This is a meta topic, it is a suggestion unto this subforum

As I'm browsing this subforum I see a lot of Support / No Supports that are… badly reasoned to say the least. Although this isn't forum policy (nor has even been), tradition is to place upon a topic a marker of your “Support” and “No Support” which means… pretty much nothing as the final decision made via the ST discussing things internally.

I see many-a-reason such as

Example Bad Reason wrote:

No Support because this could allow inappropriate content

Now obviously, context matters because if this suggestion were to be, say, Cloud Lists, that is a genuine moderation issue.

However this reply was not on a topic about cloud lists, no, no, no! It was on a topic about pinning comments.
The comment system which is already filtered, moderated and safe. Pinning comments to the top of your profile / studio / project would not ease bullying, for you would have to direct the person there in the first place, and any offensive remark would be on display for everyone to see, amassing a following of reports longer than any before.

We have the rejected suggestions directory, but I feel like “rejected reasons” would be very applicable to warrant valid discussion on topics flooded with both Supports and No Supports which are unwarranted, contribute nought and fail to invoke thoughtful discussion.

In fact I've seen threads with reasons such as that above dissolve in to unintelligible arguments over petty details such as “What is moderation? For it could be the prevention or punishment of bad behaviour” (but it much less… English-y words. Like I said, unintelligible).

Note that a lot of these threads don't have OP arguing, but rather two long-time forumers flaunting their 1000+ post count (forgetting they're only 1200 posts unlike some people who are 10k+ CatsUnited, I have a userscript to see real post count for everyone) acting like they own the place, both of whom adopt a brick-wall-esque “I'm right, you're wrong, end of” perspective. The ST swiftly move in, performing damage control, the thread is locked and the suggestion is banished to the depths of the second page, with a sad looking grey title.

It's fair for neither the ST nor OP. The ST justifiably lock a lot of threads like this due to them being mainly volunteers who do this because they want this site to be a friendly place and do not have the time to remove a few pages worth of nonsense.

And OP's poor suggestion will either be reposted by themselves and we loop back to forumers arguing, or you wait a few months and someone else will post it, and the forumers who were arguing may be in a better frame of mind.

In fact, I don't believe “No Support” should even be allowed on this forum. What is the reason behind it when it is mostly wielded as a tool for people who misunderstand suggestions to extrapolate falsities from a perfectly fine suggestion and spread misinformation via a long rant about how extending the size of notes and credits could allow for an RCE attack on the forums because of buffer overflows?

If a suggestion is so bad that it cannot be added ever say why, if it's flawed, but workable, give it chance. Allow discussion to form, or hey, maybe try suggest some modifications within the thread that makes the suggestion good?

One of my biggest issues is workarounds.

I hardly see a necessity to drop a “No Support” in threads suggestions blocks with workarounds. Literally everything is workaroundable, the ATs figured out the minimum amount of blocks needed to use Scratch at one point, all else is “workaroundable”. Doesn't mean we should let the developers dress as the grim reaper on Halloween and start culling blocks line by line from the source code.

The ST is always open to suggestions, there may be a “workaroundable” block suggestion that they take a liking to, one that would be easy to implement and worthwhile to use.

This subforum really needs to undergo a change in attitude. Support and No Support means nothing right now, with some degree of standardisation, I can see them becoming much more useful tools to allow further, thoughtful discussion.

TLDR:
Read the suggestion, it's very information dense and thus a TLDR wouldn't work.
Please don't reply to solely disagree or agree unless you can provide discussion-forming views. If you fail to do so it shows you read none of this post, or just decided to ignore it.

Permalink because I know someone tarnish the first page very quickly.

These are some version good examples of why a list of rejected reasons would be incredibly useful.

WindOctahedron wrote:

I came up with something that could be added to that list: “No support, because this block can be abused.” My explanation of why it should be “rejected” can be found here.

Nambaseking01 wrote:

Should we also discuss how people post things like this which doesn't even contribute to the discussion? Those are no proper support reasons (no offense to the author, just pointing out a minor mistake. That author is, tbh, a really good forum helper).

