We are almost one month into our crowd-sourcing project, and we are moving forward...gradually, but forward nonetheless. My own difficulties with grasping the project as a whole are dissipating, and the process of developing solid ideas/stories/myths for dealing with our desired subjects is already underway. However, through my personal story development, I found myself forgetting what is going to make this project unique as an art form--an attribute that has been growing in popularity since the dawn of the internet. But going through the related media/texts brought me back home, outlining various perspectives of collaboration via web and the term "crowd-sourcing" in general.
Just from a spectators point of view, Jimmy Wales' presentation on the development of Wikipedia was amazing (plus, I love TedTalks in general). I was completely clueless concerning Wikipedia's main goal of providing a free online encyclopedia to everyone in the world, in literally every language. Wales' goes in to great detail about the method of building this seemingly crowd-sourced information bank, and credibility issues that arise. I remember in high school when all of my teachers crucified Wikipedia, stating that it was an unreliable source because the information could be edited, live, at any time. This may pose a problem, however, the concept got me thinking. A source that is available for editing to the entire world population, with an ability to cite specific sources throughout the document....can you say fact checker's dream?! My view is that permitting edits by a world population will conclusively aid in not just viable, cut and dry facts, but investigation into certain subjects, some known, some unknown, by intelligent populations. This, I believe, has been a great step towards the freedom of knowledge, literally--and its crowd-sourced!
Relating to our own crowd-sourcing project and elements of Wikipedia, I think that for a truly crowd-sourced project, the more individuals/groups working on smaller portions of the project, the better for the cause. Wikipedia achieves this aspect, allowing for infinite amounts of edits based on new facts or further information about a subject--it is ever evolving. Now, I know that our project will ultimately reach a final product...or will it? Should a true crowd-sourced project ever come to an end? Is the crowd still there? Have you chosen the crowd specifically based on your needs? Is it even a crowd then? Some of these questions are addressed in the article written by Chris Grams, "2 Reasons Why the Term Crowd-Sourcing Bugs Me," but ultimately, our main goal should be to create something new and innovating that uses a kind of collaboration that will mold and evolve the project in a loose quality in terms of over-arching control. It is important to have a primary director for primary goals/ideas, but the director should allow an evolution based on the personal voices of his crowd.
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