can we make joke topics on the forums?

We should be able to. If helpful forums are off-limits for jokes and we can only use forums that people don't use then it should happen despite previous years having some spam. Also I am fine with it only being on April 1st and not March 31st as well.

Also the forum community are like free customer support for the Scratch Team and some may we do deserve something to have fun over for a day.

Last I heard, the Scratch Team was leaning toward a hard “no”, and I understand where they are coming from. I do agree with your points, but that’s just what they said. They haven’t made a confirmed statement on whether they will or will not do it this year.

dertermenter wrote:

We should be able to. If helpful forums are off-limits for jokes and we can only use forums that people don't use then it should happen despite previous years having some spam.

i don't know if anything official was said yet, but earlier today i happened to check an announcement made last year that stated some good policies like (1) limit the number of joke topics you make, and (2) don't post in forums where scratchers are expecting help, like “questions about scratch” and “help with scripts.” (i think “bugs and glitches” should also belong in this category too.) if scratchers collectively agree to follow these policies, that would at least make things go much smoother.

dertermenter wrote:

Also I am fine with it only being on April 1st and not March 31st as well.

agreed on this. in 2019 and earlier years, the “two-day april fools'” event did not exist, joke topics were only made on april 1st. making the event 1 day again will definitely help with cleanup as well.

dertermenter wrote:

Also the forum community are like free customer support for the Scratch Team and some may we do deserve something to have fun over for a day.

this i don't necessarily agree with. i help in the forums because i enjoy helping and being constructive. it seems a little misleading to help in the forums for the sole purpose of waiting for april fools' day. the best help comes from those who just want to help.

dertermenter wrote:

Also the forum community are like free customer support for the Scratch Team and some may we do deserve something to have fun over for a day.

Then, the main site is a better option. A day is a long time to not be able to discuss a suggestion, and it can prevent very constructive posts.

I hope it will be allowed. The last thing we heard was pretty discouraging, unfortunately. It seems like the Scratch Team's still deciding.

Hopefully, it will help that things went pretty well last year. Joke topics were kept in the appropriate forums, and there were (almost) no spam topics. There was a bit of a problem where users created too many topics, but other than that, it was pretty successful.

We also successfully reached the goal of bumping 25 pages worth of serious topics to help with the cleanup last year. Hopefully, if we do something similar this year, the mods wouldn't have to do as much work as they did in previous years. I'm sure many users would be willing to contribute to it, myself included. It'd definitely help if more users got involved than last year.

GIitchInTheMatrix wrote:

Then, the main site is a better option. A day is a long time to not be able to discuss a suggestion, and it can prevent very constructive posts.

I suppose so, but it's not quite the same. You can't do nearly as much on the main site as you can on the forums. Most April Fools' Day topics simply wouldn't be possible on the main site, for example, TRLORS.

Za-Chary wrote:

dertermenter wrote:

Also the forum community are like free customer support for the Scratch Team and some may we do deserve something to have fun over for a day.

this i don't necessarily agree with. i help in the forums because i enjoy helping and being constructive. it seems a little misleading to help in the forums for the sole purpose of waiting for april fools' day. the best help comes from those who just want to help.

That's entirely true, but I think sharkode made a pretty good point about this last year:

sharkode wrote:

I didn't use the forums just to have fun on April fools day, I just think we should be rewarded with some fun on April fool's day, however, this is not the reason why I forum. It's like joining a study club (forums) at your school to help younger students to study, you don't do it just for the pizza party (April Fools) at the end of the year, but if the teacher says “I have decided to cancel the party because last year people left junks everywhere. (last year's April fool topic mess)” then I would still be very mad, especially if I wasn't even in the study club last year and never got to experience pizza party at school nor made the mess. (I joined the forums less than a year ago)

I feel like we should get decoy forums at the bottom of the discuss page, like “Secret Suggestions.” I think i said this somehwere before, too.

jackson49 wrote:

That's entirely true, but I think sharkode made a pretty good point about this last year:

sharkode wrote:

I didn't use the forums just to have fun on April fools day, I just think we should be rewarded with some fun on April fool's day,

that's exactly what i'm talking about though. i consider helping others in the forums to be a reward in itself, because it is a rewarding experience for helping others. i don't think there should be an additional reward expected of any kind. to expect otherwise seems greedy.

sharkode wrote:

if the teacher says “I have decided to cancel the party because last year people left junks everywhere. (last year's April fool topic mess)” then I would still be very mad, especially if I wasn't even in the study club last year and never got to experience pizza party at school nor made the mess.

