Scratch

Hello, New Scratchers (and regular Scratchers, if you are reading this)! Welcome to the forums! I'm going to give you some Do's and Don'ts of being a New Scratcher. The Do's will help you become a Scratcher faster. The Don'ts? Well, not so much.

To the regular Scratchers: Yes, I know there are already a zillion threads telling people how to become a Scratcher. So please, don't post stupid things saying that I don't need to post this.

OK, here we go!

DO
Be active for a while on both the main site and the forums. How many posts a day? That is your decision. You don't have to have to post 30 posts a day, but make sure you post enough weekly to be considered active.  Make sure you upload some projects because you cannot become a Scratcher if you have no projects. It took me over a hundred forum posts to become a Scratcher, but that was my choice. You could do it with far less.

Post helpful posts and people's threads. Lots of New Scratchers like to get their post numbers up, and by doing that they post lots of Lols, or just random stuff. Don't do that. That isn't helpful. The Scratch Team, which is a group of real people, updates your status. If they see your posts are just a bunch of nonsense, they won't upgrade you. Here is a good example and bad example:

Thread name: How do you make your text colored?

Good answer: Use the BBCode. This is the code: [color=your color here]Your text here[/color]

Bad answer: i dunno

Post good projects. Let me define "good" for you. Good is projects that are creative and thoughtful. If you post a very simple project, but it has creativity and thought put into it, it is still a good project. Since you are new, you don't need to make amazing projects. You can just make beginner projects. A project that is not good has no point put into it, or is spam. This is what I call "nonsense projects". If you have a project that is the Scratch cat saying "What's up?", that, in my opinion, is a nonsense project.

Post nice and constructive comments. I must admit, my comments are not that constructive. If I like a project, I say "This is awesome!" and just settle for that. Once in a while, I will post a suggestion. What you should do is NOT do that. You can post nice comments, definitely, but make them a little more detailed. If you like somebody's project, don't just say "Cool!" Say, "Cool! The best part is the awesome graphics!" This could really give the creator an idea that they're graphics are good, henceforth making it so that they continue on making good graphics.
Here's something you never do, and I never do. Post mean comments. If you worked really hard on something and somebody wrote "Worst project ever!", how would you feel?
Now, let's say that the project is not very creative or thoughtful. Instead of writing a rude comment about how bad it is, think of something that could make it better and write that.
However, if you cannot think of any suggestions, don't comment at all.

DON'T
Complain about being a New Scratcher That is not being helpful or constructive, and it might annoy other people. Plus, you are really the only person that can make yourself become a Scratcher.

Complain about your limitations. It is what it is, and everything has a reason. All the limitations will go away or change someday. All you need to do is post some projects, be active on the forums and main site, and be nice. If you want to blame it on somebody, blame it on the trolls.

Post spam. You have no idea how much hate you can get if you post even one spam post/comment. It really annoys people, no matter what type of spam it is. If you are wondering about what type of comments/posts are considered as spam on Scratch, go here.

Post stuff that has nothing to do with you. Example: Do not request to be a curator. Since you are new, you can't. The Scratch Team picks people who are pretty experienced and have been on for a while. If you did accidentally request to become a curator, it doesn't really keep you from becoming a Scratcher or curator in the future, but it just might be a little bit annoying for the ST (Scratch Team).


Here is a list of things you can do when you become a Scratcher:

You can have a signature. A signature is a thing that shows up in every one of your posts. It can be a picture, typed words, basically anything you want, just as long as it's not
inappropriate.

You can use the [url]tag for any website. Right now, if you are a New Scratcher, you can only use the [url]tag for Scratch-related websites.

You can use the [img] tag. If you are a New Scratcher right now, you cannot post any images. The reason you can't do this is because not all New Scratchers are the most trustworthy people, therefore taking the risk that New Scratchers might post bad pictures. But right now it doesn't matter anyway, since a nasty picture attack occurred (not so) recently, so even if you are a Scratcher you can't post images ;_;

You can use the code tag.

The 180 second rule turns into the 60 second rule. When you are a Scratcher, instead of waiting 3 minutes to post again, you only have to wait 1.

You can edit and delete forum posts.

Thanks for reading this! If you have any suggestions to things I should add, post below!

Last edited by fungirl123 (2012-02-07 15:18:10)