Community coding

We introduce community coding, where information systems meet social networks. Community coding is an emerging field of social computation and coding theory, which provides a method of aggregating resources from a community to maximize the sum of their utilities by allowing the community members to coordinate their contributions of resources. Community coding can be classified into two categories: (a) coding based on collective knowledge over aggregated community sources to maximize the efficiency; (b) coding based on collective contributory resources over aggregated community sources to minimize the possibility of the disruption of services. The ultimate objective is to harness and unleash the power of a community to better perform some tasks that one individual is not able to accomplish efficiently and effectively. We illustrate the principles and notions of community coding by real-life system examples.