Updates to Following and Followers

EndBIRO

speakvisually wrote:
Aquaflame wrote:
Maybe each person can have a personal statistics page. It could show who followed you that day, how many comments you received that day, and how many loves/favorites you got each day. It could also show past statistics, and how today compared to yesterday.

Ah, we've actually been discussing something like this! It could be more or less a page of statistics for each account. What would you like to see on this page?

That would be a very good extension to the website! Also, ST removed the number of comments from users profile, but what about removing the number of comments from projects and studios? They are still there. Although I didn't really like the previous update, but this could make better.

Scratch On! - EndBIRO http://scratch.mit.edu.ezproxyberklee.flo.org/users/EndBIRO/

helloyowuzzup

I told myself to stop posting on this thread but I'm a naughty child so I'm at it again XD

To me, it seems like there is one more aspect that we have been forgetting here- not followers, but who you are following.
When you follow someone, you do it for a reason, right? Maybe you saw an amazing animation that they did. Maybe you had a really funny conversation with them. Maybe you know them irl and want to keep track of when they release a new project.
It is, in fact, added to a number when you follow that person. Not only are they proud, you are proud to give them addition to that number, and you know why? Because they deserve it.
So when you see that person that you really care about, that you think should be discovered in the community, but you can't see a number attached to it… you feel cheated. You feel like there has been a glitch in the system and your vote saying ‘Yes! This person is awesome!’ was not counted.

I know that you can still click ‘view all’ to see it, but when you remember the past, you aren't always ready for the future.

hacker

This update is completely and utterly pointless. We might as well just remove the number of comments, views and love it's on a project. This update defies and contradicts the concept that hard work = appreciation. It's hard to say whether this idea was over or under thought, but either way, it achieved one thing, lowering the value of a hard working scratchers.

Last edited by hacker (Sept. 27, 2014 11:34:10)

Blueinkproductions

hacker wrote:
This update is completely and utterly pointless. We might as well just remove the number of comments, views and love it's on a project. This update defies and contradicts the concept that hard work = appreciation. It's hard to say whether this idea was over or under thought, but either way, it achieved one thing, lowering the value of a hard working scratchers.

Except that loves are the way to show appreciation, not follows.

Infinity-

Lilry1 wrote:
achouse wrote:
Doesn't a meaningful conversation on your profile or project mean more than any number of comments/followers ever could? It seems to me that 1,000 silent followers would teach you much less about the quality of your projects than having constructive dialogue with a few engaged Scratchers. As the poet Nishan Panwar once said, “Your greatest asset is not the quantity of your friends, but the quality of your friends!”
hmmm…I still like a lot of followers

*facepalm*

MiniMacro

What if only the account owner could see the followers and stuff?

jrezneckbhds

Scratchifier wrote:
Why I believe that this update is bad:

1. Taking the follow numbers away from the profile page does nothing. Well, it does do something. It annoys me because I have to load one more page just to check more followers. This means that I'll hardly know when somebody unfollows me. I like to know if that happens because I don't want to be advertising something to repeatedly and annoying people, being too active… etc. However, about the people who are obsessed with followers, how will that discourage them? If they have enough time to spam several hundred people with follow requests, how is clicking one little button going to get them to stop? And taking the numbers away doesn't mean that they don't want followers any more.

2. I like to keep track of everything on my profile and projects so that I know what people like, what types of projects encourage what types of activity, and so on. For example, I can tell you that my Updates project got quite a number of random comments on my profile, love its on my other projects, and not many love its for itself (compared to my other things of course). Now I know that disguising a game as an Updates project is a terrible marketing ploy. If there were no numbers, then how would I know not to do that again?

3. When you visit a profile, you usually have no idea how good or bad a user is at Scratch. Should you check out their projects? Should you not? Is the user just getting all of their thumbnails from another user that makes them look better at Scratch? Well, to determine this, many Scratchers look at the number of followers. If there are a lot of followers in a short amount of time, then you know that it's probably worth checking out their projects! I usually will compare the number of followers to the joined date so that I know if the given Scratcher is something new in the world of Scratch. I'm not saying that it's not worth checking out projects if the user doesn't have many followers, but I subconsciously do this a lot and it's really annoying if I need to click twice more to do this! That's a big waste of time! (Thanks to other Scratchers for reminding me of this).

4. In a matter of minutes, I've several Scratchers have all gotten annoyed at this change. They are also some reputable Scratchers, such as: VoltageGames, WILL_WAM, ELSA_THE_CONQUEROR, -Flash-, TheAnimationShow… need I continue?

Edit: List of more annoyed Scratchers: Flygon12345678, -Because_Im_Batman-, PRETTY_GIRL, dinocatmeow, SnowKittyartist, helloyowazzup, BLACKSWIFT, THEGENERALESS, aminameow4, GetWithTheProgram, MTCRAFTER, RED-drag0n, Lilry1, austin360, SUPERDOGGY, SIFEF, sophielymes527, Fox16, HAnthony, AQUAFLAME, -THEDOCTOR-, GRANNYCOOKIES, andrewjl, tiny288, Infinity-, Eugenbross, gcenac, TheMistyPuppy2000, DARKCRYSTALBALL, Epicness123, JETPAC, flexaxu, __–Programmer–__, MiniMacro, L-Rignity, jrezneckbhds, violin16, hacker…

Now, how many Scratchers are there? How many don't like this? I'm going to let you count and see how annoying that is.

As a simple note, Scratchers in all capitals are well known Scratchers who have worked hard for their popularity. They are all annoyed at you right now. Is this what you wanted?

Please revert this change.

-Scratchifier and many more-

I agree! i was added to the annoyed about this update list because i don't like having to go back and forth.I say the old way was a little better.

