Paper Reading #15: Soylent: A Word Processor with a Crowd Inside

Comments:
Comment 1
Comment 2

Reference Information:
Title: Soylent: A Word Processor with a Crowd Inside
Authors: Michael S. Bernstein, Greg Little, Robert C. Miller, Björn Hartmann, Mark S. Ackerman, David R. Karger, David Crowell, Katrina Panovich
Venue: UIST

Summary:
The basis of this work is that work editors are simply not good enough at tasks such as spelling and grammar correction. In order to deal with this the authors propose a system by which Turk Workers will review papers and then submit them back to the user through the word processor called Soylent. The processor would have three main functions, Shortn which would reduce the size of the paper while keeping the meaning, Crowdproof which would check for spelling and grammar mistakes, and The Human Macro which would be used for citations or figures. Each task uses a find-fix-verify method to correct the paper. The Turk worker first finds patches in the paper that could be fixed, then the worker fixes the patch, and finally the worker makes different revisions of the fix and asks other workers to vote on which is the best one.

Discussion:

While I do find this to be a very interesting technology, I am very wary of anything that requires this much human maintenance to work. I am not even sure how it can be guaranteed that the Turk workers edit will be a better revision that the users. Would every worker have a degree in literature? I do agree that word processors aren't as good at their tasks as they should be, but I'm not sure how this proposed solution would work out in the long run. It also seems like it would cost a bundle to hire the amount of people necessary to run this in a reasonable amount of time if this program did get picked up by everyone.