This idea comes from two separate events at RailsConf: a conversation and a keynote.
A conversation at RailsConf started up between a group sitting at a table, some of which turned out to be pretty knowledgeable on the subject of knowledge markets. The gentleman sitting next to me (forgive me, I didn’t catch your name!) brought up a good point about the idea of collective knowledge markets and the opportunity for people to “game the system” if there was any personal benefit involved.
Another RailsConf extraction, if you will, is BarnRaisr (which is another testament to this community: a call to action was made during Nathaniel Talbott ’s RailsConf 2006 talk Homesteading: A Thriver’s Guide and someone came up with a name and site less than a day later). The basic idea is this: present a project and have members of the community help it along by contributing testing, coding, design, and time to help this idea along.
On the ride home, these two separate ideas came together: when enough code and hours start to be volunteered on projects you suddenly have a decent indicator of the merit of a particular idea. People “game” the system by committing hours and hard work to the project, which I think anyone would agree is a pretty good thing.
