There is a problem on scratch right now. Follower hunger. It is a problem and can cause good scratchers to leave because they spend lots of effort on projects and only get a few followers. I think this can be solved easily. Either delete the “followers” bar entirely, or not have the numbers show and delete all the follower page numbers to prevent people from guessing and getting sad or jealous. This will make talented scratchers that want followers stay. There are young kids here, and they don't know that scratch isn't about fame and think copying projects and advertising are good. Then they get banned or blocked. I think making changes like this will help the community.

Lots of people think that I want to make the community 100% perfect. I don't. Removing the follower bar OR JUST THE NUMBERS will solve most of the problems. My idea is to keep the notifications for when someone follows you, so you can thank them. Most people commenting here say that they have no problems. There are other people that do have problems with followers, and they make quality projects but don't get attention. They then leave, and a lot of potential for good projects is wasted. There are other people who copy projects, and they gain hundreds of followers off of it. If there were no followers, those talented scratchers would've stayed, and the copycats would've not been copycats. Scratch was intended to be a programming website, not a social media website. I use scratch to program, not to do social media. If you want followers to stay, then you are encouraging scratch to become more like a social media website, which could turn into a catastrophe.

If you think that I am trying to stop the problems 100%, you are wrong. I think removing the follower count will cause no harm to scratchers feeling appreciated, since they can still have their projects viewed, loved, and favorited. Also, there probably won't be “Fav4Fav” or “Love4Love”. If there is, F4F doesn't break the guidelines (I am not saying F4F is good or bad) so Fav4Fav or Love4Love will not cause problems. Back in 1.4 there was no F4F or copying or follower hunger. Just programming and fun. 2.0 destroyed everything. Switching to the old 1.4 system might help.

when green flag clicked
if <(followerNumberShown) = [1]> then
    
stop [All of scratch v]
end
if <(followerNumberShown) = [0]> then
    
stop [Follower Numbers v]
Scratch On!
end

No support, still. Please do not make duplicate topics for the same suggestion.

Scratchifier wrote:

No support, still. Please do not make duplicate topics for the same suggestion.

^^

People who cheat to get followers hardly gain popularity, or even many followers. So many people have copied griffpatches paper minecraft, but have you bothered to check them out? No, because you know which one's the original project.

And look, if people who don't get followers leave Scratch then imagine what happens when followers disappear completely :\

stop [all v] ::stack

I see where you are coming from here, but please don't make multiple topics about the same thing.

I'm personally fed up of these ‘famous’ Scratchers, who consider themselves so because they have lots of followers. They ponce around, being ‘rebels’ and end up getting banned. Then when these ‘famous’ Scratchers get banned their followers turn into a kind of ‘text’ army against the Scratch Team and constantly plague them to unban this person, despite never knowing them in real life. Honestly, followers were the death of Scratch. Followers should not define fame, and to stop this the followers bar should be removed. Who needs to see who someone is following anyhow? It's a waste of profile space as well! Full support!

cheeseeater wrote:

Who needs to see who someone is following anyhow?

It's this thing called curiosity. It's a pretty powerful thing, if you didn't notice.


As for the other parts of your speech, your text army you're talking about is as problematic as ping pong balls against a navy destroyer. The plague is hardly a plague, as most people comment on the banned users comment section instead of contacting the actual the Scratch team. Followers were not the death of Scratch, but advertisers were.

And

FOLLOWERS

DO NOT

EQUAL

FAME.

ever. They never did.

I'll be accurate though. Followers come close to equaling fame sometimes. Only when the user actually does something good though.

stop [all v] ::stack

Alberknyis wrote:

cheeseeater wrote:

Who needs to see who someone is following anyhow?

It's this thing called curiosity. It's a pretty powerful thing, if you didn't notice.


As for the other parts of your speech, your text army you're talking about is as problematic as ping pong balls against a navy destroyer. The plague is hardly a plague, as most people comment on the banned users comment section instead of contacting the actual the Scratch team. Followers were not the death of Scratch, but advertisers were.

And

FOLLOWERS

DO NOT

EQUAL

FAME.

ever. They never did.

I'll be accurate though. Followers come close to equaling fame sometimes. Only when the user actually does something good though.

No need to be snappy; we're all entitled to our opinions no matter if you agree with them or not.

