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This is a thoughtful article, except for the basic premise that if Reddit wants to be useful at crowdsourcing of this nature, it needs to be something other tha
by Vivtek 14y ago
This is a thoughtful article, except for the basic premise that if Reddit wants to be useful at crowdsourcing of this nature, it needs to be something other than Reddit.
Reddit is a social forum. It allowed people to feel part of things, and that's great. Expecting your hammer to be good at driving screws, though? That's just doomed to failure.
Moral of this story for me: just because you have a crowd doesn't mean you're crowdsourcing. Use tools appropriate to the task and you might actually get results.
Sure didn't stop the national media - who actually get paid to know better - from blowing Reddit crowdsourcing up as some kind of magical deus ex machina, though.
- pseut 14y agoThat was the last paragraph of TFA: The problem from Reddit’s perspective, of course, is that this method of sleuthing would be far less exciting for users, and would probably generate less traffic, than its current free-for-all approach. The point of the “find-the-bombers” subthread, after all, wasn’t just to find the bombers—it was also to connect and talk with others, and to feel like you were part of a virtual community.... Your last two sentences are points made by the article.
- Vivtek 14y agoNo, I think these are afterthoughts. The point of the article as I read it is that Reddit needs to change, that these effects are only due to its current design. But I think a saner takeaway is that Reddit is simply the wrong tool for crowdsourcing.