SelixScratch wrote:

BearSlothCoding wrote:

fdreerf wrote:

BearSlothCoding wrote:

SelixScratch wrote:

My goal is not to abolish fame. I love the social aspects of Scratch.
Rather, I want to see if we can make those social aspects encourage more originality.

Lol good luck with that. I think it's too late to do this since even if you take some stuff away, everyone's focus will still be fame. People will try to figure out to still be famous no matter what you do.

These sentences conflict.

Not really, they're trying to get everyone's focus to not be fame. What I am saying is that everyone's focus will still be fame, no matter what.

I don’t think that’s entirely correct. I think that there are a considerable amount of even famous scratchers who don’t prioritize fame. It’s their followers missing that and thinking fame is inherently good, and thus making derivative projects, that I don’t like.
There are many people who don’t prioritize fame over quality. But there are also too many who do.

Everyone who's focus is currently fame, will still focus on fame. No matter what you do, not much will change. Maybe a few of them, but not all.

Ban “Famous Scratcher” projects and studios. These create the impression that fame is a desirable trait, and that shouldn’t be an impression people should have.

I would have thought “Famous Scratchers” studios would be violating the CG already, since they are not inclusive.

Users get a message when someone they follow shares a project. This makes a follow more meaningful, and discouraged following hundreds of people.

This would be a total nightmare if you were following lots of people already, but for those who don't follow many people, it might be good.

Collapse “following” and “followers” into one “tabbed” box, with “following” being the default. This reduces the emphasis of follower count in the UX.

I like the idea of this one. Some people have even suggested to remove the “followers” bar. I also think it would be a good idea to hide the number that shows on the “followers” section, so people can't see the exact count.

Require users to manually show view/love/favorite/remix stats. It can be interesting to see these numbers, but making them things you have to “show” should reduce the emphasis on popularity. The love and favorite buttons will still exist, just without the numbers next to them.

Honestly I think there is no good reason to have these counts in the first place. I sometimes like to see the stats for my own projects though, so maybe make it so it would be visible only to the creator of the project.

Remove the “what the community is loving” tab. I don’t trust nine-year-olds to run a meritocracy, but maybe that’s just me.

I highly doubt there would be much point to this.

In order to avoid the remixing tab becoming a replacement, add a one-hour delay between when a remix is created and when it can be shared.

I'm not sure how this could help, and one hour sounds like an awfully long time.

SelixScratch wrote:

Here are some possible solutions:

• Ban “Famous Scratcher” projects and studios. These create the impression that fame is a desirable trait, and that shouldn’t be an impression people should have.
  
• Users get a message when someone they follow shares a project. This makes a follow more meaningful, and discouraged following hundreds of people.
  
• Collapse “following” and “followers” into one “tabbed” box, with “following” being the default. This reduces the emphasis of follower count in the UX.
  
• Require users to manually show view/love/favorite/remix stats. It can be interesting to see these numbers, but making them things you have to “show” should reduce the emphasis on popularity. The love and favorite buttons will still exist, just without the numbers next to them.
  
• Remove the “what the community is loving” tab. I don’t trust nine-year-olds to run a meritocracy, but maybe that’s just me.
  
• In order to avoid the remixing tab becoming a replacement, add a one-hour delay between when a remix is created and when it can be shared.
  

I cannot call all of these ideas mine. However, as this thread is supposed to mostly discuss the problem and solutions in general, rather than a specific solution, I am completely fine with that. I am simply listing those here as reference.
Please share your own ideas if you have any.

1. I don't agree with these studios, But famous scratcher projects are fine as of now. (Semi-support.)
2. No, This will be pretty annoying for people who follow a 1,000 and 1 different people. (No support.)
3. That'd be interesting, But it's not really needed. (Semi-support.)
4. Hmm, Not really needed either. (No support.)
5. Why are we targeting 9 year old? Why not 13 year olds? My friends 13 and she acts like a 3 year old, Being older doesn't always make you more mature. (No support.)
6. It'd be annoying. Plain and simple, What about those people that want to signup for rps (And they have to remix a project to signup?) or those people that are doing colabs by remixing? (No support.)

I'm not a fan of checking how many followers I have, But kids are always going to be materialistic, Its how it is.

