No Access to "My Stuff" When Banned

moss-shadow

I'm genuinely curious why you're not allowed to look at your own projects or even download them when you get banned.

I get the argument that bots could spam new projects to mess with the server, but Scratchers do that anyway with the same thing or unchanged remixes. I also get the argument that bans should be a punishment, but I've had one 3 year ban and one 1 year ban, and I feel like that's a bit excessive to not allow me to edit my projects cause, especially after the 3 year ban, I had no idea where I was in my game I had been working on and didn't know where to pick up from. I feel like there should at least be a download option for bans over a year.

GIitchInTheMatrix

bans are supposed to let you know not to do something/be a punishment, which access to projects makes it not a punishment.

jackson49

GIitchInTheMatrix wrote:
bans are supposed to let you know not to do something/be a punishment, which access to projects makes it not a punishment.

Really? I thought the punishment of bans is more so the inability to interact with the community, not taking away hard work. That seems like an unnecessarily cruel punishment. Besides, punishment isn't really the main point of permanent bans. The purpose of them isn't to squash people's interest in programming, but to protect the community.

Perhaps that actually is the reason My Stuff is inaccessible, but if so, it's not a very good one. Personally, I think it's more of an oversight than anything. There's actually an ongoing topic that's suggesting to make My Stuff accessible to banned users, among other pages. If it was an intentional punishment, that topic likely would have been rejected by now.

Last edited by jackson49 (Dec. 31, 2022 04:49:19)

Za-Chary

GIitchInTheMatrix wrote:
bans are supposed to let you know not to do something/be a punishment, which access to projects makes it not a punishment.

I would agree with that. Yes, perhaps the inability to share content with the community is perhaps more important. But this definitely hammers in the point that, if you value your hard work, you should follow the Community Guidelines to avoid getting banned.

GIitchInTheMatrix

jackson49 wrote:
Really? I thought the punishment of bans is more so the inability to interact with the community, not taking away hard work.

So, you see, to punish Jimmy for doing something ban worthy on Scratch, we will let them download their projects, which makes the most major part of the ban, the punishment, useless.

jackson49 wrote:
Besides, punishment isn't really the main point of permanent bans.

But, it’s a good point to have some sort of punishment when you ban someone, otherwise it’s basically a permanent mute without the ability to use cloud variables, share or favorite projects.

jackson49 wrote:
The purpose of them isn't to squash people's interest in programming, but to protect the community.

Because I’ve been banned off my Scratch account and lost hard work, I’m never gonna program again and will not touch my computer again.
Besides, if your interest is squashed due to being punished for breaking major rules/constantly breaking rules on a site made for kids, and you won’t appeal, which I believe they are accepted a lot, and if 2 weeks is a lot to wait, than you’re probably being taught a good life lesson in patience.
Besides, if you knew you could access your projects when banned, would you be very careful? Probably, but not as careful as you are. Besides, you get banned, appeal, and just work on projects for a few months while sending in underwritten appeals.
Another thing, having that account still accessible can make someone believe they may use another account while banned, due to them likely not noticing they shouldn’t use community fields.
Isn’t the whole point of a permaban to keep someone off Scratch? Then why allow them to continue using the most vital feature through their servers long term? Wouldn’t they wanna push the user to Snap, JS or the offline editor, to not be on their Scratch account?

jackson49 wrote:
If it was an intentional punishment, that topic likely would have been rejected by now.

Not necessarily. People may bring up points worth keeping discussion around.

moss-shadow

GIitchInTheMatrix wrote:
and if 2 weeks is a lot to wait, than you’re probably being taught a good life lesson in patience.

My ban was 3 years.

This did actually make me not want to code anymore for the time being since actual coding wasn't working for me, and I wasn't in college yet to take a class on it, so I was stuck forcing myself unsuccessfully to find a different hobby for, again, 3 years.

SavetheAtlantic

When you created your Scratch account, you agreed to the rules set out by the Terms of Use and the community guidelines. By not abiding by said rules, the ToU puts it quite bluntly:

If you do not agree with any of these conditions, please do not use Scratch.

moss-shadow

SavetheAtlantic wrote:
When you created your Scratch account, you agreed to the rules set out by the Terms of Use and the community guidelines. By not abiding by said rules, the ToU puts it quite bluntly:
If you do not agree with any of these conditions, please do not use Scratch.

