Trending projects CAN'T go on trending without resharing

alexandretherrien

The explore page is definitely updating more reliably (it now updates everyday), but I noticed that it's still very unreliable but in different ways.
First, the reshare glitch and trending hacks are still going on,

but mostly, I noticed that so many popular indexed project do get on trending:

For example, @Ceebee 's new project got 200 loves in a few days, is indexed and shows up in the search results. But, when I activated the trending setting in the search results, I had to scroll down tens of page to finally find it at the ∼1000th position behind so many project without any love or favorite. For some reason, Scratch thinks that her project is not trending at all and this explains why it never showed up anywhere on the explore page. This project is already a week old, so even if the scratch algorithm eventually realizes that her project is trending, it's probably going to be too late for trending.

Here's another example: PeteyBirdd's new project got 500 loves in 6 days and when you search for it with the search bar, you see that it got indexed (it shows up in the results), but for some reason, like ceebee's project, it shows up last in the trending results even behind remixes. So, again, Scratch thinks that this project was not trending at all and this explains why it never got on trending.

The same is happening with GonSanVi 's latest project that got 2000 loves in 5 days but still shows last when you search for it with the trending setting.

This is also happening to Griffpatch's latest project that never showed up on trending even after getting 3000 loves in a few days. It still shows up after all the remixes in the search result for ‘'trending’'

I just picked these 4 random popular projects from top loved as examples, but this is happening to so many other projects. In fact here a list of 40 projects affected by this bug. Up to this day, none of these projects show up first when you search for them. These projects should have gotten on trending but are no where to be seen even if you scroll hundreds of pages and this is happening to so many projects. This might explains why the explore page is barely changing everytime it updates. This seems strangely similar to what happened years ago: https://scratch.mit.edu/discuss/topic/458541/

The only fix that work is to reshare the project as explained in this post.

This is my guess on why this and the reshare glitch are a thing. Of course I could be wrong though.

Does any Scratch Team member know what's going on, if any changes has been done recently or if the devs put back an old version of code?

Last edited by alexandretherrien (March 31, 2023 03:34:12)

FunnyAnimatorJimTV

They must fix this. It's caused frustration to so many people. How can the ST always say they don't even know how the trending page works. They made it. Seriously they could even just ask TimMcCool if they can use his code on his working trending page that he made in 1 day https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/771495142/ I love Scratch and ST but this does not seem like such a big problem for it to take this long

FunnyAnimatorJimTV

here is an example of japanese people frustrated about the trending page. he made a movie that took 6 months to make and it didn't get on trending, meanwhile people that copied his own projects and finished their projects on the 1st day, did get on https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/783480576/

alexandretherrien

You know something is wrong when griffpatch’s project do not show up on trending: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/788908450 (3000 loves in a few days)

alexandretherrien

Bump

alexandretherrien

This is a one-year old project that got on trending right after being reshared : https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/568608642/

Also every project without any exception (as far as I'm aware) that get on trending are either reshared or got less than 100 loves in the first day. Also the explore page is barely moving every day. Most of the days, you can't even tell if it updated because of how little it changes every day. I feel like it's probably because of how many trending projects can’t access trending right now.

Here are 3 other trending projects that never showed up on trending and that show up in the last results when searching with the ‘'trending’' setting activated:

https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/792021914/

https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/783102054/

https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/781596057/

Last edited by alexandretherrien (Jan. 30, 2023 05:09:27)

RED-001-alt

How did this bug even come to be?

alexandretherrien

Another 3 month-old project got on trending just after being reshared: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/745571004/

-PinPoint-

The Scratch Team really needs to fix the trending page… at this point I'm probably going to wait for a fix before I post a new project

alexandretherrien

The exact same thing happened to these 2 projects

https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/486632504/

https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/786347374/

It’s like if the indexer was skipping projects and never indexed them for some reason. It’s frustrating to see high quality creative projects in which so much effort was put into not show up anywhere because of a bug.

alexandretherrien

The bug also happened to these projects:

- https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/794792695/
- https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/791856157/
- https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/681993891/
- https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/794792695/

Last edited by alexandretherrien (Feb. 8, 2023 02:59:10)

alexandretherrien

Last edited by alexandretherrien (March 17, 2023 17:58:11)

-PinPoint-

I guess you can add my game to the above list… it was indexed and is nowhere to be found on trending, including being below remixes when you search the game and set mode to trending. below are the stats after 12 hours since release:

Last edited by -PinPoint- (Feb. 21, 2023 08:00:26)

alexandretherrien

-PinPoint- wrote:
I guess you can add my game to the above list… it was indexed and is nowhere to be found on trending, including being below remixes when you search the game and set mode to trending. below are the stats after 12 hours since release:

Your project is unbelievably good and with its stats, it should have gotten on trending easily. (fi you check Timmccool's explore page, you see that you are supposed to be #4)

But you are right, the same bug is happening to your project, so, for Scratch, it's like if it did not exist and it will never have the chance to reach trending.

