Gawker: crowdsourcing

NYC's Wikipedia Entry Penned By Idiots, Unsurprisingly

Sheila — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 10:44:20 EDT

Steve Cuozzo in the Post hates Wikipedia, that "engine of ignorance 'compiled by volunteers' and masquerading as a legitimate reference work." He's right! It gets things about New York City all wrong, as he points out—not just wrong, but "notoriously wrong-headed."

Among its many crowdsourced errors:

"Other entries read like dumb bus-tour guides' off-base spiels. One states that the East Village "is considered part of the Lower East Side" - by morons, maybe, but not by anyone who has ever crossed Houston Street. Nor was the East Village "formerly known as the Bowery."
...It's such an incoherent maze of mangled chronology and outright falsehoods, you don't know where to laugh first. For starters, there's no "residential tower" planned at Ground Zero. A museum will not highlight "many of the different aspects of the past and future World Trade Centers." The Port Authority did not "organize a competition through the LMDC" to come up with a master plan in 2002 - it was entirely the work of the LMDC."?

Oh, man. He's going to be up 'til at least midnight trying to correct all these things.

FBI to Internet: "Hey, Do Any of These Priceless Stolen Paintings Look Familiar To You Guys?"

Sheila — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 18:03:01 EDT

When patron of the arts William Kingsland died in 2006, he left a big stack of paintings behind. Guess what, some of them were stolen back in the 60s, Animal New York tells us. Now the FBI is—wait for it—crowdsourcing its investigation of the paintings' origins. They put photos of the paintings on their website. After the jump: do you recognize any of these paintings? Plz halp! Luv, FBI.

Quoth the FBI,

"But because of the overwhelming size of the collection and the complex and time-consuming nature of provenance investigations, we decided the best and most expeditious course of action was to publicize the art work to the general public... If you have information on the provenance, acquisition, or ownership of any work of art from the Kingsland collection shown here—or if you want to make a claim—please contact Agent Wynne at (718) 286-7302 or by e-mail at James.Wynne@ic.fbi.gov."

Henry Aiken

This one's a Picasso!

FBI

The Internet Presents: Nazis Invade Earth From The Moon

Nick Douglas — Wed, 07 May 2008 13:17:04 EDT

Turns out that you can't crowdsource a good book but you can crowdsource a good movie. The dark indie comedy Iron Sky was put together with the help of over 3000 people organized through an online system that has already turned out one film. They released a trailer Tuesday (shown below, along with the creators' first film). The premise: During World War II, Nazis escaped to the moon, and now they're back. Awesome.

So thankfully, the masses here aren't being asked to write the movie but to help produce it. The creators of Iron Sky divided production tasks into chunks that they farmed out using their online system, Wreck A Movie. They built this system after putting together their first collaborative film, Star Wreck:

Wreck A Movie was also used for the Finnish horror film Sauna, which looks like a Northern European version of Guillermo del Toro.

The Iron Sky crew is also asking fans to buy promo packages, calling them "war bonds." Again, a great way to mobilize a crowd in an entertaining way without actually ruining your movie. And whatever comes out of this, it'll be hella better than Snakes On A Plane.

Gayfights

Nick Denton — Wed, 07 May 2008 12:51:54 EDT

Somebody must have snatched a photo of last night's shoving match between Kristian Laliberte, Gawker's favorite benefit-hopping gay, and Derek Blasberg, self-appointed arbiter of socialite status. Of course, it wasn't much of a match. Laliberte—accused by Blasberg of bad-mouthing the Style.com reporter—was reduced to tears, poor dear. Photos to tips@gawker.com.