Presentation by Simon Tanner given at: CITIZEN HUMANITIES COMES OF AGE: CROWDSOURCING FOR THE 21ST CENTURY. 9th and 10th September 2015, King's College London

1. @SimonTanner
When crowdsourcing was
called telecrofting:
Some origin stories
Simon Tanner
Digital Humanities,
King’s College London
Twitter: @SimonTanner
09/09/2015 05:47 ENC Public Talk 19 February 2013 1

2. Quick Case Study – telecrofting
Some fun looking at the origins of the term
Some serious points about the challenges to be
addressed
Overview
@SimonTanner

3. http://simon-tanner.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/when-crowdsourcing-was-called.html
Telecrofting at the Turn of the Century
Shetland Isles Museum and Archives
http://photos.shetland-museum.org.uk/
@SimonTanner
Glass plate collection >80,000 items

5. Volunteer benefits are high
Shetland Isles Museum and Archives
http://photos.shetland-museum.org.uk/
@SimonTanner
Volunteers trained to very high
explicit skill levels
Extremely high community
engagement
Task achieved but its success was
defined by the community not
just the museum

6. Project Gutenberg’s Distributed Proofreaders.
Founded by Charles Franks in 2000 as an independent site to assist Project
Gutenberg.
Wikipedia (launched Monday 15 January 2001)
may be the greatest ever volunteer project
and one that looks very much like crowdsourcing.
Don’t forget the debt of inspiration owed to the h2g2 website – a collaborative
online encyclopedia project. Started by Douglas Adams in 1999 to construct in
its own words, "an unconventional guide to life, the universe, and everything“
and based on his idea dating back to the 1978 radio show and books.
Some Origins of a Term
@SimonTanner

7. “Commons-based peer production” - Professor Yochai Benkler
Benkler, Y (2002) Coase's Penguin or Linux and The nature of the firm, Yale Law Journal 369
Information is the key object of production
“Communication and information exchange
across space and time are much cheaper and
more efficient than ever before”
Thus: very large numbers of people work
cooperatively on the Web. Often but not
exclusively without direct payment to
those contributors.
Commons-based peer production is
often used interchangeably with
social production
Some Origins of a Term
@SimonTanner
2001

8. @SimonTanner
www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/clickworkers-on-mars

9. Crowdsourcing – first use
Jeff Howe: “Simply defined, crowdsourcing represents the act of a company or
institution taking a function once performed by employees and outsourcing it to an
undefined (and generally large) network of people in the form of an open call. This can
take the form of peer-production (when the job is performed collaboratively), but is also
often undertaken by sole individuals. The crucial prerequisite is the use of the open call
format and the large network of potential laborers.”
“I interpret crowdsourcing to be taking place any time a company makes a choice to
employ the crowd to perform labor that could alternatively be performed by an
assigned group of employees or contractors... In other words, crowdsourcing need not
require an active shift from current employees (or again, contractors) to the crowd; it
can start with the crowd.”
@SimonTanner

10. Infinite Monkeys?
@SimonTanner

11. Value Chain = Task / Utility Oriented
@SimonTanner
Benefits = entertainment,
passing the time,
low level skills built
Task completion &
thus crowdsourcing host
is key beneficiary
Marginal benefits but
high volumes reached

12. Challenge – find your telecrofters
If crowdsourcing is so great why are there so few projects?
Volunteers have a much higher engagement,
develop a much higher skills base and thus see more
chance their lives can be changed in beneficial ways
Personalise the crowd,
reach out to individuals,
build genuine relationships and listen
The task is not everything – look beyond
mere utility
@SimonTanner

13. @SimonTanner
When crowdsourcing was
called telecrofting:
Some origin stories
Simon Tanner
Digital Humanities,
King’s College London
Twitter: @SimonTanner
09/09/2015 05:47 ENC Public Talk 19 February 2013 13