dracae wrote:

Zro716 wrote:

-snip-

I find it kinda ironic how you rant so much about how the F4F causes spam, yet you support an idea that will multiply spam ten-fold?

…

*facedeskfacedeskfacedeskfacedesk*

you need to do some research. Spam is “irrelevant or inappropriate messages sent on the Internet to a large number of recipients”, so if what you're saying is “irrelevant” or “inappropriate” then we should just get rid of the message system and do everything else you want us to do.

Anyways, I have compiled several arguments:
- Your idea discourages following, which I guess is the point. A bad point, however, because following is an integral part of Scratch and you want to wreck this feature.

Discourages following? We haven't even tried it and you're already assuming things.

- Furthermore, you yourself admit that the current following system is completely harmless, which further drives me to say…

Still no support.

Whatever, no cookie for you.

Zro716 wrote:

- Furthermore, you yourself admit that the current following system is completely harmless, which further drives me to say…

Still no support.

Whatever, no cookie for you.

I'll starve myself of cookies if it means your idea won't be implemented.

And I don't think you see my point.
Look at you, you're following 86 people.
Imagine all the activity ONE person does.
Multiply that by 86, and thats how many messeges you'll get everyday.

I don't know about you, but having hundreds or thousands of messages at a time would seriously deter anyone away from Scratch.

(EDIT: And as I said before, calm down… There's no need for your borderline disrespectful remarks. It seems like you're trying to ignite a flame war)

dracae wrote:

And I don't think you see my point.
Look at you, you're following 86 people.
Imagine all the activity ONE person does.
Multiply that by 86, and thats how many messeges you'll get everyday.

Again, assuming I'll get tons of messages, and also assuming my idea isn't flexible. Of course you'll be able to control what messages you get.

(To make sure you're not flooded with just a couple users I'll get rid of the “what-this-user-loved” part of the idea. )

dracae wrote:

Zro716 wrote:

-snip-

I find it kinda ironic how you rant so much about how the F4F causes spam, yet you support an idea that will multiply spam ten-fold?

Anyways, I have compiled several arguments:
- Your idea does not benefit “us all,” in fact it just creates more spam.
- Your idea discourages following, which I guess is the point. A bad point, however, because following is an integral part of Scratch and you want to wreck this feature.
- Furthermore, you yourself admit that the current following system is completely harmless, which further drives me to say…

Still no support.

(EDIT:

Zro716 wrote:

in the hopes of a fancy so stupid its success would be inconceivably frivolous.

Calm down there bud, no need for hurtful words and innapriopriate language to try to prove your point. No one wants a flame war, right?)

Actaully it makes people cut down on spam(f4f). His idea will make it so people will only follow those they want to keep updates on. hurtful words?

Harm
“physical injury, especially that which is deliberately inflicted”

Zro716 wrote:

dracae wrote:

And I don't think you see my point.
Look at you, you're following 86 people.
Imagine all the activity ONE person does.
Multiply that by 86, and thats how many messeges you'll get everyday.

Again, assuming I'll get tons of messages, and also assuming my idea isn't flexible. Of course you'll be able to control what messages you get.

(To make sure you're not flooded with just a couple users I'll get rid of the “what-this-user-loved” part of the idea. )

Oh, well F4F people can do the same, and just get rid of “what this user -blah-blah-blah” part.

dracae wrote:

Zro716 wrote:

dracae wrote:

And I don't think you see my point.
Look at you, you're following 86 people.
Imagine all the activity ONE person does.
Multiply that by 86, and thats how many messeges you'll get everyday.

Again, assuming I'll get tons of messages, and also assuming my idea isn't flexible. Of course you'll be able to control what messages you get.

(To make sure you're not flooded with just a couple users I'll get rid of the “what-this-user-loved” part of the idea. )

Oh, well F4F people can do the same, and just get rid of “what this user -blah-blah-blah” part.

So followers will diminished to the minimum.

Bump. Let's try this again, so bear with me.

It still sickens me that people are more desperate to get another follower than to get another love-it on their best project. It still hurts everyday to find one of my followers is more concerned about how many people he can follow than the painstaking hours of effort I poured into my projects. Even when griffpatch explicitly states he will not F4F people are still trying to get at him. Whatever happened to preserving a project-oriented community and not one that begs for attention?

Let me set an example. You wouldn't create blank projects for sheer fun, would you? It's just as fun to have hundreds of blank projects on your profile just like following lots of people, except it's against the rules! Why must it be the only major part of Scratch (besides comments/posts) that if used carelessly is punishable? After all, it was at the discretion of the Scratch Team to decide what is important enough for punishment, so if something as important as following (according to some) is so heavily neglected without punishment why does it remain unchanged? Is it really that unimportant that it should be removed? Of course not! Quoth Lightnin, it is “to receive updates about a user”, but we here and now we never receive live updates except those vague notices on the front page. And as I observed earlier, people neglect the time to look up activity by those they follow, and henceforth they continually forget the use of following! Even I'm starting to see no use in it because of this happening to me!

