HUG & KICK

When I hear the word collaboration - I think partnership, team, working together, etc. I would not consider it to be a‘bad’ thing. But after reading these mixed reviews and opinions through our readings, I now see how collaboration can actually give a negative impact. Sometimes.

Online collaboration has many advantages. A very current and strong example of GOOD in collaboration is going on in Egypt right now. The whole Egypt banning Internet nonsense… Egypt used Twitter and Facebook to assemble people to rally in various areas. The tweets and facebook pages gave details about where to meet, how to bypass certain barriers, and other veryimportant information that was highly needed to gather the people of Cairo together.

In such a turmoil time, the Internet made things so much easier and quicker for these people in Egypt. I think that is absolutely amazing. In one of our articles “The Twitter Revolution Debate”, I believe those skeptics who claim that it is not a revolution, rather an old school method of people following people onto streets to rally, is wrong, but not completely wrong. Jeff Jarvis from CNN nailed it when he said “if the Internet didn't matter the Egyptian government wouldn't have felt it necessary to shut it down…” and that is the blatant truth. But relating Jarvis’s quote to the other critics who disagree, I think that even if people followed other people onto the streets to rally, there is a good chance that those followers did it because whoever those leaders were that were already on the streets had the inside information, from the internet, to lead the uninformed ones to their destination.

As far as ‘crowdsourcing’ goes, I think people need to understand that term thoroughly. The article “The Myth of Crowdsourcing” explains things well. Like the fact that on Wikipedia, “the vast majority are the product of a motivated individual. After articles are created, they are curated--corrected, improved and extended--by many different people.” directly quoted from Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia. This basically means that either a professional, or a significant researcher, in the subject creates the page of whatever the subject is, then other interested well-informed folk add on to it. So technically, it is not necessarily all unauthorized information.

I do agree with Rheingold’s assessment about self-interest in cooperation. If I wasn’t interested in or benefited by an open source, then why would I bother putting my two cents in it? I wouldn’t. But I also agree with Narr’s claim that we overly celebrate amateur work, just because you can take a macro picture with your DSLR, doesn’t make you a professional photographer. Yes your efforts and work are appreciated and/or impressive, but what have you got to prove your professional self, other than a few macro shots of your burrito.

I believe that both Rheingold’s and Carr’s theories go together. A website like Flickr is an open source for anyone to upload pictures and show them off or just create ‘private’ albums online. On this website however, you will also find very astounding photography that even professionals may post because they simply want to share their skills, show off or to teach. You will notice that professionals, many times, put a watermark or copyright on their work though. Professional photographers limit their work and build a reputation for themselves that amateurs merely attempt to mock. Hence, agreeing with Carr’s claim that amateurs get recognized on Flickr because of their high interest (Rheingold) in photography, but professionals already have a name for themselves, which usually is not overlooked, rather looked at as inspiration. Did that make sense?

Opensourcing can be a wonderful thing, like Youtube or Twitter, but it can also be bad on other websites like Jigsaw because they sell your info, well i guess you permit it though...Point is opensourcing - Web 2.0 makes the world even smaller and easier to access information. We want free, we want accuracy, and we want it now. I want to hug opensourcing for allowing me to download and upload as i please, but i want to kick it for spamming my email with crap. You win some, and you lose some.

Crowdsourcing: All for one...and one for himself?

Crowd sourcing most definitely provides a lot of opportunities. Allowing multiple users to collaborate on a single work or project allows for new and unheard of ideas to be exchanged, and brings together differing perspectives and viewpoints to help create a more complete and polished final product. At the same time, however, while a number of users are genuinely concerned about the quality of the finished piece and want to make sure it's of quality, just as many people are only in it for selfish reasons. They want to show that their contribution is better than those of the other contributors, and if the collaboration shifts away from their vision or they're not given what they feel is significant credit for their work, they're just as likely to turn on the others, possibly taking measures that can damage the project as a whole.


To provide an example as seen in recent pop culture, a recent chapter in the comic series "Bakuman" featured an artist named Toru Nanamine submitting a manuscript for his comic called "Classroom of Truth" to a magazine for serialization. However, his initial draft, while praised, was passed up. However, Nanamine took unexpected measures by blogging that his manuscript had passed up, uploading scans of it as well, causing multiple angry calls and letters from online readers to the magazine. Furthermore, believing that comic readers knew better than the editorial department, Nanamine's ignored the notes given to him by the editors and instead chose 50 commenters at random and integrated their ideas and suggestions into a newer draft. He would later take this a step further and end up outsourcing much of the art to some of these fans as well.

It proved successful for a short time, but eventually, Nanamine's collaborators became incensed at the fact that he was receiving all the credit for their work, as well as the fact that he was making money off the comic while they didn't receive a cent. In turn, they began to destroy the series from the inside, with some purposefully ruining the art, others dropping the project entirely, a few leaking spoilers about upcoming storylines online, and some even going to the magazine directly and demanding compensation. The scandals and mass exodus of his group's members ultimately ruined "Classroom of Death", as Nanamine's talent alone wasn't enough to maintain the necessary level of quality, and the series was unceremoniously cancelled.

True crowdsourcing will never truly be 100% viable, as humans are selfish beings by nature; at our core, we all want our hard work to be noticed by others. For some, that means trying to outdo and overshadow everyone else so they can't help but look. For others, just getting their name out in the open and letting people know they exist is enough. And a few, of course, just like being disruptive, as negative attention is still attention. Unless everyone involved completely puts aside their own self-centered tendencies and truly believes int he project, focusing 100% on its improvement, there's no 100% guarantee of success with a crowdsourced project. However, that sort of "hivemind" thinking also means the unique perspective each person brings to the table would be held back, ultimately defying the very purpose of crowdsourcing, that being a blend of different views and interpretations to create something unique, and defeating the purpose entirely. As a result, crowdsourcing will likely never be a fully viable option, or at least not for the forseeable future.

Fourth blog post: On crowdsourcing and collaboration

To be sure, the web has introduced unprecedented ways to bring people together in collaborative forms.

Based on this week's readings, what do you think are the advantages and drawbacks of online collaboration and crowdsourcing? Do you agree with Howard Rheingold's assessment that cooperation and open source initiatives are ultimately about self-interest? Or Nicholas Carr's claim that we overly celebrate the amateur, instead of trusting the professional, online? Is crowdsourcing enabling new forms of knowledge or art or innovation to emerge, or is it just another tool for collaboration, as humans have always done?

You can, in particular, consider the recent events in Egypt - what role has collaboration through social media played in fueling the protests (or news reporting) there?

Respond to any or all of the above questions in this week's post. And remember - the best posts will reference specific examples in the readings, include an image, and include a title. Due Wednesday, February 9th.