As Assignment Zero comes to a rolling halt, discussion this week is focusing on the lessons learned. And rightfully so — that was the point of the project in the first place.

Here are some great reactions to Jeff Howe’s original article which ran in wired.

1. Reportr.Net: Why a failed experiment in crowdsourcing was a success
   “The lesson here for journalism is not so much whether crowdsourcing works, but that failure is not something to be scared off. For journalism to thrive in the future, there is a need for more experimentation, more failure, and ultimately, more successes.”
2. Smart Mobs and Social Synergy: Assignment Zero: Valuable Lessons:
   “’m going to try and catalogue and summarize the lessons in this article as I review it in this blog posting, so:

   * Assignment Zero Lesson #1: Figure out a way to engage participants as soon as they show up.”

3. Mathew Ingram: A “citizen journalism” trifecta of failure:
   “Through some bizarre confluence of events, we have not one but two retrospectives on two separate citizen journalism or “crowdsourced” media projects today — Backfence, which recently announced it was shutting down, and Assignment Zero…”
4. Derek Powazek: Did Assignment Zero Work?
   “o did Assignment Zero Work? I say: Yes. A bunch of people, myself included, were published on Wired.com. Of course it didn’t go perfectly to plan - community projects rarely do. But the AZ editors showed they had what it takes when they reacted to the community needs, narrowed scope, changed the technology, and wound up making something great.”
5. Tish Grier: Assignment Zero Post-Mortem: Participation was Paramount
   “Amanda and I spent many days trying to figure out how to get through to the journalists, and decided it was perhaps better to do what we could to bolster the volunteers (some of the journalists got it—because they had done some interaction already—while others just didn’t.)”
6. Jeff Howe again The Importance of Community
   “Another concept that by all rights should have been more fleshed out in the Wired.com piece was the importance of community. While I’d like to think this idea suffuses the piece, I could probably have been more explicit in noting its importance to making AZ productive.”

And I’m sure there is more: If you find a good piece of analysis — please leave a comment.