People are liars. Are they? Ok, some of them are truthful. And they don’t know anything. Wait, so they don’t know A-N-Y-thing? Ok, fine some of them do know something. But why would they tell you what they know? They’ll always say fuck-off, I don’t got the time. Noone got A-N-Y-time? Well, yeah, there’s always one or two people who’s got time, but what can THEY tell you? A lot. For example, those one or two CAN tell me if their internet is down, or electricity is down or if it is raining outside, or someone in their country is planning to ban Facebook at midnight, or is it China there? That’s just 2 people. No, that’s four eyes at your disposal. They are not your eyes though, are they? Good point.

So ask yourself this, do you only believe what you see? Can’t see pain. Can’t see love. Can’t see your own behind, I tried. They ARE there, though. Despite what you think you believe in. So, almost definitely, you trust other sources as well as your own eyes. How do you know what other sources to trust? Maybe you know them personally. If not, maybe you’ve seen them work. If that’s not the case, may be you’ve seen their work and that work impresses you. So if you were to ask them about something they would be familiar with, you’d get results. Can they be wrong? Yes, they can. But that’s the wrong question to ask about crowdsourcing. Should they be always wrong? No, not always. And yes, that’s the right question you should be asking about a crowdsourced result.

Ask 10 people “do you see this bunny?”, while holding a hat with no bunny in it. They’d say “No, are you high or something?”. You’ll know they are telling the truth because unless you’re high, you too know there’s no bunny. There is an Evidential Proof of the truthfulness of information provided. Do we always have that? No. Maybe I’m high sometimes, and I lose my bunny, maybe I put it inside my hat this morning and I can’t tell if the bunny’s still there. I will need to ask others, “do you see this bunny?”

It is imperative that you ask, “do you see this bunny?”, cause they’ll then look for the bunny. In an uncharted territory, we only find what we look for, not what’s there. Columbus looked for people, food, shelter- not americans. You MUST know what you’re looking for to find it.

If you do, you’ll find it without exception, if it’s indeed there. Then I can verify your report against my knowledge. I will always verify, that’s without exception too. Crowdsourcing doesn’t rely on bad reports, it cannot. When you’re Facebook, and you just received a 100 requests for taking down a post, you don’t take it down. You send it to “Department of Happyness Engineering”, and ask them to look at the post and check if the claim is legit. They say it is, post’s down by the clock. Every requester gets a “thank you for reporting” message. They are happy and energized.