Scratch

Today's homepage features only the projects that the current Scratch community likes: views/remixes/loveIts. I say current because I also think the community has evolved a lot in the past 2 years.

When an animation-lover visits the Scratch homepage (s)he will be attracted by all the animation and probably sign up to Scratch and downloading it. So, even more LoveIts on animation/art projects and even more animation/art projects on the frontpage attracting more animation-lovers etc.

When someone willing to create games visits the Scratch homepage (s)he will not see any projects (s)he really likes and decide to keep on Googling for something better. The result? Less people clicking LoveIt etc on games and, more importantly, less contributors of well programmed games.

The result is that the Scratch community is sort of unbalanced, featuring only animation/art and not featuring any other projects.

Solving this can be quite difficult. A major redesign of the whole website might be needed to support such a huge community as today.

I've some ideas though.
• What if people would be forced to categorize their project into only one of the six categories, then displaying only the 3 top loved projects of each category on the homepage?
• Allow sorting by number of scripts - more scripts usually mean more programming.
• Allow sorting by multiple things. Top Loved and Most Scripts? 

JSO wrote:

I've some ideas though.
• What if people would be forced to categorize their project into only one of the six categories, then displaying only the 3 top loved projects of each category on the homepage?
• Allow sorting by number of scripts - more scripts usually mean more programming.
• Allow sorting by multiple things. Top Loved and Most Scripts? 

1. This could be done as a development of the tagging system - you have to tag it as 1 particular category (e.g. games, animations etc.) so then it would be easy to find the animations, games or whatever and display a couple of each of them in the Top Loved / Top Remixed etc.
2. Sounds good in principle, only one problem - some games with not many scripts (LINE for example) are very successful, more so than some multi-script games, because sometimes scripts could be used inefficiently. Compare my 32 script Racing Champ v 6.2 with LINE and you'll see what I mean.
3. This would also make sense, it would be useful if you particularly like complex games / animations that are popular, among other uses.

gettysburg11 wrote:

Does anyone else think surprise projects should return to the front page?

I really want that to happen, there is still a surprise section, just not on the front page.

JSO wrote:

Today's homepage features only the projects that the current Scratch community likes: views/remixes/loveIts. I say current because I also think the community has evolved a lot in the past 2 years.

What about the curator and friend's projects section?

Andrés - true, now I think of it only 3 of 8 "spotlights" on the homepage are about project popularity. Both the Friend's projects and curator's picks are great. In my post above I was only trying to share what I personally think what makes some Scratchers upset about the homepage.

The most important part of my post is the following,

I've some ideas though.
• What if people would be forced to categorize their project into only one of the six categories, then displaying only the 3 top loved projects of each category on the homepage?
• Allow sorting by number of scripts - more scripts usually mean more programming.
• Allow sorting by multiple things. Top Loved and Most Scripts?  hmm

Which I think should not be as hard to implement as a "frontpage costumization" (I like the idea in general but it does not seem possible to realize it)

The curator and friend's projects sections still don't really allow to display a diversity of all types of projects and mostly the kind of projects a user is looking for.

And maybe it's quite silly from my side to say the current system doesn't fills my (or other Scratchers') needs while I have no clue how to allow Scratchers to search through a diversity of 585,102 projects easily. I think we can only improve by working together as we already are doing in this thread.

andresmh wrote:

Lucario621 wrote:

What about it? Curator=still not neccecarily good projects (well only sometimes), and friend's projects section=nice, but still having to be able to see 3 projects a day due to friend's projects isn't the best...

Andres, the truth is, why not FRONT PAGE CUSTOMIZATION? Just like igoogle.

Well, one reason is that Google has thousands of full time programmers. We don't even have 1 full time programmer for our website... so that's one reason   

But our code is open, so if someone is good at web development (CakePHP, MySQL, memcached, etc) we would welcome any help at making this possible!

About how good the curated projects are, I guess that's  subjective. The projects are good at least to the person who made them and the curator who picked them... Do you want to be a curator next? 

I'll say that I have a great set of favorites all with good veriety, but no thanks 

As far as I can conclude from andresmh's post, 1 thing - GO TO THE SUPPORT PAGE AND DONATE MONEY LOLZ!!!!

Andremsh, I think that rather than a cusomized front page, a simpler one should be used. Right now we have 7 rows of projects. Newest, Featured, Curator, Freinds, Top Loved, Top Remixed, and Top Viewed. I beleive that the Curator's and Featured are almost the exact same thing and that one should go. I agree with the fact that Top Remixed has become useless for creativity. Many people in this thread have suggested it be replaced with top scripts, but the consequences/ways around it are very obviuos.
I think that bringing back Top downloaded would allow well programmed projects arise from where they have fallen to. While people will look at a dramatized note, or love it, they probably won't download it. There are only three reasons I download a project:
1. It has music or a sprite I need.
2. It has a concept of proamming that I am curious in.
3. It won't load online.
Haveing a top downloaded section would feature projects with good programming because that is the main reason people download them.
What I am getting at is that there are too many rows on the front page. It seems cluttered. I think that we should take it down to around 5 rows, like earlier, and implement a better tagging system.

I also beleive that Archmages suggestion with the forced tagging of one type of project is valid. Perhaps choosing between Game, Animation/Art and Simulation/Tutorial would be a good three catagories, one row each of top loved, and then Newest and Featured/Curators. This also brings it down to 5 columns.
I agree with the wiki being a neccesity as well. There should be a standarized guide for scratch somewhere along with programming concepts to help the beginner. I could help with that if someone decides to make it.

Anyways, I can't write anymore now. I will later.

I am going to upload a project that says "I quit" And then I will state that it is a fake quitting, and that it was just to see if this is really what attracts peoples attention.

andres: I am a kid but I can program pretty well in php & mysql.    I could help...

Hey! I know HTML, PHP, Javascript, CSS, and a little bit of C.

BTW, I'm 11. Not trying to brag...

TheSaint wrote:

I think that bringing back Top downloaded would allow well programmed projects arise from where they have fallen to. While people will look at a dramatized note, or love it, they probably won't download it. There are only three reasons I download a project:
1. It has music or a sprite I need.
2. It has a concept of proamming that I am curious in.
3. It won't load online.
Haveing a top downloaded section would feature projects with good programming because that is the main reason people download them.

I don't think this'll work because of why it was removed in the first place. All the popular people's fans will ALWAYS download their stuff, and it'll still be the popular people and the nobodies. I don't download unless I can't see it online as well, but I know other people who are obsessed with certain users would download just because it's a project made by that user.

I agree with you completely.... I know that sometimes I make animations, but I try to stick to making games and programs. I am still not that great with scratch, so my games are usually simple... But at least I try. I agree that it is the same people getting the front page... and I know I am one of those people. But I love being on the front page, and I do not see anything wrong with that.

TheSaint wrote:

I think that bringing back Top downloaded would allow well programmed projects arise from where they have fallen to. While people will look at a dramatized note, or love it, they probably won't download it. There are only three reasons I download a project:
1. It has music or a sprite I need.
2. It has a concept of proamming that I am curious in.
3. It won't load online.
Haveing a top downloaded section would feature projects with good programming because that is the main reason people download them.

I agree. During production of my racing games, I have quite frequently downloaded games that have good programming that can help with my series, and I don't just download my friends' games for no reason but to bump up the number of downloads because it takes up too much room on my computer.

So I would like to see Top Downloaded back.