OurPrincess wrote:

-snip-

So you think this suggestion converts Scratch into a tyrannical dictatorship?

I highly disagree. I'll address each of your posts respectively.

OurPrincess wrote:

This is a free website, where anyone can do anything that doesn't break the Community Guidelines. This could make Scratch less free and more serious.

Why are you saying that this removes freedom when stuff such as bans removes the freedom to log back in?

OurPrincess wrote:

Before you accuse me of pampering Scratchers, many people that are new to the forums generally post unconstructive posts, and in my opinion, it's rude to mute them just because of a single post.

And then when a mod (or mini mod) comes around to let the know they've done something wrong, most of the time (not always) they will instantly get scared off never to return. And in general the minimod will explain what they did, they won't link to any of the rule stickies – the mute was intended to give the person time to read the rules and then be given a second chance.

OurPrincess wrote:

Many people wouldn't like it and start protesting against the rule. (They can do this without the ST noticing at all.)

Why do bans exist?

Why do comment mutes exist?

Why (as far as I know) have I not seen any protests about that?

OurPrincess wrote:

Anyone can just report someone's post as unconstructive for any reason at all.

As I said if someone doubts the mute, they can always appeal to the ST to check over what they posted and punish the reporter accordingly when they return.

OurPrincess wrote:

Scratch has been created with Scratchers' enjoyment in mind, and forum muting may cause Scratchers to question Scratch's real purpose.

The suggestion was not to end coding.

This was meant to improve forum moderation and draw more people in. Not only does this make it cleaner, it does a better job of education than simply stating “Sorry, this isn't the place”. Yes, it's flawed, but then so is every other suggestion on this forum.

OurPrincess wrote:

I think if someone is muted many times in a short period of time, they could be banned and the reasons above suggest that it's a crazy reason to get banned.

I never mentioned banning. Only mutes. Of course, the mutes will get successively longer, but you will not be banned unless you're excessively spamming (which people have been banned for before).

ResExsention wrote:

OurPrincess wrote:

Many people wouldn't like it and start protesting against the rule. (They can do this without the ST noticing at all.)

Why do bans exist?

Why do comment mutes exist?

Why (as far as I know) have I not seen any protests about that?

Bans and comment muting are different from forum muting. Let's say you were just talking about something shop-related in a Scratch shop. You get muted because someone thought you were breaking the Community Guidelines, even though you weren't at all. Would you like that if that happened to you?

I don't mess with shops… I was once there but left after a while due to the capitalist anarchy.

It's the same with any other report. Pretend you're commenting something project related and someone “thought” that wasn't allowed.

This is the exact same idea. When the person comes back they can always ask the ST to check the reported post over. If you find this hard to wrap your head around, let me reiterate.

This suggestion seeks to increase the penalty for nonconstructive posts. Though it would be nice if it were automated, it doesn't have to.

Bump.

Bump.

OurPrincess wrote:

Bans and comment muting are different from forum muting. Let's say you were just talking about something shop-related in a Scratch shop. You get muted because someone thought you were breaking the Community Guidelines, even though you weren't at all. Would you like that if that happened to you?

Not at all likely. You see, false reports are, in my opinion, kinda bad for the Scratch Community.
I think I'd report that false report to the Scratch Team to check out what's going on in the false report.
Hope you understand.

move (999999999) steps
move (999999) steps

I really like the purpose behind this suggestion, but I'd question if it's the most effective way to get the job done. I know the first few weeks of thirteen-year-old me using the forums was a mess of poor posting (necroposts, like three guides I tried to make, generally not adding anything to discussions, overthinking the questions I asked). What if instead of having those “READ BEFORE POSTING” guides at the top of each forum (that, frankly, nobody reads), users were forced to “unlock” each forum by reading that post (once, the very first time they use each forum)? Then with that new report system, instead of muting people out for a few hours (which is going to come off as a punishment more than a tool to help them grow), the guide would just pop up again when they next try to access the forum saying something like “Hi! Somebody noticed that one of your posts wasn't constructive. You're not in trouble, but it would help us with moderation if you'd reread this chunk of the guide. Thanks!” (Have a dropdown of each point addressed in the guide so an ST member could quickly assign this- then the section would be highlighted in orange.)