I've recently started to move away from the whole “Support” and “No support” tags. I like to think I was pretty good at clearly explaining why I did or did not support a suggestion, but stating “Support” or “No support” isn't necessarily needed.

Are you really suggesting a “list of rejected reasons,” or are you just asking forum users to change their thoughts on using Support / No Support? If you are suggesting such a list to be made, could you give a few more examples on what would go on that list?

Are we talking things like the following?

Scratcher 1 wrote:

Support for reasons stated in the OP.

Scratcher 2 wrote:

Support for reasons stated in replies above.

Scratcher 3 wrote:

No support because it is rejected.

Scratcher 4 wrote:

No support because there is a workaround.

I think workarounds are sometimes okay. For instance, I've seen a suggestion about adding a

<mouse up? :: sensing>

block. I would argue that this is unnecessary, as the obvious workaround is extremely simple:

<not <mouse down?>

However, a popular suggestion is this block:

(() ^ ():: operators) 

Yes, a workaround exists. But the workaround is rather complicated, involves custom blocks (and therefore cannot be a reporter), involves multiple if-else statements, and might not even cover all cases of what you'd want to do with an exponent block. Certainly this block would be a good addition to Scratch, even though there technically is a workaround.

Some people would respond to this thread with a workaround. I think that could be okay to at least let the OP know that what they are looking to do, can be done using a different method for the time being.

But saying “No support because there is a workaround” isn't my favorite in this case. Especially since this workaround is complicated. “There is a workaround” isn't always reason to say “no support”. It's kind of like saying “I don't want this block to be in Scratch because I can already make it through a more complicated method.”

In contrast, the “mouse up?” block is extremely easy to workaround, and so I would argue that saying “no support” would work a little better there.

I'm hoping that isn't off-topic from this thread. Do you share my views on presenting workarounds? Is that part of what your topic is getting at?

yay support

As defined in your example, Scratchers forget some details before posting “support” or “no support”. I feel like a lot of people just say things because they want to post something on a random topic, or just simply want to find a reason to not support. The reason this forum even exists is because the ST want Scratchers to brainstorm on particular suggestions, get an idea of what to do and try to convince people. Unfortunately, brainstorming these days is equal to being off-topic or posting because of a weird compelled feeling.

Yes, I feel like a list of rejected “Support and ”No Support" reasons needs to get implemented. But now more infuriating things are starting to happen. If you take a look at posts like these, the poster probably didn't even have an idea of the reason why they want to post on here. Like I said, these people post stuff even though they have no apparent reason why. At an official brainstorming meeting, you can't just straight-up squeal “I agree!” towards the CEO when he declares something important!

A true helper would understand the situation, explain why the idea probably could be good according to the current financial situations and try to make it clear for everyone that the CEO is not giving a crazy idea. If the helper just would have squealed, the CEO would have been left with no idea and probably just abandon it. In our case, the OP's poster and the people who give random or no reasons for their “support” and “no support” squeals. Or instead worse, do workers start discussing usual business trends at such a brainstorming session?

When a new page starts, I would expect more clear brainstorming and the ST deciding more if the discussion on the last page was good and gave them some clarity. Instead, people just shout, “Page 2 no edit! Yay!”. I completely agree that these are all mistakes that everyone makes, including myself, but the amount these days is not normal. If people reach page two on your mathematics book, they don't scream “Page 2 no mistakes! Yay!” while the teacher is explaining the next practices.

Oh, and next are the people in the business meeting who say “Thank you!” when the CEO suggests the new idea, and it's not even been implemented yet. The workers know they have come to a suggestion giving meeting and they think it's been implemented and the discussion is just starting. In our case, the OP's poster is not even a member of the ST and they are just casually suggesting something and the people who post know that they're in a topic inside of the Suggestions forum. Yet here goes: “THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR ADDING THIS!”

I mean, look at the amount of fuss happening inside of one simple Scratch forum. If I need to say this post in one sentence: "People seriously need to think before posting!"

