Scratch

Thanks! 

Me.
I Definetly agree (but i dont make too many myself.    )

EDIT: I agree still.   
                                                                                             

Last edited by bbbeb (2010-08-19 15:07:22)

juststickman wrote:

Handicap like this: LINK

Kind of like that, except adapted for this points system.

Harakou wrote:

tl;dr

Nah, just kidding. Great idea. You have my support.

lol. thanks for supporting.

juststickman wrote:

Still, how do you determine "fame"?

Answer:

You might think now that this doesn't solve the problem of less famous Scratchers getting on the front page but don't worry. I propose a handicap system. This system ensures that less famous Scratchers can more easily get on the front page. Handicap is determined by the project's popularity relative his/her other projects' popularity so that the threshold for getting on the front page is higher for more famous Scratchers and lower for less famous Scratchers. For example, if a less famous (as determined by the handicap system) Scratcher's project has the same point value as a more famous Scratcher's project, the less famous Scratcher's project will take precedence in rank over the more famous Scratcher. This addition will ensure a variety of Scratchers will get on the front page and achieve their dreams.

The exact details for me isn't that clear because I'm sure some people would like different systems to determine "fame." It could be a handicap system like from a scale of 0.2-2, so higher handicap values mean that the Scratcher described is less famous and is multiplied to his/her point value to boost the relative value compared to other projects, and vice versa; or it could be somewhat like your handicap system. what's your opinion on this?

JTxt wrote:

Thanks for thinking this through!

This or something similar has been suggested already:
http://scratch.mit.edu/forums/viewtopic.php?id=17959
http://scratch.mit.edu/forums/viewtopic.php?id=39505
http://scratch.mit.edu/forums/viewtopic.php?id=39802

Here's my response.

I've seen point-based suggestions before on this forum but my suggestion determines what recent projects get on the front page, unlike the suggestions you linked to because they use a points system to determine the ranks of each user through the popularity of his/her projects.

vortex19 wrote:

I've seen point-based suggestions before on this forum but my suggestion determines what recent projects get on the front page, unlike the suggestions you linked to because they use a points system to determine the ranks of each user through the popularity of his/her projects.

I'm sorry, I overlooked some of your points.

Your "Best projects" is better than a leaderboard, like those links (except the last).  "Best projects recently" makes it better, so that it doesn't stagnate like "top viewed/loved all time".

Here's something I ran into recently that may help your idea, or at least may be worth thinking about: http://drupal.org/project/radioactivity (see nodes as scratch projects)

I think any project promotion or points system has to use care not to become a ranking system on a creative website like scratch, that would encouraging competition or getting 'fame', instead of the joy of creating and collaborating with others.


How I see the problem:
The current frontpage is like the shotgun approach: shoot everything at everyone.
I think we are now way too diverse for one frontpage to meet our needs.
Some of us like art, games, math, weird algorithms, stories, music, dogs, pickles...

I think we would rather target our projects to people that would appreciate them instead of everyone.  And in turn I think people would rather easily find the types of projects they find interesting.
I think we can do this by making tags more relevant and into mini-communities/front-pages.  By doing so I think it would take pressure off the front page.
So we can use sniper rifles and target the communities that would like our work.  Those community would decide how relevant the submitted project are to their category.
Still the better projects would rise in general categories/communities like "games", but you could also look for more specific communities like "games + platformer + mario", to find project, create for, and collaborate with.

Also, I think it should be easy to request help/attention, and find people with similar interests that want help. 

So I think we can do better than a single frontpage for meeting our needs for getting attention to our hard work.  Thanks!

Last edited by JTxt (2010-08-20 01:19:15)

thats a really good idea!! i would love less known projects to be on the front page instead of it being bombarded by  "FAMOUS" scratchers. If a famous scratcher gets on the front page then everybody would look at their other projects and they would get front paged aswell, continueing on and on and resulting in something like the beach wich is always on the front page.

vortex19 wrote:

I agree with the favetags now that I realize that the Scratch community is more diverse than I really thought. Maybe there could be a "best games recently" section, a "best animations recently" section, etc. to showcase the best in each category? But I somewhat disagree with Drupal radioactivity because that will only benefit the more famous Scratchers as their projects will receive more views and therefore less famous Scratchers' projects will likely go unnoticed. But on the other hand, maybe if the community helps find great projects made by somewhat unknown Scratchers, that project will get more well-known.

EDIT: nvm, I agree with Drupal radioactivity. In fact, I think that the decay rate for more famous Scratchers should be higher than that for less famous Scratchers. Thanks for helping to improve my suggestion!

