Crowdsourcing works best if some don't help

• Autores: Sarah Scoles
• Localización: New scientist, ISSN 0262-4079, Nº. 3039, 2015, pág. 11
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • There are those who edit Wikipedia entries for accuracy--and those who use the online encyclopedia daily without ever contributing. A new mathematical model says that's probably as it should be: crowdsourcing a problem works best when a certain subset of the population chooses not to participate. In most social undertakings, there is a group that actually joins forces and works, says Zoran Levnajic at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. They found that if the researchers ran simulations with larger crowds, the freeloaders it contained naturally "defected" to working alone--knowing that they could benefit from any solutions the crowd reached, while also potentially reaping huge benefits if they could solve the problem without sharing the result