Delqhi wrote:

I'm not a fan of checking how many followers I have, But kids are always going to be materialistic, Its how it is.

Agreed. I repeat, this is going to be a very long game of whack-a-mole.

nerdiebirdy wrote:

]I also think it would be a good idea to hide the number that shows on the “followers” section, so people can't see the exact count.

It's still possible (and positively easy) to figure it out how many followers someone has by doing a bit of multiplication.

(removed)

JC20092009 wrote:

I want to point something out.

1: If fame is what motivates people to make projects, so be it! Motivation is important.

2: People want their hard work to be recognized. Of course it’ll be a bit annoying when you work months on a project and you get only 20 views. Fame is a perk, not something bad.

There are scratchers who put time and effort into their games and designs and dont get popularity. I'd rather see games like @uvne's instead of low quality generic platformers made in 20 minutes that dont even use their own script.

bump

Edits have been made. Text that has been removed is marked with a strikethrough, and added text is marked in (parentheses and italics.)

SelixScratch wrote:

Here are some possible solutions:

1. Ban “Famous Scratcher” projects and studios. These create the impression that fame is a desirable trait, and that shouldn’t be an impression people should have.
   
2. Users get a message when someone they follow shares a project. This makes a follow more meaningful, and discouraged following hundreds of people.
   
3. Collapse “following” and “followers” into one “tabbed” box, with “following” being the default. This reduces the emphasis of follower count in the UX.
   
4. Require users to manually show view/love/favorite/remix stats. It can be interesting to see these numbers, but making them things you have to “show” should reduce the emphasis on popularity. The love and favorite buttons will still exist, just without the numbers next to them.
   
5. Remove the “what the community is loving” tab. I don’t trust nine-year-olds to run a meritocracy, but maybe that’s just me.
   
6. In order to avoid the remixing tab becoming a replacement, add a one-hour delay between when a remix is created and when it can be shared.
   

1. Banning fame-based projects/studios would be a nightmare for the Scratch Team, as I'm sure thousands upon thousands already exist – with more in the making. (And the Scratch Team already has too much curation responsibility.) If the correct measures are taken, these will fade away on their own. Perhaps, however, begging for fame could be banned.
   
2. Users should absolutely get messages from people they're following. Right now, following has no value besides bolstering an arbitrary fame value, which is what we don't want. To prevent message spam, a daily summary could be sent, similar to studio activity notifications. (However, this should be discussed in a separate topic, as this doesn’t change anything about fame, it just following more useful.)
   
3. My suggestion is to remove the followers bar/page entirely on profiles other than one's own. This way, one can still see how many followers THEY have, but they won't be able to detrimentally compare themselves to other Scratchers. (The API would still exist for those who are dying of curiosity about others, but removing this from the core website experience could make it feel like stalking for some.)
   
4. Similar to my suggestion with followers, the “counts” should only for the project creator to prevent detrimental comparison.
   
5. With systems in place to decrease emphasis on popularity, the projects shown here should generally improve in quality. Although, when you really think about it, if the community is truly loving those projects, how is removing this section benefiting the community?
   
6. See #5, but I do agree that the remix system needs to be redone. A one-hour delay isn't the answer because of contest submissions and whatnot. I'd suggest to first scan the project to see how similar it is to the original. If it's the exact same with zero changes or if minimal changes are made – the Scratch Team should decide how “minimal” is defined – don't allow it to be shared and show a message saying "Oops! Your project is too similar to the original. Try x, y, or z!” (However, this should be discussed in a separate topic, as this doesn’t change anything about fame, it would just make moderation easier for the Scratch Team.)
   

And to those who argue that the social aspect itself is bad:

Half of the Scratch experience is about the online community. Sure, you can go program a huge 3D game with tons of carefully placed easter eggs with Unity, but good luck finding an audience for it. Even Snap, the language based on Scratch but more advanced, lacks a community. A major source of motivation for Scratchers to create projects is the knowledge that other people will view it and enjoy it. The social aspect of Scratch helps more Scratchers find that motivation to continue their coding journey.

