Quote:
Originally Posted by dyna mo
i'm still wondering why you think the fbi needs to do that. they are not out of leads, by all accounts, they've pulled in every agent and resource available and put them on this case.
hell, now you want to add 100,000 random internet sleuths to that? that would not speed anything up.
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Wikipedia to the rescue - Crowdsourcing is the practice of obtaining needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people, and especially from an online community, rather than from traditional employees or suppliers. Often used to subdivide tedious work or to fund-raise startup companies and charities, this process can occur both online and offline. The general concept is to combine the efforts of crowds of volunteers or part-time workers, where each one could contribute a small portion, which adds into a relatively large or significant result. Crowdsourcing is different from an ordinary outsourcing since it is a task or problem that is outsourced to an undefined public rather than to a specific, named group.
Why not? Hey, crowd, here are 100 000 photos, look for the following ..... ten days later, the FBI receives the say top 10 tips (as per the crowd), looks at them and either finds them useful or it doesn;t. It totally beats the traditional approach, which is "hey here is the hotline, give us a million leads and we'll take a year or two to process them all."