Thursday, April 11, 2013

When crowdsourcing is a euphemism for dumb piece work

The crowd, the wonderful crowd that can achieve anything! One meaning of crowdsourcing is asking the crowd for money, crowdfunding. Another is to have the crowd perform work, for free. A third meaning hides badly paid piece work behind the term.

Crowds used to held in low esteem, mostly associated with loud, undesirable, possibly dangerous behaviors.

Then we discovered the singular "the crowd" and everything changed.  Unlike the plural cousins, "the crowd" became the singular (get it?) force of good and right on the planet.

With it came crowdsourcing, even embraced by some large companies on the grounds that the crowd was wise and could get lots of work done. And the expert knowledge to be teased out of the crowd.
The real reason was not meant for publication: free labor or next to free labor.

So, if you think this blogster does not like "the crowd" you would be wrong. The problem we have is not with the crowd but with those who dump everything they cannot do or do not want to do on the crowd.

As a matter of fact, the crowd can do many things well.  For one, it can give money. This is a simple thing, you need no skills or knowledge beyond sending money through paypal or writing a check.

Other areas of crowd activity are highly specialized, only trained folks, experts can do them. Which is cool.

Then there are the bad projects, which require almost no special skills and would be too expensive for experts.

This blogster just came back from one such project dealing with web searches and user intent. What does the majority of users expect to see as the result of a query?

There were two categories: image and non-image. No category "both". Someone wrote up a table with specific items to show what users would expect, for example, "celebrity" falls under "image".  That's fine. Another one "medical conditions", not so easy anymore.

The author of the list says "image". And then I get a heart attack.

The query to classify as "image intent" or "non-image intent" is heart attack.

The blogster has an existential choice to make, adhere to the list or think a little. My fellow crowders adhere to the list, I click "non-image intent". The computer says "false" and won't pay me for it.
Hm, if the computer knows already, why the fuck did it ask me?

The next item is in German "Ladungssicherungsgesetz" (Law on securing cargo). Cool, "non-image intent".
Computer says "Incorrect - a kind of net". I would love to tell the box that a cargo net is indeed one of many ways to secure a load. But there is no option, no box. No "dumbass" button.

Moving on, "motorcycle accident", easy "non-image intent". Incorrect - can be both image and video intent. I should add here that a "video intent" is classified in the categories as "non-image intent". So, the explanation is in fact "both", but I am wrong either way. At least this explanation tells who added all the correct answers in the first place: a male, late teens to early twenties, semi literate and a fan of the Jackass movies.

Well, another German one, "Stadt Landsberg". I made it, I am safe: "image intent" according to the list. You notice that my resistance is fading, and I am trying to earn some money by sticking to the list. Incorrect - fire department.
Are you kidding me? It's a frigging small city in Germany, also most likely the name of a Lufthansa airplane as well as the name of a frigging frigate of that most elusive German navy. Oh, I see, the website description of the first query result does mention the fire department of the town.

With a certain feeling of shame, I hit the "Okay" button, confirming to the computer that it is right and I am wrong, very much in the same way that a hostage with a gun to their head will tell the gunman how they love the cologne their captor put on for this occasion.

The computer takes a second to savor its victory and then displays another dialog box: You are now disable from this project and can not continue.

A wave of relief overcomes me. I even forgive the machine the mistake of using "disable". It should have told me "disabled" to be grammatically correct, even though there are better choices of words.

And this is how crowds work in the neverlands situated between the lowlands of "no skills and clear outcome" (gimme money) and the highlands of "high skills, good outcome" (open source protein database).








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