Mr-Mathmatical wrote:

I don't really mind that the Discuss button is in the footer. If new scratchers needed advice, all they would have to do is ask one of the more experienced scratchers.

Mr-Mathmatical wrote:

I can sort of see where the Scratch Team is coming from when they said it would overwhelm new scratchers. If you've ever made a game with a menu before, you want to make sure there are as little buttons as possible. Imagine starting off in a game, and every single feature was a button. How overwhelming would that be? You can see examples in popular games nowadays, one of them being Clash Royale. Tournaments and challenges are only unlocked when you are level 8, and clans used to be unlocked when you where level 3 or 4 (can't remember which). This was so players wouldn't lose interest as soon as they joined.

Mr-Mathmatical wrote:

Only 0.08% of active scratchers clicked on the button. What's the point of even having it there?

cul8er wrote:

Mr-Mathmatical wrote:

I don't really mind that the Discuss button is in the footer. If new scratchers needed advice, all they would have to do is ask one of the more experienced scratchers.

Popular and experienced Scratchers definitely aren't, don't want to be and never will be 24/7 help services. Look at @griffpatch's profile to see what I mean.

Mr-Mathmatical wrote:

I can sort of see where the Scratch Team is coming from when they said it would overwhelm new scratchers. If you've ever made a game with a menu before, you want to make sure there are as little buttons as possible. Imagine starting off in a game, and every single feature was a button. How overwhelming would that be? You can see examples in popular games nowadays, one of them being Clash Royale. Tournaments and challenges are only unlocked when you are level 8, and clans used to be unlocked when you where level 3 or 4 (can't remember which). This was so players wouldn't lose interest as soon as they joined.

The ST has never said they removed the Discuss button because it “overwhelmed” New Scratchers.

Mr-Mathmatical wrote:

Only 0.08% of active scratchers clicked on the button. What's the point of even having it there?

Because it's a valuable and important resource that is infinitely more helpful than Tips. If it's not getting clicked on, it should be promoted, not obscured.

muellly wrote:

carsracer wrote:

Maybe tips and about should be merged and that would leave space for discuss. Or shorten the search bar like the scratch team did a while back.

Maybe, although I do like the idea of there being a more drop down for tips and about more.

cul8er wrote:

-snip-

Sheep_maker wrote:

Charles12310 wrote:

Now New Scratchers don't know about the forums.

That could be a good thing; maybe forums aren't as effective or welcome for younger users

New Scratchers actually aren't usually younger users. Typically, they are early-teens. (Is this a word?)-snip-

New Scratchers come in all ages. Even if young users might not benefit from the forums that much it's not like young users are suffering from the discuss button being in the header.

Yakov5776 wrote:

I have a idea, in the mean time while we wait to see if the ST will add the Discuss button back, Maybe you can Try this:
Discuss Button Profile

That helps the people who know about the forums that are willing to download something.

zenin10 wrote:

I have a fix to the discuss button problem. First download isOnline of the Chrome Store: https://aremyfriends.online/get , then go to https://scratch.mit.edu/users/DiscussButton/ and click enable around the username, and the the discuss button will be back! Problem solved!

I'm using firefox… I don't see why I should download something off the chrome store. Also it does not solve the problem new users never finding out about the forums in the first place.

Smurphy13AWESOME wrote:

The absolute, simplest solution: Look up at the bar. See the empty blue space on either side? We could easily expand that. Simple as that!

That is a good idea, Scratch could change the font size and padding so everything fits on everybody's screen, removing the need for blue space to make the header fit on smaller screens.

PopularTDM wrote:

jromagnoli wrote:

VideoGamerCanInvent wrote:

PopularTDM wrote:

Maybe the reason the ST removed the discuss button was because they saw users getting bullied.

What exactly do you mean?

Yeah, the forums are generally a lot safer than the comments. If that was the reason, they should've removed commenting first.

Really? To me, the comments are a lot safer.

Comments are much harder to moderate than forums. You have to know the specific studio/project/profile the comments are on to see them, you have to learn about each places existence before you can see it, making it likely only a few Scratchers will see it if it is not popular (one, maybe two). New forum posts bump the topic up to the top of the page, adds a little thing to indicate there are new posts and the active forum users will see it and ST members who moderate the forums have a higher chance of seeing it even if it isn't reported.

J2t0n4 wrote:

I was just thinking, maybe there could be a dropdown menu called support or something like that that has help, discuss and tips underneath. Does anyone think this could help?

Something like that would be awesome. It would be great if the wiki could also be included in something like that.

DownsGameClub wrote:

-Vuton- wrote:

J2t0n4 wrote:

I was just thinking, maybe there could be a dropdown menu called support or something like that that has help, discuss and tips underneath. Does anyone think this could help?

Yeah, but It may look cluttered as there already is a drop-down on the right!

Not necessarily- YouTube has both a left and right dropdown menu by technical definition- it gives quite a bit of options if you ask me, so that may be a good choice.

