What is one of the most talked about suggestions on Scratch? Collaboration Projects. Whether you agree or disagree on them, we've all posted about them. So, today I am going to tell you about THE SOLUTION a solution that might actually get added to Scratch.

So sit back, relax and read about THE SOLUTION.

How it would work:

On Scratch there are SO many ideas on how Collaboration Projects would work. I know that not everyone will agree on these, but LuckyLucky7, mumu245, and I, have all made up great ideas of how Collaboration Projects would work. Let's start with LuckyLucky7:

LuckyLucky7 has already made a post about his idea, so go here to get more details and information on his idea: https://scratch-mit-edu.ezproxyberklee.flo.org/discuss/topic/322107/?page=1

If you don't want to click on the link, and want to read a summarized version, here ya go. (And keep in mind, if I interpret something wrong from their post in my summary, sorry, and just go to their post to see the good explanation).

This idea is taking turns. For anyone who has siblings, I know you just groaned at the word ‘share’, but it's not as bad as it sounds.

(Quote from LuckyLucky7's post)
Pros of getting turns:

• Better able to encourage Scratchers to cooperate and share their ideas
  Would not take up as much server space/memory as 2 people working on a project at the same time
  Is a fair system, as it includes giving credit to both people in the collaboration
  

Here is a visual/explanatory representation of how this might look like on Scratch: visual/explanatory representation of how this might look like on Scratch.

Again, this isn't the full idea, so if you're confused just click the link to LuckyLucky7's idea.

Okay, for anyone who doesn't like the idea of sharing, you're in luck, because mumu245 made a post on his idea.

(Link to mumu245's post: https://scratch-mit-edu.ezproxyberklee.flo.org/discuss/topic/539980/?page=1)

Now for the summary.

mumu245's idea is a pull system. It's based off of remixing, but makes it WAY more convenient for Collaboration Projects. How it would work, is whenever someone hits the ‘pull’ button, it would pull all scripts, sprites, costumes, etc from the project you pulled from into the project that you want the stuff to be added to.

Alright, now my idea. The Share Zone.

This will be the most in depth, since it's my own.

The simplest description of the Share Zone, is a public backpack. When a User wants to make Collaboration Project with someone, they would make a new project, or go to an existing project, and click the “Collaborate” button at the which would be by the Share button.

After clicking the button, it would pull up a pop-up which would read, “Choose a follower, or someone that you are following to start a Collaboration Project with them. (You would also be able to type in a username, to make it easier).

When you have chosen a User, that User would get a notification saying, ”User1 has invited you to make a Collaboration Project with them. Accept, or Decline?“

Obviously, accepted would allow you to make a Collaboration Project with them, and declining would do just that.

You could have like up to 10 Users on a single project.

When you have successfully invited a User or Users to make a Collaboration Project with you, all Users in the Collaboration Project would have access to the Share Zone. There would be one Share Zone attached to each Collaboration Project. It would work almost the exact same as a backpack, except it would be shared between several Users.

For deleting each User would have the choice to delete something from the Share Zone, however it would only delete for them. For example, User1 makes a costume, and puts it in the Share Zone. User2 takes the costume from the Share Zone, and doesn't need it in the Share Zone anymore, so they delete it. User1 and User3, still have the costume in the Share Zone.

Basically, deleting from the Share Zone would just be for convenience.

Now, when making a Collaboration Project you need o communicate with the people you're making with, or else it goes nowhere. So, instead of filling up a profile or post that anyone can see, I made a fully working idea. Collaboration Forums.

I know that 75% of people reading this have had their face turn red and are screaming, ”THAT'S PRIVATE MESSAGING! AHHHH!!!" and have already started writing a post on this saying how bad private messaging is.

So please be calm, and finish reading the post, before you post your thoughts.

First things first, this in not private messaging, I know that it may sound like it, but it's not.

When a Collaboration Project is made, a Collaboration Forum would automatically be made for the Project. You would only be able to access Collaboration Forums unless you had a Collaboration Project. Now, to make it more public and safe, you would be able to see other people's Collaboration Forums (assuming you had a Collaboration Project).

You wouldn't be able to post on them, but you could look at them to see if anyone is harassing or what er, and you would still be able to report. Also, there would be an added feature that would be only for people who aren't apart of that specific Collaboration Project, and they could suggest adding themselves.

The maker of the Collaboration Project would get a notification saying, “User1 wants to join your ”untiled-1“ project. Accept or Decline?”
Accepting would allow the User who suggested to join, have access to the Project now, and Declining would give the suggesting User, a notification saying that their suggestion was declined.

