PLEASE READ
This is a suggestion to make Scratch better, so please don't report this topic to be closed because “This isn't related to Scratch.”

How would this make Scratch better?
A lot of people who help on the Scratch forums use Ocular to search for forums posts, which runs on ScratchDB; Ocular no longer indexes new posts, so it's basically outdated, and other websites like ScratchStats rely on ScratchDB to work too, but @DatOneLefty is having problems fixing ScratchDB (They're probably trying to move ScratchDB.) and it has taken over a month to fix, but Lefty has a life too; we should probably help them fix ScratchDB.

How would we do this?
The Scratch Team can contact Lefty's email. (All Scratch accounts have an email attached to them.)

Credit to @petspez for fixing an error.

scratchdb is closd source so i don't think the scratch team would like that.

undeterministic wrote:

scratchdb is closd source so i don't think the scratch team would like that.

They could privately ask Lefty to give them the source code.
“Sorry, you have to wait 60 seconds between posts.”

There's other search engines other than Ocular. The Duplicate Guide could just remove Ocular from the guide.

Also, Lefty might be banned, and I doubt the Scratch Team is going to help a banned user.

EDawg2011 wrote:

The Scratch Team could probably privately contact a Scratcher who knows how to contact Lefty through email (Every Scratch account has an email attached to it.) to learn how to contact Lefty, then the Scratch Team could help Lefty.

The Scratch Team created the website, they have access to all the emails.

petspez wrote:

EDawg2011 wrote:

The Scratch Team could probably privately contact a Scratcher who knows how to contact Lefty through email (Every Scratch account has an email attached to it.) to learn how to contact Lefty, then the Scratch Team could help Lefty.

The Scratch Team created the website, they have access to all the emails.

oh

petspez wrote:

There's other search engines other than Ocular. The Duplicate Guide could just remove Ocular from the guide.

It has posts up to January 24 though, but I think that could be difficult because not many know about ocular, an official Scratch forum search still hasn't been re-added, and search might not show correct results.

petspez wrote:

There's other search engines other than Ocular.

Hmm… like which?

ScratchDB is an unofficial project. It doesn't make sense for Scratch to go out of their way to help with a project of that sort. And it especially doesn't make sense for Scratch to help with something that actively taxes their servers

ajskateboarder wrote:

petspez wrote:

There's other search engines other than Ocular.

Hmm… like which?

That's the problem; a lot of forumers put all their eggs in one basket when searching for forum posts (Now there isn't a good forum search engine with good filters that's not super obscure anymore.), so this suggestion would be helpful.

ajskateboarder wrote:

And it especially doesn't make sense for Scratch to help with something that actively taxes their servers

I'm pretty sure the Scratch servers were always fine with ScratchDB.

ajskateboarder wrote:

ScratchDB is an unofficial project. It doesn't make sense for Scratch to go out of their way to help with a project of that sort. And it especially doesn't make sense for Scratch to help with something that actively taxes their servers

^ This. Ocular is and always was supported only by Scratchers and never received a direct endorsement from the Scratch Team as a whole. It is not an official Scratch feature. For this reason, it would probably be better for the Scratch Team to just implement their own forum search feature rather than attempt to support an unofficial feature.

We have all learned a lesson once again — relying on an unofficial feature can prove to eventually be unreliable. Scratchers had to learn their lesson the hard way when hacked blocks were not supported in Scratch 3.0. Scratchers had to learn their lesson the hard way when they could no longer use TurboWarp to view unshared projects. Now we're learning a new lesson the hard way. The Scratch Team could certainly try to implement a forum search feature if they are able to, but that doesn't mean that they must do so through Ocular/ScratchDB.

EDawg2011 wrote:

I'm pretty sure the Scratch servers were always fine with ScratchDB.

I don't know what “API” or “ScratchDB” generally refer to, and I don't know to what degree “ScratchDB” and “API” are related, but there have been several projects in the past that used API in a seemingly-innocent way but nevertheless ended up being taxing on the servers or causing some other sorts of problems.

EDawg2011 wrote:

ajskateboarder wrote:

And it especially doesn't make sense for Scratch to help with something that actively taxes their servers

I'm pretty sure the Scratch servers were always fine with ScratchDB.

scratchdb is reliant on the servers to be up not the other way around

First of all, you need to understand that Lefty does not have any obligation to maintain this, it costs money as well as time. As I get older, I don't even always use Scratch. It's not normal to stay on Scratch forever, and this user probably has a life unlike some of us.

