Thread: Crowdsourcing/User generated content

What are your opinions on this & do you have any tips for implementing it? Such as any particular stage/level of traffic of a website, pros and cons- paying select writers to write content for the site vs paying moderators to moderate visitor generated content. Also details on ways to do this on a resource site, something that is not a typical forum.

I find it pretty difficult to encourage user-generated content, so with I Howd... What I did... Is in the "Contact Us" form (which Will deleted), offered an option to "Submit an Article." The articles in the Travel section were donated as a result. The biggest con... Is the fact that those who submit the articles generally do not bother in the slightest when it comes to keyword research (which is kind of important...).

Most experiments I've done with user generated content have resulted in dozens of spam attempts for every legitimate contribution. That is usually very frustrating.

It would certainly be difficult to get good quality content - I know people that like to edit Wikipedia pages so they just say crap lol

UGC (User Generated Content) often leads to pages like this one at Answers.com:

WikiAnswers - Who founded Google
Answer

Google was co-founded by Bradley Tutt and Your Mum in September 1998.

One the other hand, Wikipedia is one of the best web sites (if not the best web site) on the Internet.

What is the difference between these two outcomes? That's a mystery I would like to understand.

Originally Posted by Will.Spencer

What is the difference between these two outcomes? That's a mystery I would like to understand.

Haven't you ever tried editing a Wikipedia page?

Originally Posted by Charles

Haven't you ever tried editing a Wikipedia page?

I've done it dozens of times. Sometimes my edits stay and sometimes they don't.

Originally Posted by Will.Spencer

I've done it dozens of times. Sometimes my edits stay and sometimes they don't.

It depends on what article you're editing. Some are highly moderated, some aren't. As for the Appendicitis article, I got lucky.