Okay, there are still a couple things that I know people will say.

1: This has already been rejected by the Scratch Team.

2: Private Messaging is bad, and this would allow it.

Answer to 1:
No it hasn't. Collaboration Projects that allow two or more Users to work on a project at the same time is rejected, but all three of these ideas are not.

Answer to 2: I know Private Messaging can be bad, but what's the difference between these two scenarios?

Scenario 1: UserBully posts something bad on UserInnocent's profile. UserInnocent's feelings are hurt, and they report UserBully. The Scratch Team sees this and blocks UserBully.

Scenario 2: UserBully is apart of a Collaboration Project with UserInnocent. UserBully posts something bad on a Collaboration Forum, or something, and UserInnocent's feelings are hurt. UserInnocent reports UserBully, saying that UserBully was saying bad stuff in the Collaboration Forum, or something.

In both scenarios UserBully says something mean, UserInnocent's feelings are hurt, and in the end, UserBully is reported. I know that cyber-bullying is bad, but the best way to stop it is to teach people why it's bad, and why they shouldn't do it.

I know I probably missed something, or something didn't make sense, and if that's the case, post down below. Make sure to follow this forum, so you get notified when some posts.

I am making a petition for this, and if you like these ideas, go here to add you Username: https://scratch-mit-edu.ezproxyberklee.flo.org/projects/645709589/

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The Share Zone would also have to be completely public, in the sense that everyone on Scratch can access it. Otherwise, collaborators could use the Share Zone to share personal information with each other. Same with the Collaboration Forum — it should be accessible to everybody on Scratch (not just those who are in some collaboration), or else you can share personal information using it.

Za-Chary wrote:

The Share Zone would also have to be completely public

Not necessarily…

Maybe the ST could have share zone moderators that moderate and make sure people aren’t private messaging? Like, say UserBully is trying to share something inappropriate with UserInnocent, but it doesn’t go to the share zone until it is approved by a moderator. The moderator would see that UserBully is trying to share something bad, and blocks UserBully. Then, (maybe, maybe not) UserInnocent is notified that UserBully was going to post something bad.

Za-Chary wrote:

collaborators could use the Share Zone to share personal information with each other.

Don't forget they could also use the Share Zone to bully the other person of whom invited them. I did not mean to speak formally there.

Anyways, to the OP (Original Poster): Good idea, but there is that…

musicROCKS013 wrote:

Za-Chary wrote:

The Share Zone would also have to be completely public

Not necessarily…

Maybe the ST could have share zone moderators that moderate and make sure people aren’t private messaging? Like, say UserBully is trying to share something inappropriate with UserInnocent, but it doesn’t go to the share zone until it is approved by a moderator. The moderator would see that UserBully is trying to share something bad, and blocks UserBully. Then, (maybe, maybe not) UserInnocent is notified that UserBully was going to post something bad.

The same reason private messaging is rejected applies here

dhuls wrote:

The same reason private messaging is rejected applies here

Wdym?

Za-Chary wrote:

The Share Zone would also have to be completely public, in the sense that everyone on Scratch can access it. Otherwise, collaborators could use the Share Zone to share personal information with each other. Same with the Collaboration Forum — it should be accessible to everybody on Scratch (not just those who are in some collaboration), or else you can share personal information using it.

I see what you mean. I do think it should be a little less public however for Collaboration purposes (what I mean by that, is if someone didn't want the open public to know story part in the game they're making).

But if the Share Zone was added and was made public, that would still fix the pain in making Collaboration Projects.

Za-Chary wrote:

The Share Zone would also have to be completely public, in the sense that everyone on Scratch can access it. Otherwise, collaborators could use the Share Zone to share personal information. Same with the Collaboration Forum — it should be accessible to everybody on Scratch (not just those who are in some collaboration), or else you can share personal information using it.

Just because the Share Zone became completely public, there are still people sharing personal info on it, and since it's public, everyone will see them, including hackers, stalkers, etc. And that will higher the risk of getting hacked/stalked. When a person adds someone to their own space or a person is reading a join request, they have to make sure the people they're inviting are trustworthy.

This action is unnecessary since Scratch Team can see everything on Scratch, including unshared projects, deleted comments, etc, and also moderate them.

-iviedwall- wrote:

Just because the Share Zone came completely public, there are still people sharing personal info on it, and since it's public, meaning everyone will see them, including hackers, stalkers, etc. And that will higher the risk of getting hacked/stalked. When a person adds someone to their own space or a person was reading a join request, they

You can also share personal information on comments, your profile, etc.