Cool! Here's what I wrote before I realized you edited.  I may edit after sleep:
-----
I realized that description of radioactivity at that link is missing some features shown in the tutorial video. 
You can set a number for added radioactivity, for different actions. So for scratch, with scores you suggested, these actions would add these scores:
viewed +1
loved +10
favorited +5
(perhaps also: comments +1, downloaded +1)

I think the difference to what you suggested is that the radioactivity has a half life of a set time, like 1 day.  So the score is halfed every day.  So when projects are sorted by this score, in effect, this becomes like your list of "recent best projects"

(I'm a bit reluctant to use views as a measure of content quality.  I think that encourages misleading/sensationalist thumbnails and titles, like "I QUIT!!" and "Don't click here!".   I do like that you gave views a low score compared to love-its.  It should be adjustable;  the scratch team may find other scores work better.)

But yes, people that are popular, get more views -> love its -> get more attention. so some kind of handycap system may be needed. Perhaps by popular users those get a shorter halflife?  EDIT: Like you said.
And/Or perhaps better: make views give a negative score like -1, so that projects needs more than 1 love-it for every 10 views to increase it's radioactivity.  So that score is based on the love-it to view RATIO.

(But with FaveTags as currently envisioned, there is no generic “love-it”.  (I think it's too general, and weakens tag sorting because a project that ranks high in a popular tag is also high in a less popular/relevant tag.)  Instead, each tag on each project has a score based on how many vote for it.  Users are encouraged to add/vote-for tags that describe the content to them,  because by adding tags/confirming tags they are also organizing their bookmarks.   As the equivalent of what we have now, some may use tags like: “Love-it”, “favorite” but I think those are less descriptive than: “cool”, “interesting”, “fun”, “awesome”, "mesmerizing"... 
Then as a tag, people can find what the community thinks is “game + fun + mario”...)

Last edited by AddZero (2010-08-21 03:21:40)

vortex19 wrote:

I see! Your idea of a love-it to view ratio is a really good idea because this promotes quality projects even more! But what about views that don't come from registered users? Wouldn't that hurt the project because that person can't love-it if he/she isn't registered on this site?

Yeah, anonymous visitors shouldn't count.  Only logged on users add to views now, and only once.  so I think that would work fine.

vortex19 wrote:

Also, I agree with more specific FaveTags. I guess love-its are way too generic for good use. Maybe there could be several different love-its (e.g. love-it for games, love-it for animations, love-it for simulations, love-it for art, etc.) so that a very popular project wouldn't hog the top spots for all the major tags.

Yeah, FaveTags are like specific love-its for games, art, simulation and everything else.  So I think "love-its" are unnecessary.

It will take scratchers a bit more time and thinking than pressing the love-it button, but the payoff is that they're organizing their bookmarks/favorites, and voting to make tags more relevant for their favorite tags/communities.
(If people miss the "love it" or "favorite" button and revolt, make a separate button for the "love it" or "favorite" tag, separate from the FaveTag picker, for when people are in a hurry.  It might be good to have a universal value tag as well as more descriptive ones. (fun, neat, inspiring...)

As for popular users hogging the top spots on tag pages, all projects are introduced to tag pages the same way, in "recently tagged a X" when the project owner of someone else adds a tag. Then there's there's a "top tagged as X" in the 24 hours (default perhaps) then you can filter by, last week, month and all time.  I do like votes to views ratio too, that may work in somehow.

Last edited by JTxt (2010-08-21 15:18:08)

Lucario621 wrote:

*starts to read*

Woah what? A love-it worth 10, and a favorite worth 5? o_O

This is to encourage quality projects over some other cheap way to get on the front page like "I Quit!" projects, a kid about to die in a flood, etc. I never really liked the "top viewed projects" row because it can easily get corrupted by such projects.

Lucario621 wrote:

vortex19 wrote:

Lucario621 wrote:

*starts to read*

Woah what? A love-it worth 10, and a favorite worth 5? o_O

This is to encourage quality projects over some other cheap way to get on the front page like "I Quit!" projects, a kid about to die in a flood, etc. I never really liked the "top viewed projects" row because it can easily get corrupted by such projects.

Yes, but what I'm trying to say is that saying something like "This is my favorite project" means a lot more than "I love this project" - a favorite should be worth more than a love-it. People favorite projects less likely than the "love-it" projects, thus favorites should be worth more  . I hope that makes sense.

I thought love-it are "better" than favorites. I guess I got it mixed up somewhere. :\