I don't regret speaking the truth. This is the reality we are becoming, all because the ST threw out the “friend” system for the “follow” system, which in their defense was to imitate trending social networks like Twitter and Facebook when “friending” was too close for comfort. They got exactly that, and as a consequence people are obsessing over snagging as many followers as they can, just like Twitter and Facebook. If this “trend” continues, they might even replace “Love it” with “Like it”, because people might be offended by “loving” a project when they really don't “love” it per se.

We want to make Scratch more like *Scratch* and not like a social network, agree? Hope so…

Then first things first, we deal with the following system. It is imperative to rename it something relevant/unique to Scratch, something like “Kittens”, “Meowers”, maybe “Scratchfriends”, anything that isn't adopted from social media. This is to diffuse the frame of mind that “Scratch has followers therefore Scratch is like Twitter which I can get popular on”, which in turn will hopefully encourage more focus on Scratch rather than *just* on following.

Then we make sure this new system doesn't get misused for pure fun and play. Simply put, advise that users find an alternate method for fun instead of neglecting an important component of Scratch. Still, users may be young and not able to understand the consequences, so they may be distraught from having this type of fun restricted; of course, they should be reminded that there are a billion better ways to have fun than sit around for hours clicking the follow button and utterly wasting someone's good time on their projects, like mine.

So to recap, the main reason I'm vying for change is to restore Scratch to its glory days of caring more about projects than following. I'm not asking to get rid of following as a whole, but rather I want it changed to something more Scratch and less Twitter.

/rant

Zro716 wrote:

Bump. Let's try this again, so bear with me.

It still sickens me that people are more desperate to get another follower than to get another love-it on their best project. It still hurts everyday to find one of my followers is more concerned about how many people he can follow than the painstaking hours of effort I poured into my projects. Even when griffpatch explicitly states he will not F4F people are still trying to get at him. Whatever happened to preserving a project-oriented community and not one that begs for attention?

Let me set an example. You wouldn't create blank projects for sheer fun, would you? It's just as fun to have hundreds of blank projects on your profile just like following lots of people, except it's against the rules! Why must it be the only major part of Scratch (besides comments/posts) that if used carelessly is punishable? After all, it was at the discretion of the Scratch Team to decide what is important enough for punishment, so if something as important as following (according to some) is so heavily neglected without punishment why does it remain unchanged? Is it really that unimportant that it should be removed? Of course not! Quoth Lightnin, it is “to receive updates about a user”, but we here and now we never receive live updates except those vague notices on the front page. And as I observed earlier, people neglect the time to look up activity by those they follow, and henceforth they continually forget the use of following! Even I'm starting to see no use in it because of this happening to me!

I don't regret speaking the truth. This is the reality we are becoming, all because the ST threw out the “friend” system for the “follow” system, which in their defense was to imitate trending social networks like Twitter and Facebook when “friending” was too close for comfort. They got exactly that, and as a consequence people are obsessing over snagging as many followers as they can, just like Twitter and Facebook. If this “trend” continues, they might even replace “Love it” with “Like it”, because people might be offended by “loving” a project when they really don't “love” it per se.

We want to make Scratch more like *Scratch* and not like a social network, agree? Hope so…

Then first things first, we deal with the following system. It is imperative to rename it something relevant/unique to Scratch, something like “Kittens”, “Meowers”, maybe “Scratchfriends”, anything that isn't adopted from social media. This is to diffuse the frame of mind that “Scratch has followers therefore Scratch is like Twitter which I can get popular on”, which in turn will hopefully encourage more focus on Scratch rather than *just* on following.

Then we make sure this new system doesn't get misused for pure fun and play. Simply put, advise that users find an alternate method for fun instead of neglecting an important component of Scratch. Still, users may be young and not able to understand the consequences, so they may be distraught from having this type of fun restricted; of course, they should be reminded that there are a billion better ways to have fun than sit around for hours clicking the follow button and utterly wasting someone's good time on their projects, like mine.

So to recap, the main reason I'm vying for change is to restore Scratch to its glory days of caring more about projects than following. I'm not asking to get rid of following as a whole, but rather I want it changed to something more Scratch and less Twitter.

/rant

Maybe cheeseeater should addd this to the first post.