(this might be a slightly incorrect analogy. i am assuming that the teacher was the one who initially organized the pizza party. but i don't ever recall scratch team members announcing that they will allow joke posts on april fools' day — this was never an endorsed event. i think people just started doing it, and the scratch team thought, “alright, i guess this is fine, as long as things don't get out of hand.” in other words, the scratch team never promised that joke posts would be allowed. that's just my impression though.)

but regardless — when you say “mad,” hopefully you are mad at the people for leaving junk everywhere, and not mad at the teacher. it's not the teacher's fault that people left junk everywhere. in this context, if the scratch team cracks down on joke posts on april fools' day, don't blame them for instigating these rules. instead blame the forum users who caused things to get out of control.

obviously you (the reader) might have been careful with the number of topics you made, but if you really want april fools' shenanigans to continue, i think it would be good to do more than that. actively encourage everybody to not make so many topics. chill out with the spam, and encourage everybody to limit their forum usage on april fools' day. convince the scratchers rather than the scratch team members. the scratch team would probably appreciate that. the scratch team would likely be more than happy to allow joke posts on april fools' day if we ensured that the amount of joke posts took up exactly 1 page in the suggestions forum.

jackson49 wrote:

GIitchInTheMatrix wrote:

Then, the main site is a better option. A day is a long time to not be able to discuss a suggestion, and it can prevent very constructive posts.

I suppose so, but it's not quite the same. You can't do nearly as much on the main site as you can on the forums. Most April Fools' Day topics simply wouldn't be possible on the main site, for example, TRLORS.

However, it prevents easily constructive discussion on serious suggestions. Of course, the dummy forum would work, but be tough to work with.

GIitchInTheMatrix wrote:

However, it prevents easily constructive discussion on serious suggestions.

That's true, but it's only for a day or two. If active suggestions are bumped again afterward (like last year), it shouldn't cause any real problems.

I think the main problem is the increased workload on the mods. Every year, our jokes create a tedious, and honestly unnecessary chore for them. If they decide to allow it again, we should be mindful of that, and follow the guidelines laid out in the aforementioned announcement.

Edit: This is off-topic, but for some reason, this post didn't bump this topic up. It didn't move to the top of the page, and it still says that the last post on this topic was by GlitchInTheMatrix. Weird. I've noticed this glitch before, but I have no idea what causes it.

I agree with what others have said. I think that if we're careful not to let it get spammy and to help clean up afterwards, that will definitely help. cheddargirl's post was pretty discouraging, but not definitive - and she also kind of made it sound like what she was posting was somewhat based on her personal opinion as well, which may not be shared with the ENTIRE Scratch Team. It might also help if the Scratch Team made specific topics stating when it was and wasn't okay to post jokes - That would solve the whole “what time zone are we using / what about March 31st” issue.

Last AFD was my first one when I actually used the forums, and it was a lot of fun, but there was a bit of spamminess happening. I can definitely see why we might need to tone it down just a little…

jackson49 wrote:

Edit: This is off-topic, but for some reason, this post didn't bump this topic up. It didn't move to the top of the page, and it still says that the last post on this topic was by GlitchInTheMatrix. Weird. I've noticed this glitch before, but I have no idea what causes it.

Yeah, I had that a couple of days ago! At least it wasn't just me…

Fun_Cupcake_i81 wrote:

cheddargirl's post was pretty discouraging, but not definitive - and she also kind of made it sound like what she was posting was somewhat based on her personal opinion as well, which may not be shared with the ENTIRE Scratch Team.

i agree with this to some extent, but let's remember that @cheddargirl seems to be 25% of the active forum moderators these days — and april 1st is on a weekend, so @paddle2see may be out for the day — and the remaining 50% of active forum moderators are relatively new at moderating the forums. actually yeah, now that i think about it, @cheddargirl may very well be the one who has to clean up most of the work this time around. so i sympathize with her a little more. and her opinion carries a lot of weight here.

I feel like everyone is derailing from the point of the OP. The OP is asking whether the Scratch Team is allowing April Fools topics this year. Some users have already answered that there is no confirmed answer yet. But the question was not, “Do you guys think that April Fools should happen this year?” Besides, that would make this a poll topic anyway, which aren’t really allowed on the forums and always get closed.

I’d like to remind everyone to please stay on-topic.

Za-Chary wrote:

this i don't necessarily agree with. i help in the forums because i enjoy helping and being constructive. it seems a little misleading to help in the forums for the sole purpose of waiting for april fools' day. the best help comes from those who just want to help.

Oh I do agree that you should help if you like helping, not doing it as you feel you have to and then expecting a reward from it. It’s just allowing to be silly for a day is a nice perk.

GIitchInTheMatrix wrote:

dertermenter wrote:

Also the forum community are like free customer support for the Scratch Team and some may we do deserve something to have fun over for a day.

Then, the main site is a better option. A day is a long time to not be able to discuss a suggestion, and it can prevent very constructive posts.

Constructive ≠ helpful. The suggestion forum isn’t really that helpful as the Scratch Team rarely implement anything on it. A day without discussion is fine as long as all the posts get bumped up in a cleanup (which btw only me, @jackson49 and @chiroyce did clean up, can we have the whole forum community to clean up next time and not 3 people?)

If people don’t wanna put in the grunt work and clean up then fine but I don’t think they should then participate in AFD. If you ain’t gonna clean up then you don’t deserve to have the fun.

dertermenter wrote:

Constructive ≠ helpful. The suggestion forum isn’t really that helpful as the Scratch Team rarely implement anything on it.

