there is likely low-hanging fruit for volunteers in charities or communities in the area of sustained tedious tasks; collecting anecdotes, reports, links, that sort of thing come to mind as LW examples
It seems like most of this can already be accomplished very cheaply by Mechanical Turk.
I’m sure, but from reading the Mechanical Turk literature (eg. my boss is a robot), you need really specific tasks and a framework for working through MT so you can do majority voting on submissions and that sort of thing.
I have a hard time thinking of things you would want to do that are mechanical enough to get good results out of Turk, and large-scale enough that you would recover all the overhead of using MT and the actual fees (to say nothing of learning how to use MT and your framework!).
The article resonated with me because a number of my own activities are pretty repetitive volunteer stuff; like reading through the archives of the Evangelion ML looking for forgotten gems and information, but I can’t imagine trusting that to Turkers because so many of the important parts are things I can’t explain and only recognize their importance serendipitously and sometimes only in retrospect after I have learned about a related topic. Or writing the DNB FAQ, something which any volunteer could do if they just read through the DNB ML’s emails to see what is important and consolidated it all, but again not something you could really write explicit instructions for.
That’d probably work much better as long as you are able to pick a freelancer with skills or credentials matching your needs. Still wouldn’t help with my Evangelion example, but would with the DNB FAQ (pick someone with Internet and psychology skills and tell them ‘flag any email that looks interesting for an FAQ etc.’).
On the other hand, you would also be paying even more on freelance or elance, and at that point, you’re not really dealing with volunteer labor but lightweight outsourcing. (I don’t know if freelancer.com even lets you pay $0 for volunteers, like Mechanical Turk does.)
It seems like most of this can already be accomplished very cheaply by Mechanical Turk.
I’m sure, but from reading the Mechanical Turk literature (eg. my boss is a robot), you need really specific tasks and a framework for working through MT so you can do majority voting on submissions and that sort of thing.
I have a hard time thinking of things you would want to do that are mechanical enough to get good results out of Turk, and large-scale enough that you would recover all the overhead of using MT and the actual fees (to say nothing of learning how to use MT and your framework!).
The article resonated with me because a number of my own activities are pretty repetitive volunteer stuff; like reading through the archives of the Evangelion ML looking for forgotten gems and information, but I can’t imagine trusting that to Turkers because so many of the important parts are things I can’t explain and only recognize their importance serendipitously and sometimes only in retrospect after I have learned about a related topic. Or writing the DNB FAQ, something which any volunteer could do if they just read through the DNB ML’s emails to see what is important and consolidated it all, but again not something you could really write explicit instructions for.
Another option might be something less mechanized like freelancer.com (which another LW recommended as useful). Do you see that as more viable?
That’d probably work much better as long as you are able to pick a freelancer with skills or credentials matching your needs. Still wouldn’t help with my Evangelion example, but would with the DNB FAQ (pick someone with Internet and psychology skills and tell them ‘flag any email that looks interesting for an FAQ etc.’).
On the other hand, you would also be paying even more on freelance or elance, and at that point, you’re not really dealing with volunteer labor but lightweight outsourcing. (I don’t know if freelancer.com even lets you pay $0 for volunteers, like Mechanical Turk does.)
Yes, good point.