Honestly, at this point the Scratch Team is just making themselves look bad.

Steve0Greatness wrote:

Honestly, at this point the Scratch Team is just making themselves look bad.

ikr

Looky1173 wrote:

Try out the new beta site, Scratch Incubator!

I went from
https://beta.itinerary.eu.org/
to
https://beta.itinerary.eu.org/experiments
to
https://beta.itinerary.eu.org/message-count-tracker
which shows a 404.

AIGamesDeveloper wrote:

Steve0Greatness wrote:

Honestly, at this point the Scratch Team is just making themselves look bad.

ikr

Yeah

Hi everyone. I have been asked by @Chiroyce to provide my thoughts on their post here. It seems to me that my response is going to be controversial amongst the users in this discussion, so I'd like to lead with a few disclaimers.

• Sometimes, my purpose in responding to posts such as these is to serve as an advocate for the Scratch Team. Obviously I am not a Scratch Team member, and so what I say is not officially endorsed by the Scratch Team, but I am hoping to help others understand the Scratch Team's reasoning — particularly when Scratchers make very charged claims against the Scratch Team.
  
  
• I did not read the OP of this thread, nor did I read any other post in this thread, except possibly for those that were quoted in @Chiroyce's post.
  
  
• When I asked @Chiroyce for context, this user responded with: “A website that hosts game jams with Scratch Project used authentication methods just like Ocular's, but then the project which the authentication was done on was taken down because it contained links to a site which wasn't allowed (according to the ST) on Scratch - and the forum topic regarding that was also taken down, without any further context”
  
  
• In case this is relevant, I know almost nothing about Scratch Auth or Itinerary and what they were used for, and have been intentionally avoiding discussion about it up to this point. The extent to which I know about it is essentially the aforementioned context quote.
  
  
• I am not going to respond to any replies to my post, nor will I even look at them, if such replies are posted in this thread (I do not regularly use Advanced Topics). However, I will respond to further questions on my profile about what I say here, as long as you are very very very nice when you write a response.
  

Okay, here we go.

god286 wrote:

The AT community is so small compared to all of Scratch! Maybe moving on is the right choice for those who have been hit by alerts and warnings for this kind of thing, because the Scratch Team needs to focus their moderation and not learn about computer stuff to moderate the ATs, a little part of Scratch.

This was quoted in @Chiroyce's post. I completely agree with it. The main purpose of Scratch, from what I gather, is to introduce people (particularly young kids) to computer programming. As such, it is meant to be easy and intuitive to learn. When someone is so advanced in programming that they feel that Scratch is too easy or is otherwise holding them back, then Scratch has successfully fulfilled its mission in introducing them to programming. The user is then open to pursue other programming languages.

This sort of argument/reasoning is similar to that presented in suggestions asking that Scratch should have a more advanced interface. But Scratch is not intended to be advanced. Naturally — per research and experience — more features leads to a more overwhelming experience for newer users.

I don't fully know what “learn about computer stuff to moderate the ATs” is referring to, but it's a bit of a pipe dream to expect the Scratch Team to learn new techniques for the sake of moderating a small subset of the Scratch community. This just leads to more work, and the Scratch Team is already hard at work with trying to keep the website safe and prevent it from falling apart. Many moderators are not qualified to handle this sort of computer code — for example, I was not qualified to understand non-Scratch code when I was a Scratch Team member.

Chiroyce wrote:

You said it correct. The Scratch team is quite obviously biased towards the majority of Scratch than the minority of ATers who develop such websites.

The word “biased” implies that you believe this is some sort of unfair preference, or one which is made without much thinking. That's not entirely true, however — as I said above, the Scratch Team is naturally building a website and a programming language with young children in mind. That's the target demographic, after all. Especially when there are other programming languages and websites out there which are better-suited for more experienced programmers.

Chiroyce wrote:

In a way that is limiting the advanced creativity of some Scratchers who started off programming on Scratch and then moved to text based languages,

Well, sure, and that's to be expected based on Scratch's target demographic. Personally, if I felt that I wanted to work on something and I wanted to share it with others, I would want to be very careful before I thought about sharing it on Scratch, ensuring that I know with 100% fact that it fits the Community Guidelines (possibly by asking through Contact Us).

