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"Collaboration" redirects here. For other uses, see Collaboration (disambiguation).

A collaboration, or collab for short, is a group of Scratchers who work together to make one or more things (these can include, but are not limited to, projects, studios, etc), or to do something related to the community. A collaboration may also sometimes be referred to as a "company",[1] coming from the idea that these groups of Scratchers exemplify a great amount of teamwork and dedication. Each Scratcher contributes their talents to the benefit of other team members, very much like how a real company operates.[2] In the official Scratch Team Blog, 'andresmh' has described collaborations as "a group of Scratchers that get together (virtually) to create collaborative projects",[1] and mentions how collaborations on Scratch are an "interesting phenomena" occurring in the Scratch Website. Many companies/collaborations have their own logo, studio, forum thread, and sometimes even a motto. 2010 has been called "the year of the companies" by some users[3][4] due to many companies/collaborations forming, possibly due to the addition of the Collaboration Forum.

Scratch 2.0 had many new capabilities which enhanced the experience of collaborating on scratch at the time.[5]

A common structure of having all of the members share a single account is not allowed by the Scratch Team (except immediate family members), and such accounts will be blocked.[6] Instead, it is recommended that the users remix existing projects by other members of the collaboration. The owner of the collaboration account can then put the final result on it.

Common Jobs in Collaborations

In a collaboration, members of the collaboration are assigned to a particular job. Listed below are some common jobs in collaborations.[7][8][9] Collaboration forum threads often feature a form which in used to recruit users to a job in a collaboration.[10][11]

Programming
Programmers may help with the coding in Scratch. Some collaborations will have ranks of programmers based on their abilities and skill in that area. Some collaborations have specialized programmers that work in areas such as Cloud Variables and using 3D in Scratch.
Art
Graphic Artists may design the sprites for projects and they may also help with graphics for the collaboration and complete art orders for shop collaborations. Art can also be counted as animation, background design, etc.
Sound design
Sound Experts may deal with sound effects in Scratch projects or composing music for projects. Some band collaborations have different roles for sound experts such as drummers, composers, pianists, and guitarists. Sound design is sometimes a huge role in the creation of project depending on what you're creating.
Ideas
Ideas people may help with brainstorming and design the game. Many collaborations allow all members to brainstorm but not all.
Testing
Testers help test the current project and give feedback including bugs and areas for improvement.
Writing
Writers may write story-lines for projects, or for a writing-based collaboration.

If the collaboration is left for too long, participants can lose interest and greatly slow the project.[12] Many people use the Collaboration forum for discussions on current collaborations, or ones currently in-development.

Common Structures of Collaborations

Although all collaboration structures are different, here is one common collaboration hierarchy. Many collaborations have set-ups similar to this, but not all.

  • Leader: There is usually one leader per collaboration. They tend to have the last say and are responsible for the overall running of the collaboration.
  • Executives: Executives are members trusted by the leader and are responsible for helping the leader run the collaboration. They often have the power to hire and dismiss members. May be known as Deputy Chief, Assistant Executive and Co-leader.
  • Managers: Managers tend to have less power than executives and may not be able to hire and dismiss members. They are responsible for running teams within the collaboration.
  • Worker: Although the workers have the least power, they make up the backbone of a collaboration.
Standard Structure
Similar to the hierarchy above.
Democratic Variant
Similar to the hierarchy above, but members are allowed to vote on some decisions.
Community Variant
This collaboration tends to be between a few friends on Scratch who have equal say in decisions about the collaboration.
Massive Variant
This collaboration has many members. They usually have several layers of teams and departments with many levels to the hierarchy.

Elections and Voting Systems

In some collaborations, certain roles are elected by the whole collaboration. There are some different voting systems collaborations can use for this. Included below are examples of a few of them.

First Past The Post
Also known as Winner Takes All and abbreviated FPTP. This is voting at its most simple. Essentially, the voters choose one candidate and the candidate with the most votes wins. It is quick, simple, and easy to organise. However, it allows a minority rule and causes a spoiler effect.
Alternative Voting
Abbreviated to AV and also known as instant-runoff voting, this voting method is used to elect one candidate from many.
  1. Instead of voting in First Past The Post, voters do not just chose one candidate, but rather order them in preference.
  2. If one candidate has over 50% of votes cast, they win.
  3. If not, eliminate the candidate with the lowest number of votes.
  4. Take the votes from this candidate and redistribute them based on the order of preference on each individual vote cast. Repeat steps 2 - 4 until one candidate reaches 50%.

Alternative voting removes the spoiler effect and allows the candidate that the majority agree on to win. However, it is a more complicated process than FPTP.

