Put smiley faces after every moderator action.

--Optimum--

Don't do that for bans or stop-or-you'll-be-banned warnings. We don't want it to be like:

Scratch team has blocked your account for breaking the rules. You are not welcome on scratch.

Anyway, what this would apply to is stuff like mods editing posts and warnings. That way people get less worked up about those things.

starhero5697

Yup, sometimes alerts feel a bit unkind. Adding the smiley face would make it feel kinder. That’s why I’ve been putting smiley faces behind some of my posts more recently.

IndexErrorException

Nah this seems to sarcastic and it would trigger me more if I saw that.

-iviedwall-

Tbh smileys are more sarcastic than kind for me, take a look at this:

Quantum-Cat

Adding emojis can often make things less formal and serious, and such messages are meant to be more serious than usual to discourage people from doing something bad again. Also from information that I have seen, I don’t think that they are unkind; alerts use words like ‘please’ which still maintains the tone, but make them more approachable.

--Optimum--

-iviedwall- wrote:
Tbh smileys are more sarcastic than kind for me, take a look at this:

Smileys aren't all sarcastic, just take the one on the forums for example:

Quantum-Cat wrote:
Adding emojis can often make things less formal and serious, and such messages are meant to be more serious than usual to discourage people from doing something bad again. Also from information that I have seen, I don’t think that they are unkind; alerts use words like ‘please’ which still maintains the tone, but make them more approachable.

They might come off as overly threatening, and that's why so many users complain about them so much. Also, I don't think that they would come off as less serious, maybe just less threatening.

musicROCKS013

--Optimum-- wrote:
They might come off as overly threatening, and that's why so many users complain about them so much. Also, I don't think that they would come off as less serious, maybe just less threatening.

Is that really better though? When the ST sends a report, they don’t want scratchers to just go “pffft oh boy another alert” no, we want scratchers to feel threatened so that they won’t do whatever again. The ST needs to assert authority over us scratchers and keep us on check, and to do so they need us to fear, and therefore respect them.

--Optimum--

musicROCKS013 wrote:
--Optimum-- wrote:
They might come off as overly threatening, and that's why so many users complain about them so much. Also, I don't think that they would come off as less serious, maybe just less threatening.
Is that really better though? When the ST sends a report, they don’t want scratchers to just go “pffft oh boy another alert” no, we want scratchers to feel threatened so that they won’t do whatever again. The ST needs to assert authority over us scratchers and keep us on check, and to do so they need us to fear, and therefore respect them.

If we put I smiley face, they would have no reason to be annoyed with scratch team so they wouldn't go “pffft oh boy another alert”. What I think would happen is people would say “Okay, I won't do that next time.” as opposed to “OMG SCRATH TEAM UNFAIRLY ALERTED ME THERE SO MEAN

”.

dertermenter

--Optimum-- wrote:
Smileys aren't all sarcastic, just take the one on the forums for example:

On its own a smiley face is not sarcastic, but “Your account has been permanently banned for posting racist slurs

” seems extremely sarcastic and looks like a Scratcher's bad actions are not much of a big deal.

musicROCKS013

--Optimum-- wrote:
If we put I smiley face, they would have no reason to be annoyed with scratch team so they wouldn't go “pffft oh boy another alert”. What I think would happen is people would say “Okay, I won't do that next time.” as opposed to “OMG SCRATH TEAM UNFAIRLY ALERTED ME THERE SO MEAN ”.

But how do you know this will actually work? How do you know they will react this way? Like many users stated before, this could sound sarcastic, as cause more backlash to the ST. Personally, I see the

being used as the equivalent to “Scratch On” in mod alerts.

ScratchCat1038

dertermenter wrote:
(#9)
--Optimum-- wrote:
Smileys aren't all sarcastic, just take the one on the forums for example:
On its own a smiley face is not sarcastic, but “Your account has been permanently banned for posting racist slurs ” seems extremely sarcastic and looks like a Scratcher's bad actions are not much of a big deal.

