I was attempting to add as many followers of @KIKOKO_ to a @KIKOKO_ project revival studio, and then I got a message for supposedly spamming invites and it was “annoying to the community”. I would be happy to debate as soon as someone lists out some points.

Because spamming invites floods peoples' notifications. It's also considered very bad etiquette.

Firstly, it's not spamming one particular user, it's giving one for each person. This only takes up one notification space, the same as a comment would. Also, would you care to explain why it is bad etiquette?

cookedasparagus8 wrote:

Because spamming invites floods peoples' notifications. It's also considered very bad etiquette.

I will also have to prepare myself for spam, as my inbox will be flooded with curator invotes, followers and comments, which is precisely what happened to me

C_E_T1Alt wrote:

Firstly, it's not spamming one particular user, it's giving one for each person. This only takes up one notification space, the same as a comment would. Also, would you care to explain why it is bad etiquette?

If you're spamming it to all of the user's followers, it's really rude. Also, if the user isn't someone you know, it's quite random.

cookedasparagus8 wrote:

C_E_T1Alt wrote:

Firstly, it's not spamming one particular user, it's giving one for each person. This only takes up one notification space, the same as a comment would. Also, would you care to explain why it is bad etiquette?

If you're spamming it to all of the user's followers, it's really rude. Also, if the user isn't someone you know, it's quite random.

I'd like to point out that you didn't quite explain it was bad etiquette because I would like to know the root causes of it being rude. It is also quite impossible to get all their followers because they have 21000 followers. Furthermore, it is quite random, but my first point against that is the people I'm inviting will almost certainly know about the project we are trying to revive. The second point is that I'm getting invited by “random” people as well.

Spam doesn't always refer to one person getting lots of messages. It also refers to one person getting a single unwanted message, especially when this same message is getting sent to multiple different people.

When I get an email from some unknown person/organization asking to recruit me for a research position that pays $500 per week, I consider that to be spam, because I'm not looking for any research positions right now. When I get a Scratch comment on my profile asking me to spread a certain message to as many people as possible “or else I will be cursed,” that is spam because it is asking me to spread a certain message (and presumably that message was already sent to multiple people).

Sending multiple studio invites is thus considered spam because not everybody wants such studio invites. Note that just because someone follows you, that does not mean they know about your studio and/or want to be a part of it. I recommend only inviting those who you know for sure would be interested in such a studio (which “as many followers of a specific Scratcher” does not describe).

Za-Chary wrote:

Spam doesn't always refer to one person getting lots of messages. It also refers to one person getting a single unwanted message, especially when this same message is getting sent to multiple different people.

When I get an email from some unknown person/organization asking to recruit me for a research position that pays $500 per week, I consider that to be spam, because I'm not looking for any research positions right now. When I get a Scratch comment on my profile asking me to spread a certain message to as many people as possible “or else I will be cursed,” that is spam because it is asking me to spread a certain message (and presumably that message was already sent to multiple people).

Sending multiple studio invites is thus considered spam because not everybody wants such studio invites. Note that just because someone follows you, that does not mean they know about your studio and/or want to be a part of it. I recommend only inviting those who you know for sure would be interested in such a studio (which “as many followers of a specific Scratcher” does not describe).

Perhaps so. However, all you need to do is to ignore it if you don't want to join, and besides this studio is supposed to let others know about it anyways. In fact, like I said before, the person getting spammed the most because of the invites is me.

C_E_T1Alt wrote:

Perhaps so. However, all you need to do is to ignore it if you don't want to join, and besides this studio is supposed to let others know about it anyways.

In that case, this is advertising, which is also against the Community Guidelines (due to spam).

There are lots of things we could just ignore. Insults, for one. But some people would prefer that something be done about someone who writes an insulting comment rather than just ignoring them.

C_E_T1Alt wrote:

In fact, like I said before, the person getting spammed the most because of the invites is me.

This does not change the fact that other people are also getting spammed.