Personally, I think this would be a lot more effective because rather than “punishing” the user and hoping they do the research on their own during that time, it presents them with exactly what the problem was and the reason why that behavior is discouraged. Most users don't try to create spam posts, it just happens because they don't know how the forums work.

Alternately, if this was something that was automatically set into motion when somebody flagged a post and you ARE comfortable with the forums, this isn't as big of a deal as a mute would be if somebody falsely flagged you- you'd just read the highlighted chunk and continue to the forums with what's always a good reminder.

EDIT: one more point- often people necroposting on old topics never find out because they didn't follow the topic, so a mute likely wouldn't do much more than confuse them, if they returned to the forums quickly enough to notice it was there, anyway.

Candylanguagegirl wrote:

I really like the purpose behind this suggestion, but I'd question if it's the most effective way to get the job done. I know the first few weeks of thirteen-year-old me using the forums was a mess of poor posting (necroposts, like three guides I tried to make, generally not adding anything to discussions, overthinking the questions I asked). What if instead of having those “READ BEFORE POSTING” guides at the top of each forum (that, frankly, nobody reads), users were forced to “unlock” each forum by reading that post (once, the very first time they use each forum)? Then with that new report system, instead of muting people out for a few hours (which is going to come off as a punishment more than a tool to help them grow), the guide would just pop up again when they next try to access the forum saying something like “Hi! Somebody noticed that one of your posts wasn't constructive. You're not in trouble, but it would help us with moderation if you'd reread this chunk of the guide. Thanks!” (Have a dropdown of each point addressed in the guide so an ST member could quickly assign this- then the section would be highlighted in orange.)

Personally, I think this would be a lot more effective because rather than “punishing” the user and hoping they do the research on their own during that time, it presents them with exactly what the problem was and the reason why that behavior is discouraged. Most users don't try to create spam posts, it just happens because they don't know how the forums work.

Alternately, if this was something that was automatically set into motion when somebody flagged a post and you ARE comfortable with the forums, this isn't as big of a deal as a mute would be if somebody falsely flagged you- you'd just read the highlighted chunk and continue to the forums with what's always a good reminder.

EDIT: one more point- often people necroposting on old topics never find out because they didn't follow the topic, so a mute likely wouldn't do much more than confuse them, if they returned to the forums quickly enough to notice it was there, anyway.

Great idea. Support

Candylanguagegirl wrote:

I really like the purpose behind this suggestion, but I'd question if it's the most effective way to get the job done. I know the first few weeks of thirteen-year-old me using the forums was a mess of poor posting (necroposts, like three guides I tried to make, generally not adding anything to discussions, overthinking the questions I asked). What if instead of having those “READ BEFORE POSTING” guides at the top of each forum (that, frankly, nobody reads), users were forced to “unlock” each forum by reading that post (once, the very first time they use each forum)? Then with that new report system, instead of muting people out for a few hours (which is going to come off as a punishment more than a tool to help them grow), the guide would just pop up again when they next try to access the forum saying something like “Hi! Somebody noticed that one of your posts wasn't constructive. You're not in trouble, but it would help us with moderation if you'd reread this chunk of the guide. Thanks!” (Have a dropdown of each point addressed in the guide so an ST member could quickly assign this- then the section would be highlighted in orange.)

Personally, I think this would be a lot more effective because rather than “punishing” the user and hoping they do the research on their own during that time, it presents them with exactly what the problem was and the reason why that behavior is discouraged. Most users don't try to create spam posts, it just happens because they don't know how the forums work.

Alternately, if this was something that was automatically set into motion when somebody flagged a post and you ARE comfortable with the forums, this isn't as big of a deal as a mute would be if somebody falsely flagged you- you'd just read the highlighted chunk and continue to the forums with what's always a good reminder.

EDIT: one more point- often people necroposting on old topics never find out because they didn't follow the topic, so a mute likely wouldn't do much more than confuse them, if they returned to the forums quickly enough to notice it was there, anyway.

That's a great idea. I support this!

yeet thread hijack time to bring in the mute

Also I'm on mobile right now so I won't quote but…

@Candylanguagegirl, sounds good. I guess we'll keep the mutes for more serious cases.

