About Crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing is a valuable “tool” for information aggregators. I use quotation marks around the word “tool,” because it isn’t really a tool, crowdsourcing is the effort of people. We can get into the semantics of whether or not other people’s labor constitutes as a tool some other time. Crowdsourcing is when companies or other sources of information reach out to their communities and as the people, in general, to contribute their time and effort to bettering their information. Sometimes that looks like people describing images for the Library of Congress to catalogue; sometimes it looks like people editing Wikipedia pages.

 

The reason people contribute to crowdsourcing is because they want to. Since it’s volunteer work, crowdsourcing isn’t usually paid. People may do it because they’re passionate and knowledgeable about the topic, or because they want to learn more about the topic, or to practice skills in information gathering and verification, or any other reason.

 

There are, of course, a few problems with crowdsourcing. The information is only as good as the volunteers can make it. This is why Wikipedia is often called inaccurate, or at least an unreliable source of information. The people doing the checking are doing it because they want to, not necessarily because they are qualified. And as I wrote about previously, sometimes people will mess with Wikipedia pages just for fun or to prove a point. This doesn’t mean all work done by crowdsourcing is going to be wrong, intentionally or not. Like I said, most of the people behind crowdsourcing are doing it because they’re passionate about the topic. Plenty of stuff edited, aggregated, or otherwise done by crowdsource volunteers is accurate and professional, it just isn’t necessarily verified or unbiased.

 

I go back and forth on my opinions on crowdsourcing for information. Objectively, I know that people who would put significant effort into maliciously messing up crowdsourced information aren’t that common, but I’ve personally known a few people who will go out of their way to cause problems for others, so I’m wary. I’m also aware that people’s biases—conscious or unconscious—may show up while editing. What I consider a trustworthy information source might be different than what someone in my family or workplace might consider trustworthy. So someone might go to a Wikipedia page, decide the information posted isn’t quite what they consider the truth, and edit it according to their own beliefs. Politics, politicians, and political events especially are going to bring out people’s biases.

 

I stand by the “traditional” view for learning things from Wikipedia or other crowdsourced information: It’s a good place to start when looking for something, but not something you want to be your main source of information, and definitely not something you’d cite for class or work or something professional.