Scratch

Lightnin · 2012-01-23 18:23:56

On Thursday, January 26, we'll be making some long-needed updates to the forums. The details are described on this thread in the announcements forum.

The biggest change is that the Miscellaneous forum will be replaced by two new forums: Things I’m Making and Creating, and Things I’m Reading and Playing.

Things I'm Making and Creating - A place to discuss awesome stuff you are making outside of Scratch. Share things like stories, Minecraft servers, programs, or art you made with tools other than Scratch.

Things I'm Reading and Playing - A place to talk about books, games, art, or music that inspires you. This would include books like Harry Potter, games like Portal, or something by your favorite musician.

These two new forums are not 'off-topic' or 'Miscellaneous' forums. Topics that don't fit the descriptions of these forums will be closed or removed, and the accounts that created them will be given a warning to stay on topic.

We know that many of you who enjoyed the free-form nature of the Miscellaneous forum will grieve its loss. We made this decision because the costs of moderating an open-topic forum were too high, especially when compared to the small percentage of active Scratchers who post there. We need to keep more of our energy focused on Scratch.

Scratch On!
Lightnin (on behalf of the Scratch Team)

p.s. If there are Misc topics that fit into the new forum structure that you would like carried over, please post a link here, and we’ll move them after we make the switch.

Wickimen · 2012-01-23 18:24:49

[/firstviewer]
O_O

veggieman001 · 2012-01-23 18:25:05

Woo! Fresh start!
And no Wicki I was :U

Wickimen · 2012-01-23 18:25:53

Whatever I was first poster big_smile
NO CHANGE IT TO THE 27TH THAT WOULD BE EPIC!

imnotbob · 2012-01-23 18:27:14

*le cry*

Wickimen · 2012-01-23 18:27:27

If they actually changed it to the 27th I'd just die of the awesomeness

veggieman001 · 2012-01-23 18:28:04

Wickimen wrote:
Whatever I was first poster
NO CHANGE IT TO THE 27TH THAT WOULD BE EPIC!

Nah. The sooner the better, man.

imnotbob wrote:
*le cry*

All this is going to do is remove a large body of spam

Though I do think the names could use some work

my-chemical-romance · 2012-01-23 18:28:12

Needs more moderation? Get more mods.

soupoftomato · 2012-01-23 18:29:02

YES!!!! I fully support that.

So basically one is for stuff you made and the other is stuff you like that others made? xD

WAIT! I notice it prohibits discussions about school or such. (An example of a current topic would be "Homework" or that poll about what soap you use)

Last edited by soupoftomato (2012-01-23 18:31:03)

Lightnin · 2012-01-23 18:30:23

soupoftomato wrote:
YES!!!! I fully support that.

So basically one is for stuff you made and the other is stuff you like that others made? xD

Yep, pretty much.

Wickimen · 2012-01-23 18:30:35

veggieman001 wrote:
Wickimen wrote:
Whatever I was first poster
NO CHANGE IT TO THE 27TH THAT WOULD BE EPIC!
Nah. The sooner the better, man.

But just think
Three important 27 days yikes

veggieman001 · 2012-01-23 18:31:26

I just can't express how happy I am this is happening :DDDDDDD

jslomba · 2012-01-23 18:31:54

This will be confusing for new users, I think.

Wickimen · 2012-01-23 18:32:20

I'm pretty happy about this but what would make it absolutely golden would be if it happened on the 27th

Lucario621 · 2012-01-23 18:32:29

my-chemical-romance wrote:
Needs more moderation? Get more mods.

Read this:

Lightnin wrote:
This is the "infinite moderation budget" strategy. I'm afraid it's just not practical for a free site run with grants and donations. The other thing is that 99.9999% of the time, the army of mods it would take to do this would be looking at stuff that was totally fine. Also, if we used this strategy, every time you posted, you'd have to wait till a mod was available to review your post before it would show up for others to see. It would probably take hours. Most posts get read soon after they're posted.

