Right now a few of us on the Scratch Team are looking into ways to improve the messaging / notifications system on Scratch 2.0. It works ok for some things, but not so well for others. For example - love it's are good to know about, but probably aren't as important as comment notifications. But the current messages page gives them equal emphasis.

As part of our research into the issue, we want to learn about the different ways that sites that are similar to Scratch manage messages and comment notifications. So - if you hang out on other sites for kids, what do their notifications pages look like? How does it work? What is good / bad about they way they do it?

Please post screenshots if you can - they'll be a huge help!

For example, here's one that shows the Scratch messages interface:


Thanks and Scratch On!

You could just alert when you get a comment and not when you get a love it or favorite.

Then, why not default to the “Comments” tab?


Typically, I don't need to do anything for a love it or favorite. But, I do like to respond to comments.

I honestly think it's personal preference which is more important, so maybe, on the sidebar, you can choose the order with a drag and drop sort of feature. Also, maybe you could choose different ways to organize it like Date, Type, etc.

I think you should be able to separate studio notifications from other comment notifications, except for direct reply-to-your-comment notifications. The transition studio was rather overflowing my messages.

This is definitely a tricky UI issue. Most of the websites my kids use do not have communities or messaging, so Scratch is likely in a unique situation. Perhaps reworking the screen into more of a dashboard-style page with fun metrics at the top and columns below the contain messages organized by type (comments, alerts, love-its, favorited, etc.). Some fun metrics could be “most loved project”, “most commented project”, “most viewed project” , “total remixes”, etc. You could also include totals across all projects. Although the example below is all grey, the columns could be color-coded by type).

I think comments from a studio should be separated from comments on your projects. Unless it's a reply to a comment of yours.
Also, whenever I click on a link to a comment it loads in the same page. When I go back to the notifications, they are all marked as read and are separated in their time slots. So, I always have to right click to open the comments in new tabs so I won't lose all the notifications. I find it a little annoying. Is there any way that all the comments won't be marked as read if I just click on a link to one comment?

I think you should stop making people get messages when loved/favorited. It's real annoying. I agree with BoltBait, default the comment tab.

Personally, I like getting notifications on love its and favorites. Maybe have an option to control the type of messages you get and don't get?

I wish you could combine to a single line a “love it” and a “favorite” if they come within, say, a minute of each other.

I think general statistics for Love-Its, Favorites, Follows, and possibly views at the top for the day would be interesting.

Idea Here

I think you should add notifications from the forums (comments, replies, quotes, ect.)

I know on Gamestar Mechanic, it only has comments and reviews so they don't have this problem there.

relrel wrote:

I think you should add notifications from the forums (comments, replies, quotes, ect.)

That is what the RSS feed button is for at the top and bottom of the topic next to the title.

I agree with BoltBait and lernegy, that system would be easier. And I also think cobraguy has the right idea; studio comments should be separate because those comments drown out my comments on other projects.

You've seen it here first!


Sorry for putting a love it in your mouth 777w it's just a mockup gee

Anyway, here are the changes I'm suggesting:
* a little popup thing (kinda like how G+ does it)
* color coding (so there doesn't need to be that clunky “All” “Comments” “Alerts” thing)
* a delete button (like Scratch 1.x)
* DROP SHADOWS EVERYWHERE
* No timestamps to save space. The box would expand horizontally if necessary tho.
* Not shown: vertical scrollbar for 15+ messages. Because.

Thoughts?

My idea plus scratchisthebest's idea = success.

BoltBait wrote:

I wish you could combine to a single line a “love it” and a “favorite” if they come within, say, a minute of each other.

A system like how facebook adds on to each message as more people press like.

Magnie wrote:

My idea plus scratchisthebest's idea = success.

I second that.

what ever you do it should be so it takes you to the comment like in 1.4

How about you add a few other sections (other than just “All Messages”, “Comments”, and “Alerts”), and then add an option so you can set any of them to default (for when you click on the messages icon).

Maybe on the settings page we can elect to get alerts (Envelope numbers) for each of the catagories:

Receive an alert for:
[X] Profile comments
[X] Project comments
[X] Studio comments
[_] Love its
[_] Favorites
[X] Someone quotes you in the message board
[_] Someone makes a reply to your message on the message board
[X] Your project is featured on the front page

etc.