Hello.

The explore page is acting weird, and it would be helpful to figure out what it is, and get some info about it


Here are some things i have noticed:

• Old projects being shown: The explore page usually shows old projects, before 2019. Even scratch 1.x projects.
  
  
• Changes rapidly: The page changes multiple times a day, but sometimes with changes.
  
  
• Remembers past versions: Sometimes shows versions that have already been shown already, but with some small changes.
  
  
• Tabs do not line up well with all: Clicking on a button like “Animations” or “Games” will show some projects that do not show up in “All”.
  

Also, i made a studio about it, so check this out: https://scratch.mit.edu/studios/51486808/

I hope the scratch team can resolve or talk about what is going on, as nothing has been spoken about it by them.

Anyways, Scratch On!

All projects on there are chosen by a group of humans, and ST seems to be cycling through previous featured projects

one thing I noticed is that before they started manually picking the projects, there were a lot of Japanese projects on trending. now there isn't. I wonder why that is.

ChristianScratcher1 wrote:

All projects on there are chosen by a group of humans, and ST seems to be cycling through previous featured projects

Makes somewhat more sense now. Possibly because late 2025 was really bad, down. Later 2025/Early 2026 was even worse.

Still, it would be nice for scratch team to actually make an topic about it.

Also if they would cycle through all projects, the dates shouldn't be all over the place? Like early 2025 should have late 2024 projects.

I think projects being indexed to be found on search should be prioritized over the trending page. ST is bassically trying to avoid indexing new projects so they don't appear on trending, thanks to the newer harmful ways of trolls.

Trending can stay the broken mess it is now, but properley indexing projects that would be able to get found on search should be the goal. The longer Scratch Team resists to this idea, the more disconnected the site gets, and the more people who finally agree with me.

Think: Why bother with having trending at this point, since it is currentley a broken mess of 10 year old projects, when Scratch Team knows it can't function in the prescene of trolls? Search still has a chance, and was created with saftey in mind, so give it.

Magudragon wrote:

I think projects being indexed to be found on search should be prioritized over the trending page. ST is bassically trying to avoid indexing new projects so they don't appear on trending, thanks to the newer harmful ways of trolls.

Trending can stay the broken mess it is now, but properley indexing projects that would be able to get found on search should be the goal. The longer Scratch Team resists to this idea, the more disconnected the site gets, and the more people who finally agree with me.

Think: Why bother with having trending at this point, since it is currentley a broken mess of 10 year old projects, when Scratch Team knows it can't function in the prescene of trolls? Search still has a chance, and was created with saftey in mind, so give it.

Exactly. projects from before 2016 are very common.

Shouldn't scratch team know if they actually have their 2016 (actually updated at 2019 if you look at the api) project on trending?

Proof from API:

{
“id”: 10128067,
“title”: “Dance Party”,
“description”: “@ricarose created this as part of the Scratchteam”,
“instructions”: “Add your own sprites to the dance party!”,
“visibility”: “notvisible”,
“public”: false,
“comments_allowed”: false,
“is_published”: false,
…
{

But what is more weird is the status of it. It says

“
”visibility“: ”notvisible“, (< INVALID)
”public“: false, (< INVALID)
”comments_allowed“: false, (< only true thing)
”is_published“: false, (< INVALID) ”

Check for yourself: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/10128067/

EDIT:
Seems like the API for the project listing (/projects/ instead of /explore/) is true, but not the one for showing trending listings?

At least it's better than when the explore page had nothing at all last year

labratguy1 wrote:

At least it's better than when the explore page had nothing at all last year

Exactly. There aren't too many solutions for getting projects manually reviewed right now since the ST is a small team, and having the Explore page exist, even in a “worse” state, is still better than not having it at all.

Look at the comments for those projects. Kids still like them. People are still inspired by them on ideas on what to make, or maybe they just had a bit of fun. As long as people are still enjoying it, should you really just take down the Explore page instead of using this system?

blessingj100 wrote:

labratguy1 wrote:

At least it's better than when the explore page had nothing at all last year

Exactly. There aren't too many solutions for getting projects manually reviewed right now since the ST is a small team, and having the Explore page exist, even in a “worse” state, is still better than not having it at all.

