Recently the phrase “random number to avoid spam” abbreviated has been put on the blacklist on the comment filter. This is what people used when they were sending out messages to large amounts of people. While there is potential for spam, a lot of users used it because they moved, or the user signed up for some kind of notification from them.

Which brings me to my question: is it okay to send the same message to multiple people if I put something like “Hi, @username” instead of “random number to avoid spam?”

If it's not, is it okay to use studio invites, or ask people to follow a specific topic for notifications?
this is probably a really dumb question but idk

petspez wrote:

Which brings me to my question: is it okay to send the same message to multiple people if I put something like “Hi, @username” instead of “random number to avoid spam?”

That's probably fine, although “random number to avoid spam” being caught by the filter is news to me. And if I can post this forum post without any issues, I suspect it's not that exact phrase which is blacklisted.

petspez wrote:

If it's not, is it okay to use studio invites,

I think so, but it seems to be frowned upon by some members of the Scratch community to use studio invites for announcements or advertisements.

petspez wrote:

or ask people to follow a specific topic for notifications?

This I don't think would work, because I don't think there's any place on the forums for user-specific announcements.

Za-Chary wrote:

petspez wrote:

Which brings me to my question: is it okay to send the same message to multiple people if I put something like “Hi, @username” instead of “random number to avoid spam?”

That's probably fine, although “random number to avoid spam” being caught by the filter is news to me. And if I can post this forum post without any issues, I suspect it's not that exact phrase which is blacklisted.

he said the abbriviation (RNTS but not the cool emoji) which you can see is blocked

Za-Chary wrote:

This I don't think would work, because I don't think there's any place on the forums for user-specific announcements.

Well, there is the Show & Tell forum, the Things I'm Making And Creating forum, and the Things I'm Reading And Playing forum, all of which might be able to be used for announcements by users, with interested users simply following discussions. I don't know if the ST will like it though.

Za-Chary wrote:

petspez wrote:

Which brings me to my question: is it okay to send the same message to multiple people if I put something like “Hi, @username” instead of “random number to avoid spam?”

That's probably fine, although “random number to avoid spam” being caught by the filter is news to me. And if I can post this forum post without any issues, I suspect it's not that exact phrase which is blacklisted.

You can say the phrase, but you can't say the abrreviation of it.


I think that answers my question though, and I can do pings again. Thanks

BigNate469 wrote:

Za-Chary wrote:

This I don't think would work, because I don't think there's any place on the forums for user-specific announcements.

Well, there is the Show & Tell forum, the Things I'm Making And Creating forum, and the Things I'm Reading And Playing forum, all of which might be able to be used for announcements by users, with interested users simply following discussions. I don't know if the ST will like it though.

TIMAC and TIRAP are for things outside of Scratch, so I don't think general Scratcher announcements belong there. The Show & Tell forum might work, but that's really more for advertising Scratch projects as far as I know.