The OP explicitly said they would not be on ban messages:

--Optimum-- wrote:
(#1)
Don't do that for bans or stop-or-you'll-be-banned warnings. We don't want it to be like:
Scratch team has blocked your account for breaking the rules. You are not welcome on scratch.

dertermenter

ScratchCat1038 wrote:
(#11)
dertermenter wrote:
(#9)
--Optimum-- wrote:
Smileys aren't all sarcastic, just take the one on the forums for example:
On its own a smiley face is not sarcastic, but “Your account has been permanently banned for posting racist slurs ” seems extremely sarcastic and looks like a Scratcher's bad actions are not much of a big deal.
The OP explicitly said they would not be on ban messages:
--Optimum-- wrote:
(#1)
Don't do that for bans or stop-or-you'll-be-banned warnings. We don't want it to be like:
Scratch team has blocked your account for breaking the rules. You are not welcome on scratch.

I actually thought that was a grammatical error due to the wording. And it still applies for alerts.

yavuz61035

maybe this:

Please don't link discord servers, as they may contain things that are 13+.

but not this:

Please don't bully. If you continue, you will be banned.

nor this:

Your account is permanently blocked due to having an inappropiate username. Thank you for being on Scratch. You may make a new account.

since the last 2 looks wayyy too sarcastic and makes your action not that big of a deal

Last edited by yavuz61035 (July 8, 2022 16:46:08)

cannedkoolaid

yavuz61035 wrote:
nor this:

Your account is permanently blocked due to having an inappropiate username. Thank you for being on Scratch. You may make a new account.

--Optimum-- wrote:
Don't do that for bans or stop-or-you'll-be-banned warnings. We don't want it to be like:
Scratch team has blocked your account for breaking the rules. You are not welcome on scratch.

--Optimum--

A lot of the replies are saying the same thing so I’ll respond to all of the ones that read the OP.
Here is what I’m thinking this would look like:
[removed by moderator - Please keep it polite

]

Please don’t advertise your projects as it’s not constructive. I forgot what the rest of this warning says. Check out show and tell instead.

Comments that led to this message: “*link*”

Please don’t gossip or spread rumors about other scratchers. If you see someone breaking the rules, use the report button instead.

Comments that led to this message: “I heard @—Optimum— did a thing.”

I don’t think these seem sarcastic or less serious.

Za-Chary

XxhackerlolxX wrote:
Nah this seems to sarcastic and it would trigger me more if I saw that.

Actually, I agree with this — I don't know why, but even when forum users use smiley faces or are extremely friendly for mundane purposes, I feel uncomfortable with this. I'd much rather see this:

This is a duplicate. To keep the conversation in one place, please continue the discussion in the link above.

than this:

This is a duplicate. To keep the conversation in one place, please continue the discussion in the link above. Thanks!

Maybe I just don't have the right mindset here. Or maybe it's different for forums posts versus moderation alerts? Not sure if I'm trying to compare apples and oranges here.

Quantum-Cat wrote:
Adding emojis can often make things less formal and serious, and such messages are meant to be more serious than usual to discourage people from doing something bad again. Also from information that I have seen, I don’t think that they are unkind; alerts use words like ‘please’ which still maintains the tone, but make them more approachable.

I agree with this, too. Scratchers are supposed to take alerts seriously. It took me an embarrassingly long time to realize this, but if someone warns me against doing something, it's not intended to be a “threat” and it's more about a learning experience.

In real life, if someone is uncomfortable with my behavior and they want to talk to me about it, I would definitely take them more seriously if they were straight-faced than smiling. (If they were smiling, I might be inclined to believe that it's a joke.) With that, if they do talk to me straight-faced, I probably would feel bad in the sense of “Oh no, my friend is telling me that I made them uncomfortable,” but that is somewhat natural. If I associate them telling me not to do something with this bad feeling, then I think I would be more willing to change my behavior, because I don't want to experience this bad feeling again through another talking-to.

