but the bureaucracy is mired in a bunch of policies that were arbitrarily determined by a tiny number of people 15 years ago who are mostly long gone. And yet the bureaucracy -- created by the precedents set early -- continues (and is arguably worse than ever).
So, it's possible for Wikipedia to both be the greatest success story (so far) and one of the worst examples of underlying dysfunction (which, if not addressed, will likely lead to serious degradation of the content in the long term).