Because Scratch has an atmosphere of mandatory happiness

Because ‘empty’ negativity can hurt an aspiring programmer's motivation considerably. When it's in a comment, the comment will specify what it is the user dislikes about the project (either that or a pile of meaningless hate that can be easily dismissed). Something as simple as a dislike button will do nothing to help, because it can not say what was wrong.

Of course, this means that objectively speaking, the love and favorite buttons shouldn't help either, because they do not specify what was good about the projects, but that's not how the human mind works.

WolfCat67 wrote:

-ShadowOfTheFuture- wrote:

…receiving a dislike could be very demoralizing and in extreme cases could lead to a user quitting Scratch.

That's an overstatement right there, I've never met someone who takes criticism to heart THAT much

Are you sure it's an overstatement?

Keep in mind that receiving a “dislike” is not the same as receiving criticism. Criticism is pretty easy to take, because it's telling you exactly why somebody doesn't like something you've made.

But when all you can see is a number – the amount of dislikes you've received – you're told exactly nothing except that people don't like your project. You're given no explanation, and no chance to improve, and this leads to a pretty unfortunate situation: you have no idea what to do to make your next project good, and so you have no choice but to hope for the best when you share it.

I personally find it difficult to deal with this particular form of feedback, despite the fact that I can very well accept that my work is flawed. And if I, somebody who is relatively old and mature, have difficulty with this kind of feature, how do you think somebody who is young might react?

Young people already have difficulty dealing with constructive criticism, as can be observed across websites where young people share their work. I can very well imagine that an anonymous “dislike” feature could cause people to at the very least feel wary about sharing new projects, and at the very worst cause them to leave Scratch.

Whoa-there's a lot of responses. Hope you don't mind if I give another one!

Scratch is a safe place. Most of the users are somewhere around eight years old. Imagine being an eight year old, working long and hard on your best work. You share it with confidence! It gets hundreds of views!! You start to celebrate!!! But then you realize it has lots of dislikes. You would be crushed.

Commenting is a much more constructive way of saying something is wrong with the project. A dislike button simply says “I don't like it”. But commenting can be used to describe where you think it could be improved. Or, like your example, a ‘scam“ can be easily reported and the reason explained.

Just simply saying ”I don’t like it“, which is what the dislike button would do, holds nothing except negativity. The project maker simply understands, ”my project is disliked. They don't like it. I don't know why, but they don't like it." This achieves nothing except hurt feelings and dents in self-esteem.

As for helping people get thicker skin, that is not what Scratch is for. Scratch is for building young coders' confidence and inspiring them. Not for helping them understand the harshness of the world. If that where what it was for, there may as well be no community guidelines.

A dislike button would achieve nothing they commenting and reporting cannot achieve. Scratch is not for giving children thicker skin.

All in all,

If you want a dislike button, go to YouTube.

Hope this helps you understand!

Joker_Dud wrote:

There's a ‘love’, ‘favourite’ and ‘report’ button under every project; but there isn't a ‘dislike’ or ‘critique’ button. This makes it extremely hard to show that you don't like the project and you can sometimes get banned if you leave a ‘'’'mean'''' comment.
I know that some people are more sensitive than others but a ‘dislike’ button could help them grow a thicker skin. Some people are also too scared to leave a critique in the comment section because they don't want to receive a bad reputation. The ‘dislike’ button will be anonymous just like the ‘love’ and ‘favourite’ buttons, so people won't have to worry about getting a bad rep.
The ‘dislike’ button can also help new scratchers improve and create better projects.
If a project has a lot of dislikes the st could get notified and see what exactly was wrong with the project. Like a scam would get a lot of dislikes so the st would know something was up.

Scratch is about encouraging others. Disliking is kind of a put down, especially when there are so many younger kids on here. If you think a project needs improving, post a comment that tells them what should be improved in a polite manner. While I see that you want to make people better, a dislike button may not be the solution. Next time you see a project you don't like, either do nothing or give some constructive criticism!

If a new scratcher or young kid were to get a “dislike” or “critique”, They would get really upset, especially if they spent a long time working on it.

imcoding99 wrote:

A dislike button would make quite a lot of scratchers feel insecure, and have low self-esteem. A kind, helpful comment would be a better solution, as ‘disliking’ would make the scratcher believe that the disliker ‘hates’ the project.

^^^
She put it better then me. :3

-ShadowOfTheFuture- wrote:

Imagine if you shared a project that you'd spent weeks working hard on, and received a flurry of dislikes. Even if it was anonymous (and also, loves and favorites are not anonymous), receiving a dislike could be very demoralizing and in extreme cases could lead to a user quitting Scratch.