That being said, there's probably a double-edged sword here. I have seen Scratchers before state that the existing alert messages seem unfriendly and cause them to panic more than they probably should. At the same time, I completely agree that the existing messages are sufficient and don't really need to be made “more friendly,” especially not with an emoji. I think the panic feeling is a little better to have. Warnings are not meant to be “unfriendly.” If someone believes that these warning messages are unfriendly and cause them to panic too much, I would gently encourage them to think carefully that the Scratch Team isn't trying to come across as unfriendly when sending these messages. It's often difficult to think this way (again, it took me a long time to realize this), but it's a really good mindset to have.

k0d3rrr

Za-Chary wrote:
XxhackerlolxX wrote:
Nah this seems to sarcastic and it would trigger me more if I saw that.
Actually, I agree with this — I don't know why, but even when forum users use smiley faces or are extremely friendly for mundane purposes, I feel uncomfortable with this. I'd much rather see this:
This is a duplicate. To keep the conversation in one place, please continue the discussion in the link above.
than this:
This is a duplicate. To keep the conversation in one place, please continue the discussion in the link above. Thanks!
Maybe I just don't have the right mindset here. Or maybe it's different for forums posts versus moderation alerts? Not sure if I'm trying to compare apples and oranges here.

The reason why people say

This is a duplicate. Please continue the discussion there to avoid cluttering up the forums. Thanks!

instead of

This is a duplicate. Please continue the discussion there to avoid cluttering up the forums.

is so the OP doesn't think they're necessarily doing anything wrong. What I mean is that the person telling the OP their suggestion is a duplicate uses a smiley face so that their post isn't seen as angry or negative.

I've personally dealt with this before, when I made a list of suggestions for my first suggestion. I'm not naming names, but many of the helpful forumers didn't use smiley faces to sound friendly.

I think this already is implemented, isn't it? Some moderators already type a smiley face next to their message, whether that be a

or a :).

Za-Chary

k0d3rrr wrote:
The reason why people say
This is a duplicate. Please continue the discussion there to avoid cluttering up the forums. Thanks!
instead of
This is a duplicate. Please continue the discussion there to avoid cluttering up the forums.
is so the OP doesn't think they're necessarily doing anything wrong. What I mean is that the person telling the OP their suggestion is a duplicate uses a smiley face so that their post isn't seen as angry or negative.

I think this is less of a problem of emoji usage and more of a problem of word choice. Note that in my post, I state that the user should use the link to “keep the conversation in one place.” Despite the lack of emoji, I claim this sounds friendlier than telling them to “avoid cluttering up the forums.” By telling the user to avoid doing something, and using a negative-connotation word like “cluttering,” I can certainly see why someone might read that and think of it as a negative post. In fact, that makes the problem worse with an emoji: if the wording is already negative, a smiley face would definitely come across as sarcastic (“Why are you smiling about a negative thing?”). So in that case I would rather see this:

This is a duplicate. To keep the conversation in one place, please continue the discussion in the link above.

than this:

This is a duplicate. Please continue the discussion there to avoid cluttering up the forums. Thanks!

I could excuse a smiley face in the first example because it seems to frame things in a nonnegative manner, to the point where adding a smiley face doesn't really change the message (and, perhaps, might even make it friendlier). But with the second example, it's a lose-lose situation. Without a smiley face, the post definitely comes across as negative. But with a smiley face, due to that negative word choice, it comes across as sarcastic. I guess the lesson here is that you only get one bite of the apple when posting, so to speak, so you may as well try to phrase a post (without emojis) in the most positive way possible before trying to add any emojis.

The question from here, then, is whether or not the Scratch Team's alert messages are already worded in a negative manner. I claim they are not — but if some do think they are, then adding a smiley face at the end could certainly cause the message to seem sarcastic, having the opposite effect of what this suggestion aims to solve.

k0d3rrr wrote:
I think this already is implemented, isn't it? Some moderators already type a smiley face next to their message, whether that be a or a :).

Nope — not in alerts.