Hopefully, this clarified a few more things to the people coming here and gave ideas to the OP's poster, and bye!
~Nammy~

Za-Chary wrote:

I think workarounds are sometimes okay. For instance, I've seen a suggestion about adding a

<mouse up? :: sensing>

block. I would argue that this is unnecessary, as the obvious workaround is extremely simple:

<not <mouse down?>

However, a popular suggestion is this block:

(() ^ ():: operators) 

Yes, a workaround exists. But the workaround is rather complicated, involves custom blocks (and therefore cannot be a reporter), involves multiple if-else statements, and might not even cover all cases of what you'd want to do with an exponent block. Certainly this block would be a good addition to Scratch, even though there technically is a workaround.

Some people would respond to this thread with a workaround. I think that could be okay to at least let the OP know that what they are looking to do, can be done using a different method for the time being.

But saying “No support because there is a workaround” isn't my favorite in this case. Especially since this workaround is complicated. “There is a workaround” isn't always reason to say “no support”. It's kind of like saying “I don't want this block to be in Scratch because I can already make it through a more complicated method.”

In contrast, the “mouse up?” block is extremely easy to workaround, and so I would argue that saying “no support” would work a little better there.

I'm hoping that isn't off-topic from this thread. Do you share my views on presenting workarounds? Is that part of what your topic is getting at?

Going off what @Za-chary said in the quote. I think it's fine to share workarounds as long as it's not your reason your not supporting it. If the workaround is pretty simple, I'd say you tell OP about it. If the workaround is quite complicated, I think you should go ahead and support. it. But that's just my take on it.

Now, for things like this where people have already given good answers, I just put down:

venyanwarrior wrote:

Support due to reasons listed above.

But I'm not going to, because saying support and then doing that would be pretty hypocritical.
So, here are the reasons I support:

• To stop people from just saying ‘support, I like this!’ and then moving on.
  
  
• To stop people from not reading the OP and then just saying ‘support’. They're contributing nothing and are getting a free post out of it.
  

umm yeah I think that's it.

Za-Chary wrote:

Are you really suggesting a “list of rejected reasons,” or are you just asking forum users to change their thoughts on using Support / No Support? If you are suggesting such a list to be made, could you give a few more examples on what would go on that list?

I feel like those go in hand in hand. Support and No Support are useful, but it seems they've lost their meaning. People use “No Supports” over very minor details that they address could be changed for the better. I feel saying "Support if“ would warrant better discussion.

Obviously something rejected or just unfit for the site (like asking for a YouTube clone because their school blocks YouTube) would warrant a ”No Support", because you just cannot support something like that.

Rejected reasons would be for non-contributing or “invalid” reasons, you know what I mean.

Za-Chary wrote:

Are we talking things like the following?

Scratcher 1 wrote:

Support for reasons stated in the OP.

Scratcher 2 wrote:

Support for reasons stated in replies above.

Scratcher 4 wrote:

No support because there is a workaround.

Those would be good candidates (and the most common), and I'm sure people could think of many more. It could probably be done like rejected suggestions, and added as they come it.

It could also be accompanied with a pre-existing header placed in posts like in “Bugs and Glitches” (globe icon) linking to a rejected reasons topic, but that's more of a QoL feature than a necessity.

Overall I think the Suggestions subforum needs less discussion. Because most posts don't contribute huge amounts. Because Suggestions is made for use by the ST having less non-contributing posts it good. And since it isn't focused on users, but rather the ST. “bumping” isn't needed as much, because I'd assume the ST look on more than the first page when looking for suggestions.

I propose we remove the

if < . . . > then
. . .
end

because you can easily work around it like this:

set [x v] to ( 0 )
repeat until < < < . . . > = < ( 1 ) = ( 2 ) > > or < ( x ) = ( 1 ) >
. . .
set [x v] to ( 1 )
end

Why do people keep suggesting these obviously workaroundable blocks!
Credit to pulljosh for the workaround btw

Support for reasons stated above.