One of my ban reasons wasn't at all in the guidelines. (Also I created an account to see what is actually said, and it only mentions the guidelines, not anything else.)

They gave me a list of reasons including:

Reporting too many projects that used my art without credit (they said I should allow people to use my art)

Having videos they were not okay with in my YouTube account

Wanting me to expand by using a different coding program

So it's a bit silly not letting someone edit their projects because of rules never told to them.

Last edited by moss-shadow (Dec. 31, 2022 07:02:16)

SavetheAtlantic

moss-shadow wrote:
So it's a bit silly not letting someone edit their projects because of rules never told to them.

7.1 Scratch has the right to suspend your account for violations of the Terms of Use or Community Guidelines. Repeat violators may have their account deleted. The Scratch Team reserves the sole right to determine what constitutes a violation of the Terms of Use or Community Guidelines. The Scratch Team also reserves the right to terminate any account used to circumvent prior enforcement of the Terms of Use.

Last edited by SavetheAtlantic (Dec. 31, 2022 07:03:39)

SavetheAtlantic

moss-shadow wrote:
One of my ban reasons wasn't at all in the guidelines. (Also I created an account to see what is actually said, and it only mentions the guidelines, not anything else.)

moss-shadow

SavetheAtlantic wrote:
moss-shadow wrote:
One of my ban reasons wasn't at all in the guidelines. (Also I created an account to see what is actually said, and it only mentions the guidelines, not anything else.)

I do believe the sign ups are more of the parents since this site is mostly for kids. I do apologize though, I was thinking of the Scratcher promotion message meant for the user.

moss-shadow

moss-shadow wrote:
SavetheAtlantic wrote:
moss-shadow wrote:
One of my ban reasons wasn't at all in the guidelines. (Also I created an account to see what is actually said, and it only mentions the guidelines, not anything else.)

I do believe the sign ups are more of the parents since this site is mostly for kids. I do apologize though, I was thinking of the Scratcher promotion message meant for the user.

Anyways, I do believe we deterred away from the original topic.

qloakonscratch

I believe this is to prevent people from downloading inappropriate projects from their My Stuff and posting them on a new account.

CT-7569

nvm

Last edited by CT-7569 (Dec. 31, 2022 11:18:00)

CST1229

Za-Chary wrote:
you should follow the Community Guidelines to avoid getting banned.

And the Terms of Use and the other rules (like the Browser Extension/Userscript Policy). The Community Guidelines aren't all the rules, they're only a portion of them (or at least, I think).

My opinion: Bans are usually a result of breaking the Scratch rules when interacting with the community. Editing your unshared projects is not interacting with the community. Therefore, you probably should be able to edit (or at least download) your unshared projects (hard work) when banned, unless it's something like spamming large sound uploads only to attempt to fill the servers.

Last edited by CST1229 (Dec. 31, 2022 11:47:49)

Za-Chary

qloakonscratch wrote:
I believe this is to prevent people from downloading inappropriate projects from their My Stuff and posting them on a new account.

Another good point. Scratchers already have a difficult time not creating new accounts when they get banned. If they had access to My Stuff, not only would they be able to evade their ban completely consequence-free, but they could also continue to cause trouble by resharing their inappropriate projects.

jackson49

GIitchInTheMatrix wrote:
Because I’ve been banned off my Scratch account and lost hard work, I’m never gonna program again and will not touch my computer again.
Besides, if your interest is squashed due to being punished for breaking major rules/constantly breaking rules on a site made for kids, and you won’t appeal, which I believe they are accepted a lot, and if 2 weeks is a lot to wait, than you’re probably being taught a good life lesson in patience.

There is such a thing as permanent bans, and appeals often don't work. I think you're underestimating how much it takes to crush someone's interest, especially if they're just starting out. Losing all your work is a painful feeling.

Za-Chary wrote:
GIitchInTheMatrix wrote:
bans are supposed to let you know not to do something/be a punishment, which access to projects makes it not a punishment.
I would agree with that.

Okay, I guess I was wrong then. I still stand by what I said about it being an unnecessarily cruel punishment though.

Za-Chary wrote:
if you value your hard work, you should follow the Community Guidelines to avoid getting banned.

