form of engagement [ 5]. These
roles/states are the core of most
user-generated-content sites, and
the Scratch community address-
es them in a relevant way for
the specific audience and type of
content.
s 0ASSIVE CONSUMER Online
communities often refer to these
people as lurkers. In this state,
people assess the community
to understand their values and
ideas. In the case of Scratch, this
involves the act of browsing the
different categories and interact-
ing with Scratch projects that
other people have created. While
this is the most passive state,
the passive consumer alters
the system simply by viewing
because the number of views is
counted and presented publicly.
s !CTIVE CONSUMER An active
consumer participates in the
community by providing meta-
data. Active Scratch consumers
contribute their ideas by com-
menting, tagging, and rating
projects.
s 0ASSIVE PRODUCER In this
state, users create projects,
sometimes inspired by other
projects they have seen in the
community, but do not neces-
sarily feel compelled or ready to
share them to the community.
s !CTIVE PRODUCER An active
producer not only consumes but
also contributes to the repository of projects. This person
gives feedback to other people’s
projects, gets inspired, and also
provides inspiration. An analysis of the usage of the website
showed that the number of projects a user creates is correlated
with the level of activity by that
user on projects created by others. That is, there is a correlation
between the number of projects
a user creates and the num-
ber of a) comments posted on
other people’s projects, b) views
on others’ projects, c) projects
marked as favorites, d) projects
marked as “I love it!,” and e) projects downloaded. Smaller correlations were found in regard to
tags. Other people often recognize these active producers’ level
of involvement. Members in this
state feel invested in the community—it is one of the most
important assets of the Scratch
online community.
Sharing and Collaboration
We use the term “creative
appropriation” to refer to the
utilization of someone else’s
creative work in the making of a
new one. Professional programmers are very familiar with this
concept, as a great deal of their
work is based on programs and
algorithms created by others.
With Scratch, we wanted to
introduce children and teens to
this approach, because learning
in the context of a community is
not only more convenient, but is
also more rewarding and engaging.
One of the main goals of the
Scratch online community is to
foster the idea of learning from
each other by building on other
people’s ideas or projects. This
is one of the reasons why it is
always possible for a member
of the community to download
the source code of any project.
Additionally, users of the community often create their projects after being inspired by other
projects they see. In this type of
creative appropriation, no code
or media is reused; instead, it is
the idea or concept that is appropriated to create a new project.
This type of appropriation often
leads to the emergence of trends
People can interact with projects displayed on the
Scratch website.
The Scratch website highlights projects contributed
by the user community.