Getting data or ideas (user-generated content) by consulting large numbers of people, especially from the ‘online’ community; Wikipedia is a good example. The OpenStreetMap project is a crowd-sourced project, where detailed map data are produced by people pooling GPS and metadata. Matt Ball’s blog of October 2010 explains the distinction between crowd-sourcing, volunteered geographic information, and authoritative data.

http://www.openstreetmap.org/ OpenStreetMap site.

http://www.sensysmag.com/spatialsustain/whats-the-distinction-between-crowdsourcing-volunteered-geographic-information-and-authoritative-data.html Matt Ball’s blog.