badatprogrammingibe wrote:

Scratch used to have lambdas, but unfortunately those got banned.

What? No. Why completely hide the “this is a joke” part using brackets? It means people that use browser extensions to quote only parts of a post won't see it at all.

TheAspiringHacker wrote:

As time has passed, the Scratch Team seems to have grown less interested in fostering a community for aspiring hackers, and more interested in appealing to the lowest common denominator. Scratch has always been plagued by its low floor, “high ceiling” curse. Scratch 2.0 was a slight improvement with user-defined procedures, yet Scratch still lacks first-class lists and functions that return values. With Scratch 3.0 and the website redesign, the Scratch Team seems to have shifted its target audience to younger children, or its perceived notion of younger children.

The Advanced Topics used to be a place of learning. Scratchers were exposed to the wider world of computer science among a supportive community, the community was interested in creative intellectual challenges, and people were interested in pushing the limits of Scratch's ceiling. The Advanced Topics was a place where aspiring hackers grew. The Advanced Topics is dead now. The Advanced Topics has been in decline as more mentors moved on and fewer learners grew to replace them. The Scratch Team has furthered this process by removing the forums from the front page. And with its restrictions on the sharing of code, the Scratch Team has killed the motivation to learn programming past Scratch.

Scratch holds a special place in my heart because it was my first exposure to programming. The Advanced Topics holds a special place in my heart because it was where I discovered the hacker culture and computer science ideas such as the lambda calculus that set the course of my entire programming journey. But the Advanced Topics isn't what it once before. Hackers know where to find others of their kind, but Scratchers will no longer have the chance to discover the wider world of programming or the hacker culture. We, as hackers, need to provide a new chance.

What will the new place be? Snap! and its community website?

MegaApuTurkUltra wrote:

dude341 wrote:

The worst part is, they won't let us talk about the instant messaging application whose name is a combination of the words “Disc” and “Cord”, so they're not even allowing us to try and go elsewhere. There is a Scratch server for the aforementioned instant messaging application but I've yet to join it.

I understand why that application is banned. It's just sad that the ATs (and to an extent, the rest of the forums) are practically gone, and we have no way to continue elsewhere.

i agree with the ST here
many better messaging applications exist, particularly for those of us that are not gamers,
that one is just a phone harvesting operation disguised as “gamer chat”

The Scratch Team did not ban that chat service out of any love for user freedom. The Scratch Team is obsessed with hand-holding and protecting its userbase from any Internet community that isn't Scratch. If more people started using IRC or Matrix, you bet that the Scratch Team would crack down on those too.

The Scratch Team is:

1. Hiding other programming languages from its userbase by banning scripts
   
2. Hiding other communities from its userbase by banning offsite links
   

The Scratch Team is preventing its users from growing and moving on.

I guess that if ReplIRC ever is used for anything big related to Scratch, they'll be trying to ban my IRC network.

ST: Learn programming!
Also ST: BAN ALL PROGRAMMING LANGS

Actually, I don't think we have much to worry about. “Similar external software” likely refers to any software (extensions, snippets) meant to be ran in a web browser that could hack into your Scratch account, delete your projects and post all sorts of things under your name. Python, OCaml and other languages are more challenging to run, so anyone who does is much more likely to understand the risk they're taking - additionally, that code is not runnable within a web browser, making it harder to access your sensitive information.

If they are not taking the content of the function into account, this still basically bans the sharing of all JS code on the forums. This is either an oversight or just an overly cautious decision made by the Scratch Team. I wouldn't get too worried about it.

That said, while they have done good work by creating Scratch in the first place, they are not free from criticism and scrutiny by the general public. Consider that they have a certain level of authority over all the kids that use Scratch, and their ties to instructional institutions such as MIT. If there is corruption festering in instructional institutions then the ST may be affected as well. We have to make sure the ST aren't abusing their power - however, this probably isn't one of those cases as long as the thread is kept open and we're allowed to discuss this.

rdococ wrote:

Actually, I don't think we have much to worry about. “Similar external software” likely refers to any software (extensions, snippets) meant to be ran in a web browser that could hack into your Scratch account, delete your projects and post all sorts of things under your name. Python, OCaml and other languages are more challenging to run, so anyone who does is much more likely to understand the risk they're taking - additionally, that code is not runnable within a web browser, making it harder to access your sensitive information.

If they are not taking the content of the function into account, this still basically bans the sharing of all JS code on the forums. This is either an oversight or just an overly cautious decision made by the Scratch Team. I wouldn't get too worried about it.

That said, while they have done good work by creating Scratch in the first place, they are not free from criticism and scrutiny by the general public. Consider that they have a certain level of authority over all the kids that use Scratch, and their ties to instructional institutions such as MIT. If there is corruption festering in instructional institutions then the ST may be affected as well. We have to make sure the ST aren't abusing their power - however, this probably isn't one of those cases as long as the thread is kept open and we're allowed to discuss this.