Consider this. Most people create a Scratch account because their teacher uses it as part of their lesson plan or because their friends are using it. If there was no social aspect, that's where it would end. The projects that they share are scarcely viewed, much less loved and favorited, which doesn't lead to any further activity because again, for many people, the motivation is in other people's enjoyment.

With the social system in place, however, good projects are (occasionally) able to be noticed. Even projects that weren't so good would be picked up if they got enough attention. Now people are getting “rewarded” for their effort. They think, “Huh. That was cool. I should make more projects!” And they view other projects too, and the loop is complete. Without the social aspect, only the most curious and externally motivated people continue to explore the website. Isn't the primary goal of the Scratch Team to teach more people to code?

The system still isn't perfect, but by removing some of the fame glorifying aspects of the website, it could be much improved. I've reported this to be stickied, as this is a central issue of the Scratch website and is more than just a simple suggestion.

I also suggest a system like this to be added to the suggestions, as it would help those quality projects get more attention.

lisa_wolfgang wrote:

Right now, following has no value besides bolstering an arbitrary fame value, which is what we don't want. To prevent message spam, a daily summary could be sent, similar to studio activity notifications.

That's incorrect – you see your followers' activity on the front page. I don't think getting notifications from followers is a good idea because people don't like getting too many notifications.

Maximouse wrote:

lisa_wolfgang wrote:

Right now, following has no value besides bolstering an arbitrary fame value, which is what we don't want. To prevent message spam, a daily summary could be sent, similar to studio activity notifications.

That's incorrect – you see your followers' activity on the front page. I don't think getting notifications from followers is a good idea because people don't like getting too many notifications.

That is usually crammed with recently loved and favorited projects. Very, very rarely have I seen a shared project in that section.
And that’s the point of this — to annoy people. If they actually want to be notified about people they’re following, they’ll appreciate these messages.

I think some front page changes would help:
Currently:
Featured Projects
Featured Studios
Projects Curated by ?
Scratch Design Studio - ?
Projects loved by Scratcher's I'm following
What the community is remixing
What the community is loving

Could be:
Featured Projects + Studios (to qualify it MUST have less than 1000 views, and the Scratcher must have less than 200 followers)
Recently Shared Projects (not just famous scratchers)
Random Projects (Each time you load the page, 10 random projects appear)
Projects Curated by ?
Scratch Design Studio - ?
Projects loved by Scratcher's I'm following
What the community is loving

I feel the message spam won't be useful. At all.

I feel sometimes that some users use the follow system as an act of “Hey you've been helpful / seem nice, I'll follow you as a symbol of respect”. Which, to be fair, is a perfectly fine way of using the system. If following was one purely for the sake of seeing the projects people make, I doubt anyone would be following me Anyhow, from reading over my messages when I *do* get a new follower, interactions with projects are often done *after* them following me.

The desire for fame and popularity is less an issue with the system and more an issue with the mindsets of some users.

Plus, what might be annoying message spam to you, can be fuel for others. I know there's people who light to see just how high they can get their notification count to go. Now if you make following increase that number rapidly, you'll have a whole set of people following as many people as possible to do *that*, and then the same people who - right now - crave fame and popularity will move on to the next trendy thing and begin following everyone to get high notification counts.

Scratch doesn't promote getting famous at all really. In fact, it's very hard to become noticed in the sea of projects this site has. Hence why the people trying to get famous fast display the behaviour they do. They only want fame, not to use Scratch for what it's intended for (an educational tool), and you can't fix people by making Scratch have purposely bad UX.

Just because some people got too focused on fame and spread it, we all have to suffer with so many things getting taken away? When a kid at school gets in a fight at recess they take recess away from the kid, not the school; since there is no way to effectively do this on Scratch I think instead of just cancelling the whole school's recess, we should leave it the way it is. After all, the only person who suffers is those too focused on fame because they lost the opportunity to actually learn coding since all they did was kind of learn how to do it but mostly just search for fame.

ElsieBreeze wrote:

I feel the message spam won't be useful. At all.

I feel sometimes that some users use the follow system as an act of “Hey you've been helpful / seem nice, I'll follow you as a symbol of respect”. Which, to be fair, is a perfectly fine way of using the system. If following was one purely for the sake of seeing the projects people make, I doubt anyone would be following me Anyhow, from reading over my messages when I *do* get a new follower, interactions with projects are often done *after* them following me.

