In the past years, a lot of people are now starting to just post things on the forums without ever reading the guides(e.g. suggestions directory, TOLORS, etc), and their post gets closed. This is becoming more significant of a problem as dead posts start pushing down good, legitimate posts. To solve this, we should dustbin “lazy” topics that didn't read the guides or delete them to free up space in the forums and let other posts get an opportunity to be seen. That way, people have to bump less to keep their topic relevant.

Or,

Alternative: Hide the new topic button for New Scratchers and force them to read required guides before they can make a new topic.

Dustbinning them seems like a better option than forcing new users to read guides, as it's possible they could just skim over a guide.
We'd definitely have to think of a way to decide what exactly counts as a “lazy” topic so that the lines don't get blurred.
I can see how this would help as even though closed topics do end up eventually getting pushed off the front page as they don't get any new posts, they still stay there for at least a day and it's quite annoying coming onto a forum only for most of the front page topics to be closed.

The Support Block :: operators

ST should add a message when a user firsts enters the forums saying to read tolors and other posts.

cookedasparagus8 wrote:

The Support Block :: operators

ST should add a message when a user firsts enters the forums saying to read tolors and other posts.

we shouldn't make them read tolors fully. It wasn't intended to be used that way.
Yes it should be advised to search tolors (ctrl+f) before making a suggestion however reading the whole thing alongside other stickies is unreasonable and nobody is gonna do that. Having your topic closed due to being a dupe or rejected is a learning experience but making lazy topics that are clearly uninformed and pointless just take up space in the subforum.

8xa wrote:

cookedasparagus8 wrote:

The Support Block :: operators

ST should add a message when a user firsts enters the forums saying to read tolors and other posts.

we shouldn't make them read tolors fully. It wasn't intended to be used that way.
Yes it should be advised to search tolors (ctrl+f) before making a suggestion however reading the whole thing alongside other stickies is unreasonable and nobody is gonna do that. Having your topic closed due to being a dupe or rejected is a learning experience but making lazy topics that are clearly uninformed and pointless just take up space in the subforum.

I agree. Maybe a summarized version after the user has been told a few times would be useful.

Or just make a popup, like

Welcome to the Suggestions Forum!
This forum is for suggesting features for Scratch, be it new blocks, themes or something else!
etc. etc.

FreshTheCat wrote:

Or just make a popup, like

Welcome to the Suggestions Forum!
This forum is for suggesting features for Scratch, be it new blocks, themes or something else!
etc. etc.

In support of this.

Remove

While technically closed topics push down legitimate topics, I argue that there are not too many of them to warrant any changes. It just takes a day or two for each closed topic to be pushed down sufficiently, so I don't think there's much of an issue here.

Admittedly, the forums have much more complicated rules. I think there is a benefit to closing topics because then a moderator will explain, in a casual setting, what specific rule they violated. Your proposed alternative is to delete the topic. But if it's deleted, they won't know what they did wrong unless the Scratch Team sends them an alert about it, which Scratchers tend to interpret as a more severe punishment.

Za-Chary wrote:

While technically closed topics push down legitimate topics, I argue that there are not too many of them to warrant any changes. It just takes a day or two for each closed topic to be pushed down sufficiently, so I don't think there's much of an issue here.

Admittedly, the forums have much more complicated rules. I think there is a benefit to closing topics because then a moderator will explain, in a casual setting, what specific rule they violated. Your proposed alternative is to delete the topic. But if it's deleted, they won't know what they did wrong unless the Scratch Team sends them an alert about it, which Scratchers tend to interpret as a more severe punishment.

Yes, but there's really no reason to keep around half of the suggestions from 2.0 as
A. They might be in 3.0
B. They provide no useful info

The problem is the other half, which might still be relevant for some reasons:
A. They haven't been added yet (but they'd probably still be open anyways, so who cares?)
B. They were mistakenly suggested by people not knowing that the suggestion already existed - but the suggestion isn't in 3.0, making the suggestion valid

Obviously, I can't really say much since I wasn't around for 2.0…

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