"Mandatory jail time for crowdsourcing or crowd-judging."
October 24, 2013 12:29 AM Subscribe
We need better implementation, not more ideas. In the Stanford Social Innovation Review, Kevin Starr argues that prizes are a distraction and don't actually lead to more innovation.
Contests are a sideshow masquerading as a main-stage event, a smokescreen that obscures the lack of efficient allocation of philanthropic and investment capital. We need real competition for impact among social sector organizations, not this faux version that makes the noise-to-signal ratio that much worse.
In business these are called proposals and it is my experience that you write a lot of them and only a few result in a contract. That IS real competition and there is nothing inefficient about it.
posted by three blind mice at 1:25 AM on October 24, 2013
In business these are called proposals and it is my experience that you write a lot of them and only a few result in a contract. That IS real competition and there is nothing inefficient about it.
posted by three blind mice at 1:25 AM on October 24, 2013
For a few years I wrote many, many applications to commissioners at places like the BBC, Channel 4, and the Arts Council. These were for things like online educational games or websites, with budgets ranging from say £50k to £500k. I understand that for every 50-100 applications, maybe 3-4 would get commissioned.
We had a very good success rate, but that still meant we had a lot of unsuccessful applications; applications that would require far more than ten man-hours, particularly for the higher budget ones. The amount of waste was extraordinary, especially when you consider that the commissioners clearly would have very little time to spend evaluating each application (while also juggling other work). Like other companies that have to bid on projects, the cost of that time eventually gets built into the project quote anyway; you have to pay for all the time you spent on unsuccessful bids.
The alternatives aren't great. Yes, you could have commissioners handpick companies to work with, but that's extremely vulnerable to favoritism and bias; in any case, a lot of organisations are obliged to put projects above a certain budget out to tender. What I've often found is that commissioners will pretty much already know who they want to work with even before they see applications, or at least steer companies/people they like into a winning position; it's an open secret and one that I've both 'benefitted' and lost out from.
Humans are human, they like to favour people they like. Even some kind of devolved crowdfunding-style system would suffer from that. But a 'competition' where 1000-4000 hours are lost because the winner is already picked right at the start doesn't seem efficient to me.
posted by adrianhon at 1:40 AM on October 24, 2013 [3 favorites]
We had a very good success rate, but that still meant we had a lot of unsuccessful applications; applications that would require far more than ten man-hours, particularly for the higher budget ones. The amount of waste was extraordinary, especially when you consider that the commissioners clearly would have very little time to spend evaluating each application (while also juggling other work). Like other companies that have to bid on projects, the cost of that time eventually gets built into the project quote anyway; you have to pay for all the time you spent on unsuccessful bids.
The alternatives aren't great. Yes, you could have commissioners handpick companies to work with, but that's extremely vulnerable to favoritism and bias; in any case, a lot of organisations are obliged to put projects above a certain budget out to tender. What I've often found is that commissioners will pretty much already know who they want to work with even before they see applications, or at least steer companies/people they like into a winning position; it's an open secret and one that I've both 'benefitted' and lost out from.
Humans are human, they like to favour people they like. Even some kind of devolved crowdfunding-style system would suffer from that. But a 'competition' where 1000-4000 hours are lost because the winner is already picked right at the start doesn't seem efficient to me.
posted by adrianhon at 1:40 AM on October 24, 2013 [3 favorites]
I did some freelance Japanese-to-English translation work for some company called Lapin Inc. recently, and they claimed that the ¥1/character that they pay (the norm, incidentally, is ¥3–4) is because their work is "crowdsourced" or, perhaps more accurately, their work is made available anywhere they can find some Japanese major willing to work well below market rate or someone in a relatively poor Asian country who speaks Japanese and English well enough to get the general meaning across for them to fix up later.
Needless to say, I haven't had too much interest in taking a second assignment from them.
posted by DoctorFedora at 1:50 AM on October 24, 2013
Needless to say, I haven't had too much interest in taking a second assignment from them.
posted by DoctorFedora at 1:50 AM on October 24, 2013
Also, we just had someone go over the economics of TV, here.
98% of scripts fail to yield a series.
Proposals fail. It happens.
posted by effugas at 2:14 AM on October 24, 2013
98% of scripts fail to yield a series.
Proposals fail. It happens.
posted by effugas at 2:14 AM on October 24, 2013
Fuck all that cancer research & shit. Y'all haven't cured anything real since polio!
What we need is (are?) more tabletop card trading games!
posted by ShutterBun at 4:28 AM on October 24, 2013
What we need is (are?) more tabletop card trading games!
posted by ShutterBun at 4:28 AM on October 24, 2013
The answer of 'proposals fail, that's life, the current system is efficient' posits an unbiased and impartial competition system. It really isn't, whether that's in book publishing or scientific grant proposals or charity commissioning - all areas that I've been involved in. And the business world sure as hell isn't much better either.
The gap between proposals in the top 10-20% is often very small and the decision on how to award points frequently subjective, meaning that some excellent proposals may fail simply because someone got out of the wrong side of the bed that day. You may say, 'well, shit happens' but it really shouldn't. There are better ways to allocate scarce resources and to prevent waste, such as by helping identify poor proposals earlier in the process (saving them time), or by reducing the amount of information required at earlier stages. Not to mention the fact that a proposal that looks good on paper doesn't necessarily correlate with a good project, or the ability to execute well.
posted by adrianhon at 4:42 AM on October 24, 2013 [3 favorites]
The gap between proposals in the top 10-20% is often very small and the decision on how to award points frequently subjective, meaning that some excellent proposals may fail simply because someone got out of the wrong side of the bed that day. You may say, 'well, shit happens' but it really shouldn't. There are better ways to allocate scarce resources and to prevent waste, such as by helping identify poor proposals earlier in the process (saving them time), or by reducing the amount of information required at earlier stages. Not to mention the fact that a proposal that looks good on paper doesn't necessarily correlate with a good project, or the ability to execute well.
posted by adrianhon at 4:42 AM on October 24, 2013 [3 favorites]
Did anyone else hilariously get a banner ad for Grinnell College hilariously advertising to nominate someone for the "$100k Young Social Innovator Prize" on TFA?
posted by graphnerd at 5:35 AM on October 24, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by graphnerd at 5:35 AM on October 24, 2013 [1 favorite]
Efficiency is not the goal.
People seem to forget that it is a means and not an end in itself.
posted by srboisvert at 8:21 AM on October 24, 2013 [1 favorite]
People seem to forget that it is a means and not an end in itself.
posted by srboisvert at 8:21 AM on October 24, 2013 [1 favorite]
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OH NO.
I love social activists, and heck, I directly support their work, but they've got a hell of a lot more than 120 wasted person years under their belt.
There's room in this world for ten hour projects.
posted by effugas at 1:24 AM on October 24, 2013 [1 favorite]