Crowdsourcing is awesome.
A bit late on this entry, but THE VLOG IS BACK!
Crowdsourcing is awesome. In so many ways, it is the realisation of what some of the earliest pioneers of the internet had envisioned - universal collaboration and access to knowledge.
Wikipedia is probably the gold-standard here. It is one of the most influential collections of knowledge in the world and has been compiled entirely by individuals who contribute and refine the content without the need for a central authority (Lee & Seo 2016, p.15).
“A feast to which many contribute is better than a dinner provided out of a single purse” - Aristotle (in Waldron 1995, p.564)
As early as Aristotle it seems that epistemological discourse has theorised ways that humans might be able to effectively share their collective intelligence, and Wikipedia (and the internet in general) seems to be the best solution to date of having the sum of human knowledge recorded and made available.
Crowdsourcing recognises that knowledge, when shared with the world, becomes a powerful tool for the greater good (Hess & Ostrom, 2007, p.8), and also that knowledge is cumulative and thus necessarily improved by having more people involved and adding to it.
It is generally at this point in the blog that I break out the “however” and go on to show the downsides to the technology and muddy the waters a bit on where I actually stand. I am going to say “however” because I want to present a balanced view, but I will come back to clarify my position with an important mention. However… There can be downsides to this kind of freely accessible commons. Wikipedia ‘vandalism’ is a humorous way of hijacking the system.. Many a teacher and professor has warned students to avoid wikipedia because “anyone can post anything”… Lee and Seo find that on Wikipedia, as the community of contributors has matured and the competition for revision has grown, dominant participants have emerged who may not necessarily have better information to contribute, but are just more assertive and active in their revisions and defense of their opinions (2016, p.19). In other words, when everyone is invited to contribute to a discussion, the ideas that are heard most are those that come from the individuals who speak loudest and most frequently.
Here’s where I want to clarify my position. Of course there are downsides to every innovation and technology. It is important to air these and debate them, but not use them as a way to dismiss or inhibit the progression of technology. I watched a great video recently by Alec Watson on his YouTube channel, Technology Connections. Through an analysis of the technological development of the LED traffic light, he illuminates what he calls the “but sometimes problem”. In his video he describes how LED traffic lights improved upon incandescent bulbs in almost every single measurable way, yet their one downside (vulnerability to snow) was used by critics to try and suppress the technology. The fallacy he describes, can be applied to many instances of how we as a society adopt new technology.
So please go ahead, contribute and be a part of building humankind’s collective knowledge.
References
Hess, C & Ostrom, E 2007, Understanding Knowledge as a Commons: From Theory to Practice, MIT Press, Massachusetts.
Lee, J & Seo, DB 2016, ‘Crowdsourcing not all sourced by the crowd: An observation on the behaviour of Wikipedia participants’, Technovation, vol. 55-56, pp.14-21.
Technology Connections 2018, The LED Traffic Light and the Danger of “But Sometimes!”, 14 May, viewed 19 May 2018, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiYO1TObNz8>
A well-balance post here @jackdigitalcommunities giving us a bit of insight into Crowdsourcing. I like that you brought up the dangers associated with sites like Wikipedia when “the individuals who speak loudest and most frequently” have dominance over the information on the site.
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Hey thanks for the support @101661945! I’m with you on the fact that Wikipedia cannot be trusted all of the time, and wiki vandalism is one of the big concerns here. I think though in the majority of cases it’s kind of just silly pranking, like the Emma Stone example you’ve given, and can be easily identified by most readers. Outright lies are pretty quickly fixed by the wikipedia community. In the case of perhaps more subtle, biased writing that bends the truth or opinions/ ideological bias... These may go undetected slightly longer, but compare that to any other form of media? I can honestly say I’d trust Wikipedia over Fox news. The crowd sourcing nature of wikipedia means that ever editor has to answer to the entire community. In any given journalism or media company they answer only to themselves.