Python is in fact a threat. I've seen functions that can login to your account remotely, needing only a password. Although, anyone with the proper software to run Python probably knows how to check code as well, so like you said, it is less of a threat.

TheAspiringHacker wrote:

The Scratch Team did not ban that chat service out of any love for user freedom. The Scratch Team is obsessed with hand-holding and protecting its userbase from any Internet community that isn't Scratch. If more people started using IRC or Matrix, you bet that the Scratch Team would crack down on those too.

The Scratch Team is:
Hiding other programming languages from its userbase by banning scripts
Hiding other communities from its userbase by banning offsite links

The Scratch Team is preventing its users from growing and moving on.

I am probably a year or two late to replying to this (not digging thru all 6 pages to check) but this is just blatantly false information that trumpets up the narrative that the Scratch Team is a bunch of mustache-twirling villains who spend all day rubbing their hands together and wondering how to get back at their users.

Discord especially is notorious for its complete lack of user safety in cases involving minors. I speak from experience when I say it is very easy to wind up in areas of the platform you are not supposed to be in and get exposed to NSFW content as a young child. The platform is 13+ only and all of its moderation in discussion spaces (servers) is left completely up to the discretion of the users who run said servers. By default there is no word filter system or any other form of the numerous devices Scratch employs to keep their target users–kids and young teenagers–safe. This makes it completely unacceptable to advertise on Scratch due to their strict stance on child safety, and the same goes for other unmoderated chat platforms.

Assuming Scratch users have functioning fingers and computers, it's not hard to ‘move on.’ Many of this platform's famous AT users (jeffalo, megaapkturkultra, zro716, maximouse, jvvg and more) have ‘moved on’ to programming fields outside of Scratch, though some stay here and provide tools and services to Scratch users in the form of stuff like Ocular, ScratchDB, and the Wiki. Claiming that Scratch's goal is to tie down users to their platform is absurd when their entire development goal is to be the entryway into programming for young people. It also makes no sense; they have no monetary incentive to, their entire platform is run on donations, and there will always be more users. (also, they have a page on platform alternatives on the wiki they pay upkeep for).

The Scratch Team is not a faceless for-profit corporation that does whatever it takes to get a profit boost even at the expense of its users; they are a group of human beings working with what they have (an entirely donation-based budget and overworked, understaffed employees) to develop a platform with the primary objective of encouraging young children to express themselves. That doesn't remove them from criticism, but I am begging, pleading, on my knees, cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-die, asking the users of this platform to please stop making these leaps of logic so big you could cross the Atlantic Ocean with them.

NanoRook wrote:

-snip-

Regarding the unmoderated chat, yes, I do agree, but that mentions of it (when the platform name is also a regular English word!) are banned entirely, it seems a little much… I get banning links to the platforms, but just general mentions is a bit excessive, and the auto-mute in the filterbot is genuinely terrible. XD


Regarding the overworked, understaffed employees, genuinely so much of that could be solved by improving the usage of open-source software! I'll admit, the Scratch Team is starting to get better with that slightly, but instead of just restricting outside collaboration to “help wanted” labels, people should be much more open and there should be less red tape (although still normal reviews, of course!) for merging outside pull requests.

AmazingMech2418 wrote:

Regarding the unmoderated chat, yes, I do agree, but that mentions of it (when the platform name is also a regular English word!) are banned entirely, it seems a little much… I get banning links to the platforms, but just general mentions is a bit excessive, and the auto-mute in the filterbot is genuinely terrible. XD

I get it, though every time I've seen ‘Discord’ used in regular commenting it is always specifically to advertise the chat platform and not to mention disarray or chaos.

Worth noting that before the current filterbot system (muting you in greater and greater increments) it would just straight up pause commenting entirely for the rest of the day after only a handful of offenses. Obviously in a perfect world we'd have no censor, but Scratch will take 1 user being upset for 5 minutes over 30,000 parents wondering if Scratch is still safe for their kid.

AmazingMech2418 wrote:

Regarding the overworked, understaffed employees, genuinely so much of that could be solved by improving the usage of open-source software! I'll admit, the Scratch Team is starting to get better with that slightly, but instead of just restricting outside collaboration to “help wanted” labels, people should be much more open and there should be less red tape (although still normal reviews, of course!) for merging outside pull requests.

I imagine the whole reason they restrict outside contributions to ‘help wanted’ is so they can get contributors without having to worry about all the boring open source technicalities like sneaky malicious collaborators and stuff like that. In practice I imagine the benefits would outweigh the risks if they wanted to make that jump anyways.

EDIT: Removed outdated info.

NanoRook wrote:

AmazingMech2418 wrote:

Regarding the unmoderated chat, yes, I do agree, but that mentions of it (when the platform name is also a regular English word!) are banned entirely, it seems a little much… I get banning links to the platforms, but just general mentions is a bit excessive, and the auto-mute in the filterbot is genuinely terrible. XD

I get it, though every time I've seen ‘Discord’ used in regular commenting it is always specifically to advertise the chat platform and not to mention disarray or chaos.

