Greater>Than Clothing

I’m an Atlantic reader and an unabashed word-nerd, so naturally one of my favorite features is the Word Fugitives column by Barbara Wallraff, (who wrote a book of the same name). Readers write in with requests for words to express particular situations or feelings, and other readers try to coin terms to fit the bill. Wallraff sifts through the results then writes her column, highlighting representative and outstanding examples. It’s fun collective nerdery and there are usually one or two gems.

In the most recent issue, answers to the following prompt are given:

“that happy feeling of kinship one feels for the driver of a car of the same make and model as one’s own”

My favorite answers included carma, carcissism, carmraderie and autobond. I told you I was a word-nerd.

Two Greater>Than-related things caught my attention while I was reading this month’s column:

I realized that Word Fugitives is just like Greater>Than

In fact, it’s an almost perfect illustration of the “curated crowdsourcing” model we use. The editor sets the rules of the game, a community member provides a prompt to focus the creativity of the group, solutions are submitted, the editor sifts through the submissions, then publishes the results back to the group. So simple!

Over time, the community becomes self-defining; the tone and quality of the output determined, is maintained and evolves over time through the collective efforts of the community. Think of an Ouija board. Nobody is “controlling” it, but everyone has a hand in determining direction. To put it another way, it is controlled by everyone and no one (no “one”).

One submission in particular blew me away Read the rest of this entry »