The ethics involved in crowdsourcing appears to be a topic of contention, not the least because it’s an easy way to get free labor. Of course, much of those concerns revolve around crowdsourcing as it’s used in the business world--it’s a bit harder to justify using underpaid and underprivileged workers to save a couple of bucks when you compare it to volunteers who willingly devote their time and resources to a project. The article “Crowdsourcing in the Digital Humanities” illustrates this difference quite well, in my opinion; however, I also think that there are still issues to keep in mind.
To demonstrate how crowdsourcing can be applied to the humanities, the article lists several projects that relied on online volunteers to perform certain tasks, such as transcribing documents and cropping pictures--in other words, tasks that don’t require a lot, if any, training. This approach ensures that the bulk of volunteers are people who have some sort of interest in contributing to the project, which means that the organizers can sidestep criticism of exploitation. In addition, it also allows academics to collaborate and contribute to research undertaken by other universities, giving them a chance to broaden their horizons. While these points do sound positive, I think it’s important to keep the phrase “too many cooks spoil the broth” in mind: the amount of people involved in a project might make it harder to keep track of progress, or there might be issues with steps that require another person to act as a mediator. Still, I concede that those are issues that could happen with any group project. As a result, I think it would be a good idea to have a way to iron out certain details before the project begins.
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