Scratch

I definitely think that people need to have less spam messages.

I hate when people randomly advertise their own projects just for the goal of achieving the front page. They don't even look at your own project; they just copy and paste on everything that's on the front page.

Right now, I just delete them. It only takes a few minutes and I know it is annoying but might as well live with it until Andremsh takes out the BAN HAMMER.



Good picture, eh?

Cyclone103 wrote:

I created a project that will hopefully alleviate some of this spam. It allows the users to spam it as much as 3 times, thus hopefully directing it away from other places. It had front page for about 6 days, and got many hits.

Sorry if this is a bit harsh, but I'm just wondering:

If your goal was to direct spam messages from other places, why would you yourself spam other people's projects advertising that project? Wouldn't a better way to eliminate spam messages be to not do them yourself, having everyone do their own part of not doing it?

I hate spammers. That's why I use the forums

The best way to get rid of a spammer is to spam them about not spaming. Try posting stop spamming 50 times on one of their projects

The polite ways to get attention are not as easy, effective or as well advertised as spamming.

I think people want views/feedback soon after they just uploaded a project they spent some time on... before they go offline.
I think this is especially frustrating to new and "unpopular" users.  (It was for me.)  I think users that are online, should be exposed to projects of users that are also online right then, waiting for feedback.

The 3 newest projects on the front page used to be more helpful for this.
But now a project can be bumped in seconds...  and 1 person can upload many projects in a short amount of time.


I think a solution could be:
Replacing the "Newest projects" with "Requesting Feedback".
People can post a project (1 a day or hour perhaps) to the "Requesting Feedback" gallery by clicking a button on their project page.

When the do, they are immediately taken there, so they hang out with others that are online right now, waiting for feedback.  There can be quick communication between this group.  I think this would reduce the NEED for spamming.
(There's more about that suggestion here.)

Also perhaps put a link to a list of polite promotional methods right by the comment boxes, with a reminder like "Spamming is rude and against the rules".

I think this would reduce the need for intervention from the scratch team.

Last edited by AddZero (2008-05-20 18:10:12)

geckofreak wrote:

The best way to get rid of a spammer is to spam them about not spaming. Try posting stop spamming 50 times on one of their projects

I'd like to reccomend against this...if you need to notify us of inappropriate behavior, you can click on "Contact Us"

Thanks 

AddZero wrote:

I think people want views/feedback soon after they just uploaded a project they spent some time on... before they go offline.
I think this is especially frustrating to new and "unpopular" users.  (It was for me.)  I think users that are online, should be exposed to projects of users that are also online right then, waiting for feedback.

I agree for this, when I uploaded my first project, i was just waiting until i saw people posting comments, so i knew they had watched it. I was not "seeking for fame", but, as addZero said "seeking for feedback". That was in ages a project was like  hour on the frontpage in "newest projects", not  3seconds... I just wanted to know what others tought about my project. I agree a "seeking feedback" link/category would be *very* useful, but i think it would be used as spamming even more then comments. Maybe a project "seeking feedback" may not have more then 500 views?

Another solution might be a complete redesign of the scratch homepage. I think the homepage is not good enough anymore, now scratch is so popular. The homepage is not designed for 1 new project each second... I think having more "slots" would do a lot. Maybe it could be changed from 3 to 6, or 5. What about the YouTube homepage, it contains a box "videos being watched right now", would it be useful on the Scratch homepage?

Joren

I personally don't really like the idea of splitting Scratch inso "subsites" - that would result in the wikipedia-laguage problem. Knowlege is not shared between languages. For wikipedia, it is required to have information in all languges, to help everyone, even if they don't speak english. Also, that system only works because wikipedia has so much people who post articles. For scratch, this is not required.

Therefore I am not fully in favor of the filtered scratch site idea ([url]http://scratch.mit.edu/forums/viewtopic.php?id=3679[url]) -  in my oppinion, it is better to have the whole scratch site free of violence, nudity etc.

The server load could be fixed completely techinally, like putting the projects onto different servers, like "projects.scratch.mit.edu". It doesn't matters for this topic, of course.

Joren

Sorry, I didn't mean to kill this discussion.      I hope it can continue.

Yes, spam is a problem.
I think it's because users want to connect with other users faster... or are compensating because the "newest projects" no longer does that.

The "show and tell" forum is already made to fill this need, perhaps if there was a link to it on the front page... or it's own tab, to put feedback seekers together.
(...except there is allot of off topic discussion there now.  Perhaps make a general discussion forum and move off topic posts there?)

I agree with a front page redesign.  How should that work?


That all said, I think what makes Scratch special and attractive is this website- that puts everyone together to share skills and ideas.  I wish I had this when I was younger.

andresmh wrote:

When we removed the automatic hyperlinking to projects on the projects a lot of people complained. Maybe we should try again?

I don't believe the ability to hyperlink is the problem- it's very useful when it's not abused.  I think the problem is that the polite ways to get attention are not as well advertised or effective as spamming.

Spamming is filling a need.  It's directing online users to online users looking for feedback/attention. "Newest projects" used to do that before it was overwhelmed.  Perhaps the "Show and tell" forum topic could do that better if it was used for just "Show and tell" and advertised on the front page.

(I think a "Seeking Feedback" gallery could serve as a streamlined replacement to "Show and Tell" and "Newest projects"  Sorry for spamming this idea- but I don't think i've presented it well yet, and perhaps it could use more debate.  Some variation to this idea may help fill this need better, and more politely than spamming.  (Galleries and featured projects are good for showcasing projects, but the creators of those projects are not necessarily still online or seeking feedback.) )

andresmh wrote:

One nice thing about creating a hyperlink automatically is that it helps Google (the search engine we use) to find new projects.

Would a dynamically generated sitemap.xml help with this?
Or easier, a static one that tells Google and other search engines that the front page, recent projects and featured pages... updates "always" and has a high "priority" may help.
http://sitemaps.org
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/docs/en/protocol.html
(I've been spoiled by the XML sitemaps module for Drupal.)

Thanks!

Last edited by AddZero (2008-06-03 04:31:01)

I made the gallery! Add a maximum of 2 projects, and you can change which ones are in there at any time!