--Optimum--

Za-Chary wrote:
XxhackerlolxX wrote:
Nah this seems to sarcastic and it would trigger me more if I saw that.
Actually, I agree with this — I don't know why, but even when forum users use smiley faces or are extremely friendly for mundane purposes, I feel uncomfortable with this. I'd much rather see this:
This is a duplicate. To keep the conversation in one place, please continue the discussion in the link above.
than this:
This is a duplicate. To keep the conversation in one place, please continue the discussion in the link above. Thanks!
Maybe I just don't have the right mindset here. Or maybe it's different for forums posts versus moderation alerts? Not sure if I'm trying to compare apples and oranges here.

I don't really feel that way but I'm not everyone. I feel like it might be different because it's a scratch team member so it's easy to assume they have good intentions.

Za-Chary wrote:
Quantum-Cat wrote:
Adding emojis can often make things less formal and serious, and such messages are meant to be more serious than usual to discourage people from doing something bad again. Also from information that I have seen, I don’t think that they are unkind; alerts use words like ‘please’ which still maintains the tone, but make them more approachable.
I agree with this, too. Scratchers are supposed to take alerts seriously. It took me an embarrassingly long time to realize this, but if someone warns me against doing something, it's not intended to be a “threat” and it's more about a learning experience.

In real life, if someone is uncomfortable with my behavior and they want to talk to me about it, I would definitely take them more seriously if they were straight-faced than smiling. (If they were smiling, I might be inclined to believe that it's a joke.) With that, if they do talk to me straight-faced, I probably would feel bad in the sense of “Oh no, my friend is telling me that I made them uncomfortable,” but that is somewhat natural. If I associate them telling me not to do something with this bad feeling, then I think I would be more willing to change my behavior, because I don't want to experience this bad feeling again through another talking-to.

But it's different for kids. Kids are a little more sensitive to that so they get smiles when being told not to do something more (I think). Also, I think people would be more like “Ah, okay. I shouldn't do this anymore. /neu”, not “The people running the website told me not to do something, but there's a smiley face so it's fine.”

Za-Chary wrote:
That being said, there's probably a double-edged sword here. I have seen Scratchers before state that the existing alert messages seem unfriendly and cause them to panic more than they probably should. At the same time, I completely agree that the existing messages are sufficient and don't really need to be made “more friendly,” especially not with an emoji. I think the panic feeling is a little better to have. Warnings are not meant to be “unfriendly.” If someone believes that these warning messages are unfriendly and cause them to panic too much, I would gently encourage them to think carefully that the Scratch Team isn't trying to come across as unfriendly when sending these messages. It's often difficult to think this way (again, it took me a long time to realize this), but it's a really good mindset to have.

Also, they think “What a dumb thing to get warned over” and start developing an anti-warning bias which leads to an anti-ST bias which leads to more disrespect towards ST. This does happen sometimes.

Za-Chary

--Optimum-- wrote:
But it's different for kids. Kids are a little more sensitive to that so they get smiles when being told not to do something more (I think). Also, I think people would be more like “Ah, okay. I shouldn't do this anymore. /neu”, not “The people running the website told me not to do something, but there's a smiley face so it's fine.”

Exactly — if they think that, then they could think “The people running the website told me not to do something, but there's a smiley face, so it really doesn't matter what I did.” It's a similar reason why you would not reward a child with apple pie for bad behavior. Say a child breaks a lamp because they were throwing a football in the house. If you say to the child, “Hey, don't throw footballs in the house, here's some apple pie,” then the child could associate misbehaving with getting rewarded (with pie), so they may be tempted to misbehave even more. This sort of effect, I would think, is especially prevalent in children. By sounding too positive when reprimanding a child, they may associate misbehaving with positivity — and that's not good.

I'm no parent, but with parenting in general I'm pretty sure you don't want to reward bad behavior. As I said earlier, children need to understand if they did something wrong, and by relaying this message in an overly-positive manner, they may get mixed messages about how they should behave.

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