Imagine that you are a professional pet food taster.

That's right, pet food taster.

Your job is to evaluate new recipes for dog food and cat food by tasting it.

Actually, putting it in your mouth and tasting it.

Yum.

But this is a real job, seriously.

I'm not joking.

It pays well, and most times requires an

advanced degree in food science or culinary arts. Your boss at the Pet Food Company has tasked

you with developing a new line of Doggy Chow. You'll need to taste test and evaluate hundreds

of variations of a new recipe to get the job done.

But, unfortunately, you have a scanty budget, and the deadline is just around the corner.

You're actually feeling kind of stressed about the whole thing.

It's not that you mind tasting pet food.

That's your job, after all.

But wouldn't it be amazing if you could

enlist an army of enthusiastic volunteers to help you get your research done faster and more

efficiently? Volunteers who would chew on mouthfuls of slimy dog food for you? Hmm, this one

tastes like I'm picking up, I'm picking up some propylene glycol, and a lot of rancid fish oil, maybe some ginger, chicken tongue, yeah, chicken tongue, indefinitely, yeah, and definitely a hint of cow lung.

Instead of trying to accomplish your goal alone with your very limited resources of time and money,

you could have these crazy people do most of the hard work for you.

They would collect the lion's share of the data, more than you ever could amass on your own.

...