Scratch

(I'm Not An Adult) That's What The "Flag As Innapropriate" Link Is For. That's the best way to keep this site clean. You Could Just Block That Certain Page. (Can't You? I Don't Know If It's Possible...) (Read First Line Of Signature) (Hope That Helps!    )

rico, you can certainly use Scratch without using the website. You could also configure your network to disable access to a particular page (the Chinese government does it all the time    ) 

With more than 1,000 projects a day, our best solution so far to deal with inappropriate content is to is to have combination of decentralized monitoring and centralized decision making. We do rely on the community to help us monitor the site and I believe this is not only a pragmatic solution but it also helps young people engage in thinking about their own moral reasoning as we ask them to explain why a project is inappropriate when they flag it.  I  would love to see more in depth discussions about these issues as there is never a right or wrong answer.

When people flag projects as inappropriate there are two things that could happen:

1. If the project receives one or just a few flags, the Scratch Team reviews the project and makes one of the following decisions:
a) censors the project, this sends a notification to the creator asking him or her not to post that kind of project
b) marks it as "for everyone" when we think it's something we would show to any person. For example, an animation of a ball or a scientific simulation.
c) marks it as "not for everyone" when the project show mild violence, are OK in the cultural context of the US media, but that we would rather not emphasize. Projects like this cannot make it to  the front page.

2. If certain content is flagged by many people it is automatically censored. Then the Scratch Team reviews it and makes a decision (see #1). This is useful because we don't have the resources to be checking the site 24 hrs a day and it has been successful mechanism at removing pornography and other kind of very inappropriate content very quickly. Unfortunately, this system is also abused by some members who sometimes organize with others to take down projects as a way to annoy their creator. That's why we always review community-censored project and sometimes un-censor them if they doesn't deserve to be censored. We also block accounts when people are abusing the flagging system.


In the future we would like to implement a filter that only shows projects marked as "for everyone", however we have not had the time or resources to do it and it also might be disappointing to browse such site because the percentage of projects that we can actually review is so small that it would be more of a place with an extended set of sample projects rather than an active sharing place.

At some point we spent some time implementing a solution for schools to have a shared and controlled environment in our site but unfortunately after talking to some teachers we realized that it was not a good solution. First, because there was not concensus on whether or not a shared spaces for all schools was something people would be interested in using. Second because teachers are already too busy with their work to be able to do spend time reviewing projects. Third, the rules in each school in each country are very different. Fourth, we would not be able to have the time and resources necessary to verify that the people joining such system were indeed schools and teachers.

In the particular project you point out, the Scratch Team decided to mark it as "not for everyone". It is very complicated to decide where the line is crossed. Each person and each culture has very different values. In general, it seems to me that people US are more concerned about sexual content while in Europe people tend to be more sensitive towards violence. I imagine in the Middle East and Asia the concerns could be different. 

One interesting data point is that there doesn't seem to be any concensus on whether or not violence in video games causes violent behavior. In fact, there is this report recently from the Harvard School of Public Health that claims that violence in video games does not not seem to be linked to real violence. I like the note ends by saying "Kutner and Olson have documented their findings in Grand Theft Childhood: The Surprising Truth About Violent Video Games, where they stress the importance of parental education and awareness. In a society where children who don't play games are considered to be socially inept, it is important for parents to understand what their kids are playing. In addition, they need to be able to block out the seemingly endless attacks on the video game industry and use the scientific evidence available to make judgments for themselves and their family."

I would like to think engaging the Scratch community in a discussion about the nature of inappropriate content is a great way of dealing with these issues as it is not only about censorship but also about the reason behind it. I would be happy to hear your thoughts and ideas suggestions or ideas. We are always very happy to find volunteers (programmers, educators, etc) to help us improve our systems.

PS - I just "flagged" the Scratch at the link in my original posting with this explanation: "Violence with blood and human victims." I'll continue to do this if I see students viewing... well viewing violence with blook and human victims. We'll see how it goes. I hope my flags don't become a bother.

scratchcritic564 wrote:

rico wrote:

I have been using and promoting Scratch as a way to introduce students in grades 3 through 5. We have enjoyed what we've done very much, and the students and I have learned a lot with lots more to learn. We've always had these rules: #1. No human victims, #2. Nothing violent. And now my students have shown me Scratch programs like this one:

http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/Comcastc99/71491

Can anything be done to clean up Scratch, or should I abandon its use at our school and block the site? If I'm the only one who thinks this type of violence is inappropriate then that's what I'll have to do. It's been fun while it lasted, however. I've got students watching the Naruto Christmas Special over and over again.

actually, there are hardly  any projects that are innapropriate.

Rico Doesn't Like #1. No human victims, #2. Nothing violent. Lots Of Blood Can Be Inapropriate and killing people can too but in her case anything that does with violence or killing is innapropriate to rico.