I agree with you on most of your points. Many people tend to reply to suggestions with variations on stock responses like “it might be confusing for new users” or, to use your example, “it might facilitate inappropriate content”; and I have to admit, I'm a repeat offender when it comes to this type of thing. Replies should actively try to provide insightful feedback to and aim to build on suggestions, improving them and not just repeating something that's already been repeated hundreds of times.

I feel like much of what you're saying is already covered in Sigton's sticky, regarding constructiveness and trying to improve suggestions rather than casting ‘votes’. Responses like “support for reasons stated in OP” or “support for reasons stated above” or “^^^^^”, as well as things like off-topic debate, are discouraged by current forum etiquette and posting guidelines. Granted, “constructive” is a pretty vague and subjective word, and one could make the case that “it might facilitate inappropriate content” fits in that category.

The problem is that many people don't read those stickies or adhere to proper forum etiquette. Enough people already don't read the List of Rejected Suggestions, and I don't see how adding a List of Rejected Replies to Suggestions would improve that. Personally, I think something about the general attitude around the forum needs changing, though how that change would come around is something that I'm too tired to think about.

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-ShadowOfTheFuture- wrote:

Support for reasons stated above.

I agree with you on most of your points. Many people tend to reply to suggestions with variations on stock responses like “it might be confusing for new users” or, to use your example, “it might facilitate inappropriate content”; and I have to admit, I'm a repeat offender when it comes to this type of thing. Replies should actively try to provide insightful feedback to and aim to build on suggestions, improving them and not just repeating something that's already been repeated hundreds of times.

I feel like much of what you're saying is already covered in Sigton's sticky, regarding constructiveness and trying to improve suggestions rather than casting ‘votes’. Responses like “support for reasons stated in OP” or “support for reasons stated above” or “^^^^^”, as well as things like off-topic debate, are discouraged by current forum etiquette and posting guidelines. Granted, “constructive” is a pretty vague and subjective word, and one could make the case that “it might facilitate inappropriate content” fits in that category.

The problem is that many people don't read those stickies or adhere to proper forum etiquette. Enough people already don't read the List of Rejected Suggestions, and I don't see how adding a List of Rejected Replies to Suggestions would improve that. Personally, I think something about the general attitude around the forum needs changing, though how that change would come around is something that I'm too tired to think about.

Support for reasons within this post

Hehe… Yeah! I think it's mainly New Scratchers (as if genuinely new, not jump ship to new account new) who see the Suggestions forum and see the “ballot box” attitude a lot of people have adopted, and start feeling like it is like an election, where Suggestions are elected to be added. But we can see from history, that Suggestions with lots of Support don't always get added, and those with minimal support can catch the attention of the ST.

One thing I do want to address is the:

-ShadowOfTheFuture- wrote:

and one could make the case that “it might facilitate inappropriate content” fits in that category.

This is an issue I had with suggesting just a “rejected reasons” thing, because that is subjective.

But like where I got the inspiration for this post from, this was used in reference to someone asking to add a “pinning” system to comments. That reason isn't valid there, because the comments can already do that but are moderated.

Nambaseking01 wrote:

As defined in your example, Scratchers really forget some details before posting “support” or “no support”. I feel like a lot of people just say things because they want to post something on a random topic, or just simply want to find a reason to not support. The reason this forum even exists is because the ST want Scratchers to brainstorm on particular suggestions, get an idea of what to do and try to convince people. Unfortunately, brainstorming these days is equal to being off-topic or posting because of a weird compelled feeling.

Yes, I definitely feel like a list of rejected “Support and ”No Support" reasons needs to get implemented. But now things that are more infuriating are starting to happen. If you take a look at posts like these, the poster probably didn't even have an idea of the reason why they want to post on here. Like I said, these people post stuff even though they have no apparent reason why. At an official brainstorming meeting, you can't just straight-up squeal “I agree!” towards the CEO when he declares something important!

