The Advanced Discussion About the Forums

Wetbikeboy2500

Important: Let's stay on topic and not be a repeat of this.

I am going to start off by saying that this is completely suitable for the ATs since this is a topic that is complex and needs to be talked about.
As said by Hardmath123 in the topic Welcome to the Advanced Topics!

The A(dvanced) T(opic)s are, in a way, the place where you go once you outgrow plain old Scratching. At the ATs, we take Scratch to its limits. Most threads here consist of someone either asking a question or showing off some piece of awesomeness, and then dozens of really smart people tripping over each other to help out with comments (and general oohs and aahs). It's pretty satisfying.

We take Scratch to its limits, not just physically, but conceptually also. Everyone on the ATs is apart of the Scratch community and is allowed to talk about the nitty-gritty aspects of Scratch. With that being said Hardmath123 then continues with:

We mainly discuss extensions to Scratch, mainly programs written in other languages that enhance Scratch (think custom forum skins and bots to post to the forums automatically). A lot of it is just coming up with a crazy idea and making it happen. That's a great way to learn; just do it.

This brings me to the first thing that has happened; Extensions aren't allowed to be discussed or promoted anymore. This was at a time when I was(and still am) working on a userscript that I hoped others could enjoy, but the forum post was taken down. The point I'm trying to make is that the ATs have lost one of the main things it had as a resource of discussion. The only things that are brought up now are old topics that died out a long time ago. That isn't the only thing dying though, the forums themselves are slowing down with little new blood being added into the mix. As said by Paddle2See:

I will say that it is obvious that the forums have not gotten much in the way of attention in the last couple of years. Priorities have been focused mostly on Scratch 3.0 and moving Scratch out to the mobile world. We need that to continue to be relevant in the future. However, I feel that the forums still provides valuable services to the community. It remains to be seen if and how we are going to support those services going forward.

I am just going to break down what he said here.

I will say that it is obvious that the forums have not gotten much in the way of attention in the last couple of years.

I think the reason the forums never got much attention is because it was never advertised. It was just a button that said discuss with a bunch of links popping up when you clicked on it. There was no ease into it. The only thing it did was throw a massive network at you. It never got traction because it was never well planned.

Priorities have been focused mostly on Scratch 3.0 and moving Scratch out to the mobile world. We need that to continue to be relevant in the future.

I haven't been here since the beginning, but what I do know is that Scratch changes when it needs to change. It is just how it is. When 1.4 grew older and they were looking for something better, they went to Scratch 2.0 and the site we have now. Currently, Scratch 2.0 growing older and outdated with browsers dropping support for flash, so the Scratch Team is now working on Scratch 3 which is Scratch made with HTML5. I am okay with it, but in the Scratch 3.0 FAQ I have seen some talk about how the new theme and design is really not meant for PC which is what Paddle2See was talking about. Scratch is moving over to the mobile world with it having already made its place with computer users. That is what Scratch is moving to with current Scratch switching its focus. More on that later though.

However, I feel that the forums still provides valuable services to the community. It remains to be seen if and how we are going to support those services going forward.

At least in the ATs, it allows us to talk about Scratch 3 with very little else going on. The last sentence is the most important though. He is really saying that the forums could be not supported in the future and could be shut down. I don't see it happened too soon, but it could happen to certain parts of the forums that have become like deserts where no one even goes anymore.

This leads to the focus I was talking about before. The Scratch forums are slowly being taken out of the scene in favor of adding more friendly places for people to go to. This is where the removal of the discuss button from the navbar comes in. I saw as the last horray of the ATs. We made userscripts and an outcry about it, but it didn't do anything and lead to the forums feeling like a place that is being neglected by the Scratch Team. They choose to add a page to supply tips for those who need learning instead of for those who what to interact with others and communicate. If you go to About Scratch there are two sections that say something really important:

The ability to code computer programs is an important part of literacy in today’s society. When people learn to code in Scratch, they learn important strategies for solving problems, designing projects, and communicating ideas.

Students are learning with Scratch at all levels (from elementary school to college) and across disciplines (such as math, computer science, language arts, social studies). Educators share stories, exchange resources, ask questions, and find people on the ScratchEd website.

