Computer, August, 2010, has A Study of the Human Flesh Search Engine: Crowd-Powered Expansion of Online Knowledge by Fei-Yue Wang, Daniel Zeng, James A. Hendler, Qingpeng Zhang, Zhuo Feng, Yanqing Gao, Hui Wang, Gaunpi Lai.
Study of several episodes of mass collaboration in China by users that involved collecting and sharing information.
Has to make you wonder about using human communities (as opposed to “experts”) to identify subjects and build topic maps doesn’t it?
To make community maps explicit is probably the more accurate turn of phrase. Communities already identify subjects of interest to them, just not in the same language as an “expert.”
Identifying subjects in human community languages (as opposed to “expert” languages) won’t enable software agents to “reason” about the temperature of drinks in a soft drink machine.
But I know where to hire some bright engineers if I need that sort of information over a web interface.