It's not always that easy. Most users who get banned (who aren't New Scratchers) didn't purposefully try to break the Community Guidelines. Yes, they're usually banned correctly, but it's (understandably) pretty easy to get banned on this site. It seems like a pretty severe punishment for something that happens so often.

Last edited by jackson49 (Dec. 31, 2022 21:30:25)

Za-Chary

jackson49 wrote:
There is such a thing as permanent bans, and appeals often don't work. I think you're underestimating how much it takes to crush someone's interest, especially if they're just starting out. Losing all your work is a painful feeling.

[…]

It's not always that easy. Most users who get banned (who aren't New Scratchers) didn't purposefully try to break the Community Guidelines. Yes, they're usually banned correctly, but it's (understandably) pretty easy to get banned on this site. It seems like a pretty severe punishment for something that happens so often.

I think you're underestimating how difficult it can be to get banned.

Getting banned for “minor offenses” usually doesn't happen unless you've already been warned about the same thing in the past. And even then, that would usually only be a temporary ban — no appeal required. So someone could simply wait for a few days to get access to their projects again.

In the event that this happens several times, then they are usually banned with the option to appeal. The appeal will almost always work (not sure why you think it doesn't) as long as you're respectful and recognize how you broke the Community Guidelines and promise not to repeat this behavior.

From here, there is the permanent bans without a chance to appeal. This basically happens in two cases: either (1) the Scratcher is intentionally trolling, in which case I would think they'd be more interested in causing trouble and not making Scratch projects, or (2) the Scratcher has already been banned with appeal several times and, despite their appeals, it is clear that they're not changing their behavior.

I'm reasonably confident in saying that by the time someone gets perma-banned with the option to appeal, then at least a little bit of this was their fault — either by deliberately ignoring previous warnings or not thinking through them carefully enough. I don't know if any of this is what OP experienced.

Last edited by Za-Chary (Jan. 1, 2023 15:31:58)

supergamer10000

jackson49 wrote:
GIitchInTheMatrix wrote:
Because I’ve been banned off my Scratch account and lost hard work, I’m never gonna program again and will not touch my computer again.
Besides, if your interest is squashed due to being punished for breaking major rules/constantly breaking rules on a site made for kids, and you won’t appeal, which I believe they are accepted a lot, and if 2 weeks is a lot to wait, than you’re probably being taught a good life lesson in patience.
There is such a thing as permanent bans, and appeals often don't work. I think you're underestimating how much it takes to crush someone's interest, especially if they're just starting out. Losing all your work is a painful feeling.

Then the user should be more careful about getting banned. Not allowing someone to access their projects will likely deter them from breaking the guidelines. Also, getting banned isn't the most easiest thing and it doesn't happen by accident. There are warns before the ban, and when the user is doing it intentionally to harm scratch seriously it could be an instant ban. So the person who got banned was likely fully aware of what they were doing and made the poor choice of going ahead and proceeding to repeat the same thing they did before. A ban is serious, letting someone access their projects makes it a lot less serious and more of a partial ban.

Prince_Wolf1

supergamer10000 wrote:
jackson49 wrote:
GIitchInTheMatrix wrote:
Because I’ve been banned off my Scratch account and lost hard work, I’m never gonna program again and will not touch my computer again.
Besides, if your interest is squashed due to being punished for breaking major rules/constantly breaking rules on a site made for kids, and you won’t appeal, which I believe they are accepted a lot, and if 2 weeks is a lot to wait, than you’re probably being taught a good life lesson in patience.
There is such a thing as permanent bans, and appeals often don't work. I think you're underestimating how much it takes to crush someone's interest, especially if they're just starting out. Losing all your work is a painful feeling.

Then the user should be more careful about getting banned. Not allowing someone to access their projects will likely deter them from breaking the guidelines. Also, getting banned isn't the most easiest thing and it doesn't happen by accident. There are warns before the ban, and when the user is doing it intentionally to harm scratch seriously it could be an instant ban. So the person who got banned was likely fully aware of what they were doing and made the poor choice of going ahead and proceeding to repeat the same thing they did before. A ban is serious, letting someone access their projects makes it a lot less serious and more of a partial ban.

Someone isn’t always aware that what they did was wrong.and if your permanently banned without a previous warning for what you did, or know what you did was against the guidelines, then projects you may have worked months or a year on are gone forever.

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