Scratch

dav09 wrote:

Lucario621 wrote:

dav09 wrote:

cool... but i cant sign up
i know this might be a bad idea but you should make a projects section for your projects, under the section of your user name, i dont know... experimental

About signing up, see the message I just posted 

I see your idea - but one thing is, that users without accounts might become jealous that they can't created articles about their own projects. Secondly, it goes against our policy on no articles on projects or users (not counting Scratch Wiki account users).

Yeah might get messy... with spam

could I become a contributer? Thanks 



Also I really like this new wiki, well done, appreciate the time and effort

It's great that you want to be a contributor! But to help us with our decision, it would help if you could answer the following two questions:

-Why do you want to join the Scratch Wiki?
-How would you help the Scratch Wiki by becoming a contributor?

Thanks!

dav09 wrote:

Ok...
I have been a member of the scratch community for a long period of time and have made some edits in the unofficial wiki and I would like to help the community out. I completely understand the purpose of these questions( For spam reasons). I hope that we can get many editors and have many Scratch Related Articles On this new Website/ Wiki. I hope to help out all of the members and help the newer ones get a better understanding of this place and program and help out missing pieces left out of wikis, you have wrote nearly too much for one person and most of us appreciate it. Keep up the good work 

Thanks for listening  !

Thanks!

We'll definitely be considering you for becoming a contributor!    We're not going to immediately do it all, rather, we will be sending the invites in 'waves', to multiple people all at once,

dav09 wrote:

Ok thank you, i have seen the paint editor trick (shif click) was found by me    in the wiki... wasn't expecting a trick that I found to be in the wiki

edit: some were... not all! rotate was found by me

Ok - I've changed some things accordingly. It can be controversial on who actually found it, because some people may have found it first, but other people have have found it without knowing the other person found it, and etc. etc., so I removed that tiny part altogether.

Also, what rotate section are you talking about?

dav09 wrote:

I dont want to gain credit for it, under the paint editor wiki, in the secrets. you also know alot about scratch. First post about this secret was here i think http://scratch.mit.edu/forums/viewtopic.php?id=33489 , it could be added to the shift-click r wiki.

also do u mind the signature?

It's ok for you to use the wiki logo in your signature, of course    .

Using the special paint things by shift-clicking the different tools aren't secrets - they don't have to be really hacked to in order to get. In fact, they're mentioned in a stickied thread here. So I don't think it belongs in the shift-click-r page.

The user list only shows thirteen users at the moment... Dx 

Jonathanpb wrote:

When will more people join the wiki? 

After we get a short list of people (maybe 12, or less) who've requested to become contributors, we'll send them all invitations 

I think you have to apply first... 

You can still browse, though. 

Well, I'm not that fussed really. I won't come begging to be let on the Wiki, if anyone who has the power to feels like it, they can add me, but it's not that important...

It's very, very cool to have a repository for information on Scratch that's hyperlinked (rather than linearly threaded like the forums), and the labor-of-love dedication of Lucario et al shines through.

But...

Maybe I'm being naive here, but this "apply to be a contributor" bothers me.  Even though it uses wiki software, it just ain't a wiki if there isn't room for broad community participation.  I don't think this is just my unreconstructed '60s radicalism talking.  It's a practical matter.

Take me, for example.  I am never going to be a Scratch Wiki activist.  I don't have the time or the inclination to write a bazillion articles, let alone police the editing of the (presumably growing) corpus of existing articles.  So I can't honestly "explain how I would help the Scratch Wiki by becoming a contributor."  On the other hand, I think I might have something to contribute to the BYOB article!  You don't want to lose that input by making it hard for me to offer it.

Why is spamming the wiki more of a concern than spamming the forums?  The latter happens, but it doesn't happen all that much, at least not in the fora I read.     Just adopting the Wikipedia "you can't write an article about yourself" policy would probably help.  (That's a better lesson to draw from Wikipedia than the "neutral point of view" one, imho; we're not going to have articles about the politics of the middle east in our wiki!  But the best lesson to learn from Wikipedia is that you get a richly textured and amazingly accurate collection of articles by opening the doors.)

I think it would be entirely reasonable not to allow anonymous editing; that's another way to cut down on spam.  Repeat offenders could be banned; that would still be much less restrictive than the current policy.

My point isn't that everyone has to be treated exactly like everyone else.  Community Moderators are a great idea for the forums, for example -- but you don't have to be a C.M. to post to a forum!  Even Wikipedia has a privileged core of editors.  But anyone can contribute.  (Anonymously!)  And, trust me on this, the level of vandalism on the Scratch Wiki will be less than on Wikipedia; for one thing, less is at stake here.  And for another thing, Scratchers are good people. 

P.S. If it's not obvious, my concern isn't that I might apply and get rejected.  (Not after being friended by Lucario.    )  It's that some kid who nobody knows, but who happens to know all about, say, techniques for getting polyphonal music to work smoothly and would write an absolutely terrific article about that, won't bother applying, or will have lost interest by the time his/her application has been approved.

Last edited by bharvey (2010-06-05 03:10:29)

Jonathanpb wrote:

• So we can be sure that the user bharvey on the Scratch Wiki is the same bharvey on the Scratch Website

Ah, but I think it should be an integrated login -- if I log in on the home page I'm logged in on the wiki and vice versa.

• To prevent vandalism/false information/lousy editing/commercial spam

Well, starting with commercial spam, half a million people is nothing to sneeze at, but most of the half million don't have credit cards, so there's a limit to how valuable the Scratch Wiki will be as a target, I think.

As for vandalism, I think the level of immaturity shown by vandals disappears quickly in a strong, cohesive community.  You can have a rule that people can't edit during their first N weeks as Scratchers.  But part of the point of wiki software is that vandalism is easily reversible.

False information and bad editing... you're going to get some of that regardless.  (As a former copy editor of my high school and college newspapers, I can tell you that nobody's writing meets my standards, not even my own!)  But letting everyone make edits is how you fix that problem -- unless you want to do it all yourself. 

Hmmm... you've defeated the second reason.    I don't think that there will be an integrated login though - I think they would have done it if they could. But I'm not sure - I'll ask Lucario. 

WeirdF wrote:

Jonathanpb wrote:

You did pretty good on your edits at the old wiki - I want you to be on the new wiki! 

Well, how do I do apply then? Do I just ask here?

Lucario linked to the Become a contributor article earlier in this topic - the article says to ask here.    So... just post and say you want to join!