That doesn’t mean they don’t consider it. And, although it’s rare for a suggestion to be implemented, does that mean that we should stop cancer treatment, as its near impossible to cure?

dertermenter wrote:

A day without discussion is fine as long as all the posts get bumped up in a cleanup (which btw only me, @jackson49 and @chiroyce did clean up, can we have the whole forum community to clean up next time and not 3 people?)

As such, 3 people bumping up 25 pages of discussion is quite high, and it would be better to not have AFD, as per this choice.

dertermenter wrote:

If people don’t wanna put in the grunt work and clean up then fine but I don’t think they should then participate in AFD. If you ain’t gonna clean up then you don’t deserve to have the fun.

How do you propose they enforce this?

GIitchInTheMatrix wrote:

Of course, the dummy forum would work, but be tough to work with.

I love the idea of a dummy forum, similar to the scratch wiki april fools day version, where you're still able to access the main scratch wiki. Of course, it should probably just be for one topic instead of a dummy version of every topic (normally suggestions is the most april-fools-dayable so that would probably be the best choice). My only real issue is how archaic forums are, and how it may be very difficult to add a new forum (although they did manage to do it anyway with game save and level codes…)

AFD is a tradition on scratch forums, and we shouldn't have to end it if there are workarounds to let it coexist with the main site.

additional tiny little thing, letting people still access the AFD forum with all the posts closed and topic creation locked outside of AFD would be neat for memories and stuff

dertermenter wrote:

can we make joke topics on the forums?

We should be able to. If helpful forums are off-limits for jokes and we can only use forums that people don't use then it should happen despite previous years having some spam. Also I am fine with it only being on April 1st and not March 31st as well.

Also the forum community are like free customer support for the Scratch Team and some may we do deserve something to have fun over for a day.

It wouldn't be made, since the forums are Scratch topic.

GIitchInTheMatrix wrote:

dertermenter wrote:

Constructive ≠ helpful. The suggestion forum isn’t really that helpful as the Scratch Team rarely implement anything on it.

That doesn’t mean they don’t consider it. And, although it’s rare for a suggestion to be implemented, does that mean that we should stop cancer treatment, as its near impossible to cure?

I don't think that analogy really works. It's not a disease, it's a trait. By definition, the Suggestions forum has to be less constructive than the others. It's not a fixable problem, or even really a problem. It's just a fact. That doesn't make it unimportant, but it's not vital. We can go one day without it.

GIitchInTheMatrix wrote:

dertermenter wrote:

A day without discussion is fine as long as all the posts get bumped up in a cleanup (which btw only me, @jackson49 and @chiroyce did clean up, can we have the whole forum community to clean up next time and not 3 people?)

As such, 3 people bumping up 25 pages of discussion is quite high, and it would be better to not have AFD, as per this choice.

I don't really agree with that viewpoint. On the contrary, the fact that it only took three people to accomplish the requested cleanup could be argued to be a good thing. It shows that it's not as hard as it may otherwise seem. If we can get more users involved, the cleanup should be relatively easy. I don't think it'd be too hard to get more people to join in.

GIitchInTheMatrix wrote:

dertermenter wrote:

If people don’t wanna put in the grunt work and clean up then fine but I don’t think they should then participate in AFD. If you ain’t gonna clean up then you don’t deserve to have the fun.

How do you propose they enforce this?

I'm guessing it probably wouldn't be enforceable. I think it'd be a good idea to add it as a guideline, just like the other guidelines in last year's announcement. I can't speak for dertermenter, though. Maybe he was thinking something different.

jackson49 wrote:

GIitchInTheMatrix wrote:

dertermenter wrote:

A day without discussion is fine as long as all the posts get bumped up in a cleanup (which btw only me, @jackson49 and @chiroyce did clean up, can we have the whole forum community to clean up next time and not 3 people?)

As such, 3 people bumping up 25 pages of discussion is quite high, and it would be better to not have AFD, as per this choice.

I don't really agree with that viewpoint. On the contrary, the fact that it only took three people to accomplish the requested cleanup could be argued to be a good thing. It shows that it's not as hard as it may otherwise seem. If we can get more users involved, the cleanup should be relatively easy. I don't think it'd be too hard to get more people to join in.

That would, given 3 people, take 625 posts needing bumping. This is approximately 208 posts per person. As such, three and a half hours. To keep with that approach wouldn’t be the greatest. Instead…

GIitchInTheMatrix wrote:

Of course, the dummy forum would work, but be tough to work with.

GIitchInTheMatrix wrote:

That would, given 3 people, take 625 posts needing bumping. This is approximately 208 posts per person. As such, three and a half hours. To keep with that approach wouldn’t be the greatest.

That's true, it was time-consuming. We did meet our goal, but it probably wasn't an ideal system. But you're assuming that more people won't join in this time. Last year, I don't think many users realized what was going on. Cheddargirl's post that asked us to bump serious topics was ironically buried in the ensuing bumps, causing fewer users to see it.

If we can make more users aware of it this year, I think it will go better. I've already seen some users express interest in helping out with it this year. There's even a studio for it.

However, this is obviously kind of a moot point until we get an answer from the Scratch Team.