Scratch

We are working on a Karma system that works like what you are describing but a bit less capitalistic and more qualitative. Stay tuned. By the way, there is another project from the MIT Media Lab that uses a similar monetary system: http://openstudio.media.mit.edu

Thanks a lot for your ideas by the way, they are really insightful.

I don't get it.

So the kids who this was aimed at would have to pay to get more features?

If that's what it is, I don't like it.

It's hard to make useful things available only after earning points, as it goes against the open sharing philosophy espoused by the scratch team.

I like the idea of having a way to identify individuals who have shared good stuff, but I suspect that tying it to any sort of substantive reward would not work well.

I don't know. I think that we could use money to download other people's projects. For instance if I wanted to download a project I would pay that person a certain ammount depending on what they are selling it for and once I paid I would download it.

relyt12101 wrote:

I don't get it.

So the kids who this was aimed at would have to pay to get more features?

I don't know, just by the comments people are saying.

Last edited by Kaydoodle13 (2007-06-21 14:40:59)

Point/Money/Karma is good for one thing only:

To identify who is a "legitimate" user that should be listened to in the forii or perhaps what projects generally won't violation the "terms of service" and what individuals you ought to avoid. 

Generally speaking, this is a part of the "self-censorship" concept where a small group simply can't, over time, police and keep track of all of the problem users.  So a person is either "trusted" or "not trusted", with the ability of the other users being able to have an up or down "vote" on the concept.  And because no matter how hard you try you will always make some "enemies" (or people who simply don't like you for what ever reason), it takes more than one person to "kick sombody off" or lower their standing to something not trusted.

Beyond that, if you are trying to turn this into a for-profit type of endeavor where you have the choice of either contribute to the community or pay for the services, perhaps "money" might be something to consider.  But this seems to fly in the face of everything that Scratch is about at the moment, and turns the whole thing into a "game".

I could see something that might grab some kids attention by having to perform certain tasks (quests?) in order to unlock a new set of Scratch block types, in a tutorial played like a game, but not everybody is going to want to game the system in order to learn how to program in Scratch.  It would turn off far more people than it would attract.

Roberth wrote:

Point/Money/Karma is good for one thing only:

To identify who is a "legitimate" user that should be listened to in the forii or perhaps what projects generally won't violation the "terms of service" and what individuals you ought to avoid.

I've had a few problems with that kind of system in a few forums before, which had a single system of "popularity", and that provided those who were more popular leeway to act bossy over others.

Isn't it simpler if the people we befriended of where marked as such, and any other person we would judge his opinions and actions ourselves (with the ability to mark them invisible, for extreme cases)? Like we do in real-life? (I don't see any Karma plastered on top of people I see everyday, and try to ignore the other common "grades" in our culture, like salary, looks, "culture", etc.).

Just my opinion.

It would be very easy to abuse this feature if you got money by adding a game or a comment. You could simply add tons of low-effort games, or continuously post on your own game. I think by adding money, it would change scratch from a creative way to share games and animations, to a game/competition

I dislike this idea.

Well, as some people said, it is good in some ways. But yes, I agree with B-Reyn428, it might just turn into a game, a competition. This system does not follow the whole Scratch idea - Imagine - Program - Share. People would be more interested in earning "money" than in programming projects and being creative.
Also, this might an unfriendly atmosphere. Those who have a lot of "money" are "more important" or "stay higher". This might discourage new Members. I think that we must give the impression that all members are equal, no matter who they are: Members, Forum Moderators, or members of the Scratch Team.

Toasty wrote:

Maybe you could start off with a certain amount.
Or when you sign up you could press a button saying:
I do/don't want to be a dollar user

I don't think there will be many users that will press the "no" button.