Can I stop my students from messaging other creators and each other? They are not using it appropriately and I would like to mute that function, so they are not writing to each other or other creators, some of which are adults and should not be able to message my students. It is an incredibly invasive an inappropriate feature and I am thinking about closing my classroom as a result. I am shocked at the lack of security in scratch, allowing adults to get in flame wars with my elementary school students regarding games and content.

It is also extremely hard to figure out how to message scratch directly to deal with the problem. that is why I am posting this into the forum.

No

JoinScratchCreats wrote:

No

why are you laughing
——————————————————————
To main OP:
what did you see
also if you want to message ST then use
https://scratch.mit.edu/contact-us/

Not sure why scratch thinks it is appropriate for grown adults to be messaging kids and getting into arguments and flame wars with them. It is extremely inappropriate.

You can't turn off the ability to comment for an account. However, flame wars are against the Community Guidelines and should be reported by clicking “Report Comment” to the top right of the comment.

Fallingbrook5_6 wrote:

Not sure why scratch thinks it is appropriate for grown adults to be messaging kids and getting into arguments and flame wars with them. It is extremely inappropriate.

Use the report button and if doesn’t work then
https://scratch.mit.edu/contact-us/

Fallingbrook5_6 wrote:

Can I stop my students from messaging other creators and each other? They are not using it appropriately and I would like to mute that function, so they are not writing to each other or other creators, some of which are adults and should not be able to message my students. It is an incredibly invasive an inappropriate feature and I am thinking about closing my classroom as a result. I am shocked at the lack of security in scratch, allowing adults to get in flame wars with my elementary school students regarding games and content.

It is also extremely hard to figure out how to message scratch directly to deal with the problem. that is why I am posting this into the forum.

No, you cannot block messaging. You would have to try the offline editor. If you want to tell Srcath Team directly, use Contact Us.

edit: OMG NINJA'D FIVE TIMES

Fallingbrook5_6 wrote:

Not sure why scratch thinks it is appropriate for grown adults to be messaging kids and getting into arguments and flame wars with them. It is extremely inappropriate.

Context: I'm NOT saying Flame Wars are appropriate for Scratch
Thanks Za-Chary
It is, in fact, appropriate. Scratch's security is great, and will not tolerate any inappropriate behavior the students and other Scratchers have.

Sadly, you can't mute them from doing this. If Scratch didn't allow this, most Scratchers would get banned.

I don't know Teacher Accounts very well, but I'm inclined to believe that it is not possible to restrict your students from messaging others. The alternative is to close your classroom and continue to use Scratch with your students via the offline editor. This of course depends on whether your students have devices that can run the offline editor. It also depends on whether you have a good way to see your students' work; without an account, they cannot post their projects online, so they would have to email them to you or something.

Do note that Scratch does not exactly allow adults to get in flame wars with kids. Scratch has moderators that try to prevent this sort of behavior. The Report button is one way to stop this behavior; if you see anyone behaving inappropriately on the Scratch website (that is, in a way that violates the Scratch Community Guidelines), you should use the Report button to let the moderators know about it. You should also encourage others (e.g. your students) to use the Report button to stop inappropriate behavior. It's not an immediate solution, but the moderators usually act within a day or two, and hopefully the problem gets resolved.

If you would like to discuss this with the Scratch Team, the best way to reach out to them is to use Contact Us. There is a link at the bottom of the website. Click the “Get Help” button, and then the “Contact Us” button in the pop-up that appears, to send them an email.

To remove community features, you have a few options.
Option one, if your school IT Guys allow it(unlike mine blocking admit access to Terminal), you can get the offline editor here.
Contact the ST on questions only they can answer here
However, a more advanced version of the editor(actually, a fork of 1.x, but ingress) is https://snap.berkeley.edu which although outdated with its aesthetic, is fairly good at teaching programming.
Edit: fixed link, copy paste

For those saying flame wars are not possible, I just checked 2 of their accounts and they have several extensive insult battles on thier chats that the Scratch moderators didn't do a thing about. I have reported the bullying creators that were messaging my students, but you had better believe I will not be using scratch in the future, or only the offline editor. I will be keeping a much closer look at their profiles in the future, but I had not idea that Scratch just let ADULT CREATORS INSULT CHILDREN. I find this mindblowing. People get blocked or banned and then just create an alternative account.

Fallingbrook5_6 wrote:

Not sure why scratch thinks it is appropriate for grown adults to be messaging kids and getting into arguments and flame wars with them. It is extremely inappropriate.

report those comments

Fallingbrook5_6 wrote:

For those saying flame wars are not possible, I just checked 2 of their accounts and they have several extensive insult battles on thier chats that the Scratch moderators didn't do a thing about. I have reported the bullying creators that were messaging my students, but you had better believe I will not be using scratch in the future, or only the offline editor. I will be keeping a much closer look at their profiles in the future, but I had not idea that Scratch just let ADULT CREATORS INSULT CHILDREN. I find this mindblowing. People get blocked or banned and then just create an alternative account.