Yes, we all know that followers should not equal fame, however this isn't how people see it these days. People see followers as a ranking of how famous they are because the idea of ‘following’ someone has been adopted from Social Media websites, where followers indefinitely equal fame or at least a notable internet presence. As for curiosity, yes I have heard of it. Curiosity should be endorsed, and allowed to blossom, especially on a site like this. However, I know nearly no one who would actively go trawling through a list of followers. All the list does it makes other users jealous, and provides no extra ‘learning tool’ to the site, since programming is the purpose of it's existence; having social features is just an add-on to the main purpose. As older Scratchers leave the platform, a new, younger generation of Scratchers are joining. These younger Scratchers are more interested in getting ‘known’, rather than the older ones. They use the followers bar and the number of followers someone has to judge that Scratcher's reputation and ‘fame’. It's sad but true. It's also easy for younger children to get jealous of one's ‘fame’, and no one would become so if the followers bar and numeric value were removed. If the followers bar is removed, those new Scratchers can settle down and get on with the real purpose of Scratch; Imagining, Programming and Sharing. The following bar and the followers count is the exact reason Follow4Follow exists. These Scratchers see fame in amount of followers they have, so they trade follows with each other to increase that value!

cheeseeater wrote:

No need to be snappy; we're all entitled to our opinions no matter if you agree with them or not.

This is me. I communicate differently from other people. We're all unique, right? So I hope you're okay with that.

I'm reading the rest of your comment now.

stop [all v] ::stack

To cheeseeater

That's… Good. Good speech.

I don't have anything against that.

stop [all v] ::stack

Alberknyis wrote:

cheeseeater wrote:

No need to be snappy; we're all entitled to our opinions no matter if you agree with them or not.

This is me. I communicate differently from other people. We're all unique, right? So I hope you're okay with that.

I'm reading the rest of your comment now.

Of course, I'm alright with uniqueness. However, use of capitals and separate lines is almost to show ‘slow’ shouting.

Alberknyis wrote:

To cheeseeater

That's… Good. Good speech.

I don't have anything against that.

Thank you; it's appreciated when someone accepts a word I say.

cheeseeater wrote:

I see where you are coming from here, but please don't make multiple topics about the same thing.

I'm personally fed up of these ‘famous’ Scratchers, who consider themselves so because they have lots of followers. They ponce around, being ‘rebels’ and end up getting banned. Then when these ‘famous’ Scratchers get banned their followers turn into a kind of ‘text’ army against the Scratch Team and constantly plague them to unban this person, despite never knowing them in real life. Honestly, followers were the death of Scratch. Followers should not define fame, and to stop this the followers bar should be removed. Who needs to see who someone is following anyhow? It's a waste of profile space as well! Full support!

That's a very broad stereotype, and I don't think it applies only to well-known Scratchers. I would point to the G+ community instead (Which actually shouldn't even be there, as it goes against the terms of use, but it's hard to enforce something on a website that is not yours!). That's where I see a ton of the drama coming from, and it doesn't have to do with popularity, well, not always. It usually is because they don't have to follow any rules over there, then they think the same applies for Scratch, get banned, stir up drama on G+, and then repeat the cycle all over again with their friends protesting and stuff… of course then again there are some on G+ who just follow all of the rules on Scratch and break this stereotype, but about the problem of protesting bans, G+ is where it mostly comes from…

I think that you're really exaggerating the problems that come from love its. The Scratch Team has removed Add Everything studios for search bars, the numbers on the studios, the followers numbers, the permissions of a curator to delete everything in a studio… but wars on Scratch still remain. People are still angry at AEs and try to sabotage them. Follow for follow still exists. “Can you follow me” is still a phrase I hear often. It's not going to change. Taking away features, statistics, and random tools in Scratch really isn't going to fix the community once and for all.

Alberknyis wrote:

cheeseeater wrote:

No need to be snappy; we're all entitled to our opinions no matter if you agree with them or not.

This is me. I communicate differently from other people. We're all unique, right? So I hope you're okay with that.

I'm reading the rest of your comment now.

Take a deep breath, then drink some water.
Now post, try not to go “crazy”. No offense meant.


I say we shouldn't remove it.

I mean the reason for followers was for people to be up-to-date with their favorite scratcher or see what cool project they have, not just follow someone for no reason. You should report anyone asking for Follow4Follow. What are you gonna do without followers and you want to find a certain scratcher between millions! So I say keep it not remove, I've seen more often to just rename followers.

No support, still. Also please don't make duplicate topics.

Scratchifier wrote:

cheeseeater wrote:

I see where you are coming from here, but please don't make multiple topics about the same thing.

I'm personally fed up of these ‘famous’ Scratchers, who consider themselves so because they have lots of followers. They ponce around, being ‘rebels’ and end up getting banned. Then when these ‘famous’ Scratchers get banned their followers turn into a kind of ‘text’ army against the Scratch Team and constantly plague them to unban this person, despite never knowing them in real life. Honestly, followers were the death of Scratch. Followers should not define fame, and to stop this the followers bar should be removed. Who needs to see who someone is following anyhow? It's a waste of profile space as well! Full support!

