Success--mass collaboration?

During this second COETAIL course, I expanded my research of blogs and the Internet for my hobby of family history as I discussed in a previous blog. Via a blog posting I just "met" another researcher who just came back from my mother's lineage's ancestral home village in the 1600s. The researcher had discovered a missing link in our lineage and I was able to learn about it from the other side of the globe by just writing like I am doing now. A few people working together on a common project like a genealogy search could be considered mass collaboration. A useful produce is produced by many that would be unlikely done by a few.