Second of all, as much as you argue the opposite, this isn't related to Scratch. The ST has no control over this, and I doubt that they'll even respond. This is a third-party system that other users use and I don't think you understand that the ST has nothing to do with this.

han614698 wrote:

First of all, you need to understand that Lefty does not have any obligation to maintain this, it costs money as well as time. As I get older, I don't even always use Scratch. It's not normal to stay on Scratch forever, and this user probably has a life unlike some of us.

Second of all, as much as you argue the opposite, this isn't related to Scratch. The ST has no control over this, and I doubt that they'll even respond. This is a third-party system that other users use and I don't think you understand that the ST has nothing to do with this.

1. But if Lefty doesn't maintain it anymore, that would be SO inconvenient; websites forumers rely on would break.
2. It is related to Scratch; these services make Scratch more convenient to use.

EDawg2011 wrote:

han614698 wrote:

First of all, you need to understand that Lefty does not have any obligation to maintain this, it costs money as well as time. As I get older, I don't even always use Scratch. It's not normal to stay on Scratch forever, and this user probably has a life unlike some of us.

Second of all, as much as you argue the opposite, this isn't related to Scratch. The ST has no control over this, and I doubt that they'll even respond. This is a third-party system that other users use and I don't think you understand that the ST has nothing to do with this.

1. But if Lefty doesn't maintain it anymore, that would be SO inconvenient; websites forumers rely on would break.
2. It is related to Scratch; these services make Scratch more convenient to use.

But they're not by Scratch. Why should Scratch spend their time trying to get someone that they don't even know to maintain something…

Again, Lefty has no obligation. You don't understand that this is a website for 8 year olds…

han614698 wrote:

But they're not by Scratch. Why should Scratch spend their time trying to get someone that they don't even know to maintain something…

Again, Lefty has no obligation. You don't understand that this is a website for 8 year olds…

Ocular makes forum searching easy with filters; popular alternatives to Ocular don't have many filters. Ocular can make finding dupes pretty much painless.

EDawg2011 wrote:

han614698 wrote:

But they're not by Scratch. Why should Scratch spend their time trying to get someone that they don't even know to maintain something…

Again, Lefty has no obligation. You don't understand that this is a website for 8 year olds…

Ocular makes forum searching easy with filters; popular alternatives to Ocular don't have many filters. Ocular can make finding dupes pretty much painless.

NONE OF THIS IS CONNECTED TO SCRATCH

This is like Disney reaching out to fanfiction writers to help them. If Scratch wants these features they can add it themselves. If you are so obsessed with Lefty updating this, why don't you do it?

han614698 wrote:

If Scratch wants these features they can add it themselves.

But Scratch doesn't implement many suggestions; development is hard and they have to carefully select what features they want to implement.

han614698 wrote:

If you are so obsessed with Lefty updating this, why don't you do it?

I'm not a nerdy computer programmer who knows JavaScript.

Sorry if I sound rude.

EDawg2011 wrote:

han614698 wrote:

If Scratch wants these features they can add it themselves.

But Scratch doesn't implement many suggestions; development is hard and they have to carefully select what features they want to implement.

han614698 wrote:

If you are so obsessed with Lefty updating this, why don't you do it?

I'm not a nerdy computer programmer who knows JavaScript.

Sorry if I sound rude.

My point is that the ST is not going to collaborate with a user to make a feature they obviously don't want that badly.

han614698 wrote:

My point is that the ST is not going to collaborate with a user to make a feature they obviously don't want that badly.

Please, we can't survive without ScratchDB; it makes helping in Suggestions more convenient and what if you want to see stats of other users on ScratchStat?

methinks he is busy getting a degree and has no time to maintain some random scratch crawler

EDawg2011 wrote:

han614698 wrote:

But they're not by Scratch. Why should Scratch spend their time trying to get someone that they don't even know to maintain something…

Again, Lefty has no obligation. You don't understand that this is a website for 8 year olds…

Ocular makes forum searching easy with filters; popular alternatives to Ocular don't have many filters. Ocular can make finding dupes pretty much painless.

wait weren't you literally just talking about ScratchDB? I'm confused lol

EDawg2011 wrote:

han614698 wrote:

If Scratch wants these features they can add it themselves.

But Scratch doesn't implement many suggestions; development is hard

and I don't think it would be any different if they were “helping” someone, because as you just, development is indeed hard