PokemonMaster64 wrote:

If you have those three rules, I would suggest banning computers and internet altogether. We all try to hide from these things, but you can't be young and innocent forever... violence... is something we can't hide from. I don't get what you mean by no human victims. Killing aliens is still violent. Also, mindless? Isn't it OK to be a little crazy sometimes? Also, you never mentioned blood. Blood does not always go along with violence. There could be a project with someone who os injured in it. That could have blood too. You would have to live in a box to live by rules that are that strict!
<stop all> contact with computers if you want to keep those rules!

Human Victims is when you have someone in a movie that kills someone else (or in human case....you kill a human.)

Scratch should try to install a filter system where they view the project before allowing it onto the website and if its bad they can not let it on the website. It'd be hard, but (i think) doable

big-bang wrote:

PokemonMaster64 wrote:

If you have those three rules, I would suggest banning computers and internet altogether. We all try to hide from these things, but you can't be young and innocent forever... violence... is something we can't hide from. I don't get what you mean by no human victims. Killing aliens is still violent. Also, mindless? Isn't it OK to be a little crazy sometimes? Also, you never mentioned blood. Blood does not always go along with violence. There could be a project with someone who os injured in it. That could have blood too. You would have to live in a box to live by rules that are that strict!
[blocks]<stop all>[/blocks] contact with computers if you want to keep those rules!

I agree. Sword fighting games? Those are... unrealistic... and lego.com tries to be appropriate. And (random) example: Goomba stomping - try doing that, you'll pull a leg muscle. Sometimes, "Cartoon Violence" is to keep people from really doing violence. But games without blood are scary to - one of the Resident Evil designers says that he makes gory games because otherwise, a guy getting sliced in half and not bleeding could lead to a misconception that doing an unspeakable act will not cause much pain. There's no perfect way out, unfortunately.

I agree. no offesnse, rico, but you obviously have problems, if you have to ban a site because of a few games with cartoon violence. as i've noticed, adults are always overprotective when it comes to violence. seriously, Super Smash Bros. Brawl is very non-violent, but somehow it got rated teen. and on scratch, blood is basicly nothing more than red stuff created in the paint editor.

I think some people use video game violence as an outlet for anger. I know if I didn't have break time to slash up some monsters with a sword in a  good game of zelda to vent out frustration, I would go crazy and probably violent! I think playing something like Halo doesn't make you as violent as knowing all your friends play it and that they mock you behind your back because you don't.

scratchcritic564 wrote:

big-bang wrote:

PokemonMaster64 wrote:

If you have those three rules, I would suggest banning computers and internet altogether. We all try to hide from these things, but you can't be young and innocent forever... violence... is something we can't hide from. I don't get what you mean by no human victims. Killing aliens is still violent. Also, mindless? Isn't it OK to be a little crazy sometimes? Also, you never mentioned blood. Blood does not always go along with violence. There could be a project with someone who os injured in it. That could have blood too. You would have to live in a box to live by rules that are that strict!
[blocks]<stop all>[/blocks] contact with computers if you want to keep those rules!

I agree. Sword fighting games? Those are... unrealistic... and lego.com tries to be appropriate. And (random) example: Goomba stomping - try doing that, you'll pull a leg muscle. Sometimes, "Cartoon Violence" is to keep people from really doing violence. But games without blood are scary to - one of the Resident Evil designers says that he makes gory games because otherwise, a guy getting sliced in half and not bleeding could lead to a misconception that doing an unspeakable act will not cause much pain. There's no perfect way out, unfortunately.

I agree. no offesnse, rico, but you obviously have problems, if you have to ban a site because of a few games with cartoon violence. as i've noticed, adults are always overprotective when it comes to violence. seriously, Super Smash Bros. Brawl is very non-violent, but somehow it got rated teen. and on scratch, blood is basicly nothing more than red stuff created in the paint editor.

I was wondering about Brawl. I was about to get it, but then I noticed the rating. I guess it's just the fighting itself, but still... good luck trying to pull a Final Smash on a jerk who shoves you over a fence.

I Play It anyways. Even my brothers and sisters (3-8) 

Actually, it all depends on the way blood and violence is presented in a project. Sure, violence is part of our life, but when the blood is accented, that cannot be considered appropriate, because then the violence is taken not as "just a small part of life", but as something that life is all about. That is called gore, and that is, what I believe, Rico is afraid of.
And actually, sometimes it's hard to distinguish a violent concept from a non-violent one.
Sometimes, a project can be quite harmful without visible blood, projects that contain "emotional" violence. For example, they might encourage hatred towards a person or anything in itself or provoke negative feelings.

Ahh yes. MyRedNeptune you nailed it. Because my new project Slimey, is about a piece of slime who gets shot at and has to find out who shot at him. However there is no blood or gore or any of that innappropiate stuff. Which makes it the small violence in life, but not excessive violence.