Crowdsourcing

 Still  on the subject of crowdsourcing, Waze is one crowdsourcing apps that I use regularly.  It's a community-based traffic map, with users inform other users of traffic jams, road closures, police traps etc.  I never had considered it a crowdsourcing site before, but it really is.   However, misuse of crowdsourcing,  as was the case when students at the Technion faked a traffic jam, can cause this kind of application to be unreliable. Similar reports about fake traffic jams in Los Angeles were refuted by the Waze developers. 

With all the reports of sexual harrasment in Egypt, Egyptian women have created an online map, based on crowdsourcing, meant to track sexual harassment.  They are able to submit reports online, which then appear on a map of Egypt.  I don't know how effective it is, but it's certainly meant as a deterrent.

Unfortunately, crowdsourcing hasn't really reached its fullest potential. I can think of many uses for it in our city, such as creating an interactive map of events, which are shared by users within the community.  It could be used to keep track of racist attacks, of places where garbage hasn't been cleaned, or where there are available parking spots, or other kinds of information sharing or requests for information/assistance.

Wisdom of the crowds

Although it seems that the wisdom of the crowds is usually correct, that may not always be the case. I spent a few (bored) evenings as an online "volunteer"  to transcribe genealogical information for an online archive that was engaging in Crowdsourcing.  While it struck me as a great idea, mainly because I was interested personally in accessing some of the files that were being transcribed, I realized how erroneous this kind of crowdsourcing could be. I transcribed several files without reading the directions.  I submitted files with numerous mistakes mainly because I couldn't be bothered to read the directions. I'm not sure anyone was going to clean up after my mistakes either.

I have to admit that I suffer from information overload.  I don't read emails anymore because I subscribed to too many political and work-related email lists. I've tried to organize them into files in gmail, but have found it too overwhelming.  As a result, I miss important emails about school meetings etc. Strangely though on facebook, I'm always happy to read as much information as I can, and am willing to scroll forever reading posts from hours before.  I suppose that this is the "Fear of missing out," which is probably why my cellphone battery dies after a few hours of checking email and facebook.

I have noticed on facebook that most of my good friends (in real life) overlap with one another, although in some cases I know that they aren't really good friends with one another.  Usually when somebody who doesn't know anyone else that I know requests a friendship, I wonder what they want from me, or how do they even know me.  Unfortunately, my attempt to run netvizz in Facebook didn't work the way I thought it should, and just yielded names and numbers. So I tried WolframAlpha and I received a lot of information, some of it interesting, some not.  The most amusing was that Ahmad was the most common name among my friends.  And my friend Aviva will be very happy to hear that she was listed as a top "social connector."   I found this interesting too, when I log onto facebook, including at 3 am.

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