(from here)

my-chemical-romance · 2012-01-23 18:34:15

Lucario621 wrote:
my-chemical-romance wrote:
Needs more moderation? Get more mods.
Read this:

Lightnin wrote:
This is the "infinite moderation budget" strategy. I'm afraid it's just not practical for a free site run with grants and donations. The other thing is that 99.9999% of the time, the army of mods it would take to do this would be looking at stuff that was totally fine. Also, if we used this strategy, every time you posted, you'd have to wait till a mod was available to review your post before it would show up for others to see. It would probably take hours. Most posts get read soon after they're posted.
(from here)

The problem is with the moderation team is that they're all American, we need to spread it out and get a nice variety of timezones in there to cover as much space as possible, splitting the moderation into 2 sections doesn't really help.

RedRocker227 · 2012-01-23 18:34:29

Farewell, Misc.. Nice knowing you.

veggieman001 · 2012-01-23 18:35:23

my-chemical-romance wrote:
Lucario621 wrote:
my-chemical-romance wrote:
Needs more moderation? Get more mods.
Read this:

Lightnin wrote:
This is the "infinite moderation budget" strategy. I'm afraid it's just not practical for a free site run with grants and donations. The other thing is that 99.9999% of the time, the army of mods it would take to do this would be looking at stuff that was totally fine. Also, if we used this strategy, every time you posted, you'd have to wait till a mod was available to review your post before it would show up for others to see. It would probably take hours. Most posts get read soon after they're posted.
(from here)
The problem is with the moderation team is that they're all American, we need to spread it out and get a nice variety of timezones in there to cover as much space as possible, splitting the moderation into 2 sections doesn't really help.

Nope. MRN is Russian I believe, and JSO is Dutch. There may be other non-US ones as well;; I really don't know.

jslomba wrote:
This will be confusing for new users, I think.

Not really. There will be guidelines threads in each.

ProgrammingFreak · 2012-01-23 18:37:10

Hmmph. This is sad.
But it is for the better, I suppose.
Though there will be some topics I will miss that will not fit in those guidelines. ;_;

veggieman001 · 2012-01-23 18:37:31

ProgrammingFreak wrote:
Hmmph. This is sad.
But it is for the better, I suppose.
Though there will be some topics I will miss that will not fit in those guidelines. ;_;

Like which?

jslomba · 2012-01-23 18:38:17

veggieman001 wrote:
jslomba wrote:
This will be confusing for new users, I think.
Not really. There will be guidelines threads in each.

But still, I think it will still confuse many scratchers, and annoy the mods even more to move a bunch of topics that are in the wrong section.

veggieman001 · 2012-01-23 18:40:04

jslomba wrote:
veggieman001 wrote:
jslomba wrote:
This will be confusing for new users, I think.
Not really. There will be guidelines threads in each.
But still, I think it will still confuse many scratchers, and annoy the mods even more to move a bunch of topics that are in the wrong section.

Not really. The names are definite and descriptive. Sure, at first there will be some moving but after that there'll be an example of what goes where.

Lightnin · 2012-01-23 18:40:44

my-chemical-romance wrote:
Needs more moderation? Get more mods.

Our mods are awesome, but it still takes energy and focus to run the mod program.

As at least one former mod pointed out, they felt that more and more of their responsibilities were being focused on the misc, because that's where the flames / problems kept cropping up. When we made the mod program, we wanted mods to be able to help other Scratchers do awesome stuff with Scratch. Being an awesome helpful Scratcher was their primary role, and doing actual moderation was more secondary. But because the Misc was so often problematic, it demanded more and more of their (and our) limited time. As we move towards the alpha of Scratch 2.0, we need to keep our energy focused on things that are closely related to Scratch itself. Running an off-topic, anything goes forum (whose threads only rarely had much to do with Scratch), has turned out to be, well, too off-topic.

Lucario621 · 2012-01-23 18:42:59

veggieman001 wrote:
Nope. MRN is Russian I believe, and JSO is Dutch. There may be other non-US ones as well;; I really don't know.

