Ok so the first thing I'd like to get out of the way is YES I understand why the muting feature exists! Some of the younger members of Scratch MAY b e prone to more meanness than, maybe, older members. that's why i'm posting this on the forums and not in a project.
So basically my grievances are: The muting timer is annoying and I don't like it. I'm writing this because 20 minutes ago I got muted for 20 minutes, for saying “you suck” in a teasy way, in a completely out of context fashion (full thing paraphrased: step one, try it. step B, realise you suck. step 3, keep doing it anyway. step IV, ???. step cinq, profit). But other times, I've been muted for longer, for reasons I was never told. I once was muted for 30 minutes, and all it told me was that I had violated the Community Guidelines. So, I get it. But I'm so frustrated at the muting at this point that I NEED to talk about it. Basically, the tl;dr of this is, mutes are too long and too ambiguous. One must-add I think is specifically telling you WHAT part of your post violated the guidelines. Again – I was once muted for 30 minutes and I never learned why.
Some other suggestions I have are lowering the mute increments, making it a three-strikes thing, making the increments go down faster, or maybe just removing the system and not letting you post violating things. (this would probably work on places that aren't scratch tbh) And just to drive the point home – I usually copy and paste my comments before posting them (including this post!) just in case I somehow violated the community guidelines without knowing.

ok! didn't get muted. nice.



i love how as soon as i said this i got the 60 second warning. it has been a long time since i used scratch huh..,,,.,

The filter cant detect context, and use thos for filter bugs: https://scratch.mit.edu/discuss/topic/235220/
The 60 second tule on the forums is to reduce spam. Saying what cop;aged the guidelines would be able to teach kids who accidentally set it off bad words and help trolls work around it.

GIitchInTheMatrix wrote:

The filter cant detect context
The 60 second tule on the forums is to reduce spam.

Yeah I get that it can't detect context and this post isn't about the 60 second rule but would it kill the ST to add a flagging system to tell you exactly WHAT violated the guidelines? Also what does cop;aged mean I literally cannot understand half of your post–

HansonKerman1 wrote:

GIitchInTheMatrix wrote:

The filter cant detect context
The 60 second tule on the forums is to reduce spam.

Yeah I get that it can't detect context and this post isn't about the 60 second rule but would it kill the ST to add a flagging system to tell you exactly WHAT violated the guidelines? Also what does cop;aged mean I literally cannot understand half of your post–

*might have, I’m using a iPad keyboard rn
Anyways, let’s say Cat is a bad word. Lil’ Jimmy tries commenting ‘I have a baseball cat!’ Misspelling cap. ‘Sorry, cap is a bad word. P.’
“Hey, mommy, what does cap mean”
Children make accidents, and by not saying what violated the guidelines, the child isn’t at risk of learning anything they shouldn’t know.

GIitchInTheMatrix wrote:

HansonKerman1 wrote:

would it kill the ST to add a flagging system to tell you exactly WHAT violated the guidelines?

Let’s say Cat is a bad word. Lil’ Jimmy tries commenting ‘I have a baseball cat!’, misspelling cap. ‘Sorry, cat is a bad word.’
“Hey, mommy, what does cat mean”
Children make accidents, and by not saying what violated the guidelines, the child isn’t at risk of learning anything they shouldn’t know. (typos hopefully corrected???)

i honestly think the benefits strongly outweigh specific situations like that. mama bertha would just say something like “you will understand when you're older” or “why do you ask”? and if lil jimmy had just made the honest mistake, that would be the end of that. i think everything in the op still stands.

HansonKerman1 wrote:

GIitchInTheMatrix wrote:

HansonKerman1 wrote:

would it kill the ST to add a flagging system to tell you exactly WHAT violated the guidelines?

Let’s say Cat is a bad word. Lil’ Jimmy tries commenting ‘I have a baseball cat!’, misspelling cap. ‘Sorry, cat is a bad word.’
“Hey, mommy, what does cat mean”
Children make accidents, and by not saying what violated the guidelines, the child isn’t at risk of learning anything they shouldn’t know. (typos hopefully corrected???)

i honestly think the benefits strongly outweigh specific situations like that. mama bertha would just say something like “you will understand when you're older” or “why do you ask”? and if lil jimmy had just made the honest mistake, that would be the end of that. i think everything in the op still stands.

