Choosy crowds and the machine age: challenges for the future of humanities crowdsourcing

Choosy crowds and the machine age: challenges for the future of humanities crowdsourcing

Citizen Humanities Comes of Age: Crowdsourcing for the Humanities in the 21st Century

King’s College London, September 2015

Mia Ridge, Open University@mia_out http://miaridge.com

Crowdsourcing in cultural heritage is...

...asking the public to help with tasks that contribute to a shared, significant goal or research interest related to cultural heritage collections or knowledge.

The activities and/or goals should be inherently rewarding.

Motivations as guidance

People crave:• satisfying work to do• the experience of being

good at something• time spent with people

we like• the chance to be a part

of something bigger(Jane McGonigal, 2009)

State Library of New South Waleshttps://www.flickr.com/photos/29454428@N08/2880982738

Mobiles and tablets

http://familysearch.org/

The growth of platforms

Technology isn't enough

https://www.flickr.com/photos/missouristatearchives/20329587543/

Compete or collaborate?

http://www.hover.com/blog/what-ever-happened-to-webrings/

#party host

https://www.flickr.com/photos/nlireland/5786204856

Choosy crowds

Window shopping

https://www.flickr.com/photos/twm_news/6841092248

Balancing acts

https://www.flickr.com/photos/statelibraryofnsw/3072281873

Going off-piste

'...None of the above is ready to send to you as I have more research to do'

https://www.flickr.com/photos/swedish_heritage_board/10207262464

Planning a graceful exithttps://www.flickr.com/photos/fylkesarkiv/4545543824

Task ecosystems

http://buildinginspector.nypl.org/

Simple tasks as stepping stones

http://www.fossilfinder.org/

http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/05/21/408234543/will-your-job-be-done-by-a-machine

Machine learning

Handwritten text recognition

Transcribing and tagging audio

Robot journalists

http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/05/20/406484294/an-npr-reporter-raced-a-machine-to-write-a-news-story-who-won

Flickr's image tagging

The end of stepping stone tasks?

https://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/

Robots can get it wrong

We won't run out of material soon

https://www.flickr.com/photos/statensarkiver/8975684427

We can go further together

PCF Image Recognition

Help create niche projects

Better task validation

https://www.flickr.com/photos/nationalarchives/4128460122

Personalised feedback

New tasks

http://crowdsourced.micropasts.org/project/photomaskingLunula

Better heuristics

https://www.flickr.com/photos/internetarchivebookimages/14780537354/

Keep learning, keep sharing!

Citizen Humanities Comes of Age: Crowdsourcing for the Humanities in the 21st Century

King’s College London, September 2015

Mia Ridge, Open University@mia_out http://miaridge.com