A true helper would understand the situation, explain why the idea probably could be good according to the current financial situations and try to make it clear for everyone that the CEO is not giving a crazy idea. If the helper just would have squealed, the CEO would have been left with no idea and probably just abandon it. In our case, the OP's poster and the people who give random or no reasons to their “support” and “no support” squeals. Or more worse, do workers start discussing usual business trends at such a brainstorming session?

When a new page starts, I would expect more clear brainstorming and the ST deciding more if the discussion on the last page was good and gave them some clarity. Instead people just shout, “Page 2 no edit! Yay!”. I completely agree that these are all mistakes that everyone make, including myself, but the amount these days is not normal. If people reach page two on your mathematics book, they don't scream “Page 2 no mistakes! Yay!” while the teacher is explaining the next practices.

Oh, and next are the people in the business meeting who say “Thank you!” when the CEO suggests the new idea, and it's not even been implemented yet. The workers know they have come to a suggestion giving meeting and they think it's been implemented and the discussion is just starting. In our case, the OP's poster is not even a member of the ST and they are just casually suggesting something and the people who post know that they're in a topic inside of the Suggestions forum. Yet here goes: “THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR ADDING THIS!”

I mean, look at the amount of fuss happening inside of one simple Scratch forum. If I need to say this post in one sentence: "People seriously need to think before posting!"

Hopefully this clarified a few more things to the people coming here and gave ideas to the OP's poster, and bye!
~Nammy~

I did spent a crazily long time writing my post but people tend to ignore my posts these days…

LastContinue wrote:

Overall I think the Suggestions subforum needs less discussion. Because most posts don't contribute huge amounts. Because Suggestions is made for use by the ST having less non-contributing posts it good. And since it isn't focused on users, but rather the ST. “bumping” isn't needed as much, because I'd assume the ST look on more than the first page when looking for suggestions.

So many topics in this forum tend to be duplicates or completely irrelevant. I think it would better for people to look for dupes before saying a flat out “I support.” The ST does a good job on looking for suggestions that would benefit scratch. If they ignore it, it's probably because it's workaround-able or rejected and they know other scratchers are aware of that and can take care of that. (I mean the forum helpers by the way.) There's so much unneeded bumping and posts that the suggestions tend to be cluttered.

(If my mess of words makes any sense)

What will be the effect of the list? Everything that states "no support because (a rejected reason)" will be deleted, simply told to be ignored, or what?
Plus, like @-ShadowOfTheFuture- said, that doesn't stop people from not reading the stickies.*
*The problem with that argument is that we can't calculate how many people do read them and don't post because of that.

Nambaseking01 wrote:

yay support

As defined in your example, Scratchers really forget some details before posting “support” or “no support”. I feel like a lot of people just say things because they want to post something on a random topic, or just simply want to find a reason to not support. The reason this forum even exists is because the ST want Scratchers to brainstorm on particular suggestions, get an idea of what to do and try to convince people. Unfortunately, brainstorming these days is equal to being off-topic or posting because of a weird compelled feeling.

Yes, I definitely feel like a list of rejected “Support and ”No Support" reasons needs to get implemented. But now things that are more infuriating are starting to happen. If you take a look at posts like these, the poster probably didn't even have an idea of the reason why they want to post on here. Like I said, these people post stuff even though they have no apparent reason why. At an official brainstorming meeting, you can't just straight-up squeal “I agree!” towards the CEO when he declares something important!

A true helper would understand the situation, explain why the idea probably could be good according to the current financial situations and try to make it clear for everyone that the CEO is not giving a crazy idea. If the helper just would have squealed, the CEO would have been left with no idea and probably just abandon it. In our case, the OP's poster and the people who give random or no reasons to their “support” and “no support” squeals. Or more worse, do workers start discussing usual business trends at such a brainstorming session?

When a new page starts, I would expect more clear brainstorming and the ST deciding more if the discussion on the last page was good and gave them some clarity. Instead people just shout, “Page 2 no edit! Yay!”. I completely agree that these are all mistakes that everyone make, including myself, but the amount these days is not normal. If people reach page two on your mathematics book, they don't scream “Page 2 no mistakes! Yay!” while the teacher is explaining the next practices.

