I read in the Wiki that followers were called friends in the early days of Scratch prior to version 2.0. But as far as I understood, the principle was the same, you could unilaterally follow/friend another scratcher. So basically it just was a follower concept misnomed as “friends”, correct?

My question is, wouldn't Scratchers benefit much more from a true friending system where both Scratchers have to agree to friend each other? With the current follower principle we see that there are a few Scratchers that get most of the followers. As a result, a Scratcher like Griffpatch drowns in Likes and Comments for each project, while an unknown Scratcher goes unnoticed. Even if you are a new unknown Scratcher you would more likely follow those who already have a lot of followers rather than your peers which are at the same level as you are.

In contrast with a friending system based on invitation/accept a new Scratcher could start with a friend group of similar Scratchers, helping and giving feedback to each other. And it would be impossible for someone to acquire thousands of friends without friending them yourself.

I guess a friend system might create some drama (“why did you unfriend me”, “why are you friends with him?”) but in general it would be a more balanced distribution of attention. Probably the drama part is why Scratch did not implement it in the first place, could somebody from the ST confirm?

What I find interesting is that F4F is basically the emulation of such a friending system, but many Scratchers find it bad or a kind of cheating.

What do you think?

I think the problem with “friend” is that it implies something a lot more intimate than most online relationships. Someone being a friend implies they're someone you can trust and rely on, which is not how you should view a stranger on the internet. As scratch is primarily a kid's site, it's better to use a more “detached” word to protect younger users from trusting people they shouldn't.

TheRealNetherBefore wrote:

I think the problem with “friend” is that it implies something a lot more intimate than most online relationships. Someone being a friend implies they're someone you can trust and rely on, which is not how you should view a stranger on the internet. As scratch is primarily a kid's site, it's better to use a more “detached” word to protect younger users from trusting people they shouldn't.

Very true. But I think it would be possible to have the friend mechanism with a different word, like for example “Buddy” or another more neutral word.

Support!!

Buddy would be good, we have AJ's system to go off as I haven't seen any many complaints on it

Also if you un-FRIEND someone, that means that you are no longer their friend.

--_Nova_-- wrote:

Buddy would be good, we have AJ's system to go off as I haven't seen any many complaints on it

What is AJ's system? Never heard of it but sounds interesting.

Yes, I think “Buddy” is a better word

frodewin wrote:

--_Nova_-- wrote:

Buddy would be good, we have AJ's system to go off as I haven't seen any many complaints on it

What is AJ's system? Never heard of it but sounds interesting.

What are we talking about?