Crowdsourcing

If I Were an Editor and You Were All Reporters ...

As I get ready to leave for the long weekend, I wanted to get a post up with a little bit of staying power. So I thought I'd engage in a little thought experiment. I'm going to pretend I run a good-sized news desk (we'll call it the crowdsourcing bureau) and I actually have a team of writers I can send out on assignment. A lot of press releases, personal appeals, business proposals and the like come across my transom. Some are intriguing. Many are bone-headed, or bear the unmistakable scent of snake oil. I've selected several of the former and have written up what are generally called "assignment memos" in the industry.

Now my suspicion is that my little parlor game will start and end with this post. But if any of you feel inspired, go ahead and take any of the following assignments. I promise to post any reasonably well-written and well-reasoned post that results.

Story: The USAID Development 2.0 Challenge
Backgrounder: The United States Agency for International Development isn't known for innovation. But it's recently launched an initiative to generate ideas on how mobile applications could be used to "improve development impact and connect people in developing countries to key resources in health, banking, education, agricultural trade, or other pressing development issues." Three winners will be chosen. Grand prize is 10 grand. The runners up get $5,000. All three will be lauded at a ceremony in DC in the new year. The community will vote on the projects and a jury (Full Disclosure: I've agreed to sit on said jury) will pick the three winners from the fifteen most popular projects. 
Angle: Such open source challenges have produced rich yields for companies like NetFlix and Google. However, USAID is offering considerably less money than these private sector firms did. Can the prize format work in the public sector? What does a mobile expert make of the proposals submitted thus far? Are they feasible? The question foremost in my mind is, who gets the contract to develop the winning application? Presumably the submitter should have a stake in it. Do they retain rights to their intellectual property, or do they—as in most cases with the prize form of crowdsourcing—hand it over to the intitution?

Story: The Extraordinaries—Philanthropy! On Your iPhone!
Backgrounder: A lot of people have been trying to find the confluence between crowdsourcing and philanthropy (including—see above—USAID). But the Extraordinaries, by this assigning editor's lights, are making a good shot at it. Generally I like to see rubber hitting road before siccing one of my reporters (remember, we're in pretendville here) on a story, but sometimes the idea alone merits a story. The Extraordinaries folks have built an application that could be downloaded to any smart phone. It would allow users to donate those unused minutes in their day (what Clay Shirky aptly calls "cognitive surplus") to, well, doing good. Examples: "Transcribe old books; Critique people's resumes; Identify potholes in your community; Translate docs for a non-profit;" Etc. The problem with many crowdsourcing ideas is they don't take modularity into account, which is to say, they don't anticipate that most people don't have an hour to give them, but only a few minutes or two. The Extraordinaries builds this anticipation into their product.
Angle: Simple: Dig into the company. What are the founders' backgrounds? Will this work? What do professional developers think about it? Best yet: How could various charitable organizations utilize this?

More stories TK. It's 5:30 and time to start baking pies.

Google Launches SearchWiki

Last night Google officially launched its SearchWiki function. Now you can customize your own search results—upgrading the best, deleting the worst and adding notes to any you like. It is, in characteristic Google fashion, straightforward and ridiculously easy to use. It is also—for a company that tends to follow the release early and often dictum by quietly adding upgrades and features with little fanfare—an uncharacteristic hard launch. Marshall Kirkpatrick at ReadWriteWeb notes, "We expect this to be a very big deal. ... This isn't Google Labs, this isn't a little project off to the side, apparently there's a Google Search Wiki team and they have access to the primary search results page."

So what's wiki about it? While your changes only affect your own searches, you can also view everyone else's edits by clicking on the "See all notes for this SearchWiki" link at the bottom of any search page. This could become a real acid test for crowdsourcing. Since its release today, SearchWiki has already generated—shocking, this—much commentary in the search results for "Obama." This contains such gems as "Hi there!!!" and "Obamanation!" Google has written Digg style voting function into the comments, so we can hope that in time the more inane commentary gets voted out of view. But if I learned anything in the research for my book, it was that bigger crowds invariably lead to exponential increases in idiocy. SearchWiki could revolutionize search, or it could just attract a global army of trolls. Time will tell. While we wait, here are some first-blush reactions from across the Intertubes:

• Michael Arrington asks: If it ain't broke, why fix it?
• Official Google Blog on the release
• John Battelle wonders whether people want customized results.
• and VentureBeat says SearchWiki proves that despite its size Google retains the ability to reinvent itself.

Finally, here's the official Google video explainer:

Crowdsourcing the Patent Review System

There are many areas of government over which Obama has pledged to wave the magic wand of reform. And given the severity of the current economic crisis, fixing the system by which the US awards patents and trademarks has presumably been placed on the back burner. If that's the case, it's a shame, because the patent system's problems have reached tragi-comic proportions. As of early 2008 (when I last researched the matter for my book) it took an average of 2.5 years for an application to work its way through the USPTO, which has a backlog of more than 1 million applications. The 5,500 examiners themselves are notoriously underpaid and overworked, and can only allot twenty hours to review even the most abstruse patents. Further hampering the process, reviewers rarely posses expertise in computer science and aren't allowed to consult the Internet in their research, relying instead on the USPTO's own database of prior art. The result? An increase in undeserving patents and a Gordian Knot of conflicting claims. Unsurprsingly, patent litigation has doubled since 1990, at an average cost of $2 million per lawsuit.

