Voting and commenting mechanisms in ongoing crowdsourcing platforms: A case study of lego ideas platform

• Main Author: ALHARBI, Khalid Murzig M.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2018
• Subjects: Crowdsourcing; Lego Ideas platform; Commenting; Voting; Ongoing Crowdsourcing.; Business Administration, Management, and Operations; Technology and Innovation
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/etd_coll/163; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1163&context=etd_coll
• Institution: Singapore Management University

Although crowdsourcing, an innovative online call to help solve problems or generate new ideas, has gained much traction in the business word, not much research has been done on the commenting and voting mechanisms. Most of the research has focussed on the why and how businesses crowdsource. To fill the gap, this research focusses on the commenting and voting mechanisms and aims to analyse the effectiveness of the commenting and voting mechanism in an ongoing crowdsourcing platform, Lego Idea. Using Python software, 8663 comments were extracted from the Lego Ideas platform. These comments were then manually categorised into 10 variables based on a taxonomy of categories built from a combination of another scholars’ work and this researcher’s effort. The approved and rejected projects set of data resemble each other to a great extent. Hence, the results of both the data sets show very little or no difference in the responses. This further signifies that the chosen variables for the research analysis only play a partial role in determining the success or failure of the submitted projects of Lego. When the contributors share more of their personal stories and experiences, the number of comments on the submitted idea also increases. Sharing personal stories or experiences of the submitters as well as the commenters, in relation to the project designed, motivated the contributors to make a point about the content or design of the project.