There is also a related issue. For example, sometimes Scratchers find it fun to write on their profile “Spam my profile, give me as many comments as possible” or something like that. Yes, they are asking for spam, but the Scratch Team still doesn't appreciate this. It causes some moderation issues, possibly some server issues, and potentially suggests to Scratchers that it is okay to spam on others' profiles. It would a good idea to serve as a role model for the community and not encourage spam. I'm not sure if this entirely relates to studio invites specifically, but it at least sheds some light on why saying things like “if I'm the one getting spammed then it's okay” isn't as harmless as it may seem.

Za-Chary wrote:

Sending multiple studio invites is thus considered spam because not everybody wants such studio invites.

Is that Scratch Team official stance and what metric do they use to enforce it? All spam is said to be reportable but you’ve defined a type of spam that might not be reportable, so it is not spam. That recruitment letter you got would not spam on this site because the sender had a reasonable expectation that it would not be out of context for you. The OP question was does the scratch team take action against mass public invites and was not should someone report an invite because they didn’t want it. The concern that the Scratch Team has about bulk invites is probably when these invites result in a series of unconstructive posts by the community who discuss being upset by it.

Za-Chary wrote:

Note that just because someone follows you, that does not mean they know about your studio and/or want to be a part of it. I recommend only inviting those who you know for sure would be interested in such a studio (which “as many followers of a specific Scratcher” does not describe).

You cannot ask someone if they want to be a curator of a studio because that is advertising. What is the metric to ‘be sure’ that someone is interested if you can’t ask?

Sending an invite to multiple people who each showed some involvement, or interest in what you are doing or in the studio’s theme is part of the way that studios work. Those invites are not out of context. If I invite multiple people to join my violin duet studio because they each have made a violin playing project it’s not spam because it is all in the context of an interest that they each have shown, even if they don’t want to get any studio invites.

Maybe a moderator can add more clarity but right now we can’t ask before sending an invite and we don’t have an official metric to know when when someone is likely to be interested.

I think it is the large amount of invites in a short period of time that is the problem for the Scratch Team.

10goto10 wrote:

All spam is said to be reportable but you’ve defined a type of spam that might not be reportable, so it is not spam. That recruitment letter you got would not spam on this site because the sender had a reasonable expectation that it would not be out of context for you.

Not having the infrastructure to report a particular instance of abuse is not sufficient grounds to claim that that abuse is permitted. Take classes, for example; there isn't a way to report those, so is it then fine to abuse that feature? No, we have the ability to use Contact Us to notify the ST of the abuse. We'd be able to do the same here.

Also, your example is situational. Getting the recruitment letter is great if you're interested, but it's only good for kindling if you're not. It gets especially annoying when you receive multiple. As such, it would be considered spam depending on the recipient's interest, especially if they've received multiple.

According to the Wiki, in Scratch “ Spam is the act of posting content unrelated to the situation where it is posted in, which is likely to annoy other users.”

Spam is a made up word. You can use it however you want. But in Scratch, something that is content related is not spam. It might have some other fault (not honest, insulting, asking for personal information, so on) but it’s not spam just because it is unwanted since it has to also be unrelated to it’s situation.

Everything is reportable through contact us. Things that are not proper subjects to being reported are things that don’t violate the rules. Just saying “I didn’t want to see this” is not a proper reportable subject.

Studio invites where a manager has misjudged someone’s interest should not be a reportable event.


The OP question was about massive invites that actually cause a disruption in the community and why the Scratch Team does not want to let that happen.

10goto10 wrote:

The OP question was about massive invites that actually cause a disruption in the community and why the Scratch Team does not want to let that happen.

Actually, to make it slightly clearer, why my situation above was supposedly disruptive.

I have not researched your specific situation. In another case, maybe related, users started comparing notes about being invited and then began a cluster of unconstructive, negative comments. This is not how the moderators want their website to be used.

A person might be able to avoid this by starting out their studio description with a clear explanation of why you thought your studio would be of interest to them and then ask them to kindly disregard the invitation if it was not something of interested. I don’t know that this would avoid the problem of people feeling triggered by the invitation but maybe.

Of course this assumes you have a really good reason why large numbers of someone’s followers would be good candidates to be curators for your studio. It’s probably not intended to replace the broken studio discovery feature with studio invites.

