Scratch

I would really like the most recent project list largened, as at the moment, three projects isn't enough in my view. You share your project and then a couple of minutes later, it's gone. This takes the fun out of sharing projects as not many people will view them in that two minutes.

I has one!

News Posts
=============
Here, a user can post news stuff about them. It'd be like a single forum post, but on their userpage. Archived, maybe

...I mean two!

Color Schemes
=================
Quite simple, users are able to change the color scheme of the website so that the white background wouldn't burn into their eyes.

...The edit was adding a letter "o" and this part

Last edited by boinoinoi (2008-11-19 16:51:39)

Dan01 wrote:

I would really like the most recent project list largened, as at the moment, three projects isn't enough in my view. You share your project and then a couple of minutes later, it's gone. This takes the fun out of sharing projects as not many people will view them in that two minutes.

I think your problem can't be solved by having more "most recent projects": Evan with more than ten your project is vanished from that list within a short period. This period is almost always to short for attracting some "goodwilling" people to have a closer look at your project. You find a much better solution here:
http://scratch.mit.edu/forums/viewtopic.php?id=7317

@Andres:  I think many Scratchers have that Problem Dan01 has. To strengthen that good "Critique Group"-Solution of  http://scratch.mit.edu/users/ashbyr1 and others, there should be a link to that idea at the main page. Perhaps there are also  many other good tips in the forum that should get more attention. So why not have a "featured forum entries" pane at the end of the Frontpage? I think the "Critique Group"-Forum-Entry could stay featured forever, but some other might come and go.

I only found that "Critique Group"-Idea by chance, because http://scratch.mit.edu/users/Paddle2See (and as I think many others) has a "hint with link" in his signature, that was caused by following instruction:

ashbyr1 wrote:

spread the word with this sig tag:
Join a Critique Group for feedback on your projects.

Code:

Join a [url=http://scratch.mit.edu/forums/viewtopic.php?id=7317]Critique Group[/url] for feedback on your projects.

Because I think that "Critique Group"-Idea is so good, I transfered it to the German community and asked there, if somebody wants to join a first "German language Critique Group": http://scratch.mit.edu/forums/viewtopic.php?id=11795

boinoinoi wrote:

No, wait, I have more.
Mostly from one of my old topics.
[...]

Wau ... that's a lot...I didn't know you would come out with so much...:-)
I think most of your suggestions are very desirable, but who should implement all that stuff? As far as I know there is no one but Andres seriously programming the Scratch-SITE, and he just wrote me about a Scratch-Proxi-Problem we have at our school-PC's:

andresmh wrote:

...unfortunately I have very limited time. As you might know, I am a graduate student so that takes some of my time too
[...]
If you know someone who would be willing to help me fix this problem and has a lot of knowledge of PHP, Apache, proxies and source control (we use SVN), please let me know.
[....]

So to have some progress, we have to categorize suggestions and describe it as "simple to implement" as possible. The best thing would be some more people that are willing and able to help Andres. Sadly I can't do that, because I don't know enough about the necessary technologies.

Last edited by MartinWollenweber (2008-11-19 18:10:14)

MartinWollenweber wrote:

@boinoinoi :Perhaps you could also detail your ideas and give suggestions for easy implementations and UIs. Also state what is most important from your point of view.

I think one of the most important parts of my ideas is that they are open to interpretation.
Mainly, I mean that you should try to fit <<most>> of my description as easily as possible.

Hi boinoinoi,
good additional idea about the posts at projects and galleries. I advocate that!

boinoinoi wrote:

MartinWollenweber wrote:

@boinoinoi :Perhaps you could also detail your ideas and give suggestions for easy implementations and UIs. Also state what is most important from your point of view.

I think one of the most important parts of my ideas is that they are open to interpretation.
Mainly, I mean that you should try to fit <<most>> of my description as easily as possible.

As I stated - as far as I know - the scratch Team has not much resources (I am in Germany, I only know some of them by mail contact). So I think, if we can't help them in programing, we could at least help them in giving ideas about how to reach the highest value for the Scratch-Site-users with the lowest effort. So perhaps it would be valuable to make some thoughts about the user interface (UI) for every suggestion that fits this target. How ever - the freedom to implement it in an other - even easier way -stays, if Andres finds one. What do you think?

@Andres: What do you think? Is it helpful or disturbing to give you implementation ideas about improvement suggestions for scratch.mit.edu ?

edit: only typos...