What if the people who are being insulted are being insulted by kids? And yes, flame wars can be slipped trhought the cracks but the best thing to do is to obviolsy report them. Moderation isn't perfect so.please help it.

Fallingbrook5_6 wrote:

For those saying flame wars are not possible, I just checked 2 of their accounts and they have several extensive insult battles on thier chats that the Scratch moderators didn't do a thing about. I have reported the bullying creators that were messaging my students, but you had better believe I will not be using scratch in the future, or only the offline editor. I will be keeping a much closer look at their profiles in the future, but I had not idea that Scratch just let ADULT CREATORS INSULT CHILDREN. I find this mindblowing. People get blocked or banned and then just create an alternative account.

how about this:
Scratch Foundation is non profit
and reading before saying ST mod sucks
https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/914480307/
And once again report and move on
or just:
https://scratch.mit.edu/contact-us/

Fallingbrook5_6 wrote:

For those saying flame wars are not possible, I just checked 2 of their accounts and they have several extensive insult battles on thier chats that the Scratch moderators didn't do a thing about. I have reported the bullying creators that were messaging my students, but you had better believe I will not be using scratch in the future, or only the offline editor. I will be keeping a much closer look at their profiles in the future, but I had not idea that Scratch just let ADULT CREATORS INSULT CHILDREN. I find this mindblowing. People get blocked or banned and then just create an alternative account.

Well, they aren’t allowed but it happens anyways. There will always be terrible people who harass others, and the best that one could do is report them. The ST will eventually IP ban them, but sadly there sin’t much more that can be done.
Snap doesn’t have social features if you wanna try that.

GlitchedThrough wrote:

Fallingbrook5_6 wrote:

For those saying flame wars are not possible, I just checked 2 of their accounts and they have several extensive insult battles on thier chats that the Scratch moderators didn't do a thing about. I have reported the bullying creators that were messaging my students, but you had better believe I will not be using scratch in the future, or only the offline editor. I will be keeping a much closer look at their profiles in the future, but I had not idea that Scratch just let ADULT CREATORS INSULT CHILDREN. I find this mindblowing. People get blocked or banned and then just create an alternative account.

Well, they aren’t allowed but it happens anyways. There will always be terrible people who harass others, and the best that one could do is report them. The ST will eventually IP ban them, but sadly there sin’t much more that can be done.
Snap doesn’t have social features if you wanna try that.

Snap has the forums.

106809nes wrote:

GlitchedThrough wrote:

Fallingbrook5_6 wrote:

For those saying flame wars are not possible, I just checked 2 of their accounts and they have several extensive insult battles on thier chats that the Scratch moderators didn't do a thing about. I have reported the bullying creators that were messaging my students, but you had better believe I will not be using scratch in the future, or only the offline editor. I will be keeping a much closer look at their profiles in the future, but I had not idea that Scratch just let ADULT CREATORS INSULT CHILDREN. I find this mindblowing. People get blocked or banned and then just create an alternative account.

Well, they aren’t allowed but it happens anyways. There will always be terrible people who harass others, and the best that one could do is report them. The ST will eventually IP ban them, but sadly there sin’t much more that can be done.
Snap doesn’t have social features if you wanna try that.

Snap has the forums.

Yeah, but not the other features, and the Snap forums are tough to find. They also use Discourse

There isn't any built-in function to block students from commenting on this site.

As others have said, the proper way to deal with this is to report the offending comments and/or send in a Contact Us ticket (link in the footer), as flamewars and heated arguments are indeed against the community guidelines.

Also, I checked out the flamewar you just mentioned, and it appears that no one there has a confirmed age nor has anyone mentioned they are an adult- Not all non-class scratch users are over the age of 18.

Scratch moderation is not perfect, and trust me, the moderators try the best they can dealing with their users, but considering there are less than 100 members on the scratch team for literal millions of user accounts and the organization that runs scratch itself is a nonprofit that relies on donations, their system isn't near-flawless. So at least keep that in mind.

Fallingbrook5_6 wrote:

Not sure why scratch thinks it is appropriate for grown adults to be messaging kids and getting into arguments and flame wars with them. It is extremely inappropriate.

While I do not see how its inapropriate for adults to chat with children (parents do that all the time, and I do expect that you, as a teacher, is also an adult), however, I do agree it would be inapropriate if they're getting into arguments and flamewars. In these cases, simply report anyone involved, and ST would issue punishment accordingly.

Of course, if you really dont want your students accesssing the chat feature, you could always us the offline editor

You could post a suggestion to add this in the suggestions subforum.