Chiroyce wrote:

but then the ST thinks it's better to do that than leave a few million users to minor risk.

“Minor risk” is still a risk, and a few million users are not an insignificant part of the community. If a single person gets into a dangerous situation, and dire consequences arise as a result of it, that is terrible. The Scratch Team does not want to risk the safety of a single user. (That's why moderation systems exist in the first place.)

Chiroyce wrote:

If the ST thinks that a scratch user who stumbled upon such a site might give away a lot of personal info, then the Scratch team shouldn't try to fix this issue by not allowing links to this sites,

I disagree with this logic. I can think of a few examples of some very adult websites that just don't belong on Scratch. I think it's completely reasonable to ban those websites from Scratch, for the sake of not traumatizing young users. The Scratch Team, likewise, is certainly able to ban “less traumatizing” websites if they believe they are a violation of the Community Guidelines.

Chiroyce wrote:

and instead should ask every user's guardian/parent/teacher to advise that Scratcher on how the internet works and the extent to which they should be giving out personal info.

A parent can do everything they can to educate their child about not sharing personal information. That doesn't completely stop the child from doing so, however. The moderation practices in place help serve as another barrier to prevent users from sharing personal information. This is especially important considering that many children are not mature enough to understand when they are in a dangerous situation — thinking things like “I know what my parents said, but this user is different, I can trust them completely.” This is also especially important considering that Scratch, as a website which claims to have children as their target demographic, must take action against personal information-sharing instances on the website due to certain United States laws (to my knowledge, at least).

Chiroyce wrote:

This is definitely not practical, but just think about it, should a user that doesn't know not to give out personal info be allowed on the internet?

Again, children can agree to anything, but then down the road they can be placed in a situation that they don't recognize is dangerous. Not to mention that sometimes it's adults who cause the problem — parents can't necessarily stop an adult from accessing the Internet.

Chiroyce wrote:

They can use the offline editor, and when they're old and mature enough to be interacting with people on the internet, they can be given a Scratch account.

That's a slippery slope. There are lots of teenagers who are not mature enough to be interacting with people on the Internet — even people who have previously been determined mature enough to do so. There are even some adults who are not mature enough for this.

Considering the Scratch Team's goal of introducing young children to programming, and providing a safe and comfortable environment full of collaborative and supportive possibilities, this seems like a pretty unnecessary workaround. There are many websites that allow users to share personal information. Scratch is not one of them.

Chiroyce wrote:

Scratch Team via Contact Us wrote:

Asking Scratchers to connect offsite is forbidden, especially when it's a user-created site that has no moderation or TOS.

This is very it all falls apart and where every Scratch Team alert starts to contradict each other, without actually verifying the authenticity of those sites, the ST (imo) randomly selects websites that they feel is a “threat” to Scratchers and removes links pointing to them, whereas on the other hand there are quite possibly thousands of links that go to user created and managed sites that are still out there. There is an inconsistency in the way they handle external sites.

There is some leniency toward websites which are creative sharing platforms like Scratch, particularly those where types of verified moderation exist. YouTube comes to mind as one example. A Scratcher-moderated website does not count — how does the Scratch Team know if the Scratchers are moderating the website to the same standards as the Scratch Community Guidelines? Some user-created websites are allowed for the sake of creation; however, I believe such websites have 0 way of contacting that person (no emails shared, etc.). If there is a way to contact someone using a user-created website, then that naturally goes against the sharing-personal-information rules that the Scratch Team has in place.

If there are websites that you feel are unsafe for Scratchers, I recommend using Contact Us to let the Scratch Team know about them.

Chiroyce wrote:

This is NOT meant to say that Ocular should be banned from Scratch, (also no offence to the creator of Ocular, I just want to state how the ST is also biased in this way), but have you ever seen the ST send an alert to someone who linked to Ocular? Isn't that a user created and managed site? How does the ST verify if there is moderation on it? There isn't even a ToS for Ocular, and yet the ST has no issues with it (not that they should) - so why is Itinerary not allowed if Ocular and PostPercent and other sites are?

