Coversourcing is not Crowdsourcing
I was reading about a competition where designers were invited to create a cover for the upcoming book, Crowdsourcing. This competition, cleverly named 'Coversourcing' -- was presented as being an example of crowdsourcing in action.
Except it's not. It's spec work.
I was compelled to comment on this on the Creative Review blog post about it.
Reprinted below:
I disagree with the definition of crowdsourcing presented by this competition.
This competition is spec work -- getting lots of designers to design something, with only a few getting compensated.
Crowdsourcing is when 'the many' can do a job better, faster, and more comprehensively than the 'the few'.
Wikipedia is an example of crowdsourcing. Facebook being translated by members into multiple languages is an example of crowdsourcing.
This competition is not.
Labels: creativereview crowdsourcing
1 Comments:
you are maybe right as far as definitions go, but while an encyclopedia can be considered better, i.e. more valuable, because of the knowledge of a crowd (still, wikipedia founder doesn't like to consider wikipedia a a crowdsourcing example, since the curatorship is a key element of its value), a translation can just be faster, and not at all better, because of the effort of the crowd... and loads of professional translators would be as angry as other creatives or professionals are if the whole crowdsourcing concept is actually introduced just to obtain cheap-to-free online collaboration... i think, everyone should consider pros and cons of these emerging practices and none should be judged if acting following his/her free will...
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