Scratch

I have an idea to resolve the issue the Scratch Team has been having about the Miscellaneous forum. If you are not familiar with the Miscellaneous forum trouble, please read this post by Lightnin from the Miscellaneous forum:

Lightnin wrote:

As many of you have noticed, the miscellaneous forum has been getting kind of rowdy lately. What with various arguments about religion and politics, it's sometimes hard to remember that this forum is part of the Scratch community.

This has been a big concern for the moderators and the Scratch Team. When the tone of a forum starts to get mean spirited, it starts taking a lot more work to keep an eye on. Believe it or not, mods and Scratch Team are a lot like the rest of you - we love Scratch and we like making projects and talking about cool Scratch related stuff. So it's a problem when mods and the Scratch Team have to spend a lot of their time dealing with flame wars, trolling, or other kinds of disrespectful posts in this forum. Most of our mods are volunteers who freely donate their time because they love Scratch. So it's not fair to ask them to spend so much of their time dealing with arguments that have nothing to do with Scratch.

So - no decisions have been made yet, but we're considering closing the miscellaneous forum. Some Scratchers who have made disrespectful posts and have already been warned in the past have been blocked temporarily so we can talk about the situation with them and ask them to use a different tone. We don't like doing that, but we need to cool things off a bit.

If you'd like to help out, the best thing you can do is contribute to a positive and friendly atmosphere in this and all other forums. Be careful when joking around in ways that could seem mean spirited. You and the person you are joking with might know you are just kidding around, but others may not. There are always new Scratchers joining the community, and we want to make sure it feels welcoming for everyone.

Scratch On!

Now, I have also read a post by cheddargirl that inspired my idea:

cheddargirl wrote:

... Being that Miscellaneous is starting to be come the new off-topic section and now is starting to become the new source of hassle for moderators, one could say that the tactic applied to the TBG might work out well with 'Miscellaneous' - I would assume that 'Miscellaneous' is suddenly becoming the new posting 'temptation', thus moving it outside of the current Scratch Forums would again, in theory, prevent the temptation to post something for the sake of posting while waiting to reply to a more Scratch-relevant topic (or course, whether or not conflicts are less likely to erupt is slightly different in this case as 'Miscellaneous' technically serves as a place to post serious discussion, and we all know that sometimes things get heated). ...

Well, without further a due, this is my idea:

I think the Scratch Team should change the entire layout of the Text-based Games forum so it will have four forums:

Management (where the forum is managed)
Moderators (where only moderators can read and post)
Text-based Games (for TBGs)
Off Topic (for off topic things)

Also, the entire name of the forum can be changed to "The Off-Topic Forum". Here are the up and down sides of this new idea:

UPSIDES:

-More focusing on the real scratch forums.
-More fun with the TBG forums.
-Less flame wars in the real Scratch Forums.

DOWNSIDES:

-More work for admins to change the TBG forum.
-More trolls in the TBG forums.
-Some people may not like the change (like they did with the TBG forums).

IN-THE-MIDDLE-SIDES:

-More TBG moderators will be needed.
-Less users in the real Scratch Forums.

I hope you liked my (and kind of cheddargirl's  ) idea.

Thanks and Scratch On!