Since we live in America, I’m afraid there will never be such a thing as crowdsourcing. We are a melting pot of individuals looking to be better than the next person. Sure we can collaborate through networking and shoot ideas back and forth, but how much of that is really produced? There are a lot of talkers, but not many doers. This is why I am not surprised to know that Wikipedia is mostly updated by a select group of “virtuosos” who take the time out to provide this information.
“People who've made more than 10,000 edits add nearly twice as many words to Wikipedia as they delete. By contrast, those who've made fewer than 100 edits are the only group that deletes more words than it adds. A small number of people are writing the articles, it seems, while less-frequent users are given the tasks of error correction and typo fixing.”
-Chris Wilson, The Wisdom of the Chaperones
Most importantly we cannot forget the major word here: free. As Dan Woods says, “It turns out most people with deep expertise do not spend their time writing software to give away.” This goes for everything. Nothing is free in this world. Most times when things are free, they are faulty. However Nicholas Carr says “free trumps quality all the time.” This leads us to a competitive nature that we know so well. That sole person who backs the major production of “crowdsourcing” is not recognized because he/she got help from others who jumped on the bandwagon. This just emphasizes the point that just because something is available does not mean it will be used. Wikipedia is available for ALL to contribute to, but not many do. I agree with Dan Woods because we need to give recognition to these inventors. There’s no need for a cover up. Let’s celebrate the Steve Jobs of our day, and help where we are needed.
We do need give more props to the ones who have set a path. The information they are editing is setting out there what we read everything and hopefully it is accurate.
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