Scratch

Popularity.

The more people come to scratch, the higher the chances that some of them will be idiots.

***

If it were possible, I'd advocate

(a) hiding postcounts, to reduce the number of people that post pointless drivel just so they can point at their high post count. 

(b) Only allow people to post on the Miscellaneous forum once they have made 100 posts elseswhere, forcing them to demonstrate a willingness to make a valuable contribution to the message boards before being allowed in Misc.

Anyone found posting pointless post-count-inflating stuff elsewhere would have these posts deleted, and if they continued, would simply be banned.

Mayhem wrote:

Popularity.

The more people come to scratch, the higher the chances that some of them will be idiots.

***

If it were possible, I'd advocate

(a) hiding postcounts, to reduce the number of people that post pointless drivel just so they can point at their high post count. 

(b) Only allow people to post on the Miscellaneous forum once they have made 100 posts elseswhere, forcing them to demonstrate a willingness to make a valuable contribution to the message boards before being allowed in Misc.

Anyone found posting pointless post-count-inflating stuff elsewhere would have these posts deleted, and if they continued, would simply be banned.

I think this system would be a good solution to all of the problems we face. And perhaps a rating system, where you can rate someone as a forum user, so you have a way to tell who is a helpful forum user.

I agree with tons of the posts here....

Some of each sounds good...But only once and hour if you're less helpful? Only if it's really unhelpful that you can only post once. If it's rude stuff, or against the ToS then it should be a complete ban. 

Remove top viewed. Problem solved.

pinochio wrote:

Yep.... One of the reasons I quit. Honestly, there are only a couple of people left on Scratch who actually make games that involve programming. Ironic, isn't it? I say Scratch has a message before kids join that says 'Don't be a publicity door'.

It still contributes to the problem.....

juststickman wrote:

RHY3756547 wrote:

Remove top viewed. Problem solved.

Isn't what they thought about top downloaded?

... No. How would that cause problems? Why would you download an announcement project?

Paddle2See wrote:

It's good to get a dialog going on this...as Scratch 2.0 is being designed, presumably there will be a new forum to go along with it.  I like the idea of hiding postcount - except it would make it more difficult to spot imposters.   I think we should use a font that makes it more difficult to swap letters and make imposter accounts - that might help.

Yes a font should be used that makes it impossible to disguise letters like "I" (capital I) as a lowercase l. And the rating of users would also help to see differences between impostors and real users.

I really like the idea of some kind of karma system where posts can be rated on how helpful and supportive they are.  People who have good karma get to post more often than people with bad karma.  So if you are a helpful member, you might be able to post once every 20 seconds.  Less helpful, maybe only once an hour continuing up the scale until the person was effectively silenced.

Yes, that would be a great idea! Users should start with a neutral karma rating, allowing them to post once every sixty seconds. And as you are voted higher you can post more often and vise versa.

There might also be a time-based component so your karma continually gets better, even with no posts, so nobody is locked out indefinitely (unless they were actually blocked).

Negative karma should improve over time, as a way to give users second chances, although mods should definitely still be able to mute an account.

Of course, then the question must be raised...who gets to set the karma rating?  Is it voted by the other forum members?  Or set by the mods?  Or some of each?

I think that all forum members should be allowed one vote on karma for every user, that they can change as they will, and that a vote from a person with more karma has more weight than a vote from a person with less karma, and that the neutral karma should "count" 5 times for the purposes of averages, so that one malicious user can't effectively mute so one with one vote before anyone notices that person.

Paddle2See wrote:

I really like the idea of some kind of karma system where posts can be rated on how helpful and supportive they are.  People who have good karma get to post more often than people with bad karma.  So if you are a helpful member, you might be able to post once every 20 seconds.  Less helpful, maybe only once an hour continuing up the scale until the person was effectively silenced.

As soon as you introduce a member self evaluation system, it becomes open to abuse - with a gang of 5 spammers all rating each others posts as helpful, for example.

As for the imposters thing - show date of joining, not post count.

The *only* reason to display post-count is to encourage "I've got a higher post count than you" style competition.

fg123 wrote:

In the Fantastic Contraption Forum, when posting in off-topic, or misc, no posts will be added. 

That's nice; but it's not just about post count. Miscellaneous is the forum which is the most popular, so people are attracted away from the main forums, which the Scratch Forum was made for - and Miscellaneous causes the most arguments and such.

Mayhem wrote:

Paddle2See wrote:

I really like the idea of some kind of karma system where posts can be rated on how helpful and supportive they are.  People who have good karma get to post more often than people with bad karma.  So if you are a helpful member, you might be able to post once every 20 seconds.  Less helpful, maybe only once an hour continuing up the scale until the person was effectively silenced.

As soon as you introduce a member self evaluation system, it becomes open to abuse - with a gang of 5 spammers all rating each others posts as helpful, for example.

That aspect does concern me as well.  No system is fool-proof...hopefully enough safeguards could be designed into it to handle things correctly 95% of the time and the mods could fix the other 5%.

Mayhem wrote:

As for the imposters thing - show date of joining, not post count.

The *only* reason to display post-count is to encourage "I've got a higher post count than you" style competition.

That certainly makes sense to me.

Paddle2See wrote:

demosthenes wrote:

Mayhem wrote:

Popularity.

The more people come to scratch, the higher the chances that some of them will be idiots.

***

If it were possible, I'd advocate

(a) hiding postcounts, to reduce the number of people that post pointless drivel just so they can point at their high post count. 

(b) Only allow people to post on the Miscellaneous forum once they have made 100 posts elseswhere, forcing them to demonstrate a willingness to make a valuable contribution to the message boards before being allowed in Misc.

Anyone found posting pointless post-count-inflating stuff elsewhere would have these posts deleted, and if they continued, would simply be banned.

I think this system would be a good solution to all of the problems we face. And perhaps a rating system, where you can rate someone as a forum user, so you have a way to tell who is a helpful forum user.

It's good to get a dialog going on this...as Scratch 2.0 is being designed, presumably there will be a new forum to go along with it.  I like the idea of hiding postcount - except it would make it more difficult to spot imposters.   I think we should use a font that makes it more difficult to swap letters and make imposter accounts - that might help.

I really like the idea of some kind of karma system where posts can be rated on how helpful and supportive they are.  People who have good karma get to post more often than people with bad karma.  So if you are a helpful member, you might be able to post once every 20 seconds.  Less helpful, maybe only once an hour continuing up the scale until the person was effectively silenced.  There might also be a time-based component so your karma continually gets better, even with no posts, so nobody is locked out indefinitely (unless they were actually blocked).

Of course, then the question must be raised...who gets to set the karma rating?  Is it voted by the other forum members?  Or set by the mods?  Or some of each?

I don't agree with the Karma. Some might think posts are good, some will say they are not helpful. It'd be confusing. If someone was holding a grudge against another user, they might rate all their  comments as "bad."