The open monuments project as an example of social crowdsourcing in culture : factors motivating crowds to share knowledge

This paper describes crowdsourcing as a concept of using the knowledge and skills of virtual communities. The analysis focuses on the case study of the polish, cultural Open Monuments Project. The Open Monuments project was initiated in 2012 by Centrum Cyfrowe Projekt: Polska. Its main goal was to encourage Poles to verify and add information on the monuments featured in the Polish national monument register, which often lacks current addresses, exact dates when particular monuments were constructed, or data which was not required in previous years (e.g. GPS coordinates). The effect of the community work became a springboard for the development of a nationwide website. Today, each monument featured on the website has its own separate page, and Internet users can add information, upload photos and documents, and submit "non-encyclopedia" content, i.e. trivia, legends, or anecdotes. The overriding goal of the paper is to shed some light on the factors that motivate Internet users to engage in social crowdsourcing.