The Limits of Crowdsourcing—Required Reading

There's been a lot of controversy bubbling up among the Digg faithful lately. This is hardly unprecedented, but because social news is such a widespread and significant use of crowdsourcing*, these donnybrooks are more important than immediately meets the eye.

This one got its start a few weeks ago when Digg started purging its ranks, banning some 80 Diggers, purportedly for using scripts that violated Digg's Terms of Service. As it happened, many of the exiled were top Diggers, which is to say, part of the one percent responsible for driving 32 percent of all Digg's pageviews. Banning them raises two troubling issues at once: How can Digg represent itself as a democracy if such a small cabal of users determine such a large share of Digg's content? And two, given that this is the case, is it wise for Digg to alienate the same people that are buttering its bread?

And that, as they say, is just the tip of the iceberg. As I pointed out in my book, Digg and other social news sites are easily gamed. In fact, there are companies out there whose sole purpose is to do just that. Suffice to say that part of the reason for this week's radio silence at Crowdsourcing.com is my own research into recent events at Digg. I can't think of any more salient issue facing crowdsourcing right now than whether the crowd can act as a reliable filter, and there's no better place to start, er, digging into that issue than with today's required reading, an examination of the state of democracy at Digg from Mashable.

Comments

[alanbooker]

Tantalizing title Jeff!

Just as individuals have biographies so to do institutions.

I doubt that there is any viable “fix” for the challenges that Digg might have.

I suspect that the multiple impulses that form or shape any venture arise from two main sources, those who reside in the inner sanctum and decide policy and the adherents or employees, the crowd in this case, who “commit” themselves to the ongoing process.
These two impulses make up the organic and extremely complicated set of defining elements that bring life, mediocrity or death to any initiative or venture.

The back and forth between the two above described impulses give rise to the elements that form and fashion both the institutional and individuals biographies, that in retrospect might become much more clear.

Crowdsourcing as such, in my mind, has little to do with the comfort level, or lack thereof of Digg’s, Facebook’s, or Wikipedia’s leadership and their community’s ongoing challenges.

Just as Democracy is less than reachable in society, it might be naïve to think that it is attainable for any online venture.

Once the struggle for financial success, or any other goal, and the original community’s utopian or idealistic goals are in motion, the residues, problems described by you and David Chen, fall away to reveal the forces that ultimately define the present state of being and its unfolding biography.

My question would be, is CS limited by such events or are these just birthing pains?

Alan

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[David Culiner]

Hey Jeff...just want to thank you for harnessing the magnificence of 'crowdsourcing.' I haven't even read the book yet...though it is EXACTLY what our own gig here at LovethisLife is all about. Am racing off to grab a copy right now.

Congrats on following through on your initial inspiration.

David

[Graham Brown]

Good post Jeff. I've blogged you over at the crowdsourcing 101 @ http://www.youth-marketing-buzz.com/2008/10/buzz-words-crowdsourcing.html , where I've given some consideration to the limits of crowdsourcing (not being the holy grail). Keep up the grood work

[Jenny Williams]

Hi Jeff,

I've written a blog post about digg and crowd-sourcing and would love to hear what you think about the issues I've raised.

http://jennyleewilliams.wordpress.com/

Thanks,

Jenny

[Alan]

Here is an irritating piece by Andrew Keen. The end of “free labor” online! Even used tea leaves in a tea cup could do a better job at forecasting.

http://www.internetevolution.com/author.asp?section_id=556&doc_id=166342&

Alan

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I think it is fair to say in general that the more accessible a social (news)site is, the less reliable is it's content and/or outcome. Identification of individuals becomes more of an issue in these systems as well.
The facilitator of the platform and his goals determine wether this kind of 'trickery' is allowed. Still I sense sooner or later we all may get a unique global (Internet) identity (UGI).

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