Far too often, we overestimate the knowledge of other people. In the case of Assignment Zero, the technological knowledge of the volunteers was definitely overestimated, and resulted in the loss of many potential contributors.

According to the article Did Assignment Zero Fail.., the site was too confusing for the volunteers. Many of them were lost as soon as they showed up. Too many of the volunteers did not know enough about the concept of crowdsourcing to actively contribute, and never came back after their first visit to the site. Maybe it is because they were not ready for Assignment Zero. As a whole, maybe they were not as tech-savvy as they would have liked to been.

“Baffled by the overarching concept of crowdsourcing, confused by the design of the website and unable to connect directly to a manager or organizer, most of the initial volunteers simply drifted away. “What we learned,” says Rosen, “is that you have to be waaaay clearer in what you ask contributors to do. Just because they show up once doesn’t mean they’ll show up over and over. You have to engage them right away.”"

If all of the volunteers were as tech-savvy as the editors would have liked them to be, then the project would have run much more smoothly. Another option was to make the site much more user friendly; make it as basic as possible to make sure that everyone can understand what’s going on, and how to use it. In doing so, the whole concept of crowdsourcing would become more accessible to the general public. Whether or not that would be a good thing is questionable.