Zro716 wrote:

-Snip-

So to recap, the main reason I'm vying for change is to restore Scratch to its glory days of caring more about projects than following. I'm not asking to get rid of following as a whole, but rather I want it changed to something more Scratch and less Twitter.

Exactly. That post was very well said. Scratch is taking a more ‘social networking’ approach, probably to make it appeal to the next ‘generation’ of scratchers who have this kind of thing. It is extremely important that the following is changed to something else, even back to friends. I can guarantee that people will go around begging for friends because it would be awkward. Back to social networking, on there people are always asking for followers, if they changed it to friends people may be a bit more wary of who they add.

Conclusion
1) Scratch needs to change ‘following’ to something else. Like subscribing, or friends. It would also be nice if it was personal and unique to scratch.
2) Whatever its called, all the bars and stats with how many there are must go in the bin
3) Give Scratchers more ideas for what projects to make instead of just using Scratch as a social site.

I'll add this quote to my signature. “The main reason I'm vying for change is to restore Scratch to its glory days of caring more about projects than following. I'm not asking to get rid of following as a whole, but rather I want it changed to something more Scratch and less Twitter.” -Zro716

@blaze349 Its not really an idea, and its best to keep the first post short.

I was wondering: what do you think of those people who get 100's of followers- Just by making a ‘Welcome’ project and having a fancy vector logo?

____                  _____  _______              
|   \  |     |     | |          |    |\    | | /
|___/  |     |     | |__        |    | \   | |/  
|   \  |     |     | |          |    |  \  | |\   
|    | |     |     | |          |    |   \ | | \  
|___/  L____  \___/  |_____  ___|___ |    \| |  \ 
               PRODUCTIONS

I support number 2 except for renaming it subscribing because that sounds too official.
I support number 5 also.

Blueinkproductions wrote:

I was wondering: what do you think of those people who get 100's of followers- Just by making a ‘Welcome’ project and having a fancy vector logo?

Seems like a lot of people's reaction is:
“He has a vector logo and a welcome project…. so I guess I'll follow him/her.”

mathfreak231 wrote:

how about just limiting the amount of people one can follow; there's really no need to follow more than 10 or 20 Scratchers that you know irl or that inspire you

I'm just gonna bring this up again. First of all, this will to some extent stop F4F; if they can't follow >10 or 20 people, they can't be followed by much more than the same 10 or 20 people. Of course, F4F cannot be truly stopped (without that friends list of course but I'm not sure I want that).

So far I've only followed 9 people; 5 I know IRL, 1 for following myself (just so it's easier to track projects I've loved), 2 are my alts, and only 1 person on there is someone I just found on the Scratch website that I don't know. Probably because his content is just useful for my remixes and stuff.

Another possible fix for this is to say what follows are for on some sort of help page and ask that they are used only for that discreetly.

I recommend this: you need permission from the user to follow.

when I receive [a scratch account v]
imagine :: custom
program :: custom
 share:: custom

when I receive <<[a favorite v]:: events > or <<[a follow v]:: events > or <<[a comment v]:: events > or <[a love v]:: events  >> >>
say [Thanks!] for (2) secs
say [You wil get a love too!] for (2) secs
say [I will suggest this to followers!] for (2) secs
say [I'm actually serious! Check out the projects above!] for (2) secs

I know it creates jealousy, but followers keep us going. When you get a follower, it makes you feel happy. It makes you believe that people enjoy you, and it helps you to think “I will keep making projects”. On the other side, some people have quit Scratch because they don't get any followers. Most of this led to all the hate.

On another note, there's a follow button for topics, why does nobody want to follow hundreds/thousands of topics? It seems ridiculous that despite all the attention people go for in following not one of them bats an eye at following all the topics on the forums of Scratch… oh geez did I just give a bad idea?

And I think I know why: there is no obvious list of topics you're following (so people aren't abuzz about getting lots of topics to follow), and that you actually receive live notices about updates in the topic (like following should be).

Zro716 wrote:

You wouldn't create blank projects for sheer fun, would you?

Hehe you'd be surprised…

Zro716 wrote:

On another note, there's a follow button for topics, why does nobody want to follow hundreds/thousands of topics? It seems ridiculous that despite all the attention people go for in following not one of them bats an eye at following all the topics on the forums of Scratch… oh geez did I just give a bad idea?

And I think I know why: there is no obvious list of topics you're following (so people aren't abuzz about getting lots of topics to follow), and that you actually receive live notices about updates in the topic

There's no real satisfaction gained from that. And besides some Scratchers don't even know about the discuss page.

Zro716 wrote:

On another note, there's a follow button for topics, why does nobody want to follow hundreds/thousands of topics?

I don't really want to, but I do anyways - I love forum updates.