DocumentCloud

First, let me say that I applaud the DocumentCloud team and its efforts and congratulate them on their recent Knight News Challenge funding.

I'm just not so sure about how it will work in the long run. I asked this question during their Poynter live-chat:

Hey there guys. Any concern that document contributors will be so outnumbered by document users that frustration will result and only committed institutional contributors (not-for-profits, perhaps?) will continue using the DocumentCloud?

This is a common concern/problem with groupsourced projects. Think of every group homework project you did in school, or the open source software community. Plenty of users. Few contributors. So, I think it was a reasonable question.

Scott, Eric, and Aron: We think there will be a vibrant community of users and contributors.

Well, OK. I suppose Knight thinks so, too, or they wouldn't have contributed $719,500 to the effort. I stand corrected.

Best of luck, guys.