title: Modeling crowdsourcing as collective problem solving.
abstract: Crowdsourcing is a process of accumulating the ideas, thoughts or information from many independent participants, with aim to find the best solution for a given challenge. Modern information technologies allow for massive number of subjects to be involved in a more or less spontaneous way. Still, the full potentials of crowdsourcing are yet to be reached. We introduce a modeling framework through which we study the effectiveness of crowdsourcing in relation to the level of collectivism in facing the problem. Our findings reveal an intricate relationship between the number of participants and the difficulty of the problem, indicating the optimal size of the crowdsourced group. We discuss our results in the context of modern utilization of crowdsourcing.
authors.affiliation: Department of Science of Education and Psychology, University of Florence, Florence, Italy.|Center for the Study of Complex Dynamics, University of Florence, Florence, Italy.
authors.forename: Andrea
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Guazzini
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Agent Based Social Simulation, Institute of Cognitive Science and Technology, National Research Council, Rome, Italy.
authors.forename: Daniele
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Vilone
authors.affiliation: Department of Science of Education and Psychology, University of Florence, Florence, Italy.
authors.forename: Camillo
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Donati
authors.affiliation: Department of Science of Education and Psychology, University of Florence, Florence, Italy.
authors.forename: Annalisa
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Nardi
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Information Studies in Novo mesto, Novo mesto, Slovenia.|Faculty of Computer and Information Science, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia.
authors.forename: Zoran
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Levnajić