I could see someone inviting the followers of mres and andresmh to a studio to collect projects about the history of Scratch but I would want to make it very clear in the studio description why I think there was a strong interest link. Even then I think I would do a great deal of filtering like only invite users who had recently commented about something historical on one of the profiles.

10goto10 wrote:

Za-Chary wrote:

Sending multiple studio invites is thus considered spam because not everybody wants such studio invites.

Is that Scratch Team official stance and what metric do they use to enforce it? All spam is said to be reportable but you’ve defined a type of spam that might not be reportable, so it is not spam.

My understanding is that this is the Scratch Team official stance, yes. Sending a few invites to your friends who might actually be interested in joining the studio is fine. But sending lots of invites to random Scratchers is spam.

It depends on context, of course. As a similar example, it's fine to send the same message to several Scratchers if they were participants in a contest you hosted and you want them to see the results. But if you send random Scratchers a message asking them to love and favorite your new platformer game, that is (reportable) spam. Even though the first example sends multiple messages like the second example, the context is different.

10goto10 wrote:

That recruitment letter you got would not spam on this site because the sender had a reasonable expectation that it would not be out of context for you.

This is a bit irrelevant, but note that I never received an recruitment letter.

10goto10 wrote:

You cannot ask someone if they want to be a curator of a studio because that is advertising. What is the metric to ‘be sure’ that someone is interested if you can’t ask?

For example, I would only ask my closest Scratch friends, particularly those who already seemed interested in the projects/studios that I've released before (they commented in the project/studio, loved/favorited my projects, etc.).

10goto10 wrote:

Sending an invite to multiple people who each showed some involvement, or interest in what you are doing or in the studio’s theme is part of the way that studios work. Those invites are not out of context. If I invite multiple people to join my violin duet studio because they each have made a violin playing project it’s not spam because it is all in the context of an interest that they each have shown, even if they don’t want to get any studio invites.

You are correct, although it might be respectful to ask directly first if you can send them an invite. (Some Scratchers are very against studio invites…)

Note however that I think the context of inviting violin enthusiasts to a studio for violin enthusiasts is much different than the context of inviting all of one Scratcher's followers to a studio about that Scratcher.

10goto10 wrote:

I think it is the large amount of invites in a short period of time that is the problem for the Scratch Team.

Yes, because that is spam.

10goto10 wrote:

I could see someone inviting the followers of mres and andresmh to a studio to collect projects about the history of Scratch but I would want to make it very clear in the studio description why I think there was a strong interest link. Even then I think I would do a great deal of filtering like only invite users who had recently commented about something historical on one of the profiles.

Exactly. People follow others for different reasons. Some follow @mres because they like his projects. Others follow @mres solely because he was one of the creators of Scratch. Neither of these groups of people are necessarily interested in other Scratchers' projects about the history of Scratch. You'd want to be very sure that anyone whom you send an invite to are specifically interested in the history of Scratch.

Za-Chary wrote:

-snip-
My understanding is that this is the Scratch Team official stance, yes. Sending a few invites to your friends who might actually be interested in joining the studio is fine. But sending lots of invites to random Scratchers is spam.

Do you have a reference for that because there is nothing in the online descriptions of studios that gives this warning and it would be an odd requirement for a Scratcher to have to anticipate if someone was going to be triggered by a interest-relevant studio invite. Again, studio invites are not out of context in the situation where there is a plausible reason for the receiver to be interested even if that person has a personal dislike for all invitations. This would likely be an audit finding if the Scratch Team provided a way for Scratchers to reach out to potentially interested candidates and then punished them because the receiver was triggered by a normal website feature. We keep using the word “spam” but on this site all spam is reportable and spam must be something that is out of context (Both of these are from the Wiki) and therefore not solely defined by anything that you didn't want to see.

And there is the question of how does a moderator determine the amount of randomness between two Scratchers. Is that something that can be made to be consistent between two moderators? Is that really a good use of their time? How would this be evaluated in an audit?

You're saying that studio invitations must have some pre-established, vague friendship connection but all I read is just expecting a common interest “related to a particular theme, idea, or prompt”. https://resources.scratch.mit.edu/www/guides/en/scratch-studios-guide.pdf

Za-Chary wrote:

But if you send random Scratchers a message asking them to love and favorite your new platformer game, that is (reportable) spam.

