Genius Killed by Knowledge (Book-Inspired Post #2)

I thought I had a stroke of genius. At work we were asked to create a translation application for smartphones that could assist the volunteers at the Olympics. The idea was to provide grammatically correct translations that a computer, such as Google Translate, could not provide. At first we prepared 7000 common phrases and had volunteers translate each phrase to their native languages. Instantly I saw the limitation, but at first was not sure how to overcome them. The first solution I had was to show both Google’s translation and the translation by the native speaker if there was one. This would work well because it would display the correct translation for each phrase the volunteers had done and show a sometimes correct Google translation for the others. Then I had my supposed stroke of genius, allow the users to help generate the applications content.

The application could allow the users to confirm that Google’s translation was correct, correct Google’s translation, correct other user’s translations, and rate other user’s translations. This would allow the application give the user many more correct translations, providing the users supplied their input. This seemed genius to me until I read Here Comes Everybody and realized that users must have some motive to contribute. The plan for the application is to release it free to the public with a time bomb to disable the application at the close of the Olympics, and after that charge for subscriptions to the application. Before I could imagine users willingly contributing their knowledge to help the whole community of users, but now I imagine a hesitance in the users to contribute knowing that an organization will profit from their volunteered work.