Worth noting that before the current filterbot system (muting you in greater and greater increments) it would just straight up pause commenting entirely for the rest of the day after only a handful of offenses. Obviously in a perfect world we'd have no censor, but Scratch will take 1 user being upset for 5 minutes over 30,000 parents wondering if Scratch is still safe for their kid.

The issue, however, is when someone uses it as just the normal word and gets muted and, in trying to find out why they were muted, learn of the chat platform… Honestly, it would be better, I think, to have Scratch temporarily flag messages the filterbot detects with a warning saying not to go to any websites mentioned since they can be dangerous, and then, when moderators review it, they can remove that flag if necessary or delete the comment…

And the issue isn't so much just about Discord, many much more common websites, especially social media websites, are also blocked by the filterbot despite being so well-known that a kid wouldn't not have heard of it. Scratch has its own Twitter account, for example, that used to display when the website was down. Everyone has heard of Facebook at least once… Yet, they are blocked by the filterbot! Again, links make sense, but blocking mentions is excessive. You can't even just say “tweet,” as in the bird sound! Even “email” is blocked by the filterbot! Like it would make sense if it was just silently flagged or even publicly flagged to other users as a warning, and then reviewed, but the way the system works now just invites people to find ways to get around the filter entirely and causes other people to either just be confused about why they were just blocked from commenting or to figure out the very thing that the filterbot filtering out the name of the website would be intended to keep them from figuring out…

NanoRook wrote:

AmazingMech2418 wrote:

Regarding the overworked, understaffed employees, genuinely so much of that could be solved by improving the usage of open-source software! I'll admit, the Scratch Team is starting to get better with that slightly, but instead of just restricting outside collaboration to “help wanted” labels, people should be much more open and there should be less red tape (although still normal reviews, of course!) for merging outside pull requests.

I imagine the whole reason they restrict outside contributions to ‘help wanted’ is so they can get contributors without having to worry about all the boring open source technicalities like sneaky malicious collaborators and stuff like that. In practice I imagine the benefits would outweigh the risks if they wanted to make that jump anyways.

EDIT: Removed outdated info.

I know they review code thoroughly, but I've asked before, and they just said that they “didn't need help.” Yet, they actually don't have the time to fix the issue, and it goes unsolved for months… There are some cases where the code deals with a closed-source infrastructure repo or where a fix entirely changes how the Scratch website or editor works, that would need more review or an internal fix, but general issues should be open regardless of labels…

The issue, however, is when someone uses it as just the normal word and gets muted and, in trying to find out why they were muted, learn of the chat platform… Honestly, it would be better, I think, to have Scratch temporarily flag messages the filterbot detects with a warning saying not to go to any websites mentioned since they can be dangerous, and then, when moderators review it, they can remove that flag if necessary or delete the comment…

Unavoidable edge case, I think. A message that pops up telling users not to go to unmoderated chat sites is a nice gesture but I think it'd just encourage people to do the opposite.

And the issue isn't so much just about Discord, many much more common websites, especially social media websites, are also blocked by the filterbot despite being so well-known that a kid wouldn't not have heard of it. Scratch has its own Twitter account, for example, that used to display when the website was down. Everyone has heard of Facebook at least once… Yet, they are blocked by the filterbot! Again, links make sense, but blocking mentions is excessive. You can't even just say “tweet,” as in the bird sound! Even “email” is blocked by the filterbot! Like it would make sense if it was just silently flagged or even publicly flagged to other users as a warning, and then reviewed, but the way the system works now just invites people to find ways to get around the filter entirely and causes other people to either just be confused about why they were just blocked from commenting or to figure out the very thing that the filterbot filtering out the name of the website would be intended to keep them from figuring out…

The reason it's not silently flagged is because Scratch does not want kids sharing personal information that they may be too young/dumb to realize will expose parts of their real life. The lack of internet security common sense in this generation is abysmal but that's besides the point. Once again, they'd rather have one user be annoyed for five minutes instead of the alternative. No filter for any chat site is going to be 100% perfect and there will always be people slipping through, but they will take that if it means the plurality of the website is safer for it.

I know they review code thoroughly, but I've asked before, and they just said that they “didn't need help.” Yet, they actually don't have the time to fix the issue, and it goes unsolved for months… There are some cases where the code deals with a closed-source infrastructure repo or where a fix entirely changes how the Scratch website or editor works, that would need more review or an internal fix, but general issues should be open regardless of labels…

Might be worth a Suggestions post. Get more eyes on your proposal.

Soon it seems like they'll start banning mentions of operating systems because an operating system has full control of your computer.

no.

Well, that's sad and all, but have you heard of a Git repository service like GitHub or GitLab?

allexanderonroblox wrote:

no.

dont necro

They already banned extensions, JS code code etc. Now why dont they ban learning entirely??