3,499 research outputs found
Human Computation and Convergence
Humans are the most effective integrators and producers of information,
directly and through the use of information-processing inventions. As these
inventions become increasingly sophisticated, the substantive role of humans in
processing information will tend toward capabilities that derive from our most
complex cognitive processes, e.g., abstraction, creativity, and applied world
knowledge. Through the advancement of human computation - methods that leverage
the respective strengths of humans and machines in distributed
information-processing systems - formerly discrete processes will combine
synergistically into increasingly integrated and complex information processing
systems. These new, collective systems will exhibit an unprecedented degree of
predictive accuracy in modeling physical and techno-social processes, and may
ultimately coalesce into a single unified predictive organism, with the
capacity to address societies most wicked problems and achieve planetary
homeostasis.Comment: Pre-publication draft of chapter. 24 pages, 3 figures; added
references to page 1 and 3, and corrected typ
Simulating the Cost of Cooperation: A Recipe for Collaborative Problem-Solving
Collective problem-solving and decision-making, along with other forms of collaboration online, are central phenomena within ICT. There had been several attempts to create a system able to go beyond the passive accumulation of data. However, those systems often neglect important variables such as group size, the difficulty of the tasks, the tendency to cooperate, and the presence of selfish individuals (free riders). Given the complex relations among those variables, numerical simulations could be the ideal tool to explore such relationships. We take into account the cost of cooperation in collaborative problem solving by employing several simulated scenarios. The role of two parameters was explored: the capacity, the groupâs capability to solve increasingly challenging tasks coupled with the collective knowledge of a group, and the payoff, an individualâs own benefit in terms of new knowledge acquired. The final cooperation rate is only affected by the cost of cooperation in the case of simple tasks and small communities. In contrast, the fitness of the community, the difficulty of the task, and the groups sizes interact in a non-trivial way, hence shedding some light on how to improve crowdsourcing when the cost of cooperation is high
Outsourcing labour to the cloud
Various forms of open sourcing to the online population are establishing themselves as cheap, effective methods of getting work done. These have revolutionised the traditional methods for innovation and have contributed to the enrichment of the concept of 'open innovation'. To date, the literature concerning this emerging topic has been spread across a diverse number of media, disciplines and academic journals. This paper attempts for the first time to survey the emerging phenomenon of open outsourcing of work to the internet using 'cloud computing'. The paper describes the volunteer origins and recent commercialisation of this business service. It then surveys the current platforms, applications and academic literature. Based on this, a generic classification for crowdsourcing tasks and a number of performance metrics are proposed. After discussing strengths and limitations, the paper concludes with an agenda for academic research in this new area
Understanding proactive leadership in crowdsourcing
Crowdsourcing is a relatively new concept, nonethel
ess it has been raising more and more interest
with researchers. More and more organisations reach
for it, for instance taking into account its
potential business value. It decides about access t
o experience, innovativeness, information, skills,
and
work, which are located outside the organisation, a
ctually in the crowd. An analysis of various
examples of making use of crowdsourcing by organisa
tions encourages reflection on the factors,
which determine its success. In the literature, one
emphasises, among others, the significance
of proactive leadership to crowdsourcing. This arti
cle is an attempt to specify the significance of
proactive leadership in crowdsourcing. For the need
s of specifying, evaluating, and identifying the
existing state of knowledge on the significance of
proactive leadership in crowdsourcing a systematic
literature review was conducted. It also enabled se
lection, critical evaluation of the existing resear
ch,
identification and synthesis of the results of all
of the principal research studies and theoretical
approaches. The results of the systematic literatur
e review indicate that proactive leadership is
considered to be the necessary condition for beginn
ing any actions initiating crowdsourcing.
A proactive leader takes the initiative, starts the
action, initiates, is able to find the best soluti
on, and
actively searches for information in order to incre
ase the knowledge resources. This is connected with
identifying by these persons of the possibilities a
nd willingness to introduce changes in work
organisation. It creates incentives for the partici
pation of virtual communities in crowdsourcing and
propagates and promotes accepting their knowledge b
y the employees
Integrative Solutions in Online Crowdsourcing Innovation Challenges
Online crowdsourcing challenges are widely used for problem-solving and innovation. Existing theory has characterized such challenges as tools for tapping distant knowledge. By building on information processing theory we move beyond this characterization and present a perspective that describes innovation challenges as virtual places in which ideas are not simply submitted or commented upon but knowledge is integrated. This perspective shifts the role of crowdsourcing challenges from mere tools for gathering ideas to representing the locus of innovation. Our perspective suggests that three types of knowledge affect the quality of integrative solutions: elementary ideas, facts, and analogical examples. Based on a large dataset, we find that elementary ideas and analogical examples are related to increased solution quality, while facts are related to decreased solution quality. We expand the research on online crowdsourcing innovation challenges to include how crowd participants influence the quality of solutions through the content of their postings
A survey of the use of crowdsourcing in software engineering
The term 'crowdsourcing' was initially introduced in 2006 to describe an emerging distributed problem-solving model by online workers. Since then it has been widely studied and practiced to support software engineering. In this paper we provide a comprehensive survey of the use of crowdsourcing in software engineering, seeking to cover all literature on this topic. We first review the definitions of crowdsourcing and derive our definition of Crowdsourcing Software Engineering together with its taxonomy. Then we summarise industrial crowdsourcing practice in software engineering and corresponding case studies. We further analyse the software engineering domains, tasks and applications for crowdsourcing and the platforms and stakeholders involved in realising Crowdsourced Software Engineering solutions. We conclude by exposing trends, open issues and opportunities for future research on Crowdsourced Software Engineering
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