The Controversies of Crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing is an interesting idea. The website Wikipedia works off of it, but how popular of an idea is it? In The Myth of Crowdsourcing (http://www.forbes.com/2009/09/28/crowdsourcing-enterprise-innovation-technology-cio-network-jargonspy.html), the author mentions that Wikipedia isn't a true example of crowdsourcing because a "vast majority are the product of a motivated individual". Even still, since Wikipedia is open to the public to edit and update, it should still be considered an example of crowdsourcing. Most of the time in groups, there is one motivated individual that does a lot of the work, and this carries through into crowdsourcing.

Crowdsourcing is not too intense because it isn't efficient or smart for companies to open their networks to the rest of the world to updated their data. However, employees in firms that deal with encyclopedias and other reference works should watch out for crowdsourcing because sometimes, the people that know the most about a certain subject aren't the ones working for reference companies. In that case, crowdsourcing is definitely the best bet for sharing information.