Measuring the Crowd – A Preliminary Taxonomy of Crowdsourcing Metrics

Crowdsourcing initiatives benefit from tapping into diversity. A
vast plethora of disparate individuals, organizations, frameworks
and skillsets can all play a role in sourcing solutions to a
challenge. Nevertheless, while crowdsourcing has become a
pervasive phenomenon, there is a paucity of research that
addresses how the crowdsourcing process is measured. Whereas
research has advanced various taxonomies of crowdsourcing none
to date have specifically addressed the issue of measuring either
specific stages of the crowdsourcing process or the process as a
whole. As a first step towards achieving this goal, this research-inprogress
paper examines crowdsourcing at the operational level
with a view towards (i) identifying the parts of the process (ii)
identifying what can be measured and (iii) categorising
operational metrics to facilitate deployment in practice. The
taxonomy advanced is overarching in nature and can be deployed
across disciplines. Furthermore, the preliminary taxonomy
presented will offer practitioners a comprehensive list of metrics
that will enable them to facilitate comparison across various
crowdsourcing initiatives.