I really admire the premise of crowd sourcing. It relies on intrinsically motivated individuals working toward the greater good and helping each other. The idea that in a larger group of people, you’ll get better results and better information makes sense. I can also understand why it would be worrisome, because often the loudest people in a group will not be the most factual or correct ones. There are so many examples of vandalism on wiki pages and misinformation.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/alanwhite/spectacular-acts-of-wikipedia-vandalism?utm_term=.rcnOplW8B#.yrJZN4OGW

The link above is an example of a hypertext, which I had NO idea had roots on the older paper encyclopedias. I think that encyclopedias are kind of dated at this point and that people don’t really need to spend money on them, but I feel like if I had been alive a longer time ago I would have been the type of person to buy a set. I’m so glad I grew up in a time where most information is easily accessible through a computer. That’s why I loved Richard Stallman’s freedoms of software and his idea of copyleft. I feel like the more people have access to things, the better they’ll be. More people will be willing to fix and improve information and software, and more people will be using it which is good for them.

Crowd sourcing can be good for everyone. For example, WAZE is an app that uses crowd sourcing to help notify drivers of things on the road like blockages, traffic, police officers, etc. The more people use it, the better and more accurate the alerts become. Also, people like me who never update the app with information because I’m too afraid to do it while driving can still benefit because there are enough people who have passengers in their car who can update it for them and they help the rest of us.