True, but:

- JSO is busy with Scratch Wiki and Scratch Resources, and is not active on the forums
- MRN is basically online whenever she wants (?)

So they aren't major contributors to the moderating team, in terms of forum management (to my knowledge).

veggieman001 · 2012-01-23 18:44:35

Lucario621 wrote:
veggieman001 wrote:
Nope. MRN is Russian I believe, and JSO is Dutch. There may be other non-US ones as well;; I really don't know.
True, but:

- JSO is busy with Scratch Wiki and Scratch Resources, and is not active on the forums
- MRN is basically online whenever she wants (?)

So they aren't major contributors to the moderating team, in terms of forum management (to my knowledge).

Ah, true. It would be nice to have a British, Australian, or elsewherean moderator.

Scratch

archived forums

#1 2012-01-23 18:23:56

The Miscellaneous forum will be replaced 1/26/12

#2 2012-01-23 18:24:49

Re: The Miscellaneous forum will be replaced 1/26/12

#3 2012-01-23 18:25:05

Re: The Miscellaneous forum will be replaced 1/26/12

#4 2012-01-23 18:25:53

Re: The Miscellaneous forum will be replaced 1/26/12

#5 2012-01-23 18:27:14

Re: The Miscellaneous forum will be replaced 1/26/12

#6 2012-01-23 18:27:27

Re: The Miscellaneous forum will be replaced 1/26/12

#7 2012-01-23 18:28:04

Re: The Miscellaneous forum will be replaced 1/26/12

Wickimen wrote:

imnotbob wrote:

#8 2012-01-23 18:28:12

Re: The Miscellaneous forum will be replaced 1/26/12

#9 2012-01-23 18:29:02

Re: The Miscellaneous forum will be replaced 1/26/12

#10 2012-01-23 18:30:23

Re: The Miscellaneous forum will be replaced 1/26/12

soupoftomato wrote:

#11 2012-01-23 18:30:35

Re: The Miscellaneous forum will be replaced 1/26/12

veggieman001 wrote:

Wickimen wrote:

#12 2012-01-23 18:31:26

Re: The Miscellaneous forum will be replaced 1/26/12

#13 2012-01-23 18:31:54

Re: The Miscellaneous forum will be replaced 1/26/12

#14 2012-01-23 18:32:20

Re: The Miscellaneous forum will be replaced 1/26/12

#15 2012-01-23 18:32:29

Re: The Miscellaneous forum will be replaced 1/26/12

my-chemical-romance wrote:

Lightnin wrote:

#16 2012-01-23 18:34:15

Re: The Miscellaneous forum will be replaced 1/26/12

Lucario621 wrote:

my-chemical-romance wrote:

Lightnin wrote:

#17 2012-01-23 18:34:29

Re: The Miscellaneous forum will be replaced 1/26/12

#18 2012-01-23 18:35:23

Re: The Miscellaneous forum will be replaced 1/26/12

my-chemical-romance wrote:

Lucario621 wrote:

my-chemical-romance wrote:

Lightnin wrote:

jslomba wrote:

#19 2012-01-23 18:37:10

Re: The Miscellaneous forum will be replaced 1/26/12

#20 2012-01-23 18:37:31

Re: The Miscellaneous forum will be replaced 1/26/12

ProgrammingFreak wrote:

#21 2012-01-23 18:38:17

Re: The Miscellaneous forum will be replaced 1/26/12

veggieman001 wrote:

jslomba wrote:

#22 2012-01-23 18:40:04

Re: The Miscellaneous forum will be replaced 1/26/12

jslomba wrote:

veggieman001 wrote:

jslomba wrote:

#23 2012-01-23 18:40:44

Re: The Miscellaneous forum will be replaced 1/26/12

my-chemical-romance wrote:

#24 2012-01-23 18:42:59

Re: The Miscellaneous forum will be replaced 1/26/12

veggieman001 wrote:

#25 2012-01-23 18:44:35

Re: The Miscellaneous forum will be replaced 1/26/12

Lucario621 wrote:

veggieman001 wrote:

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