The desire for fame and popularity is less an issue with the system and more an issue with the mindsets of some users.

Plus, what might be annoying message spam to you, can be fuel for others. I know there's people who light to see just how high they can get their notification count to go. Now if you make following increase that number rapidly, you'll have a whole set of people following as many people as possible to do *that*, and then the same people who - right now - crave fame and popularity will move on to the next trendy thing and begin following everyone to get high notification counts.

Scratch doesn't promote getting famous at all really. In fact, it's very hard to become noticed in the sea of projects this site has. Hence why the people trying to get famous fast display the behaviour they do. They only want fame, not to use Scratch for what it's intended for (an educational tool), and you can't fix people by making Scratch have purposely bad UX.

Agreed.

ElsieBreeze wrote:

I feel sometimes that some users use the follow system as an act of “Hey you've been helpful / seem nice, I'll follow you as a symbol of respect”. Which, to be fair, is a perfectly fine way of using the system. If following was one purely for the sake of seeing the projects people make, I doubt anyone would be following me Anyhow, from reading over my messages when I *do* get a new follower, interactions with projects are often done *after* them following me.

I relate to this on every level possible, it's insane.

ElsieBreeze wrote:

I feel sometimes that some users use the follow system as an act of “Hey you've been helpful / seem nice, I'll follow you as a symbol of respect”. Which, to be fair, is a perfectly fine way of using the system. If following was one purely for the sake of seeing the projects people make, I doubt anyone would be following me Anyhow, from reading over my messages when I *do* get a new follower, interactions with projects are often done *after* them following me.

I am a HUGE example of this. Most of my projects are just tests and incomplete experiments, but I have about 100 followers.

But for the sake of compromise, getting pinged for every project shared could be an optional feature, disabled by default.

lisa_wolfgang wrote:

See #5, but I do agree that the remix system needs to be redone. A one-hour delay isn't the answer because of contest submissions and whatnot. I'd suggest to first scan the project to see how similar it is to the original. If it's the exact same with zero changes or if minimal changes are made – the Scratch Team should decide how “minimal” is defined – don't allow it to be shared and show a message saying “Oops! Your project is too similar to the original. Try x, y, or z!”

Oh, good luck devising an actually effective AI to distinguish between near copies and vastly different projects.

And if you've been following the Suggestions forum for a while (half a year) you'll notice that several suggestions to ban minor remixes have been shot down. In fact, I believe it is a rejected suggestion.

lisa_wolfgang wrote:

SelixScratch wrote:

Here are some possible solutions:

1. Ban “Famous Scratcher” projects and studios. These create the impression that fame is a desirable trait, and that shouldn’t be an impression people should have.
   
2. Users get a message when someone they follow shares a project. This makes a follow more meaningful, and discouraged following hundreds of people.
   
3. Collapse “following” and “followers” into one “tabbed” box, with “following” being the default. This reduces the emphasis of follower count in the UX.
   
4. Require users to manually show view/love/favorite/remix stats. It can be interesting to see these numbers, but making them things you have to “show” should reduce the emphasis on popularity. The love and favorite buttons will still exist, just without the numbers next to them.
   
5. Remove the “what the community is loving” tab. I don’t trust nine-year-olds to run a meritocracy, but maybe that’s just me.
   
6. In order to avoid the remixing tab becoming a replacement, add a one-hour delay between when a remix is created and when it can be shared.
   

1. Banning fame-based projects/studios would be a nightmare for the Scratch Team, as I'm sure thousands upon thousands already exist – with more in the making. (And the Scratch Team already has too much curation responsibility.) If the correct measures are taken, these will fade away on their own. Perhaps, however, begging for fame could be banned.
   
2. Users should absolutely get messages from people they're following. Right now, following has no value besides bolstering an arbitrary fame value, which is what we don't want. To prevent message spam, a daily summary could be sent, similar to studio activity notifications.
   
3. My suggestion is to remove the followers bar/page entirely on profiles other than one's own. This way, one can still see how many followers THEY have, but they won't be able to detrimentally compare themselves to other Scratchers. (The API would still exist for those who are dying of curiosity about others, but removing this from the core website experience could make it feel like stalking for some.)
   