Lilry1

63% of the people I asked, said they liked the new update.

Superdoggy

Lilry1 wrote:
63% of the people I asked, said they liked the new update.

Who did you ask?
I don't think this number is accurate.
For example, I did the same survey, but I got 100% no.
Because I only asked my brother.

Lilry1

Superdoggy wrote:
Lilry1 wrote:
63% of the people I asked, said they liked the new update.
Who did you ask?
I don't think this number is accurate.
For example, I did the same survey, but I got 100% no.
Because I only asked my brother.

4 people, one person wasn't entirely sure

Lightnin

NoxSpooth wrote:
Followers does not necessarily equal quality of projects.

I agree with this point - and disagree with the notion that quality of projects is strongly correlated with follower counts. Follower counts are more likely to be a loose indicator of how much time and energy the Scratcher invests in the one of the social aspects of the community. And that's not a bad thing! Investing in the community is great. However, it concerns me when people compete and try to increase numbers that they believe reflect simplistic notions of quality or success at Scratch – they don't. Quality and success and even investment in the community are very difficult to measure with numbers.

A related example from a field where the numbers are actually designed to try to predict / describe success and quality, but fail to do so:
SAT scores. Here's a summary of some of the criticisms of those:

http://www.fairtest.org/test-scores-do-not-equal-merit-executive-summary

Last edited by Lightnin (Sept. 27, 2014 13:11:23)

Superdoggy

Lilry1 wrote:
Superdoggy wrote:
Lilry1 wrote:
63% of the people I asked, said they liked the new update.
Who did you ask?
I don't think this number is accurate.
For example, I did the same survey, but I got 100% no.
Because I only asked my brother.
4 people, one person wasn't entirely sure

4 people is not enough for a full “study”. (Neither is my one. xD)
An accurate survey study would probably be about 20 people. And they have to be completely random, or else it doesn't work.

Emma5251

speakvisually wrote:
Hey everyone,

You might notice your profile page looks a little bit different. Profile pages no longer display the number of Followers and Following. (You can still view this information by clicking the ‘View All’ button on the Followers / Following panel.) The number of profile comments are no longer displayed too.

Why do this? We want to make sure people see someone’s projects, studios, and connections and not focus too much on the numbers. After all, it doesn’t matter if you have 10 followers or 10,000. Scratch is a place for creating, collaborating, and supporting fellow Scratchers.

The Scratch Mentors put together an awesome remix project about “What is the meaning of followers?” http://scratch.mit.edu.ezproxyberklee.flo.org/projects/25999074/ Check it out and see how other Scratchers think about followers! Feel free to share your thoughts too!

I think this is a great idea, there are too many problems with popularity!

Teanaway

this is probably the worst change:(:mad::o
plus, its technicaly more of a glitch.
it would be nice if you could TOGGLE this.
because some like it, and some don't.
plus, I don't care about how many comments I have, but it would be nice if you could toggle the number on/off.

Last edited by Teanaway (Sept. 28, 2014 04:32:19)

Aquaflame

Blueinkproductions wrote:
hacker wrote:
This update is completely and utterly pointless. We might as well just remove the number of comments, views and love it's on a project. This update defies and contradicts the concept that hard work = appreciation. It's hard to say whether this idea was over or under thought, but either way, it achieved one thing, lowering the value of a hard working scratchers.
Except that loves are the way to show appreciation, not follows.

What do you mean? Follows are a great way of showing that someone's appreciated.

MiniMacro

Scratchifier, can you add me to the list?

jrezneckbhds

TeamYoshi64 wrote:
speakvisually wrote:
Hey everyone,

You might notice your profile page looks a little bit different. Profile pages no longer display the number of Followers and Following. (You can still view this information by clicking the ‘View All’ button on the Followers / Following panel.) The number of profile comments are no longer displayed too.

Why do this? We want to make sure people see someone’s projects, studios, and connections and not focus too much on the numbers. After all, it doesn’t matter if you have 10 followers or 10,000. Scratch is a place for creating, collaborating, and supporting fellow Scratchers.

The Scratch Mentors put together an awesome remix project about “What is the meaning of followers?” http://scratch.mit.edu.ezproxyberklee.flo.org/projects/25999074/ Check it out and see how other Scratchers think about followers! Feel free to share your thoughts too!

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I was confused at first, but now I got the hang of it.

Me too!

jrezneckbhds

Scratchifier wrote:
NoxSpooth wrote:
Best.

Update.

Ever.

Thank you, Scratch Team, now hopefully people will stop treating their followers as mere numbers.

I strongly disagree with that. I've never treated my followers as pure numbers. Every time I get a follower, I get happier because it means that somebody liked my worked-on-hard projects enough to follow me.

Me too! Personally,i strongly dislike this update.

jrezneckbhds

speakvisually wrote:
Aquaflame wrote:
Maybe each person can have a personal statistics page. It could show who followed you that day, how many comments you received that day, and how many loves/favorites you got each day. It could also show past statistics, and how today compared to yesterday.

Ah, we've actually been discussing something like this! It could be more or less a page of statistics for each account. What would you like to see on this page?

I like that idea! Hope that turns out on my account screen!

jrezneckbhds

Infinity- wrote:
Not very happy with this update. I can understand why you changed it, but I don't think it'll go down well. I'd like to know how many followers I have without counting them all. So say I reached a certain number of followers, I might want to make a project to thank them for it, but now it'll much harder to tell. *Edit* Been told you have to click “view all” , thanks Speakvisually! To be honest though, that just makes it even more pointless, as there's nothing stopping people clicking a button. And why do the project comment numbers still show? I suggest we should either get rid of all the numbers, or keep them all. *Edit*

I'm not happy either.I wish that there could be an option so people could stop arguing.

Discuss Scratch