Professor Stuart Anderson, Connecting With The Crowd Conference, London, 16 June 2017. Smart Society: Crowds, conflict and collectives Crowds are complex. People have varied reasons for participating in a crowd and conflict is an ever-present possibility. Resources are often a particular area of difficulty. Most crowds harbour quite divergent value systems and points of conflict are difficult to predict and accommodate. Individuals within a crowd operate in a shifting web of affiliations that facilitate their actions. The Smart Society EU project studied collective adaptive systems of human and machine elements taking account of diversity in those elements. Crowds in Zooniverse were a key study area for the project where we looked at the effects of incentives on participation. Within the framework of Smart Society we took a systematic approach to identifying and managing context, reputation, provenance, task and incentive within a programming framework that eased the development effort for this type of platform. A key deliverable of the project is the Smart Collectives toolkit (http://www.smartcollectives.com) that provides tools and training in the Smart Society approach. In addition the talk will touch on the broader social and ethical dimensions of platform technologies and will outline the key elements in our Charter for Platform Technologies that provides governance principles for these technologies.

1. Ben-Gurion University of the Negev University of Oxford
Crowds, conflict and collectives
Avi Segal
Ya’akov (Kobi) Gal
Robert J. Simpson
Victoria Homsy, Mark Hartswood, Kevin R. Page and Marina Jirotka
Stuart Anderson Daniele Miorandi

2. Ben-Gurion University of the Negev University of Oxford
Citizen Science
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3. Ben-Gurion University of the Negev University of Oxford
Participation
Most citizen scientists either give up or move on…
(at least from the perspective of any one
application)
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4. Ben-Gurion University of the Negev University of Oxford
Profiling Populations
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56% – 87% of
volunteers
1 day cohort
4% to 14% of
volunteers
10-day cohort

5. Ben-Gurion University of the Negev University of Oxford
Change the curve
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(a) Encourage more regular
contributions
(b) Encourage dabblers to
do a bit more
(b)
(a)

6. Ben-Gurion University of the Negev University of Oxford
“You're not alone on PROJECTNAME - thousands of people take part every
month.
We know that some people worry that they aren't very good at PROJECTNAME .
We can use all volunteers' clicks to learn about the data, and multiple people
will see each image.
We use statistical techniques to get the most from everyone's answers, and the
occasional error does not affect the results.
If PROJECTNAME didn't suit you, then check out all of the other Zooniverse
citizen science projects at www.zooniverse.org,”
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Send an Email

7. Ben-Gurion University of the Negev University of Oxford
Change in the Return Ratio
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8. Ben-Gurion University of the Negev University of Oxford
The Trouble with Incentives
• First understand motives – then design incentives designed to align
those motives to the desired behaviour (Kittur et al)
• Gamification produce ambivalent results in citizen science (Darch,
Preist et al)
• The ability of incentives to create perverse outcomes is well
documented (e.g. Sneddon)
• Incentives produce diverse effects depending on context
(Kittur et al)
• ‘Badge fatigue’ is well known within the gaming industry
http://gamingbusinessreview.com/features/gamification-pitfalls-badge-fatigue-and-loyalty-backlash
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9. Ben-Gurion University of the Negev University of Oxford
Towards a co-creation of value approach
• Instead of asking what motivates people –
– ask instead how participating creates value for
themselves and others.
• Instead of asking how to incentivise people -
– ask instead how people can be better enabled to
create value for themselves and for others.
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10. Ben-Gurion University of the Negev University of Oxford
What is co-creation of value?
• Past: Value created in the
factory and delivered to
the consumer
• Present: The customer is
active in creating the value
of the product or service.
• Promoting the product;
design of new products;
aiding diffusion.
• ‘Flows’ of value to the
business, the customer
and to other customers.
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Wet Seal fashion retailer
http://www.wetseal.com/curalate-gallery/curalate-gallery.html