I think giving constructive criticism in the comments section is enough. There's no need for a dislike button, and it would do more harm than good.

ANOTHER POINT: if the creator of a project was notified when somebody else “disliked” their project, they could end up getting extremely angry. In their anger, they might be driven to hate on the other Scratcher.

Let's say that Scratcher A created a project. Scratch B “disliked” it. Scratcher A is very angry, and begins spamming the following comment on Scratcher B's profile.

The Scratcher who received the dislike wrote:

Y U DISLKIE ME PROJEKT??!???!?!?!11??!?!/?!? UR MEANIE!!!1!!1!!!11! I HATE U!!!!11!1!!!! U STINK @ LIFE!!!1!!!!11!!

In the end, nobody's happy.

██       ██  ██            ██  ██       ██
██       ██  ██            ██  ██       ██
██       ██  ██     ██     ██  ██       ██
██       ██  ██     ██     ██  ██       ██
███     ███   ██   ████   ██   ███     ███
 █████████     █████  █████     █████████

As a response to -ShadowOfTheFuture-, I believe that hunting another user down because of something like this is called “witch hunting”.

-ShadowOfTheFuture- wrote:

-ShadowOfTheFuture- wrote:

Imagine if you shared a project that you'd spent weeks working hard on, and received a flurry of dislikes. Even if it was anonymous (and also, loves and favorites are not anonymous), receiving a dislike could be very demoralizing and in extreme cases could lead to a user quitting Scratch.

I think giving constructive criticism in the comments section is enough. There's no need for a dislike button, and it would do more harm than good.

ANOTHER POINT: if the creator of a project was notified when somebody else “disliked” their project, they could end up getting extremely angry. In their anger, they might be driven to hate on the other Scratcher.

Let's say that Scratcher A created a project. Scratch B “disliked” it. Scratcher A is very angry, and begins spamming the following comment on Scratcher B's profile.

The Scratcher who received the dislike wrote:

Y U DISLKIE ME PROJEKT??!???!?!?!11??!?!/?!? UR MEANIE!!!1!!1!!!11! I HATE U!!!!11!1!!!! U STINK @ LIFE!!!1!!!!11!!

In the end, nobody's happy.

Exactly.

This should be closed. We already have too much posts explaining almost the exact same thing, and the user probably knows the answer by now.

Because Scratch is a constructive website where anyone can do anything (within reason and the CG). Would you feel inspired and exasperated if someone told you what you did was bad? You wouldn't, would you? The point of Scratch is to inspire people to do great things with code, and if you were told your project was bad, then that would be no good.

There should be a dislike button so we can have complains without a message from the scratch team.

when green flag clicked
say [Why can't we just delete a guideline?] for (2) secs

xuya wrote:

There should be a dislike button so we can have complains without a message from the scratch team.

when green flag clicked
say [Why can't we just delete a guideline?] for (2) secs

Please don't post on old, resolved topics. That is called necroposting and isn't allowed.

xuya wrote:

when green flag clicked
say [Why can't we just delete a guideline?] for (2) secs

Why can't we just delete the community guidelines?

NilsTheBest wrote:

Why can't we just delete the community guidelines?

Because that's rejected by the Scratch Team, sorry

Rejected Suggestions wrote:

6.5 Remove the Community Guidelines or remove the Terms of Use
The Community Guidelines exist in order to ensure a friendly and safe website for all ages. Removing them completely would mean anyone could post anything they wanted, which would place a lot of chaos into the Scratch website, and generally would not make it very friendly or inviting for all ages.

The Terms of Use exist for legal reasons, and cannot be shortened. In particular, the privacy policy ensures that the Scratch Team will be able to take down projects that use the servers illegally, whether shared or unshared. If you disagree with either the Community Guidelines or the Terms of Use, then please do not use Scratch.

Anyway, a dislike button is also rejected.

Za-Chary wrote:

4.2 Dislike button or a project rating system
This idea has a major drawback. Generally, a user's first project is something rather simple, such as a test project, a remix, or a project made using a tutorial. Because this project is simple, other users may give the project low ratings since it is not advanced. With low enough ratings, the creator might be discouraged enough to stop using Scratch even though the creator is just trying to learn. If you do not like a project, you could choose not to love it, or you could leave a respectful and constructive comment telling the user how to improve.

Since this topic has a rejected suggestion, and the OP's question seems to have been substantially answered, and because this was necroposted on, I'll report the topic to be closed.