Essays on Volunteer Mobilization in Peer Production

111 Pages·2013·0.8 MB·English

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