-iviedwall- wrote:

Just because the Share Zone became completely public, there are still people sharing personal info on it, and since it's public, everyone will see them, including hackers, stalkers, etc. And that will higher the risk of getting hacked/stalked.

Well, you're technically not wrong, but I wouldn't call it accurate. You could still say the same about the rest of the site. People are still able to share their personal information and others with bad intentions can use this information. However, if it's completely public, the Scratch community will be able to report the project and let the ST know about it.

By the way, in the entire ~15-year history of Scratch, there have been no actual hackers.

-iviedwall- wrote:

This action is unnecessary since Scratch Team can see everything on Scratch, including unshared projects, deleted comments, etc, and also moderate them.

Again, it's technically not wrong, but it's not right either. The ST can see everything on Scratch and is able to moderate it, but do they have to power to moderate everything?

No. If you take a look at the page that lists ST members, you can see that there are about 66 people on the Scratch Team. I don't know how many of those are moderators, so we'll say all of them are moderators for the best-case scenario. As of writing, there are currently 689.880.382 unshared projects, so if we divide that by 66, we get about 10.5 million projects per moderator. Now assuming that a moderator can determine if a project is appropriate or not in 10 seconds, which is extremely quick, it'll take 3.3 years of non-stop working to get it done.

That's not a viable solution, so the ST relies on the community to report inappropriate content.

RL1123 wrote:

-iviedwall- wrote:

Just because the Share Zone became completely public, there are still people sharing personal info on it, and since it's public, everyone will see them, including hackers, stalkers, etc. And that will higher the risk of getting hacked/stalked.

Well, you're technically not wrong, but I wouldn't call it accurate. You could still say the same about the rest of the site. People are still able to share their personal information and others with bad intentions can use this information. However, if it's completely public, the Scratch community will be able to report the project and let the ST know about it.

By the way, in the entire ~15-year history of Scratch, there have been no actual hackers.

-iviedwall- wrote:

This action is unnecessary since Scratch Team can see everything on Scratch, including unshared projects, deleted comments, etc, and also moderate them.

Again, it's technically not wrong, but it's not right either. The ST can see everything on Scratch and is able to moderate it, but do they have to power to moderate everything?

No. If you take a look at the page that lists ST members, you can see that there are about 66 people on the Scratch Team. I don't know how many of those are moderators, so we'll say all of them are moderators for the best-case scenario. As of writing, there are currently 689.880.382 unshared projects, so if we divide that by 66, we get about 10.5 million projects per moderator. Now assuming that a moderator can determine if a project is appropriate or not in 10 seconds, which is extremely quick, it'll take 3.3 years of non-stop working to get it done.

That's not a viable solution, so the ST relies on the community to report inappropriate content.

Some of the ST on that list retired. That list is outdated.

You all make good points. RL1123 showed the math that monitoring all the projects is impossible for the Scratch Team to do alone. But, something you need to keep in mind is that people can share their personal info, or whatever on normal projects.

So, we kind of all have to accept that you can't necessarily stop people from posting their info, saying bad stuff, etc. Now don't think that I'm completely dismissing the importance of having Collaboration Projects public. I'm just saying that we don't need them FULLY public, but it wouldn't be good to have them NOT AT ALL public.

FF5Bartz wrote:

You all make good points. RL1123 showed the math that monitoring all the projects is impossible for the Scratch Team to do alone. But, something you need to keep in mind is that people can share their personal info, or whatever on normal projects.

So, we kind of all have to accept that you can't necessarily stop people from posting their info, saying bad stuff, etc. Now don't think that I'm completely dismissing the importance of having Collaboration Projects public. I'm just saying that we don't need them FULLY public, but it wouldn't be good to have them NOT AT ALL public.

they should be publicly VISIBLE, but in the share space you could make it so only certain people can EDIT what you are sharing with others, but others can see the edits happen

Tunde123 wrote:

Some of the ST on that list retired. That list is outdated.

thats even less people

MagicCoder330 wrote:

FF5Bartz wrote:

You all make good points. RL1123 showed the math that monitoring all the projects is impossible for the Scratch Team to do alone. But, something you need to keep in mind is that people can share their personal info, or whatever on normal projects.

So, we kind of all have to accept that you can't necessarily stop people from posting their info, saying bad stuff, etc. Now don't think that I'm completely dismissing the importance of having Collaboration Projects public. I'm just saying that we don't need them FULLY public, but it wouldn't be good to have them NOT AT ALL public.

they should be publicly VISIBLE, but in the share space you could make it so only certain people can EDIT what you are sharing with others, but others can see the edits happen

I agree

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