Paddle2See wrote:

Scratch has never been about competition - you don't see contests put on by the Scratch Team. The reason is that Scratch is primarily intended as a learning language to be used by programming beginners. The joy of creation and learning while having fun with your friends provides a lot of incentive to learn Scratch without formal competition. I suspect that this will continue.

One area where competition is currently incorporated on Scratch is “the trend” and a couple of the homepage rows. We have seen how too much focus on these areas can negatively affect the community - further reinforcement of the above.

This is the reasoning why official contests prior to the membership were rejected. Scratch has taken great lengths to avoid fostering a competitive environment. Evidently, something about this has changed since the Winter Cheer Design Challenge for Scratch members is an official contest.

If they are willing to host official contests now, I think it would be great to have an occasional contest that is available for non-members to participate in. I'm imagining that at least once every year, non-members can participate in one of the official contests Scratch is now offering. This could potentially attract more users to join the membership by showing them what they can experience more often.

Now, keep in mind that the Winter Cheer Design Challenge's prize seems to be rather inconsequential. I'm not suggesting that we receive a more traditional take on Scratch contests. I want these contest prizes to remain superficial and niche as opposed to something more substantial. I think that keeping that both avoids making Scratch “about competition” while bringing the community together for something fun that they can learn from.

If you think my suggestion is lacking somewhere, please let me know so that I can evaluate how to best address it.

rejected

TOLoRS wrote:

7.17 Official contests on Scratch
Scratchers often host contests about making a certain type of Scratch project, and it has been suggested that the Scratch Team should host an official contest. However, Scratch is not about competition; the Scratch Team would prefer to emphasize the fun of creativity and learning without doing so in a competitive environment. Scratchers are still allowed to host their own contests, but the Scratch Team will not hold any official contests.

CodeComet6161 wrote:

rejected

TOLoRS wrote:

7.17 Official contests on Scratch
Scratchers often host contests about making a certain type of Scratch project, and it has been suggested that the Scratch Team should host an official contest. However, Scratch is not about competition; the Scratch Team would prefer to emphasize the fun of creativity and learning without doing so in a competitive environment. Scratchers are still allowed to host their own contests, but the Scratch Team will not hold any official contests.

I know about the TOLORS entry. The Winter Cheer Design Challenge contradicts the entry, so I'm seeing if anything has changed. I also literally quoted the rejection post.

CodeComet6161 wrote:

rejected

TOLoRS wrote:

7.17 Official contests on Scratch
Scratchers often host contests about making a certain type of Scratch project, and it has been suggested that the Scratch Team should host an official contest. However, Scratch is not about competition; the Scratch Team would prefer to emphasize the fun of creativity and learning without doing so in a competitive environment. Scratchers are still allowed to host their own contests, but the Scratch Team will not hold any official contests.

There's a scratch official contest already, so I guess un-rejected?
EDIT: Ninja'd

If anyone has concerns about my suggestion still being rejected, please state why you believe it may still be rejected. It may help clear up confusion surrounding whether the official contest truly nullifies the previous rejection.

Bump

I support this, it's almost “pay to win” to require people to pay money to enter the contest to begin with, and they aren't even guaranteed a chance at winning or having any sort of prize. Some contests open to all Scratchers would be fair.

M1mikyu wrote:

I support this, it's almost “pay to win” to require people to pay money to enter the contest to begin with, and they aren't even guaranteed a chance at winning or having any sort of prize. Some contests open to all Scratchers would be fair.

That's also a reason I suggested this; It doesn't make much sense for members to receive a previously rejected suggestion when those who would have benefited from the original suggestion get nothing. I'm aware that Scratch needs to provide incentive for the membership, so non-members getting the ability to join at least one official contest a year sounds like a reasonable compromise.

support either that or don't have member contests! it feels unfair!

The Scratch Foundation could explain that what they have created is a Scratch Foundation contest, intended to be separate from the Scratch website. From what I read, no one who isn’t a member or a ‘fan’ would receive the email that has the winning entry.

There is probably a very high cost to having a contest on the Scratch website itself. The number of Scratch Foundation members is much smaller (I’m not sure if this is true but someone said there was about 50 members so far plus all of the Scratch Youth advisory board members).

10goto10 wrote:

The Scratch Foundation could explain that what they have created is a Scratch Foundation contest, intended to be separate from the Scratch website. From what I read, no one who isn’t a member or a ‘fan’ would receive the email that has the winning entry.

I didn't think about that, but I did in part make this suggestion to figure out if and how 7.17 remains valid. I imagine posting the winner(s) in the announcements forum or creating a studio for the contest may prove to be the best communication method for the site. Alternatively, they could send a message directly to the user(s) that won, since they have the infrastructure to do so.

10goto10 wrote:

There is probably a very high cost to having a contest on the Scratch website itself. The number of Scratch Foundation members is much smaller (I’m not sure if this is true but someone said there was about 50 members so far plus all of the Scratch Youth advisory board members).

That's a good point, and it may be why this suggestion would still be rejected. However, there is the matter of being able to set applications and selecting a particular number of participants. I'm also curious to see how this point would stand if the membership numbers rise significantly.

DarthVader4Life wrote:

I want these contest prizes to remain superficial and niche as opposed to something more substantial.

Agreed — but what could these prizes be, and how would they differ from the members-only content prizes?

Za-Chary wrote:

DarthVader4Life wrote:

I want these contest prizes to remain superficial and niche as opposed to something more substantial.

Agreed — but what could these prizes be, and how would they differ from the members-only content prizes?

It's a bit difficult to think of stuff that isn't worth getting particularly competitive over, like getting on the 2025 Holiday Card. It's a neat, one-off thing that is not a huge deal. Perhaps one of the contests is designing a Halloween backdrop and the winner gets their backdrop used the Halloween project that the Scratch Cat account releases sometime around the holiday. Another potential contest is designing art in the bitmap or vector editor and getting featured in a promotional video for that editor and its capabilities.

DarthVader4Life wrote:

It's a bit difficult to think of stuff that isn't worth getting particularly competitive over, like getting on the 2025 Holiday Card. It's a neat, one-off thing that is not a huge deal. Perhaps one of the contests is designing a Halloween backdrop and the winner gets their backdrop used the Halloween project that the Scratch Cat account releases sometime around the holiday. Another potential contest is designing art in the bitmap or vector editor and getting featured in a promotional video for that editor and its capabilities.

Other ideas could be picking projects/art to feature in promotional updates, such as emails or even the Annual Report.

No support, people would get mad at losing and I agree that scratch should be fun. But i do understnad what you are going for

wei04787 wrote:

No support, people would get mad at losing and I agree that scratch should be fun. But i do understnad what you are going for

You could say the same about the official contest Scratch already has available for members. There is clearly a shift in how the logic of the original rejection applies. In part, I made this suggestion to figure out what that shift is.

Scratch has made many changes that people have gotten upset with over the years. One example is the studio update a while back. In fact, I have a rejected suggestion from when it was first announced. In the past, potentially making users upset hasn't been something that stopped the ST before. Although, official contests are of a more frivolous nature.

Scratch's efforts to cultivate a non-competitive environment is something that I wholly want to maintain (which is why I want the contests to remain insubstantial and niche), but that is not to say any and all competition would ruin this. In fact, some level of competition is fun, healthy even. I think the people who would be mad at losing do not number greatly enough to be of any real consequence. And they could have an opportunity to learn how to deal with disappointment in a low-risk environment.

Bump.

Bump.

Bump IV: Electric Bugaloo^2.

Bump V: Migrating to the Front Page.