SIFT researcher co-authors Security Informatics journal paper

At the completion of the SIFT massive collaborative problem solving program, SIFT researcher Dan Thomsen wrote a joint paper with SIFT competitors at MSI. The paper is now available at the open journal Security Informatics: http://www.security-informatics.com/content/1/1/12/abstract

Abstract
We present the initial discoveries investigating massively collaborative problem solving (MCPS) assembled from two independent projects attempting to foster massive collaboration to solve complex problems, including those relevant to local and national security. Two preliminary investigations for a DARPA Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) program are discussed. Instead of a linear approach to problem solving, in which many people are asked to perform a similar task until consensus is reached, the described problem solving environments encourage deep reasoning to emerge by combining small contributions from many individuals to solve dynamic and previously unsolved problems. The environments encourage problem solvers to decompose a complex problem into parts so that it can be solved by a community with diverse skills and experiences. Social consensus then plays a role in crafting the aggregate solution. However, as the number of collaborators goes up, the number of disruptive attempts by malicious individuals to derail the solution may increase as well. We discuss potential applications of MCPS for security and intelligence, and in complement we describe some system security issues for MCPS and how they can be addressed.