For example, at one point during the Netflix Prize, someone with the screen name Simon Funk posted on his blog a proposed solution based on a singular value decomposition, an approach from linear algebra that had not been used previously by other participants. Funk’s blog post was simultaneously technical and weirdly informal. Was this blog post describing a good solution or was it a waste of time? Outside of an open call project, the solution might never have received serious evaluation. After all, Simon Funk was not a professor at MIT; he was a software developer who, at the time, was backpacking around New Zealand (Piatetsky 2007). If he had emailed this idea to an engineer at Netflix, it almost certainly would not have been read.
Kwa mfano, wakati mmoja wakati wa Tuzo ya Netflix, mtu aliye na jina la skrini Simon Funk alichapisha kwenye blogu yake suluhu iliyopendekezwa kulingana na mtengano wa thamani wa umoja, mbinu kutoka kwa aljebra ya mstari ambayo haikuwa imetumiwa hapo awali na washiriki wengine. Chapisho la blogu la Funk lilikuwa la kiufundi wakati huo huo na sio rasmi sana. Je, chapisho hili la blogu lilikuwa linaelezea suluhu nzuri au lilikuwa ni kupoteza muda? Nje ya mradi wa simu wazi, suluhisho linaweza kuwa halijapata tathmini kubwa. Baada ya yote, Simon Funk hakuwa profesa huko MIT; alikuwa msanidi programu ambaye, wakati huo, alikuwa akifunga mizigo karibu na New Zealand (Piatetsky 2007). Ikiwa angetuma wazo hili kwa mhandisi wa Netflix kwa barua pepe, hakika haingesomwa.