As far as I'm aware, Ocular has no personal-information-sharing capabilities. Therefore it is a user-created website that is allowed to be linked to. If it is possible to share personal information using Ocular, then someone really should bring that up to the Scratch Team via Contact Us. PostPercent is similar — I don't see any ways to share personal information using it, nor do I see any other way in which it breaks the Community Guidelines (unless there is something about the API which I don't know about).

As I've said already, I don't know anything about Scratch Auth, and consequently I don't think I know what Itinerary is. So I can't speak for anything about why that was removed or why it “shouldn't have been removed.” Whoever made it, if they don't understand the reasoning of its removal, should use Contact Us to ask about it, and they should be very very very nice when doing so.

Chiroyce wrote:

Scratch Team via Contact Us wrote:

We do not allow links to external sites that have even the potential to share private information or chat functions, regardless of how well you intend to moderate.

Come on ST! You didn't even check the website, you just assumed out of the blue that Itinerary was a chat app for Scratchers?

I encourage you to think of this not as the Scratch Team's fault, but as an opportunity to think carefully about why they may have wanted to remove this project. If the answer is “I can't think of any reason why it should have been removed,” then the next thought should be either “I should email the Scratch Team to ask,” or “I haven't been doing enough thinking,” rather than believing the Scratch Team doesn't know what they're doing.

While the Scratch Team has made some mistakes in the past (I certainly had, as well) — after all, they are human, and humans make mistakes — I've seen a few cases of these large projects getting removed due to various reasons, and I can say that such decisions are not taken lightly. Usually when such a project comes up, lots of discussion between moderators takes place before a final decision is made. Please believe me when I say that the Scratch Team wants to encourage creativity, provided that it is safe and follows the Community Guidelines (and can be moderated/trusted sufficiently).

I find it disappointing that Scratchers believe — in regards to well-intentioned projects created with lots of effort and advanced programming knowledge — that the Scratch Team removes these sorts of projects haphazardly without any thought, discussion, or consideration towards the user who made it. I similarly find it disappointing that many Scratchers react to such takedowns with contempt towards the Scratch Team, seemingly haphazardly without any thought, discussion, or consideration towards the efforts that it takes to moderate such a website.

Chiroyce wrote:

So, I, personally and subjectively feel like it's safe to conclude that at this point the ST are basically rolling a dice to decide whether or not they should allow a website to be shared on Scratch.

I, personally and subjectively, not only strongly disagree with what you just said, but am also disappointed by the fact that you think this way. In particular, I am disappointed by the fact that — despite your strong coding knowledge, witty humor, and willingness to help other Scratchers — you no longer appear to support the Scratch Team's efforts. I am sorry that your experience on Scratch has not been what you would expect.

Looky1173 wrote:

Scratch's ToU declares that "8. Third Party Websites, 8.1 Content on Scratch, including user-generated content, may include links to third party websites." - Therefore, I don't see how Scratch Auth could be considered an exception, provided that it does not violate the ToU, the Community Guidelines and adheres to the Privacy Policy as well as to the topics in the Announcements forum. I spent an hour verifying all this.

Personally I don't see how the quoted Terms of Use section implies that Scratch Auth is allowed without exception (again, this is me knowing very little about what Scratch Auth is). After some thought, I think the confusion lies in the word “may,” where this user assumed that the definition of “may” is “expressing permission” in a sense (i.e. they interpreted this terms of use quote as “Content on Scratch, including user-generated content, are allowed to include links to third party websites.”). However, I think the use of the word “may” in this case is “expressing possibility” (i.e. the quote is saying “It is possible that content on Scratch, including user-generated content, includes links to third party websites.”).

I think the latter interpretation makes sense given the full context of this section from the Terms of Use:

Terms of Use wrote:

8.1 Content on Scratch, including user-generated content, may include links to third party websites. The Scratch Team is not capable of reviewing or managing third party websites, and assumes no responsibility for the privacy practices, content, or functionality of third party websites. You agree to relieve the Scratch Team of any and all liability arising from third party websites.