Look at the comments for those projects. Kids still like them. People are still inspired by them on ideas on what to make, or maybe they just had a bit of fun. As long as people are still enjoying it, should you really just take down the Explore page instead of using this system?

Yeah!
Butttttt,

Some of them are fun, but mostly bitmaps, because scratch 2 set them as default for new costumes, and the projects were made before 2019 (scratch 3.0 release)

Honestly most comments about them are about advertising as most of the users making them have either quit scratch, or have switched accounts.

Some of the comments are usually by searching tho.

And the amount of projects are small, and not much games at all. (selecting the games tab does not work properly, too.)

I think that turning it off is the worst option ever, but they could at least targeted more projects using scratch 3.

labratguy1 wrote:

At least it's better than when the explore page had nothing at all last year

Yeah.
I also think they could have turned it off due to the backlash before they turned it off or something?

After that, it was still not good or something (iirc)

This is not the correct topic, therefore, I will ask you to always redirect yourself to the Bugs and Glitches topic whenever you have questions similar to this nature. Thank you.

Kyubuki wrote:

This is not the correct topic, therefore, I will ask you to always redirect yourself to the Bugs and Glitches topic whenever you have questions similar to this nature. Thank you.

Thanks for telling me.

This is my first post ever after all.

windowsxp2k wrote:

Hello.

The explore page is acting weird, and it would be helpful to figure out what it is, and get some info about it


Here are some things i have noticed:

• Old projects being shown: The explore page usually shows old projects, before 2019. Even scratch 1.x projects.
  
  
• Changes rapidly: The page changes multiple times a day, but sometimes with changes.
  
  
• Remembers past versions: Sometimes shows versions that have already been shown already, but with some small changes.
  
  
• Tabs do not line up well with all: Clicking on a button like “Animations” or “Games” will show some projects that do not show up in “All”.
  

Also, i made a studio about it, so check this out: https://scratch.mit.edu/studios/51486808/

I hope the scratch team can resolve or talk about what is going on, as nothing has been spoken about it by them.

Anyways, Scratch On!

Now ST is manually picking and putting the projects there because there was ALOT(yeah, a LOT) of inappropriate content ending up there.

I hate the new trending page. They're limiting it to people they think are good, instead of letting the algorithm help.

AndPherbCodes wrote:

I hate the new trending page. They're limiting it to people they think are good, instead of letting the algorithm help.

That's not exactly true.

It's limiting projects to what the ST has SEEN, not that they think should be featured.

It pulls from FE projects, which means that it's not only featured projects that get on trending, but any projects that the ST has seen and marked to be ok (FE), whether they put it on Featured or not.

-Firey_on-paws-8 wrote:

Now ST is manually picking and putting the projects there because there was ALOT(yeah, a LOT) of inappropriate content ending up there.

I really don't know about that.
The explore page was really never bad, and it is very rare for it to have any projects on it against the rules. (iirc)

The only possible way for that to happen is if an hacker gets access to an account, and modifies their project on trending. (Rarely happens, but i have seen it once.)

Better than not having one at all, but at least they could at least show more Scratch 3.0 projects over random, old, pixelated and usually not very good in terms of quality Scratch 2.0 projects. (There are better Scratch 2.0 projects in the wild, they could use those!)

Can even show 1.x if you are lucky. (This actually happens sometimes! )

Guessing it will be fixed when NGP rolls out, as that is Scratch Team's current priority (even mentions explore page being upgraded!)

I'm not saying it isn't picked by scratch team, as there are patterns on the explore page. (projects in a certain topic can be together, and very early scratch 2 projects usually show up)

Anyways, here is some proof:

Also the fact they can constantly change it is surprising by human capability lol

AndPherbCodes wrote:

I hate the new trending page. They're limiting it to people they think are good, instead of letting the algorithm help.

Yeah, same.
Feels like a random number generator picked random projects. (But it's Scratch Team)

Actually, a while ago i built a turbowarp program to do that, and its output compared to the explore page today are somewhat close. Only that it picks english projects with slightly more views. (also working on another)

Also the studios part of the explore page has barely changed. (or not at all!)

Let’s just hope that the NGP will fix this.

Hmm, this page seems to show the most popular projects of all time based on views, not sure if this is a temporary solution or not. It's just a search page with nothing in the query.

:D yay