Scratch’s target demographic is kids under 13. So, lil’ Timmy goes to google, “What does cat mean” and sees inappropriate content. Also, what benefit would it be other than specific situations like saying email?

GIitchInTheMatrix wrote:

HansonKerman1 wrote:

GIitchInTheMatrix wrote:

HansonKerman1 wrote:

would it kill the ST to add a flagging system to tell you exactly WHAT violated the guidelines?

Let’s say Cat is a bad word. Lil’ Jimmy tries commenting ‘I have a baseball cat!’, misspelling cap. ‘Sorry, cat is a bad word.’
“Hey, mommy, what does cat mean”
Children make accidents, and by not saying what violated the guidelines, the child isn’t at risk of learning anything they shouldn’t know. (typos hopefully corrected???)

i honestly think the benefits strongly outweigh specific situations like that. mama bertha would just say something like “you will understand when you're older” or “why do you ask”? and if lil jimmy had just made the honest mistake, that would be the end of that. i think everything in the op still stands.

Scratch’s target demographic is kids under 13. So, lil’ Timmy goes to google, “What does cat mean” and sees inappropriate content. Also, what benefit would it be other than specific situations like saying email?

situations like when people like me get muted for unknown reasons! your worries are valid, but i'd still say that the benefits far outweigh the risks. ( i actually have seen this happening in a very specific situation https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/420/#comments-296875746 ). i do think this is an issue, but i also think that the situations are too specific to warrant a useful feature like i'm suggesting. I think it would benefit accidental misspellings (happened to me), keysmashes accidentally proving the infinite monkey theorem (happened to me), long posts which you can't remember the entire content of (happened to me), words you didn't realise weren't allowed but in hindsight you understand why they aren't allowed (happened to me), and i'm sure that there are more i'm forgetting. also (nitpicking time) id also like to mention that this post isnt entirely about highlighting which parts got you flagged it's also got other suggestions in it too. i dont think they'd be a perfect solution but i think theyd be a good first step. again in the end all i really want is for me not to feel like i need to copy and paste everythign i type to be safe.

scratch had forums?

This is being suggested here. Please continue discussing this feature there.

HansonKerman1 wrote:

Ok so the first thing I'd like to get out of the way is YES I understand why the muting feature exists! Some of the younger members of Scratch MAY b e prone to more meanness than, maybe, older members. that's why i'm posting this on the forums and not in a project.
So basically my grievances are: The muting timer is annoying and I don't like it. I'm writing this because 20 minutes ago I got muted for 20 minutes, for saying “you suck” in a teasy way, in a completely out of context fashion (full thing paraphrased: step one, try it. step B, realise you suck. step 3, keep doing it anyway. step IV, ???. step cinq, profit). But other times, I've been muted for longer, for reasons I was never told. I once was muted for 30 minutes, and all it told me was that I had violated the Community Guidelines. So, I get it. But I'm so frustrated at the muting at this point that I NEED to talk about it. Basically, the tl;dr of this is, mutes are too long and too ambiguous. One must-add I think is specifically telling you WHAT part of your post violated the guidelines. Again – I was once muted for 30 minutes and I never learned why.
Some other suggestions I have are lowering the mute increments, making it a three-strikes thing, making the increments go down faster, or maybe just removing the system and not letting you post violating things. (this would probably work on places that aren't scratch tbh) And just to drive the point home – I usually copy and paste my comments before posting them (including this post!) just in case I somehow violated the community guidelines without knowing.

Scratch isn't biased towards any scratcher, the bot can't detect what did you use for, but if it is in the list, it gives you a mute, but I agree, it is a bit too ambiguous. Only if it's very insulting do they give long mutes, if it feels accidental, they usually give you only 5 minutes, which isn't that long if you think about it.