From what I know, this essentially says: “When you use the Scratch website, it is possible that you might stumble upon some third party websites. Suppose that you access one of these third party websites through Scratch, and something bad happens to you as a result. You agree not to hold the Scratch Team liable because of it.” This does not imply that links to third party websites are allowed without exception — it doesn't even imply that links to third party websites are allowed if they follow the Scratch Terms of Use. Check for yourself: as far as I know, nowhere in the Terms of Use does it state that you are permitted to post any third party websites which seemingly follow the Scratch Terms of Use. Not even this quote:

Terms of Use wrote:

3.7 You agree not to post links to any content outside of the Scratch website, if to do so would violate any part of the Terms of Use.

This says that you are not allowed to post links that violate the Terms of Use. However, it does not explicitly state, nor does it logically imply, that you are allowed to post links that don't violate the Terms of Use. The natural follow-up question is “Why would the Scratch Team want to remove links that don't violate the Terms of Use?” The details for the answer can be asked through Contact Us. The answer is different for every possible website that gets removed from the website.

Chiroyce wrote:

Yeah, you did the very right thing by making this wonderful website and also verifying that it is safe for Scratch, but unfortunately they don't care about the ATs community or the forumers enough to value their time and effort.

I read their response just once again and well it gets even worse, it looks like they just responded with the default template that they LOVE to use

At this point I can no longer respond. Thank you for sharing your post with me and asking for my thoughts.

removed

What will happen to scratch auth?

Za-Chary wrote:

In particular, I am disappointed by the fact that — despite your strong coding knowledge, witty humor, and willingness to help other Scratchers — you no longer appear to support the Scratch Team's efforts.

I completly understand and agree by what you've said - that post of mine shows me in completly new light, but don't let it make you think that I hate the ST in every way possible, in fact, I don't even hate them, I'm just disappointed with the way they're currently handling user generated websites on Scratch. They seem to allow some (without a ToS or moderation that the ST can see) and they don't allow some (without a ToS and without moderation that the ST can see). I am extremely sorry if that post was in a rude tone, I was just frustrated a bit.. apologies to the ST if I sounded rude, I just wanted to prove my point.

Za-Chary wrote:

As far as I'm aware, Ocular has no personal-information-sharing capabilities. Therefore it is a user-created website that is allowed to be linked to.

If they went through every page of Ocular to search through for places to send personal info, why didn't they do it for Itinerary?

Za-Chary wrote:

I am sorry that your experience on Scratch has not been what you would expect.

I'm glad it was what I expected for around 2 years, and well, it doesn't seem like it will be for much longer…

Za-Chary wrote:

The details for the answer can be asked through Contact Us.

This post shows that @Looky1173 asked the ST for details — "Finally, I would like to inquire about why Itinerary was censured as well." and they haven't provided one in the response.

NFlex23 wrote:

dynamicsofscratch wrote:

(#371)

dynamicsofscratch wrote:

remeber my scratch.vir project yeah the one that got taken down well it turns out a another project called Mincr.vir is the same thing but its still isnt taken down!
WADDA ECK!

replica's link https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/701225838/

According to the ToU:

The ToU wrote:

3.5 You agree not to use Scratch in any way intended to disrupt the service, gain unauthorized access to the service, or interfere with any other user's ability to use the service. Prohibited activities include, but are not limited to:

1. Posting content deliberately designed to crash the Scratch website or editor;
   

okay fin my project down fin but mincr not down yet that problem for me

Steve0Greatness wrote:

Honestly, at this point the Scratch Team is just making themselves look bad.

yip

Steve0Greatness wrote:

Honestly, at this point the Scratch Team is just making themselves look bad.

sigh…

Za-Chary wrote:

As far as I'm aware, Ocular has no personal-information-sharing capabilities. Therefore it is a user-created website that is allowed to be linked to. If it is possible to share personal information using Ocular, then someone really should bring that up to the Scratch Team via Contact Us.

That is correct, however, Ocular does have the user-generated statuses which is essentially Scratcher moderated. These statuses are a huge part of Ocular and have been there since the beginning, though the ST seems fine with it.