I can see a really, really big issue though, and that's with your unlocking idea. Since most people here are still pretty young, it is likely that they won't read the guide at all, and instead become intimidated by its length and start replying more spam to the end. And when they discover all the other buttons (if they don't figure it out by then) more spam will occur until they run away never to return.

Of course, this is just my opinion, though. Most young people typically have short attention spans and this likely wouldn't work without a way of enforcing it.

badatprogrammingibe wrote:

Paddle2See wrote:

badatprogrammingibe wrote:

No support, considering the attitude and culture of this forum this would be a disaster.

Can you expand on that a bit? Do you feel that the feature would be abused? Is there a safeguard you can think of?

The current culture of the forum is very antagonistic towards members who are new to the forum. Many users (particularly those that frequent the suggestions forum) abuse members who don't understand the forum regularly by telling them in a rude and condescending way that they are not constructive.
This would lead to many users being muted for hours for simply necroposting or saying “support,” both of which are essentially harmless actions that don't cause any serious harm.

Also automatically muting/banning users from a single report is just a bad idea in of itself. It wouldn't be hard for me to create an account, then go around trolling and banning everyone.
Even if multiple report are required to mute/ban someone, this feature can still be abused through the use of alternate accounts or syndicates of trolls.
Also when people misunderstand the rules, people can get banned for things that don't break the rules in any way, for example system64 of this thread: https://scratch.mit.edu/discuss/topic/141100/?page=1

I gotta say, badatprogrammingibe has presented a good point. so I guess that necroposting is something that we all are gonna have to live with.

I have seen many a suggestion giving a “solution” to necroposting, most of which are about automatically closing old topics (which I find dumb, since someone could have something that adds to the topic). I personally believe that no matter what people will do to try and prevent necroposting, people are gonna do it.

<broadcast [message1 v] received? :: #FCBF28>

ResExsention wrote:

I can see a really, really big issue though, and that's with your unlocking idea. Since most people here are still pretty young, it is likely that they won't read the guide at all, and instead become intimidated by its length and start replying more spam to the end. And when they discover all the other buttons (if they don't figure it out by then) more spam will occur until they run away never to return.

I think in my vision for it I assumed it would be its own sort of page- stuff could be used from the main “read before posting” stickies, but it wouldn't be like a forum post that you could comment on. More along the lines of the community guidelines page.

chrdagos wrote:

I gotta say, badatprogrammingibe has presented a good point. so I guess that necroposting is something that we all are gonna have to live with.

I have seen many a suggestion giving a “solution” to necroposting, most of which are about automatically closing old topics (which I find dumb, since someone could have something that adds to the topic). I personally believe that no matter what people will do to try and prevent necroposting, people are gonna do it.

True, true. I wholeheartedly agree that nothing temporal can be stopped.

The aim of this suggestion wasn't to stop necroposting – it's to get people to not repeat it.

Candylanguagegirl wrote:

I think in my vision for it I assumed it would be its own sort of page- stuff could be used from the main “read before posting” stickies, but it wouldn't be like a forum post that you could comment on. More along the lines of the community guidelines page.

That still doesn't guarantee that people (especially children or younger teens) are going to read it. I can imagine countless cases of them scrolling around, confused as to why they were linked here while their closed minded self continues to ponder the ridiculousness of this, at least for a time.

No support. Some topics are meant to have necroposting, and this bot would ruin those topics.

Also, for example, lets say a user necroposts in the QAS Forums, and a forum helper were to post reminding the individual to not necropost. That would be flagged for necroposting as well, leaving the forum helper unable to do what they do best.

ThatOneWeirdDude wrote:

No support. Some topics are meant to have necroposting, and this bot would ruin those topics.

Also, for example, lets say a user necroposts in the QAS Forums, and a forum helper were to post reminding the individual to not necropost. That would be flagged for necroposting as well, leaving the forum helper unable to do what they do best.

Bots were never mentioned. People would be the one flagging necros and other unconstructive posts – it doesn't even have to be automated.

The base suggestion was to increase the necro and spam penalty.

Bump.

Bump.