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Crowdsourcing of labeling image objects: an online gamification application for data collection

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Abstract

This study aimed to improve the labeling of objects inside images in the crowdsourcing process. Images are one of the most widely used types of data on the internet. Controlling and refining images through the crowdsourcing process is time-consuming and tedious because of their quality and nature. Gamification of data collection was presented as a solution to review, categorize images, and motivate people. Because participant motivation might influence the quality of the output data, we used gamification elements to manage user interaction in this study. The proposed method has a great effect on improving the quality of output data by considering various challenges such as motivation, financial costs, and delays. The proposed algorithm calculates the average of the points specified by each user and then compares it with the average of the total correct answers. In the end, the proposed algorithm uses this comparison to decide whether to accept or reject the answer. In this research, the LabelMe, Flickr, and VOC2012 datasets were used. Implementing the proposed method in a real context showed that the proposed design improved the image labeling accuracy, which was increased by 11.3% compared to the previous methods. In this experiment, the people who interacted the most generated the most accurate data.

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Data availability

The dataset generated during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Bastanfard, A., Shahabipour, M. & Amirkhani, D. Crowdsourcing of labeling image objects: an online gamification application for data collection. Multimed Tools Appl 83, 20827–20860 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-023-16325-6

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