Just a new argument- can Scratch function without a forum at all? I feel like most of us are treating the removal of the discuss button as a life or death situation, which, according to @Paddle2See, is clearly not going to happen at any point of Scratch.

Additionally, are there alternate forms of communication we can use? Of course it's not going to be all that easy, but is there a possibility of Scratch welcoming users, helping, or answering questions in a different way?

Scratch could function without a forum, but the forum enhances the experience for many users who know about them. The main things that Scratch needs to survive are bug reports that could be made on ST members profiles. However this will make things harder for the ST to keep tract of as users may not know where to say they encountered a bug and due to the character limit detailed explanations of what happened will rarely be made. Announcements are also important and could be made via featured projects. The rest of the forums Scratch can go on without. New Scratchers don't need to be welcomed even though it is nice and may encourage new users to stay on Scratch longer knowing about the nice community. There is also the Scratch welcoming comity. Help with scripts and Scratch can be asked on profiles however it most of the time take longer to get answers, or the question could be complete ignored by who they ask. Comments can advertise like the show and tell however these are likely to get reported as spam. The ST profiles will be filled with spam asking to be featured, they could share a project for requests however there is the problem of users not finding the project and the user who made the project hardly being able to use their messages anymore as it will be filled with feature requests. The entire forum really can be replicated by comments in studios, projects and profiles however it will make things difficult to find users interested in things in the AT such as Scratch modifications, make collaborations made by non popular Scratchers limited to their Scratch friends or interested people who somehow stumble across their profile, limit pictures to links and force all posts to be 500 characters or less and generally it will be harder to start communication with many others than it is to with the forums.

-Vuton- wrote:

-snip-
And there is plenty to be done, the ST will probably eventually make a new way to access the forums that is easier for new scratchers!

Eventually, could be 7 years, could be 2 days, there is no telling when the ST will take, if any, action.

Mr-Mathmatical wrote:

I don't really mind that the Discuss button is in the footer. If new scratchers needed advice, all they would have to do is ask one of the more experienced scratchers.

I can sort of see where the Scratch Team is coming from when they said it would overwhelm new scratchers. If you've ever made a game with a menu before, you want to make sure there are as little buttons as possible. Imagine starting off in a game, and every single feature was a button. How overwhelming would that be? You can see examples in popular games nowadays, one of them being Clash Royale. Tournaments and challenges are only unlocked when you are level 8, and clans used to be unlocked when you where level 3 or 4 (can't remember which). This was so players wouldn't lose interest as soon as they joined.

Only 0.08% of active scratchers clicked on the button. What's the point of even having it there? It's a bit like adding a “Worst projects of all time” button or a “Least followed scratchers ever” button. No one would click on them.

But I dunno, that's just my opinion. I do agree it should be called “Forums” if it came back, though

I would agree that having 7-8 button would be overwhelming for a new person, however not so much if there is a tutorial. However 5 buttons isn't to much. Also it is more of them removing the tutorial button, a useful but hardly used button due to many older users already know how to play, because only a few people joined every day and there was a very large base at the site who don't feel like they already know everything in it. While hardly any one clicks it, it is still very useful. (however the forums would be more of advanced tutorials after someone has moved past tips.)

DownsGameClub wrote:

PopularTDM wrote:

PopularTDM wrote:

Really? To me, the comments are a lot safer.

Comments are more like instant messaging, while the forums are more like mailing, but as a group.

In other words, sending messages on the forums would likely take more work than commenting, which makes spamming/other bad things less frequent on the forums.

As with suggestions for dropdowns, I just think that scaling down the text size a bit and sliding in a fifth link (like in the isOnline extension) would be a simple solution.

That makes sense!
But it's not going to make reading stuff any easier- I wasn't able to read anything well under 14 point font.

All of these are at 14 point font. I don't like how the font blends in with the rest of the text and the menu bar isn't a “header”.

-snip-

Those search bars seem to be a reasonable size to me. They can reduce padding on buttons with longer words to keep the buttons clickable while lengthening the search bar.

-penandpaper- wrote:

IgnaxioScratcher wrote:

Plus, if you are advanced, you cant have help from ‘'Tips’' sector

Yup - I'm working on a whitelisted chat (among other things), and the HwS forum is the only place I can really go for tips.

Agreed. The forums can give you any tip you want, not just some random starter projects. To be honest I never really followed any beginer project tutorials. If the tutorials were a path with some grassy plains on the sides, I would have broken the gate to go past the grassy plains. There are surely other new Scratchers who found any thing they could find in tips more restricting than if they were just told what the blocks do. There are also new Scratchers who would want to make a first project that isn't listed in tips, so they can go to the forums for help!.. If they can find them…