Za-Chary wrote:

PostPercent is similar — I don't see any ways to share personal information using it, nor do I see any other way in which it breaks the Community Guidelines (unless there is something about the API which I don't know about).

Interestingly enough, I recall the ST removing links to PostPercent.
—

I'm honestly utterly confused of what the ST's stances and policies on things are anymore. We allow users to share Minecraft servers and the like, a platform that literally has unmoderated chat, yet we instill such trust that users aren't using it for sharing personal information. As long as it's “obviously not being used for sharing private information” it's completely fine. Yet they remove a link to my github.io site that literally just links to my Scratch, Ocular, PostPercent, and Github profile, none of which are sharing personal information or anything of the like, yet it was removed for this exact reason. Meanwhile we have sites like Itinerary which clearly have user generated content, however just a quick click through the site and you'll see that sharing personal information isn't the point of the site, similar to other creations like Scratch Tutorials. So what I don't understand is how we can allow users to link to things like Minecraft that literally have built-in chat capabilities, yet the Scratch Team seems less lenient on sites that don't even have any chat capabilities, minus some public, user-generated content that anyone can and is encoraged to report to the appropriate people.

So how can the ST entrust users to link to things like Minecraft, having absolutely zero idea of what goes on in the chat or what user-generated content they create, yet they're so strict and unforgiving when you link to your perfectly Scratch-appropriate Github profile or to sites like Itinerary where you can see the purpose of the product and all that's going on there? I honestly don't see how the latter can all be so untrustworthy, yet they hold great trust in the former?

Don't get me wrong, I support the ST. I recognize they are a small team, and I recognize that they're human and can makes mistakes. But the on-going problem that bugs me and probably everyone else is their inconsistency. You're telling me we can have the entire Advanced Topics forum be full of all kinds of projects linking to Github, yet when I link to it on my profile I'm breaking the Community Guidelines? You're telling me kids can play Minecraft and Roblox with other Scratchers, doing who-knows-what there, yet we disallow things like Itinerary? And when we inquire about what we did wrong via Contact Us as we're told to do, we get these responses that don't really answer our questions? And then we have our policies for Scratch in a bunch of different places, if even anywhere at all. Like, unless reading every topic in Announcements is a free-time activity of choice of yours, you wouldn't know the Browser Extension/Userscript Policy exists until you've linked to something that policy disallows and you received an alert. Why? I understand that the Community Guidelines are meant to be simple and to the point, but you can't be so vague on what users can and can't do, and then be inconsistent on your stances and responses.

Like I said, I have nothing but respect for the Scratch Team, but it is their vagueness and inconsistencies that are just confusing and utterly frustrating.

Here are my thoughts on scratch auth being banned:
(also rip @scoldercreations btw)
I think it was really dumb to ban it. Like bruh, i'm not as locked in to the ATs and friends with everyone as chiroyce is, but even I know it doesn't remotely make any sense whatsoever
The scratch team didn't remotely think about what they were doing. Heres why:
in their argument for banning it, they said:

scratch team wrote:

We do not allow links to external sites that have even the potential to share private information or chat functions, regardless of how well you intend to moderate.

There is absolutely no way to share any information, personal or non-personal, on scratch auth.
You can look yourself in the code: https://github.com/Looky1173/Scratch-Auth-Client
The only user input possible is the username (on the profile comments auth option), and that is moderated by scratch. NO information whatsoever is saved, except for one click sign in accounts, and for those the only information the user puts in is the username.

The scratch team's argument is literally false.
I'm not saying they are wrong about some triviality like they should have responded sooner or smth. Their argument is provably false. This isn't some freewheeling, complaining nerd who only wants to argue for the sake of arguing. I cannot overstate this. Their argument literally doesn't work.

The ban makes even less sense with the existence of fluffyscratch. FluffyScratch is a very similiar auth and was not banned. Possibly that was because they did not know about it, as there's no forum topic or anything though

And, as looky1173 said and spent an hour verifying, the scratch terms of use state explicitly:

TOU wrote:

8. Third Party Websites, 8.1 Content on Scratch, including user-generated content, may include links to third party websites.

