Assignment Zero has come to a close. But the lessons learned will be used and re-used.

Today Wired published a piece from Jeff Howe: Did Assignment Zero Fail? A Look Back, and Lessons Learned.

His final assessment: “it might best be considered a highly satisfying failure. It fell far short of the original aim of producing over 80 feature stories, but in over a dozen interviews conducted by phone and e-mail, contributors uniformly described a positive, “though frequently exasperating,” experience.”

As for the work: “I found at least three-quarters of the Q&As to be equal to or exceeding the quality of thought and insight found in any national magazine. And if Assignment Zero failed to clear the especially high bar it set for itself, the fact it produced so large a body of work still speaks to the considerable potential of crowdsourced journalism.”

Read more in the full article.