There is no point in mixing rules for messages with rules for invitations. Studio invites are a separate communicating method that the Scratch Team created to support their concept of studios. They have special rules. They can only be sent once to each person and they have no custom context. I'm still looking for something that says we are responsible for determining the amount of randomness with another Scratcher and we are responsible if another Scratcher is triggered by receiving a studio invitation that is related to their demonstrated interests.

Za-Chary wrote:

10goto10 wrote:

-snip

You are correct, although it might be respectful to ask directly first if you can send them an invite. (Some Scratchers are very against studio invites…)

-snip-

Regretfully I can't find a reference but I'm confident I've seen a warning that sending an unsolicited message to someone about participating in a studio is considered advertising. Yes, I realize that some people are also triggered by a studio invite but that's a Scratch Team provided feature to support studios and therefore is part of the normal activity on this site. People should expect to receive subject-relevant studio invitations if they are going to be on this site. Or else the Scratch Team needs to provide a consistent metric of randomness that we can use between ourselves and another scratcher before deciding to send a studio invitation.

Za-Chary wrote:

10goto10 wrote:

I think it is the large amount of invites in a short period of time that is the problem for the Scratch Team.

Yes, because that is spam.

But saying that does not help the OP. The question was, why is that a annoying to the community. The ‘community’ does not know they have received a large number of invitations unless the response to that is a cluster of negative, unconstructive comments. You keep insisting that sending studio invitations to people who are not friends with that person is reason for an alert and I keep saying it was probably the online reaction that a group expressed in negative comments over receiving a studio invitation that was unrelated to their interests.

Za-Chary wrote:

-snip-
You'd want to be very sure that anyone whom you send an invite to are specifically interested in the history of Scratch.

Again we come done to the amount of necessary due diligence expected by the moderators when people pick candidates.

I've read through this again and I can't find any find any guideline that someone needs to be ‘very sure’. It does say “A studio is a space on Scratch where users can come together to make, share, and collect
projects related to a particular theme, idea, or prompt” so that probably implies that some amount of evident pre-existing interest exist before sending an invite but nothing implies the level of being ‘very sure’.

This issue in this topic was to try and guess what this moderator meant by saying that sending bulk invitations was annoying to the community. Is it because some people are annoyed when they get any studio invites? People don't want to see studio invites that don't relate to them or to their interests? People don't want to see studio invites that don't come from their ‘friends’? The Scratch Team wants to avoid having clusters of negative unconstructive posts about a bulk studio invitation? Which of these should require moderator action and how do you write that as a procedure that is consistent between moderators and something that can then communicated with us.

10goto10 wrote:

Za-Chary wrote:

-snip-
My understanding is that this is the Scratch Team official stance, yes. Sending a few invites to your friends who might actually be interested in joining the studio is fine. But sending lots of invites to random Scratchers is spam.

Do you have a reference for that because there is nothing in the online descriptions of studios that gives this warning and it would be an odd requirement for a Scratcher to have to anticipate if someone was going to be triggered by a interest-relevant studio invite. Again, studio invites are not out of context in the situation where there is a plausible reason for the receiver to be interested even if that person has a personal dislike for all invitations. This would likely be an audit finding if the Scratch Team provided a way for Scratchers to reach out to potentially interested candidates and then punished them because the receiver was triggered by a normal website feature. We keep using the word “spam” but on this site all spam is reportable and spam must be something that is out of context (Both of these are from the Wiki) and therefore not solely defined by anything that you didn't want to see.

And there is the question of how does a moderator determine the amount of randomness between two Scratchers. Is that something that can be made to be consistent between two moderators? Is that really a good use of their time? How would this be evaluated in an audit?

You're saying that studio invitations must have some pre-established, vague friendship connection but all I read is just expecting a common interest “related to a particular theme, idea, or prompt”. https://resources.scratch.mit.edu/www/guides/en/scratch-studios-guide.pdf

Za-Chary wrote:

But if you send random Scratchers a message asking them to love and favorite your new platformer game, that is (reportable) spam.

