Community Production vs. Crowdsourcing – Initial thoughts

The following are my initial and incomplete thoughts about “Crowdsourcing” vs. “Community Production“.

Background: I first came across Jeff Howe’s use of the term crowdsourcing in Wired magazine, when I was researching for the iStockphoto business case. I then had a nice discussion of with Austin Hill about many things over lunch, including crowdsourcing and community production which he blogged about here. I then followed up by reading Austin’s Hugh Mcguire Libribox Interview, crowdsource this, goldsourcing, and the Wikipedia entry of Crowdsourcing. I’ve also checked out this insightful interview of Lise Gagné, iStockphoto’s top contributor.

Since Jeff coined the term crowdsourcing in the Wired article, I will start by quoting part of his web’s mission statement to explain what he was trying to explore,

[...] I recently published an article about a phenomenon I call Crowdsourcing. The article explored the ways in which the amateur – defined as scientists, writers, photographers or anyone else working outside an organizational structure like a firm – has become an increasingly significant economic force in our world.

It should be noted that even Jeff uses iStockphoto as an example, I think he never quite put enough emphasis on the community side of things (e.g. how contributors will help each others in forums, etc.) Here is an excerpt from Jeff’s Wired article, which also seem to focus too much focus on the cost-savings involved,

Technological advances in everything from product design software to digital video cameras are breaking down the cost barriers that once separated amateurs from professionals. Hobbyists, part-timers, and dabblers suddenly have a market for their efforts, as smart companies in industries as disparate as pharmaceuticals and television discover ways to tap the latent talent of the crowd. The labor isn’t always free, but it costs a lot less than paying traditional employees. It’s not outsourcing; it’s crowdsourcing.

As Jeff first associated crowdsourcing with cost (”… labor isn’t always free, but it costs a lot less than …”), it might have lead to Hugh McGuire’s critique/view that “crowdsourcing = clearcut” as it benefits the companies that are paying a lot less to the people who helped. With this tied-in of the concept, I can see why Austin and others are consciously trying to change the conversation from using crowdsourcing to use the term community production instead.

Before I forget, I would like to mention the “Games with a Purpose” style games (see previous blog here) — these games get work done from a crowd while people are playing. It is interesting to note that, as part of the game, the users do not communicating with each other. (example: Labeling things in pictures.)

I agree with Austin’s three properities that distinguish “Community Production” from “Crowdsourcing“, [K: emphasis and comments mine]

• Something to believe in – Open source, Librivox, Creative Commons and Wikipedia are all examples of a community forming around some common community cause that surpases any single entities interests. [K: Having a shared believe is important and certainly helps. But is it required? I'm not sure.]
• Community interactions are integral to how production occurs – Librivox works because of the community. If a company uses Amazon’s Mechanical Turk service to hire contract laborers to read public domain books then crowdsourcing might have occurred – but there is no community involved with the production of the audiobooks. [K: I agree with the point but disagree with the example. I will be much more comfortable using Wikipedia as an example because community interactions are truly integral. Why? Each article will likely be worked on by many people. People will be editing each others work. Whereas LibriVox's book chapter or poem can be read more or less individually.]
  
• Sharing for a common cause – Even in the case of iStockphoto there is a sharing of work for the common cause of creating a marketplace of affordable royalty free photos. Flickr users share for different reasons, but there is a common community that has formed around sharing. The open business competition conducted by Goldcorp had no sharing among competiting teams, no common community cause. [K: sharing is needed to form a community but I wonder if we need to have a "common cause". Enough iStockphoto contributors need to be willing to share but I don't think they need to have a "common cause".]

Now, I would like to add a few more properities that distinguish “Community Production” (CP) from “Crowdsourcing” (CS),

• CP – People tend to be more loyal because they enjoy and have strong tie and feelings for the community. Less willing to jump ship for small gains.
• CS – People tend to be less loyal as the people are more task-based. Will have no problem to work for the highest bidders.

• CP — People tend to grow and learn from each other. As in the case of iStockphoto new photographers, they actually take better photos as they get feedback and comments from the iStockphoto community.
• CS – People tend to not know about each others. So there aren’t really any opportunity to grow as a “crowd”.