Everybody’s heard of outsourcing, the fine art of subcontracting jobs and services to third parties.
Computer manufacturers like Dell outsource support services to countries like India, for example, because it’s cheaper than hiring Americans in America to do the job, despite the fact that it frustrates American customers to speak to people with thick accents they can barely understand.
I guess it’s pretty clear how I feel about Dell’s outsourcing practices. 
But I digress. “Crowdsourcing” is a newly created word that conveys a similar idea in the context of Web 2.0. Wikipedia is crowdsourcing in its purest form. Founder Jimmy Wales asked the crowd – you, me, and everybody else – to help create an online encyclopedia. Content providers aren’t paid to add or to edit entries (as far as I know). They do it for, well, I don’t exactly know why they do it. They just do.
Also see “A journalist’s guide to crowdsourcing.”
The Library of Congress (LOC) recently began a crowdsourcing project. The LOC posted over 3,000 old photos on Flickr.com and asked the public to “tag, comment and make notes” on the photos. The crowd has risen to the challenge.
Another crowdsourcing example is a photoblog called Shorpy, which posts old LOC photos. Once again, the crowd has responded. Commenters have provided information about who’s in certain photos and where and when photos were taken. (Be careful. You could spend/lose hours browsing that site.)
Finally, I get to the point of this post. Seems almost anti-climatic. Anyway, the Dallas Morning News is doing a bit of crowdsourcing, too. Last month, the Dallas County DA released documents “related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy…found in a little-known vault in his office.”
I started asking questions before finishing the story (bad habit). “Hey, are these the same documents locked away from the public until 2075 that might contain JFK’s ‘lost’ autopsy photos?” Or Lee Harvey Oswald’s military records that reveal he was a spy? Or evidence that he was, as he claimed, a patsy?” But alas, I don’t think the files contain anything as cool as all that.
Among the documents is a purported transcript of Oswald and Jack Ruby, Oswald’s murderer, discussing assassinating JFK. They’re in Ruby’s strip club also chatting about killing Bobby Kennedy. Real or phony? That’s what the Dallas Morning News wants you to help decide.
At the end of the story are links to some of the documents (in PDF), which include “transcripts, personal and official letters, newspaper clippings, lists of jurors, police reports, rap sheets, autopsy reports, trial notes, police notebooks, photographs and much more.”
What are you waiting for, crowd? Start crowdsourcing!
(Hat tip: Jeff Jarvis)