That's a very broad stereotype, and I don't think it applies only to well-known Scratchers. I would point to the G+ community instead (Which actually shouldn't even be there, as it goes against the terms of use, but it's hard to enforce something on a website that is not yours!). That's where I see a ton of the drama coming from, and it doesn't have to do with popularity, well, not always. It usually is because they don't have to follow any rules over there, then they think the same applies for Scratch, get banned, stir up drama on G+, and then repeat the cycle all over again with their friends protesting and stuff… of course then again there are some on G+ who just follow all of the rules on Scratch and break this stereotype, but about the problem of protesting bans, G+ is where it mostly comes from…

I think that you're really exaggerating the problems that come from love its. The Scratch Team has removed Add Everything studios for search bars, the numbers on the studios, the followers numbers, the permissions of a curator to delete everything in a studio… but wars on Scratch still remain. People are still angry at AEs and try to sabotage them. Follow for follow still exists. “Can you follow me” is still a phrase I hear often. It's not going to change. Taking away features, statistics, and random tools in Scratch really isn't going to fix the community once and for all.

Did I mention love-its?

The whole follows4fame stuff entirely evolves around the followers bar since that shows how many followers one has. I agree about Google+ though, however things on external sites can't change. G+ is used by Scratchers because they can stir up drama, cause trouble, and be out of the ST's reach. Calling things ‘wars’ is a big exaggeration. I've not seen guns, tanks and other military machines firing at each other over the front page. Its merely just quite a few Scratchers having a prolonged argument over something so ridiculously petty.

cheeseeater wrote:

Scratchifier wrote:

cheeseeater wrote:

I see where you are coming from here, but please don't make multiple topics about the same thing.

I'm personally fed up of these ‘famous’ Scratchers, who consider themselves so because they have lots of followers. They ponce around, being ‘rebels’ and end up getting banned. Then when these ‘famous’ Scratchers get banned their followers turn into a kind of ‘text’ army against the Scratch Team and constantly plague them to unban this person, despite never knowing them in real life. Honestly, followers were the death of Scratch. Followers should not define fame, and to stop this the followers bar should be removed. Who needs to see who someone is following anyhow? It's a waste of profile space as well! Full support!

That's a very broad stereotype, and I don't think it applies only to well-known Scratchers. I would point to the G+ community instead (Which actually shouldn't even be there, as it goes against the terms of use, but it's hard to enforce something on a website that is not yours!). That's where I see a ton of the drama coming from, and it doesn't have to do with popularity, well, not always. It usually is because they don't have to follow any rules over there, then they think the same applies for Scratch, get banned, stir up drama on G+, and then repeat the cycle all over again with their friends protesting and stuff… of course then again there are some on G+ who just follow all of the rules on Scratch and break this stereotype, but about the problem of protesting bans, G+ is where it mostly comes from…

I think that you're really exaggerating the problems that come from love its. The Scratch Team has removed Add Everything studios for search bars, the numbers on the studios, the followers numbers, the permissions of a curator to delete everything in a studio… but wars on Scratch still remain. People are still angry at AEs and try to sabotage them. Follow for follow still exists. “Can you follow me” is still a phrase I hear often. It's not going to change. Taking away features, statistics, and random tools in Scratch really isn't going to fix the community once and for all.

Did I mention love-its?

The whole follows4fame stuff entirely evolves around the followers bar since that shows how many followers one has. I agree about Google+ though, however things on external sites can't change. G+ is used by Scratchers because they can stir up drama, cause trouble, and be out of the ST's reach. Calling things ‘wars’ is a big exaggeration. I've not seen guns, tanks and other military machines firing at each other over the front page. Its merely just quite a few Scratchers having a prolonged argument over something so ridiculously petty.

xD Nooooo not the love its as welllllll!!!!! Seriously though… I don't think Scratch needs to be picked apart with all of its features, I know they have some flaws, but you'll always have that. And I find it really useful (not to mention motivating) to see my follower numbers, and even in the start of Scratch when I had hardly any “friends”, I was always excited to get the message telling me that somebody liked my projects enough to add me. (Side note: and since 1.4 didn't have a follower or friends bar, I was also wondering how many I had…) And I do like it still.

As for my terming “war”, it had to do with the following words in your post that I replied to… rebels… text army… death of Scratch. Although yeah, I think that “dispute” would be a better fit.

Scratchifier wrote:

cheeseeater wrote:

Scratchifier wrote:

cheeseeater wrote:

I see where you are coming from here, but please don't make multiple topics about the same thing.

I'm personally fed up of these ‘famous’ Scratchers, who consider themselves so because they have lots of followers. They ponce around, being ‘rebels’ and end up getting banned. Then when these ‘famous’ Scratchers get banned their followers turn into a kind of ‘text’ army against the Scratch Team and constantly plague them to unban this person, despite never knowing them in real life. Honestly, followers were the death of Scratch. Followers should not define fame, and to stop this the followers bar should be removed. Who needs to see who someone is following anyhow? It's a waste of profile space as well! Full support!

