Web's Largest listing of crowdsourcing and crowdfunding events

Events

Advertise

Web's Largest Directory of Sites

2,360 crowdsourcing and crowdfunding sites

Building Crowdsourcing Applications

document Crowd Creativity, Distributed Knowledge, Open Innovation

Building crowdsourcing applications
Simon Willison - simonwillison.net - @simonw @media - 9th June 2010

Crowdsourcing?
Let me just cop to the fact that “crowdsourcing” is a stupid buzzword. But like “blog” before it, sometimes it’s the stupid term that sticks. For my purposes, it means collaborating with the people who used to be the silent audience to make something better than you could make alone. - Derek Powazek
http://powazek.com/posts/2443

Accuracy Psychology Usability Game mechanics Real-time Copywriting

Crowdsourcing
Incentives Write-heavy Statistics Moderation Competition

Visual design Ethics Legal liability

Accuracy Psychology Usability Game mechanics Real-time Copywriting

Crowdsourcing
Incentives Write-heavy Statistics Moderation Competition

Visual design Ethics Legal liability

Accuracy Psychology Usability Game mechanics Real-time Copywriting

Crowdsourcing
Incentives Write-heavy Statistics Moderation Competition

Visual design Ethics Legal liability

Accuracy Psychology Usability Game mechanics Real-time Copywriting

Crowdsourcing
Incentives Write-heavy Statistics Moderation Competition

Visual design Ethics Legal liability

Accuracy Psychology Usability Game mechanics Real-time Copywriting

Crowdsourcing
Incentives Write-heavy Statistics Moderation Competition

Visual design Ethics Legal liability

Accuracy Psychology Usability Game mechanics Real-time Copywriting

Crowdsourcing
Incentives Write-heavy Statistics Moderation Competition

Visual design Ethics Legal liability

Examples

OpenStreetMap

Google Image Labeler

ScenicOrNot

XKCD colour survey

Crowdsourcing at the Guardian

The Blair Rich Project

MP’s expenses v1
http://mps-expenses.guardian.co.uk/

Background
June 2009 450,000 pages of expenses documents released “Transparency” = dodgy scanned PDFs One week notice - so one week to build it!

Stuff that worked
The progress bar Photos of the MPs Releasing a small group of documents at ﬁrst Score boards (once we ﬁnally added them) Especially the “top in last 48 hours” one

Stuff that didn't
Releasing everything else at once Asking the wrong questions Line items! Too much time ﬁghting scalability ﬁres Reporting tools were 24 hours too late

Contributors
total users

date

Votes per user
users

number of votes cast

MP’s expenses v2
http://mps-expenses2.guardian.co.uk/

Background
December 2009 Smaller number of documents One weeks notice (again) Opportunity to learn from our earlier mistakes

Goals
Find stuff our journalists cared about Less boring data entry Data coming out again from the start Visible rewards for contributors More digestible tasks Better sense of activity by other people

Lessons learned
Use Redis for random selections, not MySQL Assignments made a huge improvement The most important logic in a crowdsourcing system is the next thing to review button “Oldest ﬁrst” pagination is critical

WildlifeNearYou.com

/dev/fort

Where’s my nearest llama?

Lessons learned
Be ﬂexible: your users may not share your precise goals Optimise for the fat head of your user base Expose recent activity to site staff Users will do almost anything for a medal!

Final thoughts
Don’t be afraid: even ﬂawed crowdsourcing systems produce fascinating results Think hard about the questions you ask Have a minimal barrier to entry Get the next task logic right. Seriously.

Thank you

http://simonwillison.net/ http://twitter.com/simonw
http://simonwillison.net/tags/crowdsourcing/

Summary A talk on Simon Willison's experiences building crowdsourcing applications, both at the Guardian newspaper and for his own personal projects. Presented at Web Directions @media 2010 on June 9th.

Description Here's some important excerpts from the presentation:

1. Lessons learned Be ﬂexible:

a. Your users may not share your precise goals.
b. Optimise for the fat head of your user base.
c. Expose recent activity to site staff.
d. Users will do almost anything for a medal!

2. Final thoughts

a. Don’t be afraid: even ﬂawed crowdsourcing systems produce
fascinating results.
b. Think hard about the questions you ask.
c. Have a minimal barrier to entry
d. Get the next task logic right. Seriously.

Tags: atmedia, best practice, code, Crowdsourcing, design, Media, OpenStreetMap, patterns, Social, wildlifenearyou

Posted by Fritz Schaefer

Mar 08, 2011 02:08 pm GMT Viewed 11420 times

Author: Simon Willison Source

Contact us if you are owner of this content and want to make changes.

Download Flag This

Events

Building Crowdsourcing Applications

Comments

Crowdsourcing.org

Categories

Content

Crowdsourcing.org, an initiative by massolution®

Events

Related Content

Building Crowdsourcing Applications

Comments

Crowdsourcing.org

Categories

Content

Crowdsourcing.org, an initiative by massolution®