Bump it has now been 27 days since the last time the explore page updated or since any project has been added to the search results.

bump, anyone know the number of days?nearl 3 months right?

i think the explore page just updated?maybe they fixed it?

Prince_Wolf1 wrote:

i think the explore page just updated?maybe they fixed it?

I don't think so: a few projects were removed but no project we're added and if you look at the recent page, every project is still from 2 months ago. So it's unfortunately still not fixed.

I tried clicking a project from the searcher it was taken down what

alexandretherrien wrote:

CoconutGator wrote:

SNIPPY

Example: If your project is called: ‘’A dog’’ it will show up before another game with the same stats called ‘’This is my dog that I just bought yesterday’’ because in the first project, the word ‘’dog’’ represents a higher proportion (50%) of the title while in the second one it only represents 11% of the title. It’s the same with the description.

Other example: If a project has as its description: ‘’This is my dog! dog dog dog dog dog dog dog.’’ It will show up higher in the results for dog than a project with just ‘’ this is my dog that I love so much’’ as its description because in the first one the word ‘’dog’’ constitutes a bigger part of the description.

The tabs on explore works exactly the same. So a project called ‘’platformer games games games games games’’ will show up higher on the ‘’games‘’ tab than another project with the same stats called ‘’scrolling platfomer with enemies and level editor games’’, because in the first one, the tag ‘’games’’ represent a higher part of the title than the second one.

Reminds me in the very early days of the internet, how sites would often keyword stuff large paragraphs of semi-related stuff to catch web traffic

there's a 6th, I made a project about it if you wanna know about it

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(((( •̀ᴗ•́) ( •̀ᴗ•́) ( •̀ᴗ•́) ( •̀ᴗ•́) ( •̀ᴗ•́) ( •̀ᴗ•́) ( •̀ᴗ•́) ( •̀ᴗ•́) ( •̀ᴗ•́) ( •̀ᴗ•́) ( •̀ᴗ•́) ( •̀ᴗ•́) ( •̀ᴗ•́) ( •̀ᴗ•́) ( •̀ᴗ•́) ( •̀ᴗ•́) ( •̀ᴗ•́) ( •̀ᴗ•́) ( •̀ᴗ•́) ( •̀ᴗ•́) ( •̀ᴗ•́))))  

alexandretherrien wrote:

CoconutGator wrote:

I am curious why the “trending hack” (if i'm correct on what the “hack” is) works. Maybe each love/favorite is multiplied by the amount of times you “hacked” it?

I’m not talking about this. The hack/cheat I’m talking about is based on the fact that the ‘’games’’ ‘’animations’’ ‘’art’’… tabs on explore work similarly (probably exactly the same) to the search results. In fact when you search for something like ‘’Dog’’ with the search bar, the results all contains the word ‘’dog’’ either in the title are in the description. The projects that show up first are, first, the most popular (most loves), but second, the projects where the word ‘’dog’’ is the largest part of the description and title.


Example: If your project is called: ‘’A dog’’ it will show up before another game with the same stats called ‘’This is my dog that I just bought yesterday’’ because in the first project, the word ‘’dog’’ represents a higher proportion (50%) of the title while in the second one it only represents 11% of the title. It’s the same with the description.

Other example: If a project has as its description: ‘’This is my dog! dog dog dog dog dog dog dog.’’ It will show up higher in the results for dog than a project with just ‘’ this is my dog that I love so much’’ as its description because in the first one the word ‘’dog’’ constitutes a bigger part of the description.

The tabs on explore works exactly the same. So a project called ‘’platformer games games games games games’’ will show up higher on the ‘’games‘’ tab than another project with the same stats called ‘’scrolling platfomer with enemies and level editor games’’, because in the first one, the tag ‘’games’’ represent a higher part of the title than the second one.

So this weird system can be exploited in 2 ways:

1. You spam as many tags as you can in the description so that the tag represents a very big part of the description/title

2. You make your description/title just one tag so that the tag represents 100% of the title/description. For example a project simply called ‘’games’’ with, as description, (or notes and credits) ‘’games’’ and nothing else, will be catapulted in the first results of the ‘’games’’ tab way higher than it should.

That why you see so many scratchers spamming hundreds of tags in the description to make their project show up higher on the tabs of the explore page. That’s also why when you search words like ‘’mario’’ or ‘’portal’’ the first results are almost always just called ‘’mario’’ or just ‘’portal’’. This weird system works ok for the search results but for the tabs on the explore page, it leads to a lot of spam.

The only tab that is not directly affect by this is the ‘’all’’ tab


This is what I noticed with the tabs on explore and the search results. I hope this clarified things up

Thanks

good grief this is somehow even worse than i thought. i don't want to sound demanding, but the scratch team HAS to get on fixing this soon. all these bugs can be DETRIMENTAL to the community if they continue for any longer. it's practically impossible for your project to get seen right now because the servers are totally shot

when green flag clicked
forever
say [huh]
end

alexandretherrien wrote:

I'm making this to regroup ongoing bugs that affect the trending page in hope to reduce confusion among Scratchers who have noticed changes on the trending/explore/search page.