Single Transferable Vote
STV tries to achieve proportional voting and is used to elect multiple officials. Before the voting process, the number of elected officials must be decided to calculate the threshold. To work out the threshold, you can use different formulas:
  • Droop Quota: votes needed to win = (votes cast / (seats to fill + 1)) + 1
  • Simple: votes needed to win = (votes cast / seats to fill)

Other Types of Collaborations

Not all collaborations are restricted to project creation — some groups decide to collaborate on other things, such as Scratch Modifications. Some collaborations try to give advice with Scratch, such as H4U (Help For You).

Band Collaborations

Band collaborations are collaborations that make music. Some band collaborations record their music separately before sharing it with the others to improvise and record their parts, and then putting it together into one song.

Newspaper Collaborations

A newspaper collaboration is a collaboration that publishes "newspapers". Some of them publish monthly,[13] some of them publish weekly,[14] and some aim to publish daily.[15]

Content ranges from articles about parts of Scratch,[16] game reviews,[17] and interviews with Scratchers.[18] Often members of these types of collaborations will either write new articles or edit existing articles. The finished project will usually contain buttons allowing one to skip from one article to the next.

Studio Collaborations

Some Scratchers may collaborate in making a studio that serves a specific purpose to the Scratch Community. Projects relating to the purpose of the studio will be added. Since studio collaborations have very specific intentions, curators of studio collaborations may be picked cautiously and sparsely.

Other kinds of collaborations

One of the most often collaborations are where two Scratchers agree to make a collaboration together, and make projects on any kind of topic. Another one can be an account where a certain group of curators in a studio agree to make an account, and make projects that have certain activities for that certain studio.

Collab Camp 2011 and 2012

Main article: Collab Camp

The Scratch Team released the second collaboration event on Scratch, after Collab Challenge, on August 1, 2011, called the Collab Camp. Users had to work together to create interactive stories. On February 12, 2012, the second Collab Camp was released. The theme was 'music mashups'.

I'd Like to Teach the World to Code

In May 2015,[19] the Scratch Team hosted a collaboration with anyone that was interested on Scratch. People could remix this project, record themselves singing the "I'd like to teach the world to code" song, written by Scratch Team member mres, add their own characters, and submit a link to their project here. Many people participated in this collaboration, and it was featured in some news articles.[20] The final project can be found here.

See Also


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Scratch Links

References

  1. ↑ a b Andrés Monroy-Hernández. (13/1/2010). "the groups commonly referred as "companies", that is group of Scratchers that get together (virtually) to create collaborative projects." https://web.archive.org/web/20100509195102/http://blog.scratch.mit.edu/2010/01/scratch-companies-by-guest-blogger.html
  2. ↑ cocoanut. (12/12/2009). "These teams were coined as "companies," and each one was composed of hardworking "employees," each specializing in their own talents, whether the talents be programming, art, animation, music, or anything." ar-post:277409
  3. ↑ Ace-of-Spades. (31/1/2010). "This'll be the year of the companies." ar-post:314986
  4. ↑ archmage. (2/2/2010). " Some have said that 2010 is the year of the companies" ar-topic:29961
  5. ↑ Lightnin. (24/2/2010). "One of our goals for Scratch 2.0 is to better support collaborations like these" ar-topic:31223
  6. ↑ Za-Chary. (7/3/2021). "[Shared accounts] are not allowed, and will be blocked." post:4967646
  7. ↑ Block_Point_Studios. (14/10/2020). "Cloudly - Ask, Help, Share[see Jobs section]" topic:447546
  8. ↑ wgyt. (9/10/2020). "Open Positions" post:4487614
  9. ↑ CodingLand. (30/12/2020). "Positions: Are you interested? Then you might want to read this:" topic:470892
  10. ↑ p-p-p-p-p-p-p-p-p-p-. (16/12/2020). "Interested in applying? Great! Fill out the form below:" post:4692929
  11. ↑ Nezon. (17/10/2020). "Here is the application form." topic:448327
  12. ↑ topic:505697
  13. ↑ users:Scratchable_Mag
  14. ↑ StarscreamClone. (22/7/2013). "This is the new weekly ‘scratchpaper’" topic:11556
  15. ↑ Tierage. (14/8/2013). "it was a daily newspaper" topic:13466
  16. ↑ Centrifugal. (17/8/2013). "Another proposal piece [...] Moderation Forums" post:114321
  17. ↑ goldfish678. (23/7/2013). "Game review" post:90044
  18. ↑ ThePancakeMan. (14/9/2013). "for the interview" post:139217
  19. ↑ projects:63614162
  20. ↑ Cory Doctorow. (3/6/2015). "Scratch creators around the world collaborate on "I'd like to teach the world to code"[title]" https://boingboing.net/2015/06/03/scratch-creators-around-the-wo.html
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