Oh, and next are the people in the business meeting who say “Thank you!” when the CEO suggests the new idea, and it's not even been implemented yet. The workers know they have come to a suggestion giving meeting and they think it's been implemented and the discussion is just starting. In our case, the OP's poster is not even a member of the ST and they are just casually suggesting something and the people who post know that they're in a topic inside of the Suggestions forum. Yet here goes: “THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR ADDING THIS!”

I mean, look at the amount of fuss happening inside of one simple Scratch forum. If I need to say this post in one sentence: "People seriously need to think before posting!"

Hopefully this clarified a few more things to the people coming here and gave ideas to the OP's poster, and bye!
~Nammy~

second bump for my post

Nambaseking01 wrote:

Nambaseking01 wrote:

-snip-

second bump for my post

I'm sure OP saw your post, and isn't meaning to make it seem like they're ignoring you.

In fact I've seen threads with reasons such as that above dissolve in to unintelligible arguments over petty details such as “What is moderation? For it could be the prevention or punishment of bad behaviour” (but it much less… English-y words. Like I said, unintelligible).

This is unintelligible.

kittiesrule247 wrote:

In fact I've seen threads with reasons such as that above dissolve in to unintelligible arguments over petty details such as “What is moderation? For it could be the prevention or punishment of bad behaviour” (but it much less… English-y words. Like I said, unintelligible).

This is unintelligible.

How so? It's pretty easy to understand.

Here's what I think about the whole “Support” and “No Support” in the suggestions forum:

I think they're unnecessary. Suggestions aren't added to Scratch by vote, so why even say support or no support? It just seems like you are just voting for it to be added as a feature. I believe that suggestions should have more discussion on how it can be better, what problems could come from it, or why the suggestion wouldn't work out for Scratch. For example, instead of saying something like this:

CoolerKid123 wrote:

Support because I agree, this would help with:
blah blah blah

You could write this:

CoolestKid124Funny wrote:

This suggestion would be fantastic! Although, I believe it would be slighty better if we did this:
*more text or image*

I've done what “CoolerKid123” did, although, recently, I've been switching over to just saying my thoughts about the suggestion.

So yeah, my thoughts.

A related topic suggesting to outright remove the support/no support conventions if that interests any of you.

Regarding the title of this topic, I was initially doubtful that it'd do much since new Scratchers probably wouldn't read them, and warning them in a topic only sends it off-topic. However, new Scratchers learn from older Scratchers, and if the current regular posters on here get used to not using these reasons (or even not voting on suggestions at all), then newer Scratchers will be less likely to copy the support convention.
Upon reading this thread more carefully, it appears this conclusion has already been made elsewhere. Oof!

Nambaseking01 wrote:

I did spent a crazily long time writing my post but people tend to ignore my posts these days…

Sorry! Your post was good, but I didn't find anything I disagreed with, so I didn't think it was necessary to respond

LastContinue wrote:

Overall I think the Suggestions subforum needs less discussion. Because most posts don't contribute huge amounts. Because Suggestions is made for use by the ST having less non-contributing posts it good. And since it isn't focused on users, but rather the ST. “bumping” isn't needed as much, because I'd assume the ST look on more than the first page when looking for suggestions.

Interesting point; so what you're saying is that because suggestions are mostly meant for the ST to decide, most of the discussion here isn't necessary? I'm assuming moderation posts, such as finding duplicates, rejected suggestions, and possible alternatives, are fine, so if the actual discussion portion was removed, the subforum would be left with just the suggestions and the aforementioned types of posts, which I think makes the subforum redundant.

Also, a lot of Scratchers are young children, so they often are worried when no one responds (and agrees). Removing the phrase “no support” should help make the discussion less about the downvote and more about how the suggestion could be improved. Removing the phrase “support,” however, makes it unclear to the Scratcher if their opinion is well-liked, and while this may not seem very necessary, children don't care about whether something is necessary (that's a very grown-up thing to think)

idk