In my book I chronicled how Beth Noveck, a professor at New York Law School, was trying to harness the network—which is to say, all of us—to improve the process. She launched Peer-to-Patent in June of last year, in cooperation with the USPTO, as well as such companies as IBM and Microsoft, whose outsized patent portfolios exercise a magnetic force for frivolous litigation. How it works: Post applications to the public, and let interested parties submit prior art and comment on the claims. The wisdom of crowds will do a better job of determining validity, the logic goes, than a single reviewer. I'm a fan, as I make clear in my book, but to judge by the number of participants (2352 members have submitted 274 instances of prior art), it's failed to gain the level of traction that would—and I'm speculating here—persuade the USPTO to adopt Noveck's methodology across the board.

Now a new model has emerged: On Monday a company called Article One Partners hung up its shingle. It's like Peer-to-Patent, in that it relies on the collective intelligence of the public. It's unlike Peer-to-Patent in that it offers money—up to $50,000—for anyone that can provide documentation that an existing patent either is or isn't valid. My colleague Julian Sanchez at Ars Technica (now part of the Wired empire) notes that this isn't entirely original, and perhaps Article One—which has filed for patent protection—is guilty of patent infringement itself. That's not quite right—in fact, Article One is working with Noveck. It will pay Peer-to-Patent contributors if they submit prior art that is accepted by the non-profit. 

No, my problem with Article One is that it would seem to create the prospect of freelance IP mercenaries, with a cash incentive to dig up material that would assist possible plantiffs in a suit, leading to a further, unwelcome increase in court dockets. I could be wrong (and if I am, I'm sure AOP will be the first to tell me), but my impression is that whereas Peer-to-Patent asks its community to review patent applications, Article One asks its contributors to review existing patents. This strikes me as a horse of a different color, and one that patent lawyers might consider with some relish, and judges with a sigh of exhaustion.

Now, I'm not entirely unaware of the contradiction in my complaint—part of the solution to aforementioned Gordian Knot it to invalidate patents that shouldn't have been granted in the first place. But the problem is that given the complexity of many of the patents in, say, computer sciences or biotechnology, originality is in the eye of the beholder—or, as it often happens, a judge.

At any rate, I'm excited to see Article One launch for one reason: It offers an unparalled window into what may be the most fascinating, and thorny, aspects of research in community production: What motivates the contributors? Will more people contribute to Article One than have participated in Peer-to-Patent? If so, what's the signal to noise ratio? Did the cash incentive bring out the idiots and the trolls? All interesting questions that time will surely answer.

A Personal Note: A Boy Named Finn

I've dithered for weeks over whether to write this  post. As my longtime readers know, I've maintained a strict formula for what makes it onto this blog: I don't discuss my other Wired stories, or the news of the day, or how I feel about the state of the nation. Above all, I've conscientiously kept my personal life off these pages, for the excellent, time-honored reason that stories are almost invariably more interesting than the personalities who report on them. The crowdsourcing blog is devoted, simply, to crowdsourcing, in all its various manifestations and implications.

Today I'm going to break with tradition, for two reasons: First, I believe in transparency; Second, believing in crowdsourcing as I do, I think it has applications in my own life, which is another way of saying I have faith in communities of people I've never met. I'll make the relevance of these principles clear in what follows.

My son Finn, born in September of last year, has significant developmental delays. While we don't know the specific cause for the delays, he lags well behind his peers on all fronts: His social, verbal and motor skills are all impaired. He was first diagnosed in February, when he was four months old. At that point we enrolled him in an early intervention program, which sends physical, speech and occupational therapists into our home twice a week. We also began the rounds of doctor visits. Delays impact every aspect of a child's development, so we had to take him to see an ophthalmologist, a gastroentererologist, a genetic counselor, a neurologist and, of course, a pediatrician. All this presented an enormous logistical challenge, especially as I was working seven days a week editing my book. So my wife bore that brunt of the burden.

This month it was my turn. Unhappy with much of the medical care our son has received, we've been finding new doctors, or pursuing a more aggressive course with the doctors we have, as well as procuring a (fourth) therapist. This has obviously taken a (temporary) toll on my work life, noticeable most clearly on this blog. So for all of you who've asked whether I'm working on my next book, the answer is, probably not. (While the thought of a book about Finn has its appeal, it's hard to write the biography of a one year old.)

At any rate, this is where transparency comes in. Have you had trouble getting me to answer your questions, or do an interview, or even just respond to your email? Now you know why. I'm not abandoning crowdsourcing—the blog or the subject in general. I'm not on to the next big thing. And I still love hearing about all your bright, shiny ideas for how crowdsourcing could be applied to agriculture, gastronomy and third world development. Keep the emails coming; I promise to respond when time permits.

And now for the crowdsourcing bit: I never intended to relay any of this in such an impersonal format as the crowdsourcing blog. We remained mostly silent about our circumstance, telling only close friends and family. But a recent email exchange with a reader changed my mind. It turns out he has extensive experience working with kids with developmental delays. It turns out a lot of people do. And our silence hasn't served us. And it defintely hasn't served our son. We've been so busy the past nine months that we've failed to make contact with other parents in similar situations, or even identify the kinds of support networks that would provide us with invaluable information about Finn's condition.

I'm not crowdsourcing for your sympathy. Raising Finn may be mind bendingly difficult, but there are far better candidates for pity. He's healthy, active and calendar-grade cute. I am crowdsourcing for your information. Know of a Brooklyn-based support group for special needs caretakers? Bring it on. How about special therapies to increase social engagement in toddlers? I want to know about it. I am, in short, hoping to make contact. I strongly suspect that many of you have experience—far more experience than us—trodding this strange road we've found ourselves on. And just maybe, some of you have a map. We'd love to see it.