With Mathew Ingram, Simon Pulsifer, Jeff Howe, Michael Sikorsky

• “How do you respond criticism towards crowdsourcing?”
  • JH: I think its a false controversy. There were far fewer models back then, and there was no sharecropping taking place. I think it was first compared to child slavery and I thought this was really offensive. If the user doesn’t like the mechanical turk — but you know what? People will always get something … its not nothing. Even if its consulting, popularity, or learning their craft to exploit in their day job. Its very self-motivated. My first response is that I think its a false controversy and there IS an enormous potential for controversy. I hate “crowdsourcing” — because we love the idea that its organic and grassroots. Its up to the users whether or not they will be exploited.
• “Michael (Cambrian House), this is your business model — and you’re doing something to give back to users”
  • I think Amazon’s example of the mechanical turn is what makes sharecropping such a negative thing. We’re trying to make Cambrian house a co-op, so they get 1% of all revenue as we grow. Now there’s this AGM that happens in a different way than it ever could, and we think this is a way to get rid of the idea of digital sharecropping.
• “The articles that are agreed to be the most authoratative topic on Wikipedia seem to be the most arcane. Why do they do this?”
  • The most active Wikipedians are well educated but fairly well underemployed. Take me for example. I did it after school, and I found it enjoyable. There are other reasons — moving up the unofficial ranks of the Wikipedia community and so on.
• “Jeff Why do people do this?”
  • I don’t know. But I think we vastly underestimate the potential of People. They are more creative and more intelligent than we think they ever were. They’ve become producers rather than consumers — or prosumers. A Pew study shows that over hal –
• ** whoops … laptop meltdown … **
• Jeff Howe:
  • The biggest strengths of crowdsourcing is actually in filtering as opposed to creating content — like Digg or Cambrian House.  90% of everything is crap and that’s something that I’ve picked up as well.  It applies to crowdsourcing as well, but for the most part its not very good.  If you want osmething that’s current and what’s hot, they’re good for that.
• “If time and money wasn’t a consideration, what idea would you come up with that hasn’t been thought of?
  • JH:  Its Kiva.org — its myspace meets microlending.  You can lend people to money in Ghana to change their lives for ever so that they can set up their own businesses.  Robinhoodfund is a good example too.
• On community
  • People think that software is so magical.  But you have to have a framework up before you let the crowds in to help you
• “What’s most sustainable amongst compensation mechanisms”
  • SP: The free model has been a success.  Wikia is a profit model that is a merged model for a potential to make money off of working for Wikipedia.  Then there’ll be a question of where it will be distributed
  • JH: Should Flickr have paid money to its users when it was sold? One one side they’re there and giving there time.  On the other hand …
  • MS: Cambrian House says that if we don’t share in the rewards, we would screw up our context.
• “Can you explain the rating systems on your site?”
  • MS: Our rating system  is called “glory points”. You can attach glory points to every single activity.  What we do is take a look at what you’ve done and what you don’t do so that we can help you get more glory.  We can dynamically tune how much glory points so that you can do stuff to force serendipity.
• “Is YouTube getting sold without compensating its users wrong?”
  • JH: I don’t think so.  I mean, where do you draw the line.  Pagerank is essentially a crowdsourcing algorithm.  So all the Google is built upon that.
• “Do you have any tips on getting participation on my blog?”
  • SP: The filtering is what’s important.  90% what gets submitted isn’t useful for the wikipedia.  I don’t have an answer for the question re: alienating your audience at the expense of editing.
  • MS: Its important to have standards that are obvious
  • JH: The slashdot community is elegant and moderates itself (although its complicated)
• “How viable is it to inject a project which is a request for a build that is ‘user-generated’ — is that a viable network within an existing network”
  • MS: Absolutely.  You should be able to find a segment for a community to help you create things.
• On crowdsourcing gone bad
  • JH: The crowd decides what they want to cover and they ignored photography, so there’s no accounting for taste.  I don’t know — I don’t think you can really fix it.  This model is really in its infancy.  I think the short answer is that I don’t know.
• Are there any lines which are not OK to cross?
  • JH: That’s up to the individual.  If someone wants compensation he should ask for it and it should be given.  The line you can’t cross is at the respect to the user.  Its not that IP doesn’t exist but that its under a new regime.
• Shouldn’t community be called unpaid contributors?
  • MS: People are there *for* the community, so I think that if you try and get away from that you get away for why they’re there.  Its not about command and control, but co-ordinating and cultivating.  And that’s what makes sense for me when it comes to community.