Privatizing Project & Follower Stats
Making Scratch Less About Fame

So, Scratch isn't about fame, right? Yes, it's about coding, having fun, and most of all being creative and sharing that creativity with the world. Slight issue though. People are “famous” here. Yes, that is really done by the community, it's not the famous people's fault or choice, but this causes issues… People see others who have thousands of followers, and have thousands of views, loves, and faves on their projects. And those people have the benefit of easily getting on Explore. This was something I actually made a suggestion on a while back. While it appears that the Explore page has indeed changed recently to knock down some of these projects, I think more needs to be done.
But why? Here's the thing, when people who are “infamous” see famous people, it's not always easy being that person that has a few followers and has barely any views, loves, and faves on their projects and sees people with thousands of followers, views, loves, and faves. While for some this is encouraging, it soon becomes very discouraging when once you see how easily the famous users can get on Explore, Top Loved, etc. This, I believe, is what fuels Follow For Follow (F4F) and advertising, the latter being a big issue in the Community.

So, to solve these problems, I propose that all project stats (Views, Loves, and Faves) and one's followers are made private. In other words, only the account owner will be able to see them. For the followers, I think we can keep what we already see on everyone's profile, that is still display the user's last 20 followers, but completely remove the Followers page.
You see, Scratch should be about the projects and its users- Not how many views, loves, faves, or followers one has. I understand that people like to know their stats, so that's why I'm not proposing to completely remove these stats all together.

Now, you may be wondering about the “Thank You For x Followers” projects and any project or studio that celebrates some sort of milestone. I honestly don't think it would be fair to not let people celebrate these things, so I suggest that any project, studio, or comment that is sincerely celebrating a milestone, and is not jeering or bragging such as by saying things like “I have so many followers!” or “OH WOW! LOOK HOW MANY FOLLOWERS I HAVE!!”, are allowed. I think this is something that could be explained in the Community Guidelines- here's a mock-up:

While yes, people could technically lie about their stats, I feel that removing these stats would remove the focus on popularity, which in turn would make people care less about other's stats, and maybe even their own.

I know this would be a big change, and I know it would be a bummer to some, but you have to see the pros to this. This would remove a major aspect that leads to issues regarding popularity. No one would know what “popular” is, and I feel we would soon stop to care. I strongly believe that this would overall make the Scratch Community be a lot more positive, and would create a better focus on Scratch's purpose. Again, I hold no intentions to hurt any famous Scratchers, as this is in no way directed towards them- this is solely to further remove the “Fame Game” on Scratch, in hopes to create a better community.

WindOctahedron wrote:

But how would the curators of the studio “Propose projects to be featured” check if the project was already popular at some time or has too many loves?

CatsUnited wrote:

If you want to flip that around, it'd have to be done slowly over the course of several years where we would've gone through enough generations of Scratchers that each have adapted to a less fame fueled environment. I could imagine people complaining to the Scratch Team for a long time that these changes would “kill the community” or that it would “destroy our motivation” if these changes were to happen suddenly or too quickly.

CatsUnited wrote:

Additionally, wouldn't making stats like loves and favorites for projects private result in more people lying about how popular their project is and possibly creating something out of that?

LegoManiac04 wrote:

That is a great point, but if we were to make “bragging” about one's stats against the Community Guidelines, this would break this Guideline.

Nambaseking01 wrote:

But from where do you get proof that a user breaks this guideline?

nerdiebirdy wrote:

I think some people might find it useful to see the love and favourite count on a project, for example, FPCs might want to see them when deciding which projects to curate.

KittyFireSt0rm wrote:

I agree with making everything private for one, I'm not arguing with that.

It's the proposed new guideline.

What would count as bragging? If I shared a contest or an animation for say 400+ would that be considered bragging? If I made a project thanking my followers would that be bragging? What in the world would be considered bragging?

Would it be flat out “I have *insert number of followers*” in a negative connotation? Or say thanking your followers for *insert number of followers* followers? Would saying that you didn't expect to get as many of the (insert loves, favorites, or follows here) as you did?

I'd just like to point out that literally thousands of scratchers make contests for their followers when they reach a certain amount, to ban these with this new guideline seems unfair, to both the people who spend time on the entries, and the people who spend so much time to make a contest like that to start with.

Would these contests be banned as a result of this new guideline?

Unless this is explained more I don't know whether to Semi-Support, or Support because a guideline saying not to brag seems very ambiguous.

--Explosion-- wrote:

Support,this should be optional for the user making the projects though. This would really help all of the generic platformers that people make for popularity, the follower races, the underrated scratchers. This would be great.

LegoManiac04 wrote:

I think this certainly is something that requires a lot more discussion. I honestly agree that it wouldn't be fair to completely ban these things- perhaps just outright displaying your stats would be considered “bragging”? Maybe there's a better word than “brag” too, it's the only one that I could think of-

DataLabGames wrote:

I'm not sure if I support. Probably not though, since changing this would probably cause an uproar and it buries the problem rather than solve it.
It would also feel weird.

fdreerf wrote:

Since a Diet Coke version was planned but scrapped, it might be safe to call this quasi-rejected.

LegoManiac04 wrote:

Updated the OP. ^^