Flickr photo courtesy of user crsan.
I’ve seen endless demos of the power of the Internet crowd. After all, I spent a full year hopped up on Wikipedia. But I don’t think it will ever stop astonishing me. The other night, I found myself unable to sleep, reading a heart-crushing, gripping story unfolding in real-time, in which an ad-hoc community of Internet strangers bend earth and heaven to save two Russian women from falling into sex slavery.
Among the biggest game-changers for beat reporters in the era of the Web is the power of the crowd. If our Argo-bloggers aren’t investing in their communities and building crowds that can augment their work, the sites will be significantly hobbled. So we need true believers on this front. Not necessarily born crowdsourcing experts – the discipline is too new to expect all our bloggers to have mastered it – but people who really believe in what the crowd can accomplish, and willing to put in the work to get there.
Related questions: Imagine hosting the perfect cocktail party around this topic. Which groups of people are represented in the room? Are any left out? What Internet communities do you consider yourself a part of? How comfortable are you in participating in conversations on your site? How will you react when a commenter slams you? What reporting might you not be able to do without the assistance of a crowd?
What to watch for: Fundamentally, do they seem excited by the idea of building a community, or do you sense they think of it as something they’ll have to “deal with”? Have they encountered any Internet communities beyond their own friend groups on Facebook? Can you imagine them as the host of a conversation on the subject?
I’d also be looking out for signs the candidate is too mercenary about the community. A great crowd is a terrific value in itself, far beyond any specific crowdsourcing projects or reporting assists it might provide.