A crowd can split a huge problem into parts and put the parts back together, exploring many whole solutions at once. Hierarchies and communities like Wikipedia work on one solution at a time; a contest web runs contests for the parts and contests that combine them, so the same part can be reused in many different wholes. In Climate CoLab, with over 50,000 members, 40% of reused parts appeared in more than one combined plan, and 72% of reuse was of other people's work.

Evidence 7 passages

• qualifiesUntitled source

  As Table 4 shows, the averages of these ratings for the finalist integrated proposals are not significantly different from basic proposals (except for the presentation dimension where they are somewhat worse).

• groundsUntitled source

  We showed that it was possible for a diverse crowd of people from all over the world to simultaneously create multiple, sensible integrated proposals using a combination of their own and other’s work.

• groundsUntitled source

  However, as Table 3 shows, of the 348 uses of proposals at higher levels, 28% were uses of their own work, and 72% were uses of work by non-overlapping author teams.

• groundsUntitled source

  But as Table 1 shows, 40% of the proposals that are used in any integrated proposal are used in more than one.

• groundsUntitled source

  In contrast, most previous CSCW examples, including both top -down hierarchies and communities like Wikipedia, explore only one solution alternative at a time.

• groundsUntitled source

  A key insight of this paper is that just as markets in a supply web can combine the results of other markets, so, too, contests in a contest web can combine the results of other contests.

• groundsUntitled source

  The paper also describes a field test of this method in an online community of over 50,000 people who are developing proposals for what to do about global climate change.

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