11. Ben-Gurion University of the Negev University of Oxford
Co-creation of value in citizen science
13/07/2017
www.smart-society-project.eu 11
Helping scientists
create new knowledge
Providing an engaging
experience for
volunteers
Making them feel part
of the scientific process

12. Ben-Gurion University of the Negev University of Oxford
Webs of value co-creation
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13. Ben-Gurion University of the Negev University of Oxford
Blog post (1): Politics of the crowd
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14. Ben-Gurion University of the Negev University of Oxford
Blog post (2): Politics of the crowd
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“Each one also celebrates an individual: participants in
the project cover an enormous range in sex, age,
nationality, personality and motivation; and everyone
has, I think, got something a little different out of their
contribution.”
“It’s worth emphasising that the number of pages
transcribed is only one measure of contribution to the
project – some pages are much harder to read than
others, and people also edit the ship histories, provide
support and advice on the forum, and act as
ambassadors for the project with other communities.”

15. Ben-Gurion University of the Negev University of Oxford
Effects of Gamification
• E.g. Leaderboards in zooniverse
for some projects (Old Weather).
• Create a strong ‘yardstick’ for
value.
• Incentive to increase the volume
of classifications – but at what
impact on their quality? (Darch)
• Attractive to gamers – but a turn-
off for non-gamers – who feel
they do not measure up (Darch)
• Set a normative standard for
contribution (Preist et al)
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16. Ben-Gurion University of the Negev University of Oxford
Reassurance
about
classification
anxiety
Interventions from a co-creation of value
perspective
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“I had started to classify
galaxies, but was not
sure that I was giving the
right answers, so rather
than carry on making
possible mistakes I
reluctantly stopped.”
“I get a little bored, and forget about it.”
“Work and family create distractions.”
“If you're looking for ways to motivate
me, send me an email if I haven't logged
in for a week or two. That will remind
me.”
“I've been participating at Galaxyzoo
for a few weeks and it is only now in
this survey I realize all the other
projects that I can join.”
e-mail to remind
volunteers about
zooniverse
Sign-posting to
other projects

17. Ben-Gurion University of the Negev University of Oxford
Benefits of co-creation perspective
• More symmetrical – motives are held by the volunteer and incentives are things you do to the
volunteer.
• Less individualistic - explains more complex relationships and dynamics between both participating
individuals and groups.
• Don’t want to reject the idea of incentives or motivations – but want to put them in broader non-
individualistic framework.
• Opens up a broader framework for design e.g. around diagnosing and repairing problems where
participants fail to realise value for themselves or each other.
• Provides access to thinking about value and values and ethics dilemmas in participatory citizen
science based on principles of mutuality and equitability.
• Much of this is half-articulated in the citizen science literature – but moving away from the
language and logic of incentives and motives helps realise it more fully.
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18. Ben-Gurion University of the Negev University of Oxford
Smart Collective Toolkit
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19. Ben-Gurion University of the Negev University of Oxford
SmartCollectives Architecture
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20. Ben-Gurion University of the Negev University of Oxford
In short
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• 9 components
–Well-defined functionality
–Open (REST) APIs - see D8.4
–7 of them Open Source
–Integrated
• Able to seamlessly work together
• Programmer-friendly primitives (through the
programming framework)
–Java bindings provided as part of the toolkit

21. Ben-Gurion University of the Negev University of Oxford
https://gitlab.com/smartsociety
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22. Ben-Gurion University of the Negev University of Oxford
The end.
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23. Ben-Gurion University of the Negev University of Oxford
1. Understanding: Survey findings (4)
Being engrossed
– The cadence and [[structure]] of the task create
an engrossing experience.
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“It's fun to see what animals will show up in
each image! And there's always the hope that
the next image will be more interesting than the
last one (especially when there is a string of
images with no wildlife visible)..”

24. Ben-Gurion University of the Negev University of Oxford
Survey findings: Lost interest in a project initially
seemed attractive?
• Legitimacy of the value obtained or of the nature of
the exchange
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“I read a post in Talk saying that our
classifications were used for commercial
purposes.”
“People should clean-up their own data.”