Crowdsourcing/Free content and open processes

There’s a lot of stuff I would do for free that I wouldn’t do for a pittance.

—Cory Doctorow quoted by Reuters, 14 Jan 2011

For the crowd to improve content, it needs to be technically and legally possible for them to make changes. So crowdsourcing is impossible without at least some commitment to openness and to the rights of the end user. This section explores some factors that have made Wikimedia successful at attracting a large number of contributions, and some ways in which crowdsourcing can be ruined by too much control.

1. Making soup with stone
2. Intellectual property
3. Network effects (the power of one)
4. Summing up

Previous

Index

Next