The 23.5 million Scratchers in our community have been working under the guidelines of the Scratch Team, i.e. a group of people that regulate and own the Scratch language and website. The Scratch community claims to be free and creative. But in the true spirit of democracy, should we not elect the Scratch team?

Although we have freedom of expression, does freedom to elect leaders or guides not come under this? Do we have a guarantee that the Scratch team at present is the best equipped to make decisions that affect all of us? I truly desire that each and every Scratcher thinks about this.

Isn't this a problem? Living in a free world, shouldn't it be mandatory that we get to choose our leaders?

Democratizing Scratch will change it drastically, but for the better.
Take, for example, a flame war. Under the current system, an offended user reports the conversation, and the Scratch team removes the offender. But is the offender allowed to give their version of events? This kind of partiality against the defendant is a key problem with totalitarian authorities.

I am not saying that the Scratch team is evil. All I want is to bring a democracy where we can elect our leaders.

I hope that the reader thinks deeply about what I have written, and supports this petition.

You can support this by saying “Aye” in this thread.

I wish everyone a Happy New Year.

Thank you.

Aye! Scratch needs this.

uhhh not to burst your bubble or anything but being a member of the st is a paid job; they can't just trust twenty three million kids to actually employ actual people.

goldfish678 wrote:

uhhh not to burst your bubble or anything but being a member of the st is a paid job; they can't just trust twenty three million kids to actually employ actual people.

^

-Crystallize- wrote:

Take, for example, a flame war. Under the current system, an offended user reports the conversation, and the Scratch team removes the offender. But is the offender allowed to give their version of events? This kind of partiality against the defendant is a key problem with totalitarian authorities.

No one is ever removed without reason and when you are banned, you can submit an appeal with your version of the events to get unbanned

-Crystallize- wrote:

Isn't this a problem? Living in a free world, shouldn't it be mandatory that we get to choose our leaders?

There are many countries where the citizens don't have a say. And last I checked, Scratch wasn't the real world and decisions the Scratch Team make do not affect our lives (well most of the time)

Scratch isn't a country, it's a website. If you start a website, you have control over the website's policies and how it's run. The people who use that website don't get to spontaneously decide that they don't like you running the site and choose somebody else to work on it. The rule of thumb is that if you don't like how the site is being run, you can leave.

Scratch isn't the real world, like Candylanguagegirl said, the owner(s) of the website have control over it, not the people who use it.
Besides, people could make a lot of bad decisions for the site.
Scratch is also a paid job, and I don't think you should elect a kid to get paid for this type of job.

YubNubEwok wrote:

Scratch isn't the real world, like Candylanguagegirl said, the owner(s) of the website have control over it, not the people who use it.
Besides, people could make a lot of bad decisions for the site.
Scratch is also a paid job, and I don't think you should elect a kid to get paid for this type of job.

So furthermore, no support.

Well, the Scratch Team is a paid job that you legally have to be over 18 to work at. It's their website, so they have the privilege of making the decisions.

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Scratch Team decides how Scratch can be ran. It is not a country, it is a community.

Charles12310 wrote:

Scratch Team decides how Scratch can be ran. It is not a country, it is a community.

^^

Semi-support. I think if the people at MIT can't decide on a new member between two equally qualified people it would be a cool idea for there to be a voting system on the front page. But it would be hard work making something so no one can vote twice. They should also make sure both people have another job they can do so someone isn't made unemployed because of twenty-three million kids.

100% Unnecessary. The Scratch Team is not going to let millions of kids (who most of them aren't even legally old enough to drive) vote the next member of the Scratch Team. The Scratch Team is a regular, paying job that you have to apply for, and it has internships. Would you suggest that we should elect someone to put on a Restaurant crew depending on how much they eat there? It's the same thing.

Is this a joke?

You do realize that being a member of the ST is a paid job, right? I actually don't see a use for this. Plus, the ST isn't a totalitarian dictatorship at all. You ARE allowed to give your side of events, you know. The ST took down a project, and I didn't think it was justified. So I contacted the ST and they withdrew the censorship. You see, we're allowed freedom of speech and having what we think is just. As long as it actually is just. Some people hate the ST for doing things that are actually just, but they are too brainwashed and think it isn't. Most of the time, though, the ST makes the right decision. The thing is that the ST will reasonably choose because they have a lot more logical thinking than most people on Scratch. Because of Scratch's demographic, many people will use this to do illogical things that are unjust, even if they think it is. The website's been perfectly fine with the ST in charge, and it doesn't need a change.

Think of the scratch team this way-

The Scratch Team in 3 words:

• Monitors
  

• Government
  

• Creators
  

They do what they think is the best decision.
In a flame war, if someone says something mean or goes “Too far”, if someone reports the problem, The scratch team will look at the situation and take the best source of action.

For example, people are divided on a suggestion in the forums. Someone says something like “People who don't think like us are morons!” and gets reported. In my opinion, i would close the post, giving a gentle suggestion to both of the sides.

They didn't just say “UGHHHHHH!!! Another flame war?!?! let's just BAN EVERYONE INVOLVED!!! ”
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To sum it up, The scratch team tries their best to make good decisions. Respect them. They are Adults, you know.

@PrincessFlowerTV

PrincessPanda_test_ wrote:

Is this a joke?

Honestly, I don't think the op is intending for it to be a joke, they seem pretty serious about this stuff.

I can see how you think this would be beneficial, but this is just not the case. Letting a bunch of twelve-year-olds choose your job can only turn out badly.

Fupicat wrote:

I can see how you think this would be beneficial, but this is just not the case. Letting a bunch of twelve-year-olds choose your job can only turn out badly.

If we use other countries' democracies as an example, we'd probably have a minimum voting age that most of us would be younger than

Sheep_maker wrote:

Fupicat wrote:

I can see how you think this would be beneficial, but this is just not the case. Letting a bunch of twelve-year-olds choose your job can only turn out badly.

If we use other countries' democracies as an example, we'd probably have a minimum voting age that most of us would be younger than

Yes, but that's not a good idea either because that's dividing the community, and older people would act like they're better just because they can vote for a Scratch Team member. So there's two problems.

Scratch: We're hiring!

Junior Designer - This page is missing so the kids don't know what you actually do. You're probably banning their friends while you're supposed to be designing cool web graphix. Fired.

QA Engineer - Every bug gets blamed on you. Voting disabled, but your admin test account got demoted because Scratchers figured out the name. You can no longer do your work because of this. Fired.

Senior Backend Engineer - Did scratch crash due to a server outage? Fired! Did scratch have scheduled maintenance that interfered with a release date of one of griffpatch's projects? Also fired!

Learning Resource Designer - Design resources for things like hour of code! Try not to get fired because kids will vote against you because hour of code is annoying and slows down the site. Good for alternating monthly pay, because you can reapply for this job one month after getting fired.

No support.