The forums are actually helpful because they provide more information than the tips section. What is the real point of the tips section? My first point is that advanced scratchers are less likely to get help with pen projects, algorithms and all sorts of stuff. Also, most people see this thing as a major mistake due to the reason mention above and also some of the explanations mentioned in the quotations. The tips button is almost a pointless button that barely provides help to anyone, it only shows basic tutorials not even intermediate ones. Like muelly mentioned, they do give tips as well as other stuff; the tips section is just a tips section, it does nothing except showing the tips really. However, it said 0.08% of active scratchers actually viewed the forums which is not that much scratchers. If that statement is true, how many will check the tips section? 0.01%… I don't really think that this ‘tips section’ is necessary, I therefore support this suggestion to bring back the discussion button. I hope the ScratchTeam implements this suggestion,
Nopixel

muellly wrote:

cul8er wrote:

-snip-
New Scratchers actually aren't usually younger users. Typically, they are early-teens. (Is this a word?)-snip-

New Scratchers come in all ages. Even if young users might not benefit from the forums that much it's not like young users are suffering from the discuss button being in the header.

muellly wrote:

zenin10 wrote:

I have a fix to the discuss button problem. First download isOnline of the Chrome Store: https://aremyfriends.online/get , then go to https://scratch.mit.edu/users/DiscussButton/ and click enable around the username, and the the discuss button will be back! Problem solved!

I'm using firefox… I don't see why I should download something off the chrome store. Also it does not solve the problem new users never finding out about the forums in the first place.

muellly wrote:

Smurphy13AWESOME wrote:

The absolute, simplest solution: Look up at the bar. See the empty blue space on either side? We could easily expand that. Simple as that!

That is a good idea, Scratch could change the font size and padding so everything fits on everybody's screen, removing the need for blue space to make the header fit on smaller screens.

muellly wrote:

J2t0n4 wrote:

I was just thinking, maybe there could be a dropdown menu called support or something like that that has help, discuss and tips underneath. Does anyone think this could help?

Something like that would be awesome. It would be great if the wiki could also be included in something like that.

muellly wrote:

Scratch could function without a forum, but the forum enhances the experience for many users who know about them.

muellly wrote:

The main things that Scratch needs to survive are bug reports that could be made on ST members profiles. However this will make things harder for the ST to keep tract of as users may not know where to say they encountered a bug and due to the character limit detailed explanations of what happened will rarely be made.

muellly wrote:

Announcements are also important and could be made via featured projects.

muellly wrote:

The rest of the forums Scratch can go on without.

muellly wrote:

New Scratchers don't need to be welcomed even though it is nice and may encourage new users to stay on Scratch longer knowing about the nice community. There is also the Scratch welcoming comity.

muellly wrote:

Help with scripts and Scratch can be asked on profiles however it most of the time take longer to get answers, or the question could be complete ignored by who they ask.

when green flag clicked
say [Scratch on!] for (2) secs

muellly wrote:

Comments can advertise like the show and tell however these are likely to get reported as spam.

muellly wrote:

-Vuton- wrote:

-snip-
And there is plenty to be done, the ST will probably eventually make a new way to access the forums that is easier for new scratchers!

Eventually, could be 7 years, could be 2 days, there is no telling when the ST will take, if any, action.

Mr-Mathmatical wrote:

I don't really mind that the Discuss button is in the footer.

Mr-Mathmatical wrote:

If new scratchers needed advice, all they would have to do is ask one of the more experienced scratchers.

Mr-Mathmatical wrote:

I can sort of see where the Scratch Team is coming from when they said it would overwhelm new scratchers. If you've ever made a game with a menu before, you want to make sure there are as little buttons as possible. Imagine starting off in a game, and every single feature was a button. How overwhelming would that be? You can see examples in popular games nowadays, one of them being Clash Royale. Tournaments and challenges are only unlocked when you are level 8, and clans used to be unlocked when you where level 3 or 4 (can't remember which). This was so players wouldn't lose interest as soon as they joined.

Mr-Mathmatical wrote:

Only 0.08% of active scratchers clicked on the button. What's the point of even having it there? It's a bit like adding a “Worst projects of all time” button or a “Least followed scratchers ever” button. No one would click on them.

Mr-Mathmatical wrote:

But I dunno, that's just my opinion. I do agree it should be called “Forums” if it came back, though

JakeCarroll wrote:

Support. Easy for new scratchers.

JakeCarroll wrote:

Support. Easy for new scratchers.

bigpuppy wrote:

Someone might have already mentioned this, but there is a link to Discuss on the Tips page.

bigpuppy wrote:

Someone might have already mentioned this, but there is a link to Discuss on the Tips page.

Charles12310 wrote:

bigpuppy wrote:

Someone might have already mentioned this, but there is a link to Discuss on the Tips page.

It can be easily mistaken as part of the footer, won't help.

bigpuppy wrote:

Someone might have already mentioned this, but there is a link to Discuss on the Tips page.

PkmnQ wrote:

They never removed the button from the wiki!

PackersRuleGoPack wrote:

What is the big deal? Get isOnline to get the discuss button back! ison.ga!

DownsGameClub wrote:

PackersRuleGoPack wrote:

What is the big deal? Get isOnline to get the discuss button back! ison.ga!

It has been mentioned before that it doesn't permanently fix the problem. Additionally (correct me if I'm wrong here folks), it only works for Chrome.