Aug
28
Crowdsourcing for Mormons
August 28, 2008 by Giuseppe Martinengo | Filed in Internet & Media, Mormon Church
According to LDSMediaTalk,
Crowdsourcing is an innovative business trend that takes collaborative work to a whole new level. Around the world, individuals are using online communities to identify people with similar experiences or interests who can share ideas, offer their expertise, and collectively accomplish work.
Examples of crowdsourcing are provided by people editing a Wikipedia article, or uploading a video to YouTube, and so on.
Crowdsourcing is the act of taking a job traditionally performed by an employee or a third-party provider and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people in the form of an open call. Using the technique, an organization can tap into the collective intelligence and expertise of the public at large to complete the task. Crowdsourcing can include anything from gathering feedback on a new idea, asking for help to solve a problem, or actually accomplishing the task at hand.
It is important to realize that crowdsourcing is not a magic tool for solving all problems, but it can be used to speed up many processes and test new ideas or attract volunteers to participate in projects that would require an amount of resources unavailable to an organization.
However, there are also criticisms of this idea. According to Wikipedia
Some reports have focused on the negative effects of crowdsourcing on business owners, particularly in regard to how a crowdsourced project can sometimes end up costing a business more than a traditionally outsourced project.
Some of the pitfalls of crowdsourcing include:
- Added costs to bring a project to an acceptable conclusion.
- Increased likelihood that a crowdsourced project will fail due to lack of monetary motivation, too few participants, lower quality of work, lack of personal interest in the project, global language barriers, or difficulty managing a large-scale, crowdsourced project.
- Below-market wages, or no wages at all.
- Difficulties maintaining a working relationship with crowdsourced workers throughout the duration of a project.
In my experience I have noticed that some of these criticism are true. For example, to overstress the use of volunteers in an organization to save money may be a mistake since volunteers are not really free. They need to be trained and organized, and most of the time they are looking for something in return. Therefore, unless the organization is able to find alternative forms of “compensation” for volunteers, the turnover may become extremely expensive. In short, lack of monetary motivation, too few participants, lower quality of work, lack of personal interest in the projects may end up costing the organization more than simply paying people to do it.
Thinking about the use of crowdsourcing in the Mormon Church I cannot avoid thinking that it has been used many times very well (see the recent example of the Family History Record Extraction program).
However, in some cases I believe that the most important result and benefit is not that of saving money to the organization, but that of allowing members to learn and to participate more fully in fostering the mission of the Church. This added benefit alone may be enough to promote more “crowdsourcing programs” in the Church.