Interactions - March/April 2008

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