WikiDo

The Internet has allowed collaboration on an unprecedented scale. Wikipedia, Luis Von Ahn’s ESP game, and reCAPT CHA have proven that tasks typically performed by expensive inhouse or outsourced teams can instead be delegated to the mass of Inte rn t computer users. These success stories show the opportunity for crowdsourcing other tasks, such as allowing computer users to hel p each other answer questions like “How do I make my computer do X?”. Such a system would reduce IT cost, user frustration, and mac hine downtime. The current approach to crowd-sourcing IT tasks,however, only allows users to collaborate on generating text. Anyonewho goes through the process of searching help wikis and user forums h oping to find a solution for some computer problem knows the inefficacy and the frustration accompanying such a process. Text is amb iguous and often incomplete, particularly when written by non-experts. This paper presents WikiDo, a system that enables the mass of nonexpert users to help each other answer how-to computer questions by actually performing the task rather than documenting its solution.