That's a very broad stereotype, and I don't think it applies only to well-known Scratchers. I would point to the G+ community instead (Which actually shouldn't even be there, as it goes against the terms of use, but it's hard to enforce something on a website that is not yours!). That's where I see a ton of the drama coming from, and it doesn't have to do with popularity, well, not always. It usually is because they don't have to follow any rules over there, then they think the same applies for Scratch, get banned, stir up drama on G+, and then repeat the cycle all over again with their friends protesting and stuff… of course then again there are some on G+ who just follow all of the rules on Scratch and break this stereotype, but about the problem of protesting bans, G+ is where it mostly comes from…

I think that you're really exaggerating the problems that come from love its. The Scratch Team has removed Add Everything studios for search bars, the numbers on the studios, the followers numbers, the permissions of a curator to delete everything in a studio… but wars on Scratch still remain. People are still angry at AEs and try to sabotage them. Follow for follow still exists. “Can you follow me” is still a phrase I hear often. It's not going to change. Taking away features, statistics, and random tools in Scratch really isn't going to fix the community once and for all.

Did I mention love-its?

The whole follows4fame stuff entirely evolves around the followers bar since that shows how many followers one has. I agree about Google+ though, however things on external sites can't change. G+ is used by Scratchers because they can stir up drama, cause trouble, and be out of the ST's reach. Calling things ‘wars’ is a big exaggeration. I've not seen guns, tanks and other military machines firing at each other over the front page. Its merely just quite a few Scratchers having a prolonged argument over something so ridiculously petty.

xD Nooooo not the love its as welllllll!!!!! Seriously though… I don't think Scratch needs to be picked apart with all of its features, I know they have some flaws, but you'll always have that. And I find it really useful (not to mention motivating) to see my follower numbers, and even in the start of Scratch when I had hardly any “friends”, I was always excited to get the message telling me that somebody liked my projects enough to add me. (Side note: and since 1.4 didn't have a follower or friends bar, I was also wondering how many I had…) And I do like it still.

As for my terming “war”, it had to do with the following words in your post that I replied to… rebels… text army… death of Scratch. Although yeah, I think that “dispute” would be a better fit.

I think that you should still be notified if someone follows you, but if people know the follower number, it can cause lots of trouble. Removing it will leave the young kids on the website without an excuse to complain about followers, because they won't know how many they will have.

PrincessPanda_test_ wrote:

No support, still. Also please don't make duplicate topics.

Why don't you support this? I appreciate feedback.

Alberknyis wrote:

People who cheat to get followers hardly gain popularity, or even many followers. So many people have copied griffpatches paper minecraft, but have you bothered to check them out? No, because you know which one's the original project.

And look, if people who don't get followers leave Scratch then imagine what happens when followers disappear completely :\

Several people have managed to get followers off of cheating. Sadly I cannot tell you them because of scratch's name and shame rules. If followers disappear completely, people will treat each other as equals. Also, scratchers will join the website after the changes are made, and won't have any idea followers ever existed!

Alberknyis wrote:

cheeseeater wrote:

Who needs to see who someone is following anyhow?

It's this thing called curiosity. It's a pretty powerful thing, if you didn't notice.


As for the other parts of your speech, your text army you're talking about is as problematic as ping pong balls against a navy destroyer. The plague is hardly a plague, as most people comment on the banned users comment section instead of contacting the actual the Scratch team. Followers were not the death of Scratch, but advertisers were.

And

FOLLOWERS

DO NOT

EQUAL

FAME.

ever. They never did.

I'll be accurate though. Followers come close to equaling fame sometimes. Only when the user actually does something good though.

Some people thing followers are fame, and that's what this is trying to solve. The fake CHD with @Massie_Block would've never happened if there was no follower bar. One of my friends wouldn't of been banned if it weren't for the follower bar. If you don't like F4F or advertising, you should support because both of them are linked to follower hunger.

LionsStair wrote:

Alberknyis wrote:

cheeseeater wrote:

No need to be snappy; we're all entitled to our opinions no matter if you agree with them or not.

This is me. I communicate differently from other people. We're all unique, right? So I hope you're okay with that.

I'm reading the rest of your comment now.

Take a deep breath, then drink some water.
Now post, try not to go “crazy”. No offense meant.


I say we shouldn't remove it.

I mean the reason for followers was for people to be up-to-date with their favorite scratcher or see what cool project they have, not just follow someone for no reason. You should report anyone asking for Follow4Follow. What are you gonna do without followers and you want to find a certain scratcher between millions! So I say keep it not remove, I've seen more often to just rename followers.

I think that the bar showing people you are following should stay, but the bar showing your followers should be removed. Another solution would be to delete the numbers.