Scratch

But all of those provide inspiration for my projects 

The removal of Miscellaneous has been considered a number of times, as it does seem to be a flashpoint for a lot of drama and acting out.  But we feel that it does have value in providing a space for Scratchers to get to know each other better through discussions about a wide variety of topics.

Yes, it gets a bit rowdy at times...but it usually settles down pretty fast, once everybody is reminded to follow the Terms of Use and the Miscellaneous Forum Guidelines.

Wowee... OK, I'll break this down in a series of quotes.

Death_Wish wrote:

But it should still not have even been here in the first place, it's a programming forum.

So? It's common to have an offtopic section in a forum dedicated to one topic. In fact, I don't think I've ever heard of a successful forum that doesn't have one. It's just how the community gets to know each other better.

Besides, at this point, the rest of the forums are mostly relying on Miscellaneous to attract attention. The removal would result in everything else becoming a ghost town of unanswered questions, because so many regular forumers would decide to spend their time elsewhere.

Death_Wish wrote:

Miscellaneous should only be about programming on other languages, like help on Java, etc., and maybe some other stuff, but Minecraft and Portal should only lie in comments between projects. And maybe galleries and projects.

Problem is, comments aren't a good way of attracting attention. A lot of those Minecraft topics are advertising their own personal servers, which is hard to do on the mainsite. Not to mention, the commenting system would restrict casual conversation horribly, with its 500-character limit and mere 3 layers of replies.

Death_Wish wrote:

I think Miscellaneous should be deleted and maybe replaced with Other programming language help or something like that 

But these aren't the "General Programming Forums", they're the Scratch Forums! So we should limit them to being about Scratch only! Right?

Death_Wish wrote:

But seriously. When the TBGs were being removed, it caused a lot of drama, but you guys went on with it. Now, it's of course on another site, but still. It'd all work out for the best, I'm sure, if Misc was deleted.

There were reasons for the TBG forum's removal, but mostly because the mods found it annoying to moderate, due to the very heavy volume of posts and random fights. Miscellaneous has its problems, but not to the same level.

Death_Wish wrote:

And maybe there could be some user-made forums for Miscellaneous, that are in signatures and stuff.

This could be a problem. In recent months, people have been going to forums linked to from Scratch, and spamming them to the brim with shock images. The Scratch Team's actually resorted to filtering links to some forum hosts.

Last edited by hmnwilson (2011-08-02 22:58:09)

no.

Well, hmnwilson, you're correct on one way, but on the other way, Miscellaneous has gotten to the same level. Almost every topic turns into a flamewar. And it distracts all of the people that are there, every day, from programming. And actually, some of the people of Misc would probably still go on the forums sometimes and check out the other forums, which is better than being in Misc.

And to imnotbob, please give more of, like, an explanation of why not.
And to Flait, I don't go on those forums. Well, sometimes to report flame topics, but usually not. And it's the most used forum, and the most flamed forum. And I have more reasons above xD

IHeartGaming wrote:

Objection!

It's not that good, major.

well, the other topics are fun to post in and its mostly just playful games anyway, nothing bad. And you can't post there yet, you're a new scratcher.

silentslayer7 wrote:

well, the other topics are fun to post in and its mostly just playful games anyway, nothing bad. And you can't post there yet, you're a new scratcher.

Playful games are for the TBGs.