4. Similar to my suggestion with followers, the “counts” should only for the project creator to prevent detrimental comparison.
   
5. With systems in place to decrease emphasis on popularity, the projects shown here should generally improve in quality. Although, when you really think about it, if the community is truly loving those projects, how is removing this section benefiting the community?
   
6. See #5, but I do agree that the remix system needs to be redone. A one-hour delay isn't the answer because of contest submissions and whatnot. I'd suggest to first scan the project to see how similar it is to the original. If it's the exact same with zero changes or if minimal changes are made – the Scratch Team should decide how “minimal” is defined – don't allow it to be shared and show a message saying “Oops! Your project is too similar to the original. Try x, y, or z!”
   

And to those who argue that the social aspect itself is bad:

Half of the Scratch experience is about the online community. Sure, you can go program a huge 3D game with tons of carefully placed easter eggs with Unity, but good luck finding an audience for it. Even Snap, the language based on Scratch but more advanced, lacks a community. A major source of motivation for Scratchers to create projects is the knowledge that other people will view it and enjoy it. The social aspect of Scratch helps more Scratchers find that motivation to continue their coding journey.

Consider this. Most people create a Scratch account because their teacher uses it as part of their lesson plan or because their friends are using it. If there was no social aspect, that's where it would end. The projects that they share are scarcely viewed, much less loved and favorited, which doesn't lead to any further activity because again, for many people, the motivation is in other people's enjoyment.

With the social system in place, however, good projects are (occasionally) able to be noticed. Even projects that weren't so good would be picked up if they got enough attention. Now people are getting “rewarded” for their effort. They think, “Huh. That was cool. I should make more projects!” And they view other projects too, and the loop is complete. Without the social aspect, only the most curious and externally motivated people continue to explore the website. Isn't the primary goal of the Scratch Team to teach more people to code?

The system still isn't perfect, but by removing some of the fame glorifying aspects of the website, it could be much improved. I've reported this to be stickied, as this is a central issue of the Scratch website and is more than just a simple suggestion.

I also suggest a system like this to be added to the suggestions, as it would help those quality projects get more attention.

Keeping the API is a key point. ScratchStats is interesting for many, so I think making it so those numbers can still be extracted but aren't shown on the main site is a great move.

Alright, yes, I can confirm that disallowing minor remixes is rejected. Scratch is supposed to be a creative platform.

Additionally, I think the remix delay idea is equally bad. if someone wants to make a game harder or easier, why must they be forced to wait a full hour before sharing it?

ResExsention wrote:

Alright, yes, I can confirm that disallowing minor remixes is rejected. Scratch is supposed to be a creative platform.

Additionally, I think the remix delay idea is equally bad. if someone wants to make a game harder or easier, why must they be forced to wait a full hour before sharing it?

Alright, thanks for the heads-up. I’ll change it to just exact copies.
Also, thinking about it more, getting messages from people you’re following won’t help with the fame issue. If anything, it will lead to much lower follower counts, making those affected even more fame-hungry to reclaim their lost following. If someone wants to continue discussing getting messages from people you’re following as a notification bell button — like in YouTube — that should be moved to a separate topic.

lisa_wolfgang wrote:

ResExsention wrote:

Alright, yes, I can confirm that disallowing minor remixes is rejected. Scratch is supposed to be a creative platform.

Additionally, I think the remix delay idea is equally bad. if someone wants to make a game harder or easier, why must they be forced to wait a full hour before sharing it?

Alright, thanks for the heads-up. I’ll change it to just exact copies.

Exact copies are already prohibited.

And good luck making an AI to detect “exact copies.” It's easy to get around this by adding a block that will never run, adding some 1 pixel dots to a costume, or changing certain numbers by adding 0.00000001 to them, or another infinite number of ways to get around this.

ResExsention wrote:

And good luck making an AI to detect “exact copies.” It's easy to get around this by adding a block that will never run, adding some 1 pixel dots to a costume, or changing certain numbers by adding 0.00000001 to them, or another infinite number of ways to get around this.

It would still be helpful if the remixer doesn't know that exact copies aren't allowed.