It is so frustrating to see that creative scratchers are blocked from getting their work recognized simply because of a bug.

I feel like the explore page is doing the exact opposite of what it's supposed to do: encouraging people who cheat, exploit and spam instead of encouraging creative Scratchers who are currently blocked from getting on trending because of this bug.

Last edited by alexandretherrien (Feb. 21, 2023 15:38:56)

alexandretherrien

I have some information that could be very helpful for the Scratch Team if they want to fix this bug. There's seems to be a fix to this bug and it does involves resharing. So someone (I'm not going to say their name) told me that, to avoid this bug, you needed to reshare the project just before the explore page update. At the time I’m writing, the explore page is updating at 12:00 pm EST so resharing at 11h50 would work. Note that the time the explore page refresh might not stay at 12pm and might change slowly as the time goes by.

I was not sure at first, but then this fix worked for 2 projects that were affected by this exact bug.

First, this project: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/811461543/
It had received 200 loves but was showing in the last results when searching for it. He reshared at 11H50 and a few hours after the reshare, the project showed up on trending and was now showing first in the search results

Second project: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/811805586/
This project was shared on march 2th and had received 450 loves and 1700 views but was showing in the last results when searching for it. 5 days later as expected, nothing had changed and the project was still showing last in the search results with the trending option. The creator then reshared the project at 11h50 on march 6th and 20 minutes later the project was on trending and was showing first when searching for it.

These 2 examples show that the fix works and I hope that this information can be helpful for the Scratch Team to identify the cause of the problem. It is also possible that the time of the reshare is not that important. Maybe resharing at another time than 11h50 might do the job, but one thing’s sure and it’s that the only way for these popular projects to get on trending is with a reshare.
The bug needs to be fixed as it's extremely unfair for people who don't want to reshare.

Last edited by alexandretherrien (March 16, 2023 02:21:30)

bentshaggyoil

ST needs to see this. Some of these trending glitches were discovered in 2017 and they haven’t been fixed. For over five years.

LittleMissPumpkin

Does the ST know this is happening? As in, the reshare glitch, etc?

King_of_Zyjaria

I think that without the reshare glitch, I might have hit trending, but with projects clogging that up, it didn't (project ID 772421673). One thing I've noticed, though, is that top loved (on the home page) doesn't seem to be affected by the reshare glitch. It's having it's own set of project that work fine. So trending doesn't work, but top loved does. I might be completely wrong though.

LittleMissPumpkin wrote:
Does the ST know this is happening? As in, the reshare glitch, etc?

Yes, scratch team know's it's happening. As in this thread (https://scratch.mit.edu/discuss/topic/654013/), they know it's happening, but it's hard to keep track of and fix these things.

Also, they can't go on trending because they're probably not indexed yet. Indexing does take some time, and it screws up the timing on projects.

Last edited by King_of_Zyjaria (March 11, 2023 18:48:05)

colinmacc

bentshaggyoil wrote:
ST needs to see this. Some of these trending glitches were discovered in 2017 and they haven’t been fixed. For over five years.

Actually the reshare glitch was fixed for quite a while, but then apparently they reverted something trying to fix something else and it was broken again.

Alexandertherrien has been following this sorry saga for quite some time now. If you want to know anything, ask him.

colinmacc

King_of_Zyjaria wrote:
I think that without the reshare glitch, I might have hit trending, but with projects clogging that up, it didn't (project ID 772421673). One thing I've noticed, though, is that top loved (on the home page) doesn't seem to be affected by the reshare glitch. It's having it's own set of project that work fine. So trending doesn't work, but top loved does. I might be completely wrong though.
LittleMissPumpkin wrote:
Does the ST know this is happening? As in, the reshare glitch, etc?
Yes, scratch team know's it's happening. As in this thread (https://scratch.mit.edu/discuss/topic/654013/), they know it's happening, but it's hard to keep track of and fix these things.

Also, they can't go on trending because they're probably not indexed yet. Indexing does take some time, and it screws up the timing on projects.

Yes. Top Loved and Top Remixed uses a different system that doesn't rely on the project being indexed by the search indexer.

Historically there were problems with the search indexer, that people mis-interpreted as trending being broken.
But now the search indexer appears to be working very well, however trending is still pretty messed up.

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