[Renaud]

You mean like a large number of people with no qualification and experience went looking for the Boston bombing suspect?

I'll leave it here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-22214511

[TrainedMonkey]

I would argue that this is more of a mob lynching, rather than constructive combined effort.

To look for models that work, look no further than open source. Projects with high amount of interest quite often do better.

[catshirt]

i assure you it was intended to be a constructive combined effort. i only skimmed the article linked but it doesn't seem to reference the fact that the kid who was falsely identified was found dead, presumably by his own hand. "hell is full of good meanings, but heaven is full of good works", as they say.

on a lighter note, if you consider an open source project "crowdsourced" then i posit the current collaborative academic efforts to decode the manuscript are "crowdsourced" as well.

[pyre]

Which kid is that? The one that was already missing before the bombing?

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-04-26/falsely-accused-bombin...

[catshirt]

yes. he was missing, then falsely accused, then found dead.

[pyre]

Your original post could be construed as suggesting that he killed himself due to the false accusations.

[catshirt]

he was a depressive runaway and a racist internet lynch mob was threatening to kill his family for something he didn't do.

i suggested a correlation, i didn't propose it as fact. i'm curious as to what scenario you consider more probable?