How Crowdsourcing Helped People with Wikipedia Withdrawal Symptoms
When Wikipedia closed down its sites for 24 hours in protest against US piracy laws, it left millions of people without access to their favourite online encyclopedia.
However, help was at hand as the crowd rushed in to fill the information void. The Washington Post in collaboration with other media organizations including NPR and the UK’s Guardian newspaper provided an imaginative one-day crowdsourcing solution to help those seeking answers to questions.
All users had to do was ask their question on Twitter with the hasthtag #altwiki, and editors, writers, librarians, trivia obsessives, journalists and students pitched in with their answers.
“While we’re not in the Wikipedia business, this is an experimental, one-day Band-Aid to help out readers,” said David Beard, Sitewide Engagement Editor, Washington Post.
In an entertaining post Guardian writer Patrick Kinglsey explained how he tried to provide some answers with the aid of a few dusty old editions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (remember them?)
Examples of questions sent in via Twitter included:
“What is the speed of light in a vacuum?”
“Are pancakes Dutch?”
And the rather bizarre, “Shoot, who played that guy in that thing? You know the one.”
Following on from the Great Wikipedia Blackout the Washington Post blogged about the lessons they felt they had learned from this experimental crowdsourcing initiative which you can read here.
Overall it was a fun project that neatly demonstrated how a crowd can be pulled together at short notice to provide solutions.
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