There are exceptions, but this certainly hurts the scratch team's argument

Also there is the point of the google form. This form obviously had unmoderated chat. But it was removed and they didn't undo the ban. So that cannot possibly be the reason.

But what do we expect? The scratch team certainly does not have the time to look into every single user generated website. They barely have enough time to moderate projects alone! Scratch has a minimum of 15 million comments a month (thats over 5 comments per second), and each of those needs to be moderated.

And also, like Za-chary said, these kinds of things and the people who make them are not scratch's target demographic. They are not going to try to bow to the needs and wants of a relatively small group that is hard to cater to (often wanting advanced and difficult features and heavily inclined to find every single vulnerability) and is not their target group.

I mean, we'd like to think our complaints are making them deeply think about how to moderate a site like scratch, but are they? really? Really? The truth is, when you really think about it, they don't care about this kind of stuff, nor should they.
They cannot be expected or inclined to help “ATers” or anyone else (graphic designers, people who use scratch like a pure social media, wiki writers) who is not their target demographic: Young people who want to learn simple coding and share it to get constructive feedback. That, after all, is the very thing that scratch was meant to foster.

Oh and also - I'm not talking about the itinerary ban. That's completely different. I feel they do have some reason to ban that. But scratch auth is different

So in all: they have no reason whatsoever to ban it, so their ban was unwarranted and unjust.
But they cannot be expected to be right all the time, as they're human and limited.
Nor can they be expected to cater to a very small group who is not their target group, especially when they're stretched thin already
So my conclusion is, the ban was unjust but was a byproduct of the scratch team's focus on their target demographic. Basically, they're trying to say that stuff like this isn't really meant for scratch.

And they have all the right to do that. The scratch team owns scratch. They own the domain, they own the code, they own everything. They could make it into a website to sell popcorn if they wanted to. We have no right to stop them, nor should we.
They can moderate however they want, whether they ban everyone or do nothing

But the problem comes when they say they only moderate in certain cases, outline those cases, and then overstep those boundaries.
And thats what they did.

The scratch team singled out scratch auth for seemingly no reason, even when there are other sites (like aviate and ocular) that certainly let you share a lot more personal information and have more popular forum topics.

Then they took down the project and forum topic for an invalid reason.

It wasn't right, but we can't really do anything. Scratch auth does not cater to this site's target demographic (which the scratch team obviously and reasonably cares the most about) so they don't care about it being here. And, they don't want it to be here for some mystical, invisible, and possibly nonexistent reason, maybe just out of spite, and we have no say in whether they let it be here.

We literally can't do a thing.

So it's really a shame.






(also btw i have nothing but respect for the scratch team. but sometimes hard things need to be said to tell people you care about that they're doing something wrong. so ST, i'm criticizing you, but only because i care about you. I wouldn't have made this mile long post if i didn't care)

scratchusername40 wrote:

also rip @scoldercreations

That name sounds awfully familiar… Reminds me of banana bread.

Looky1173 wrote:

(#352)
Incubator will come with a rich text editor because I found that most people didn't leverage Itinerary's Markdown support, presumably because they weren't familial with the syntax.

I think github has a quick markdown guide (or thats something else) maybe you should add that?

-7s wrote:

(#394)

scratchusername40 wrote:

also rip @scoldercreations

That name sounds awfully familiar… Reminds me of banana bread.

hmmm

Well none of this matters cause scratch auth is back

Chiroyce wrote:

I'm glad it was what I expected for around 2 years, and well, it doesn't seem like it will be for much longer…

Now we really have a need for our own Scratch-like coding website.

Okay, the forum is back BUT NOT THE AUTH

sudo sh -c 'echo "text" > file'

echo 'text' | sudo tee file 1> /dev/null

kccuber wrote:

Chiroyce wrote:

I'm glad it was what I expected for around 2 years, and well, it doesn't seem like it will be for much longer…

Now we really have a need for our own Scratch-like coding website.

Remaking the forums though, that'll be a pain. You both 1. won't be able to link it, and 2 you need a server. There's no doubt that you can't use replit with this one..