There is no point in mixing rules for messages with rules for invitations. Studio invites are a separate communicating method that the Scratch Team created to support their concept of studios. They have special rules. They can only be sent once to each person and they have no custom context. I'm still looking for something that says we are responsible for determining the amount of randomness with another Scratcher and we are responsible if another Scratcher is triggered by receiving a studio invitation that is related to their demonstrated interests.

Za-Chary wrote:

10goto10 wrote:

-snip

You are correct, although it might be respectful to ask directly first if you can send them an invite. (Some Scratchers are very against studio invites…)

-snip-

Regretfully I can't find a reference but I'm confident I've seen a warning that sending an unsolicited message to someone about participating in a studio is considered advertising. Yes, I realize that some people are also triggered by a studio invite but that's a Scratch Team provided feature to support studios and therefore is part of the normal activity on this site. People should expect to receive subject-relevant studio invitations if they are going to be on this site. Or else the Scratch Team needs to provide a consistent metric of randomness that we can use between ourselves and another scratcher before deciding to send a studio invitation.

Za-Chary wrote:

10goto10 wrote:

I think it is the large amount of invites in a short period of time that is the problem for the Scratch Team.

Yes, because that is spam.

But saying that does not help the OP. The question was, why is that a annoying to the community. The ‘community’ does not know they have received a large number of invitations unless the response to that is a cluster of negative, unconstructive comments. You keep insisting that sending studio invitations to people who are not friends with that person is reason for an alert and I keep saying it was probably the online reaction that a group expressed in negative comments over receiving a studio invitation that was unrelated to their interests.

Za-Chary wrote:

-snip-
You'd want to be very sure that anyone whom you send an invite to are specifically interested in the history of Scratch.

Again we come done to the amount of necessary due diligence expected by the moderators when people pick candidates.

I've read through this again and I can't find any find any guideline that someone needs to be ‘very sure’. It does say “A studio is a space on Scratch where users can come together to make, share, and collect
projects related to a particular theme, idea, or prompt” so that probably implies that some amount of evident pre-existing interest exist before sending an invite but nothing implies the level of being ‘very sure’.

This issue in this topic was to try and guess what this moderator meant by saying that sending bulk invitations was annoying to the community. Is it because some people are annoyed when they get any studio invites? People don't want to see studio invites that don't relate to them or to their interests? People don't want to see studio invites that don't come from their ‘friends’? The Scratch Team wants to avoid having clusters of negative unconstructive posts about a bulk studio invitation? Which of these should require moderator action and how do you write that as a procedure that is consistent between moderators and something that can then communicated with us.

I don't think that unconstructive comments would be a problem. On the contrary, all the comments are like “Thanks for the invite”. So the amount sent? I don't think so either. My invite-per-eleven-to-twelve-second scheme would barely make a dent in the number of curator invites from Scratch as a whole.

SNIP UR QUOTES

C_E_T1Alt wrote:

I don't think that unconstructive comments would be a problem. On the contrary, all the comments are like “Thanks for the invite”. So the amount sent? I don't think so either. My invite-per-eleven-to-twelve-second scheme would barely make a dent in the number of curator invites from Scratch as a whole.

In a different case, the unconstructive comments that I had seen were from people taking to each other about being upset that they were being treated (basically) as nothing more than a name on list. But I didn’t look for those comments in your case, so I don’t know. My guess that some people don’t want to be dehumanized by just being a name on a list; that they want to feel personally noticed for their interests and sought after because of it.

Somewhere the moderators have an idea of what is too many invitations in a day. It might even vary by moderator. Maybe it’s something that is automatically flagged (I’ve seen guesses but nothing verified.)

But I think you were asking why something that can be individual dismissed in about a second would be upsetting to a community and I think it’s because some people are always triggered by an unexpected invitation. When people complain then moderator time is expended.

Update: It also occurred to me that this might not a trend that the Scratch Team wants to allow. The servers might not have trouble with your invitation load but what if this technique became common and was used by each person with a new studio.

cookedasparagus8 wrote:

SNIP UR QUOTES

I can't