Scratch

I actually think this whole problem starts with both "getting views" and "seeking for popularity".  The Scratch team probably did a lot of research behind this, but i don't know if it is good for young people (like me, i am 13 - but i try to handle it) to get as popular as they do on this site. Lots of kids are not creating projects just because they like it, but because they want to be popular.

Therefore some users spam or chat on these forums. When someone recognises your username several times, it might get clicked... This is a good resource, providing lots of useful information (which is required because there is almost no other support for programming in Scratch) but, as dbal said, spammed by an enourmous amount of chat messages.

On the other hand: I know the idea of private messaging is rejected - there are enough reasons for it - but it might be a better solution then a topic created for chatting. If you provide a correct way for communication (which is not stimulating 'forum chat' in my oppinion) people would use it more then the wrong ways. An example - creators of projects which are featured are almost never posting spam for that particular project. Of course, because this site is created for young people, a safe verion of pm should be created. With things like 'Report this message as offensive or innapropriate to me' or message reviewing this might work...

Joren

dbal wrote:

My observation is that important threads quickly degenerate into a long series of trivial comments, often completely off topic, and which, even if on topic do little or nothing to provide information regarding the topic.

dbal, this is the case on every discussion board I've been a part of (including the complaints about it!).  And it will continue to be this way unless there is strict, post-by-post moderation of the discussions, which is unlikely here.  Sure, the signal-to-noise ratio is not as high as you might like, but making it higher puts a high burden on moderators to cull off-topic stuff.

In addition, the "poster" to "lurker" ratio on most boards is also quite low.  Many people read but don't feel any need to contribute or ask questions.  Or, in the case of Scratch, many users get help locally (from teachers, other Scratchers, etc.) and don't need help from the forums and/or don't have anything to contribute on their own.

Also, it is not surprising to me that youth participation on a board like this is low and/or low quality.  A number of factors enter into it:  keyboarding skill & speed, spelling difficulties, lack of ease of formulating written queries.  These can be strong barriers to a forum like this for a 16 year old, much less a 10 or 12 year old.

In short, I'm not at all surprised by your findings... and not at all troubled by them.

I hate how the scratch website has to work!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Sometimes it is so annoying!!!!!!!! Like people spam all over the place for popularity, and you can't do anything about it other than spam yourself!!! And there isn't a rating system. Ratings would be nice. Just so long as someone gives reasons for why they rated it the way they did. If they didn't, you could flag the review. Now that would be good. They could have a category titled: Top rated, but it would only count if it had more than 10 reviews. Now that would be nice. Not this current system, where the only way to win is to spam your head off!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

andresmh wrote:

Moderators are allowed to move threads. Messages within a thread cannot be moved at this point for technical reasons. We haven't had enough time to look into that.

Done! Now moderators can do that. Yay!