This article explores how to help people who organize crowdsourcing events (called “seekers”) choose the best ideas from those submitted by participants (called “solvers'). To this end, we created a method using techniques like topic modeling and text analysis to sort and group ideas. Then, we tested this method on data from crowdsourcing contests in Italy in 2021. In particular, considering the literature on intermediaries, we focus on intermediation in crowdsourcing to improve the decision-making processes in those initiatives where searching activities are intermediated by digital platforms, besides other human intermediaries. This method makes it easier for seekers to handle multiple ideas, and it also helps them find better-quality ideas. Moreover, from a theoretical point of view, our method could lead to better results in crowdsourcing challenges because it groups ideas based on their content without being influenced by the organizers' pre-existing knowledge or biases. This means that seekers might discover new and unexpected topics or solutions they hadn't thought of before. From a practical standpoint, for managers organizing crowdsourcing events, this method is valuable because it not only saves time and effort but also potentially uncovers innovative and diverse ideas. Additionally, the method includes a feature that shows how much participants interact and share knowledge, thus implementing the concept of “transactivity”, which, to the best of our knowledge, hasn't been used in crowdsourcing studies before. This can help crowdsourcing organizers better understand which contests are more effective at encouraging collaboration and knowledge sharing among participants.

中文翻译：

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人群挖掘作为创新寻求者的战略资源

本文探讨了如何帮助组织众包活动的人（称为“寻求者”）从参与者（称为“解决者”）提交的想法中选择最佳想法。为此，我们创建了一种使用主题建模和文本分析等技术对想法进行排序和分组的方法。然后，我们在 2021 年意大利众包竞赛的数据上测试了这种方法。特别是，考虑到有关中介机构的文献，我们专注于众包中的中介，以改善那些搜索活动由数字平台中介的举措的决策过程，除了其他人类中介之外。这种方法使寻求者更容易处理多个想法，也有助于他们找到质量更好的想法。此外，从理论角度来看，我们的方法可以在众包挑战中带来更好的结果，因为它根据内容对想法进行分组，而不受组织者预先存在的知识或偏见的影响。这意味着探索者可能会发现他们以前没有想到的新的和意想不到的主题或解决方案。从实践的角度来看，对于组织众包活动的管理者来说，这种方法很有价值，因为它不仅节省时间和精力，而且有可能发现创新和多样化的想法。此外，该方法还包括一个功能，可以显示参与者互动和分享知识的程度，从而实现了“交互性”的概念，据我们所知，该概念以前从未在众包研究中使用过。这可以帮助众包组织者更好地了解哪些竞赛更有效地鼓励参与者之间的协作和知识共享。