Scratch

henley wrote:

BOTH!!

There should be a friends system where the other end has to accept or deny the friend request, and there should be a follow system which would be like what Scratch is now, only called “follow” not “friend”. So instead of seeing “henley’s friends” you would see “henley’s followers” or “henley’s fans”, and for the real friends list, you should (instead of the message “[username] has added you to his/her friends list”) have a message saying “[username] wants to be friends. Accept, or deny?” Then the friend requester would receive a message saying, “[your username] accepted your friend request.” Or, “[your username denied your friend request.

So the be more clear, in following, there would be a system very similar to what we have now. In friending, there would be an option to accept and deny. The friends would also be considered “not friends” until the friend requestee decided to accept. Or denied, but they still wouldn’t be friends that way.

... Opinions?

ProgrammingFreak wrote:

[
Do we lose our current friends when this starts?

That's a good question - and something we'll have to figure out if we do make the change. My first thought is to convert everyone's friends to people they follow. You could then send invitations to people you'd like to be friends with.

But I'd be interested in any other ideas Scratchers have to make the transition more smooth.

It's difficult to say. Both ways are a bit unusual -- having following that is called friending -- or having both friending and following. I mean most social networks have friending OR following -- not both.

I think the major reason due to this is for their unique needs. Facebook is not supposed to be "everybody is public to everybody" -- its a bit more private. Many people hide information so only friends can see. Whereas on twitter it is more of public and you follow them like crowds or fans.

Now where is Scratch? Probably in the middle, I would say. However I personally think its more on the twitter side, as there's no unique interaction with "friends". There's commenting and posting on the forums, but those are all public. There's no personal messages or poking, or games you play with your friends. So if we were to have both Friending and Following, then they would mostly just be words, used to describe that person. There's no actual physical difference -- you would either way be following that person's projects, and probably commenting on them -- just like with a friend.

For this reason I think keeping the current system is the best, unless any other unique friend features are added.

Lucario621 wrote:

It's difficult to say. Both ways are a bit unusual -- having following that is called friending -- or having both friending and following. I mean most social networks have friending OR following -- not both.

I think the major reason due to this is for their unique needs. Facebook is not supposed to be "everybody is public to everybody" -- its a bit more private. Many people hide information so only friends can see. Whereas on twitter it is more of public and you follow them like crowds or fans.

Now where is Scratch? Probably in the middle, I would say. However I personally think its more on the twitter side, as there's no unique interaction with "friends". There's commenting and posting on the forums, but those are all public. There's no personal messages or poking, or games you play with your friends. So if we were to have both Friending and Following, then they would mostly just be words, used to describe that person. There's no actual physical difference -- you would either way be following that person's projects, and probably commenting on them -- just like with a friend.

For this reason I think keeping the current system is the best, unless any other unique friend features are added.

Good points - and thanks for taking the time to write this out.  It's nice when Scratchers respond by saying "I want x or y."  But it's _really_ nice when they take the time to think about this issue and make a well written and insightful post, as you have. My hat is off to you, sir. 

It's possible we could use the different states - friending and following - in the future (but I'm not sure exactly how....) We're considering implementing some kind of recommender system to show Scratchers projects that they might like. It might be beneficial to give it additional data to use - like knowing who you are friends with as well as who you follow. But perhaps we shouldn't make changes based on "potential" gains in the future that we don't have a firm understanding of yet. Any change has a cost - in implementation, and potential confusion to Scratchers.

Keeping the current system would, of course, be the easiest thing to do. But if we do, perhaps we should just change the label. Several Scratchers have pointed out on this thread that they were confused or worried when someone "friended" them without them giving their ok.  So instead of using "friends," we could just change it to "Scratchers I'm watching.." or "Scratchers I'm following."  That would make for an easier transition, and probably avoid confusion caused by the use of "friend" in the future. What do you think?

Follow, because instead of the "friends latest projects", we can call it "Recent activity" or something like that.

Or we can have both! But the friend systems gotta change. You should send friend requests instead of adding them.

Thanks for reading

Great blog post!

I fund this idea. I also think it would be cool to have an interactive "web of friends" chart like you had in the picture. 

At illusionist. i DONT want the project. bit too confusing if your not allowed on the fourms or the blog.

We should change it.

scimonster wrote:

BoltBait wrote:

The one thing I don't like about the current system is that I can't find a list of who has "friended" me.

They should implement that!

Yes - good idea!

Change it please.

BoltBait wrote:

The one thing I don't like about the current system is that I can't find a list of who has "friended" me.

Yeah! I remember thinking that once! Great idea!

I like the current friend system. I think following would be good for the forums, but that might just be me.

do it! great ideas!