Did crowdsourcing impede Fossett search?
Wired magazine last week took a critical look at Amazon’s highly publicized “Mechanical Turk” project that enlisted 50,000 volunteers in what ultimately proved a futile attempt to locate the missing plane of adventurer Steve Fossett. Some participants now regret the time they spent eyeballing digital images, while others defend the effort as part of a technological learning curve. However, at the very end of the piece, after one participant in the project suggests that there was no harm in trying as long as the amateurs didn’t get in the way of the professional searchers, we get this most-telling assessment from Civil Air Patrol Major Cynthia Ryan, who says she was inundated with worthless leads generated by the amateur searchers: “The crowdsourcing thing added a level of complexity that we didn’t need, because 99.9999 percent of the people who were doing it didn’t have the faintest idea what they’re looking for,” Ryan says. “In the early days, it sounded like a good idea,” Ryan contin
