The Remixing Dilemma: The Trade-off Between Generativity and Originality

TL;DR

This paper investigates the balance between generativity and originality in online collaborative communities, showing that increased generativity often correlates with decreased originality, especially with certain work qualities and author prominence.

Contribution

It introduces a theoretical framework and empirical analysis of the trade-off between generativity and originality in peer production, using data from the Scratch community.

Findings

Moderate complexity, prominent authors, and cumulativeness increase generativity.

These qualities are linked to decreased originality in derivatives.

The study offers insights for designing peer production systems.

Abstract

In this paper we argue that there is a trade-off between generativity and originality in online communities that support open collaboration. We build on foundational theoretical work in peer production to formulate and test a series of hypotheses suggesting that the generativity of creative works is associated with moderate complexity, prominent authors, and cumulativeness. We also formulate and test three hypotheses that these qualities are associated with decreased originality in resulting derivatives. Our analysis uses a rich data set from the Scratch Online Community --a large web-site where young people openly share and remix animations and video games. We discuss the implications of this trade-off for the design of peer production systems that support amateur creativity.