Essays on Volunteer Mobilization in Peer Production by Benjamin Mako Hill B.A.HampshireCollege(2003) S.M.MediaArtsandSciences MassachusettsInstituteofTechnology(2007) SubmittedtotheSloanSchoolofManagementinPartialFulfillmentoftheRequirements fortheDegreeofDoctorofPhilosophyinManagementandMediaArtsandSciences atthe MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY September 2013 ©2013MassachusettsInstituteofTechnology. Allrightsreserved. SignatureofAuthor: SloanSchoolofManagement July31,2013 CertifiedBy: EricvonHippel T.WilsonProfessorofManagementandProfessorofEngineeringSystems ThesisSupervisor AcceptedBy: EzraW.ZuckermanSivan NanyangTechnologicalUniversityProfessor Director,SloanPhDProgram Essays on Volunteer Mobilization in Peer Production by Benjamin Mako Hill SubmittedtotheSloanSchoolofManagementinPartialFulfillmentoftheRequirementsfortheDegreeof DoctorofPhilosophyinManagementandMediaArtsandSciencesonJuly31,2013. ABSTRACT AlthoughsomeexamplesofInternet-basedcollaborative“peerproduction”–likeWikipe- dia and Linux – build large volunteer communities and high-quality information goods, the vast majority of attempts at peer production never even attract a second contributor. Thisdissertationiscomposedofthreeessaysthatdescribeandtesttheoriesonthesources andeffectsofvolunteermobilizationinpeerproduction. The first essay is a qualitative analysis of seven attempts to create English-language on- linecollaborativeencyclopediaprojectsstartedbeforeJanuary2001, whenWikipediawas launched. Analyzing data from interviews of these Wikipedia-like projects’ initiators, along with extensive archival data, I offer a set of three propositions for why Wikipedia, similartopreviouseffortsandarelativelylateentrant,attractedacommunityofhundreds ofthousandswhiletheotherprojectsdidnot. Inthesecondessay,IusedatafromtheScratchonlinecommunity–alargewebsitewhere young people openly share and remix animations and games – to present evidence of a trade-offbetween“generativity”(i.e.,qualitiesofworkproductslikelytoattractfollow-on contributors)andtheoriginalityofthederivativeworkproductsthatfollow. In the third essay, I consider the relationship between volunteer mobilization and gov- ernance in peer production organizations. Although large successful peer production projects have inspired scholars and social movements, I use longitudinal data of internal processes drawn from a population of wikis to show that, like other democratic organiza- tions, peer production projects exhibit governance consistent with Robert Michels’ “Iron LawofOligarchy.” THESIS SUPERVISOR: EricvonHippel TITLE: T.WilsonProfessorofManagementandProfessorofEngineeringSystems Thesis Committee Yochai Benkler JackN.andLillianR.BerkmanProfessorforEntrepreneurialLegalStudies FacultyCo-Director,BerkmanCenterforInternetandSociety HARVARD LAW SCHOOL Thomas Malone PatrickJ.McGovernProfessorofManagement Director,MITCenterforCollectiveIntelligence, MITSLOAN SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT Mitchel Resnick LEGOPapertProfessorofLearningResearch PrograminMediaArtsandSciences MITMEDIA LAB Eric von Hippel(CommitteeChair) T.WilsonProfessorofManagement ProfessorofEngineeringSystems MITSLOAN SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT Contents Contents 7 ListofFigures 9 ListofTables 10 1 AlmostWikipedia: EightEarlyEncyclopediaProjectsandtheMechanismsofCollectiveAction 11 1.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 1.2 Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 1.3 Failed“Wikipedias” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 1.4 DataandMethods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 1.5 Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 1.6 AlternativeExplanations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 1.7 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 2 TheRemixingDilemma: TheTrade-offBetweenGenerativityandOriginality 45 2.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 2.2 Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 2.3 EmpiricalSettingandMethods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 2.4 Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 2.5 Limitations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 2.6 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 3 LaboratoriesofOligarchy? HowTheIronLawExtendstoPeerProduction 69 3.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 3.2 Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 3.3 EmpiricalSetting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 3.4 DataandMeasures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 3.5 Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 3.6 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88 7 References 93 Acknowledgments 103 A AlmostWikipediaInterviewProtocol 109 8 List of Figures 1.1 Two-by-tworepresentationofatheoreticaldesignspaceinwhichpeerproduc- tionprojectsmobilize. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 1.2 Two-by-twotableadaptedfromFigure1.1showingplacementofOCEPs. . . . 35 1.3 GanttchartshowingwhenOCEPswereactive. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 2.1 ScreenshotoftheScratchdesktopapplication. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 2.2 ScreenshotoftheScratchonlinecommunityfrontpage. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 2.3 PlotsofestimatedvaluesfromfittedmodelsforprototypicalScratchprojects. . 64 3.1 PlotsofkeyvariablesforaBrickipedia,anexemplarywikiinoursample. . . . . 84 3.2 Plotsofestimatedvaluesfromfittedmodelsforprototypicalwikis. . . . . . . . . 87 9 List of Tables 1.1 ListanddescriptivedataoneachOCEPstartedinorbeforeJanuary2001. . . . 18 1.2 TableofOCEPscoded,dichotomously,foreachproposition. . . . . . . . . . . . 34 2.1 Summarystatisticsforvariablesusedinanalysis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 2.2 Summaryoffittedregressionmodels. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 3.1 Summarystatisticsforallofthewikisincludedinouranalysis. . . . . . . . . . . 80 3.2 Summaryoffittedmultilevelregressionmodels. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 10