The biggest thing I take from this is that they want people to communicate with each other on the site and learn, but this is something that isn't really happening much. Obviously, the forums have been dying, but there is also the issue of the control of content. This started with the changing of the search engine they used for the site; it no longer allowed you to find good search results and left out a lot of the old features. You used to be able to find accounts and search through the forums, but this is no longer true. It provides you with projects that are exact to what you typed and not what you were looking for with its ability to bring up studios being bad too. This stopped people from finding things that were new with it instead just providing what has been around. This doesn't allow a community to grow through communication if everyone has only a select number of projects to choose from. If you want to read more about this you can go to this topic. There is also a snippet of another scratcher saying that it is only a WIP search engine and that a new one was coming. That was two years ago.
The second part of content control is the explore tab. When you go there, it shows you categories and project that are trending, popular, or recent based on what you choose. It also has a small selection of tags you can choose. Before, tags could be anything and could allow others to find projects relating to a specific category, but now it really is just used for this page of the site which only has some broad categories to chose from. Anyways, the explore page only shows you things that are popular, trending, and recent. Two of those barely change with the only things shown are projects that have someone who is skilled with game making and other things, not the general users of Scratch. The only way to find the general users is by going to the recent page which doesn't provide a good way to sort out projects to determine what is just a cat and what is a project someone poured hours into making. It's a system that awards the accomplished with very little exploring going on. Is Scratch for the creator or the consumer. That is whats at conflict here.

That brings this to final part of this. Is the Scratch forums meant to teach people about coding or maybe show others what they have done with coding? Or maybe it is just a place where people feel empowered by being apart of a community where they can say, “The Scratch Community can make this amazing game with Scratch” instead of saying, “I worked with the community of Scratch to build something that everyone else can enjoy.”

What do you think the future of Scratch is going to go. Is it going to be a platform that turns out thousands of projects a day with only a few ever being seen or is it going to become some cool mobile app that you can play around with for a little bit? This is an advanced topic that I would like to hear your input on.

Misc ideas:
-A project usually receives very little traction when you upload with the occasional like, favorite, or comment “Cool” which doesn't help you get better at coding. It's more of a morale thing.
-Most spend only a few minutes on a project to then move onto something else. There is no real reward in playing the games except for seeing what other can do and what you can do. There is no way to add a way to make a fan base for a project.
-This could all just be a tin foil hat thing

Last edited by Wetbikeboy2500 (April 17, 2018 00:49:40)

djdolphin

Obviously I think it's sad that the forums are dying, but I trust that the Scratch Team is doing what's best for the platform as a whole. Considering that neither the forums nor userscripts were ever core focuses of Scratch, it makes sense to redirect the time it takes to moderate them toward more important things.

I agree that project discovery is bad. It's always been bad, and the Show and Tell forum doesn't help since it's basically a black hole. Once a project goes in, nobody sees it ever again.

I hope the Scratch Team focuses more on project discovery after 3.0 is done, but who knows what they have planned.

The two best parts of the forums, in my opinion, are the Help With Scripts and Collaboration forums. If the Scratch Team plans to completely phase out the forums, I hope they make collaboration and getting help easier on the main site. Some ideas:
- Longer comments on projects and studios, with formatting and scratchblocks
- An official, easy-to-find studio where users can post projects they need help with
- More frequent studio notifications

Wetbikeboy2500

djdolphin wrote:
Obviously I think it's sad that the forums are dying, but I trust that the Scratch Team is doing what's best for the platform as a whole. Considering that neither the forums nor userscripts were ever core focuses of Scratch, it makes sense to redirect the time it takes to moderate them toward more important things.

I agree that project discovery is bad. It's always been bad, and the Show and Tell forum doesn't help since it's basically a black hole. Once a project goes in, nobody sees it ever again. I hope the Scratch Team focuses more on project discovery after 3.0 is done, but who knows what they have planned.

The two best parts of the forums, in my opinion, are the Help With Scripts and Collaboration forums. If the Scratch Team plans to completely phase out the forums, I hope they make collaboration and getting help easier on the main site. Some ideas:
- Longer comments on projects and studios, with formatting and scratchblocks
- An official, easy-to-find studio where users can post projects they need help with
- More frequent studio notifications

I would also throw in the remaking of the Scratch Homepage which is just a big mess of projects everywhere.

_nix

Wetbikeboy2500 wrote:
I would also throw in the remaking of the Scratch Homepage which is just a big mess of projects everywhere.

Out of curiosity's sake, how was the original Scratch homepage any different? The pre-migration one was basically identical in content and layout. Unless you're talking about the 1.4 one, which is a bit different, but not super-significantly.

Wetbikeboy2500

_nix wrote:
Wetbikeboy2500 wrote:
I would also throw in the remaking of the Scratch Homepage which is just a big mess of projects everywhere.
Out of curiosity's sake, how was the original Scratch homepage any different? The pre-migration one was basically identical in content and layout. Unless you're talking about the 1.4 one, which is a bit different, but not super-significantly.