Last edited by MartinWollenweber (2008-11-27 10:37:13)

I still want more powerful "super" galleries...ones that can contain other galleries as described in this thread...

http://scratch.mit.edu/forums/viewtopic.php?pid=19687#p19687

I think this feature is more of a necessity than a "nice to have".

There should be something that shows your best game. You know it counts love its and views and puts the project in a visible place in your stuff.

Hi Andres:

I think I got an idea about a relay easy and yet powerful implementation about better connection between forum and "my stuff" page, that additional gives us some other wanted features.

The UI would look like this: If you are looking at your "my stuff" page and you are "loged in" you see two new one row text fields where you can input a link to a certain forum entry (simply by "copy & past"). The first field is named "my forum entry" after "your own projects" the second is named "featured forum entry" after "your favorite projects". The first field only accepts a link to one of your own forum entry, the second only accepts only a link to a forum entry by someone else. If you leave the fields empty or put a wrong link in it, your "my stuff" page looks the same way as always for others. If you put in a link to one of your own forum entry in the first and a link to someone else  forum entry in the second field, the referenced forum entries are mirrored inside your “my stuff"  page in a “read only" -style: The first entry between “your project"  and “your favorites" , the second forum entry after “your favorites" . The mirrored entries should perhaps be shorten to a certain length. They have links to jump into their original Tread in the forum were they are mirrored from. To have more comfort, you could have two buttons in the forum later "set as my stuff entry" and "set as featured my stuff entry" that have the same result.

This would have many advantages:

1.    Many people would use the first entry  to write something about them self,  so we find out more about the programmer and their intentions.

2.    Many people will use the second entry to feature someone else entry, perhaps about a matter of general interest , when they think is important. Because you only could feature a forum entry of somebody else you get a lightweight "quality control". This will strengthen the discussion in the forum and give more hints to important discussions.

3. Because you have two interesting gateways to the form more people are motivated to contribute to the Scratch-Community by using the forum.

4.    You don’t have that problem with  “increase the number of places where inappropriate content can be posted" :  It’s only a mirror of an existing and already controlled content.

andresmh wrote:

I am a bit worried about "commenting on my stuff" because it will increase the number of places where inappropriate content can be posted which in turn puts more time demands on our part :-/

5.    You can use all sophisticated forum-formatting including pictures etc. for that and update it from time to time (What you can’t do with comments a projects and galleries)

6.    You can see the online-State of the user at his “my stuff page"  because that is already a part of the forum entries.

7.    You can jump to all forum entries of this user because that is already a part of the forum entries.

8.    The UI seems really easy to implement and to understand

9.    Nothing changes in the look of the “my stuff"  page if somebody doesn’t use this new feature.

What do you think about this suggestion?

Last edited by MartinWollenweber (2008-11-27 05:53:06)

andresmh wrote:

Good point. Although, isn't it a good idea to ask new members to make the effort to say "hi" via a project, a post on the forums or comment from where the community can reply and say "welcome".  Have you encountered a lot of cases of accounts with 0 projects and 0 forums posts that you wanted to contact?

I had sometimes,when I wanted to contact users from Germany  or motivate students to  share their projects. But you are right that this is mostly a "theoretically" discussion.
Now I think it's better that the user can decide which comments are on their "my stuff" page and can choose an own forum entry to introduce themselves and one by someone else, they want to feature (see detailed suggestion above).

Last edited by MartinWollenweber (2008-11-26 17:19:41)

MartinWollenweber wrote:

@Andres: Perhaps there is one idea of boinoinoi that's very easy to implement, together with the idea about showing the "last update date": boinoinoi  wants "Changeable priority" for your own projects: If you implement the "update date" that could be done, by showing the projects in "order of last updated": If projects are uploaded one time, nothing changes in comparison to the actual state. If a project is updated by uploading it for a second time, it get's first of your projects.So the projects you take care of the most (by updating) are always at the front. Not so important projects are never updated and go to the back automatically.

That sounds like a great idea. I will definitely do that. I am adding it to our bug/feature tracking site. Let me know if you want access to it so you can submit some of these ideas there.

I like Martin's idea of a place to put links on your MyStuff to forum posts (or to anywhere else on the Scratch site for that matter). Who else thinks that's a good idea? Who would use it? I have been talking to ericr about the possibility of having a microblog within Scratch that allows people to tell the world what project they are working on, what they are struggling with, etc... kind of like how Facebook Status started.