1. Local trendings are gone

Before the last update to the trending algorithm, there was a different trending page for each language that Scratch could be set to. So if you spoke french and you had selected french as your language, you would see the french trending which would only contain french projects. Those projects would therefore be viewed by french people so most of the comments on the french trending page were also french. So, it was really easy for french people to interact with the community and make friends in their native language. I chose french as a example, but the same applies for every other language. But now, the scripts that allowed local trending pages seems to be broken because projects are no longer filtered based on the user's language. So, no matter which language you have selected, scratch do not filter the page to show project in your language. This is probably one of the factors that explains why over 80% of the projects on trending are currently in japanese no matter the selected language. More detail here



2. The indexer/crawler is very slow.

Most of the time, it takes months before your project shows up on search after it's shared and when it eventually shows up, it's too late for trending. In fact, a project can't show up on trending/explore when it's not in the search results which means that most projects will never have the ability to go on trending no matter their stats because they simply are not indexed fast enough after they are shared. It used to take only a few hours/minutes for a project to be indexed.





3. Trending hacks

Trending hacks are still a thing and they encourage spam. There is now not a single project in the ‘'Games’' tab that do not use atleast one trending hacks. Because these hacks are so powerful (make your project go higher on trending) and because all most everyone uses them, if you want your project to show up in the ‘'games’' tab it's almost required that you use them too. I know 4 of these hack and they are all caused by the same thing explained here

These hacks do not directly have an impact on the project's position on the ‘'All’' tab, but they have a huge impact on the other tab such as ‘'Animations’', ‘'Games’' tabs etc. These hacks result in a lot of spam on project pages




4. The whole explore page / Search page freezes every week or so

When this happens, the explore page gets completely stuck and no new projects are added. Currently, it's stuck and it have not updated since sep 21. During the summer, it froze for 42 days straight. When this happens, no new project can show up in the search results and all of the projects shared while it's frozen won't have the chance to show up on explore.



5. Project duplicates on trending

Some projects are there multiple times on the explore page and take 2 or more spots instead of just one.





If you know more Explore page glitches, feel free to leave a post and I'll make sure to add them in the list.

https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/719699622/, this is not using a hack.

(☆ ᴗ ☆:: custom-arg) // Here is FARFR, He stands for Frequently Asked Reasons For Rejection and protects my topics and my signatures.

Here's the game I worked on the most..ㅤ:: variables :: hat

not all projects in the explore page follow their category.
(e.g. Games in music)

<OUO> :: motion  // this is gary he protects my siggy from evil kumquats 

(( ( •) ) _ (( •))    :: #000000   // this is Michael incase gary cant defeat the kumquats

Great directory! Reporting to be stickied.

I updated the 4th bug.

-Quantum_Studios- wrote:

Great directory! Reporting to be stickied.

Thanks! A few people have reported it to be stickied, but they have not stickied it yet. I think this could be very useful as a sticky as I make sure to update it often to make sure that every bug on the list is proven and still ongoing, but I’m guessing they might not like how some info in this post can be used to exploit the explore page. I wonder if I could change anything to allow it to be stickied? Anyway it’s really not a big deal

Bump. The four bugs are still ongoing.

Bump

Crow_Boy08 wrote:

not all projects in the explore page follow their category.
(e.g. Games in music)

The thing is, if you use music in your game, and in your credits you say “music by blah blah blah”, as you are supposed to, then your game will show up in the music category.

It's quite a big flaw in the tagging logic.

There is literally no way to get on the first page of any of the Explore tabs, without using one of the Explore/Trending hacks.

PaddlerGames wrote:

There is literally no way to get on the first page of any of the Explore tabs, without using one of the Explore/Trending hacks.
That's why if I make any more projects in the future, I won't put any tags in the description anymore. I guess the followers that I already have from over the years can see my projects. I just don't want to deal with the Explore page anymore.

Also, it's hard to talk with any “trending” or “famous” Scratchers without getting into some “mass reporting” drama.

Yeah to be honest, the explore page situation disgusts me. I find it hard to watch when I see kids and teens who can’t stop exploiting bugs once they starts because of how effective it is. The focus is totally not on the project and creativity, but rather on the stats and how the algorithm can be exploited. This is not sending good values at all and I hope that the Scratch Team understands that. Not only is it unhealthy for the people who abuse the system and take the entire explore page, but it is also unhealthy for the people who joins scratch, see these successful scratchers who exploit and might think that doing the same is ok. It’s not because other ones are exploiting the system that you need to do it too.

The problem is that to be able to have your project reliably show up on the explore page, you are required to exploit, so it will never stop until the Scratch Team acknowledge and fixes these bugs.

Weird thing is that top loved (I think) is working. So, if they're pretty much the same thing, it's almost like ST could take down explore for a little bit and just show top loved. Not the best solution, but one that would work.

King_of_Zyjaria wrote:

Weird thing is that top loved (I think) is working. So, if they're pretty much the same thing, it's almost like ST could take down explore for a little bit and just show top loved. Not the best solution, but one that would work.

Top loved and trending don't use the same algorithm to index projects, so they are not the same thing.