The current layout and even the one before both have an issue of unknowingly throwing projects at you. Instead of trying to show you what it thinks you'll like, it shows 50+ projects that you have to guess what they are based off of the header, title, and/or studios names. It doesn't do a good job at supplying content for someone to process and run through quickly. I would prefer them to show the views with the likes and favorites to get a relative feel for the project and also including the tags that relate to that project. There is plenty of information that could be used but isn't since it follows a outdated theme.

chexbox

Wetbikeboy2500 wrote:
_nix wrote:
Wetbikeboy2500 wrote:
I would also throw in the remaking of the Scratch Homepage which is just a big mess of projects everywhere.
Out of curiosity's sake, how was the original Scratch homepage any different? The pre-migration one was basically identical in content and layout. Unless you're talking about the 1.4 one, which is a bit different, but not super-significantly.
The current layout and even the one before both have an issue of unknowingly throwing projects at you. Instead of trying to show you what it thinks you'll like, it shows 50+ projects that you have to guess what they are based off of the header, title, and/or studios names. It doesn't do a good job at supplying content for someone to process and run through quickly. I would prefer them to show the views with the likes and favorites to get a relative feel for the project and also including the tags that relate to that project. There is plenty of information that could be used but isn't since it follows a outdated theme.

I agree with this. ^^^

LastContinue

I like my BBSes like I like my dial up networks.

Barren and sans zoomers.

MegaApuTurkUltra

LastContinue wrote:
I like my BBSes like I like my dial up networks.

Barren and sans zoomers.

(ouch)

Wettining

LastContinue wrote:
I like my BBSes like I like my dial up networks.

Barren and sans zoomers.

Scratch AT BBS anyone?

LastContinue

Wettining wrote:
LastContinue wrote:
I like my BBSes like I like my dial up networks.

Barren and sans zoomers.
Scratch AT BBS anyone?

Only if it's 1200 baud and expects nothing more than a dumb terminal.

MegaApuTurkUltra

LastContinue wrote:
Wettining wrote:
LastContinue wrote:
I like my BBSes like I like my dial up networks.

Barren and sans zoomers.
Scratch AT BBS anyone?
Only if it's 1200 baud and expects nothing more than a dumb terminal.

only if it's actually dial-up

LastContinue

MegaApuTurkUltra wrote:
LastContinue wrote:
Wettining wrote:
LastContinue wrote:
I like my BBSes like I like my dial up networks.

Barren and sans zoomers.
Scratch AT BBS anyone?
Only if it's 1200 baud and expects nothing more than a dumb terminal.
only if it's actually dial-up

Dang millenials and their serial ports!

Back in my day, we had to connect the modem, dial the number on my rotary phone (and I didn't need a phone book!) and then hope no one else picked up the phone!

LastContinue

So yeah we're gonna put the forums on the BitCoin SV blockchain btw.

Anyone can fund upload 3.4GB of topic JSON?

Wettining

LastContinue wrote:
So yeah we're gonna put the forums on the BitCoin SV blockchain btw.

Anyone can fund upload 3.4GB of topic JSON?

no

LastContinue

Wettining wrote:
LastContinue wrote:
So yeah we're gonna put the forums on the BitCoin SV blockchain btw.

Anyone can fund upload 3.4GB of topic JSON?
no

What about Ethereum? Or Stellar? Or anything please I'm desperate.

Wettining

LastContinue wrote:
Wettining wrote:
LastContinue wrote:
So yeah we're gonna put the forums on the BitCoin SV blockchain btw.

Anyone can fund upload 3.4GB of topic JSON?
no
What about Ethereum? Or Stellar? Or anything please I'm desperate.

Let's start a decentralized forum

infinitytec

Wettining wrote:
LastContinue wrote:
Wettining wrote:
LastContinue wrote:
So yeah we're gonna put the forums on the BitCoin SV blockchain btw.

Anyone can fund upload 3.4GB of topic JSON?
no
What about Ethereum? Or Stellar? Or anything please I'm desperate.
Let's start a decentralized forum

Yes.

_nix

infinitytec wrote:
Wettining wrote:
Let's start a decentralized forum
Yes.

what does a decentralized forum actually look like? i guess its basically the same structure as mastodon/etc? if so we could probably like, use the code behind that……

(im sorry i havent actually worked on any decentralized codestuff ever before i just think the idea sounds neat)

LastContinue

_nix wrote:
infinitytec wrote:
Wettining wrote:
Let's start a decentralized forum
Yes.
what does a decentralized forum actually look like? i guess its basically the same structure as mastodon/etc? if so we could probably like, use the code behind that……

(im sorry i havent actually worked on any decentralized codestuff ever before i just think the idea sounds neat)

No.

We use the BitCoin SV blockchain and store forum data as OP_RETURN transactions. We bind a username to a BitCoin SV public key and all data is signed.

Wettining

_nix wrote:
infinitytec wrote:
Wettining wrote:
Let's start a decentralized forum
Yes.
what does a decentralized forum actually look like? i guess its basically the same structure as mastodon/etc? if so we could probably like, use the code behind that……

(im sorry i havent actually worked on any decentralized codestuff ever before i just think the idea sounds neat)

I made a decentralized *chan software in Java last year, it looks like any other messaging platform I guess *shrug*

Discuss Scratch