Will it come back next year, or are all of the posts permanently deleted? It would be a shame if they were all gone, because some of the topics were amazing and had lots of detail, and it would be sad to see it all go to waste.

While I can't speak for the Scratch Team, based on my knowledge of how the forums work, I suspect that the forum was made hidden, rather than every topic in that forum being dustbinned. I suppose next year there's a chance that they could make a separate “April Fools' Day 2024” forum — but I don't really think they would do that considering they now already have an April Fools' Day forum to use instead.

We're not sure. One of the things to keep in mind is that the AFD forums were (or rather, are) are a resource sink in terms of time, cost, and moderation. There's something to be said on how much resources had to be spent on a single forum section in a day versus how much is usually spent on the site elsewhere in 365 days. So, I guess it depends on if the resources are there to continue supporting it's existence next year.

Za-Chary wrote:

While I can't speak for the Scratch Team, based on my knowledge of how the forums work, I suspect that the forum was made hidden, rather than every topic in that forum being dustbinned. I suppose next year there's a chance that they could make a separate “April Fools' Day 2024” forum — but I don't really think they would do that considering they now already have an April Fools' Day forum to use instead.

That would make sense.

cheddargirl wrote:

We're not sure. One of the things to keep in mind is that the AFD forums were (or rather, are) are a resource sink in terms of time, cost, and moderation. There's something to be said on how much resources had to be spent on a single forum section in a day versus how much is usually spent on the site elsewhere in 365 days. So, I guess it depends on if the resources are there to continue supporting it's existence next year.

That also does make sense. I think one of the main issues is that on April Fools Day, many users come back to Scratch to enjoy that day, and are unaware of all of the issues on trying to make it happen. In other words, the last few users, no one knew whether we’d have April Fools again the next year, so it was a big deal for us as regular forumers to have it all work out in the end, and we didn’t spam the forum much at all — but those users who don’t use Scratch except for April Fools Day wouldn’t be aware of how difficult it was to have April Fools Day work out, so those were the main spammers in that forum.

I have a few suggestions on how to handle this, if I may. I might even add these to the Suggestions forum later, as long as I don’t find a duplicate:

1. Every time we do this, Paddle makes a sticky stating to prioritize quality over quantity. But maybe it would be worth spelling it out for them. Of course, it would be horrible to sound too forceful on a bunch of kids who just want to have fun, but there needs to be some sort of understanding that if they don’t put quality first, we may never do this again. So perhaps you could touch more on that.
   
2. Once it gets to about ten pages of April Fools topics, remove the “New topic” button. I saw someone do that earlier today on the AFD forum, actually, so I know it’s possible to do that (unless I’m unaware of some repercussions). That way, if there will only be ten pages of topics, users will think more carefully about what kinds of topics will be on that forum — plus, spam topics can just be deleted. After making new topics is closed, users can focus more on replying to other users’ topics, making the topics more high-quality in the process, by edifying the OP.
   

Does that make sense? Is there anything else I should address?

cheddargirl wrote:

We're not sure. One of the things to keep in mind is that the AFD forums were (or rather, are) are a resource sink in terms of time, cost, and moderation. There's something to be said on how much resources had to be spent on a single forum section in a day versus how much is usually spent on the site elsewhere in 365 days. So, I guess it depends on if the resources are there to continue supporting it's existence next year.

Ahh.
In my opinion based on how many topic it got, about 1000- I would have said it was effective nonetheless

Sliverus wrote:

I have a few suggestions on how to handle this, if I may. I might even add these to the Suggestions forum later, as long as I don’t find a duplicate:

1. Every time we do this, Paddle makes a sticky stating to prioritize quality over quantity. But maybe it would be worth spelling it out for them. Of course, it would be horrible to sound too forceful on a bunch of kids who just want to have fun, but there needs to be some sort of understanding that if they don’t put quality first, we may never do this again. So perhaps you could touch more on that.
   
2. Once it gets to about ten pages of April Fools topics, remove the “New topic” button. I saw someone do that earlier today on the AFD forum, actually, so I know it’s possible to do that (unless I’m unaware of some repercussions). That way, if there will only be ten pages of topics, users will think more carefully about what kinds of topics will be on that forum — plus, spam topics can just be deleted. After making new topics is closed, users can focus more on replying to other users’ topics, making the topics more high-quality in the process, by edifying the OP.
   

Does that make sense? Is there anything else I should address?

Sadly, it doesn't make sense. First bulletpoint is an extra moderation cost, second bulletpoint is an extra engineering cost. And the costs are something that have to be easily done in the span of 24 hours, for an event that only lasts 24 hours, for topics that have no continued benefit beyond that 24 hours.

Compare that to something like, say, the development of dark mode. The Scratch Team had a long time to research the pros and cons for adding it (low time cost), have it coincide with another visual-change project for cost efficiency (low money/development cost), and moderators just have to funnel any bug or suggestion discussions in a few dedicated forum threads if something breaks during its rollout (low moderation cost). I think even if the project was cut off early to not add a dark mode, any information about it would be helpful in the long run to the point that any future ST members can look into it even long after the old ones are gone.

If you want to insist on keeping AFD around in the forums, you'll have to really think hard about on how to make it super resource-efficient, otherwise AFD just comes across as fun at the expense of ending the forums faster. (Although perhaps you want to stop ignoring the stressed-out mod's idea of just sticking to the main site AFD events and leave the poor aging forums alone from AFD shenanigans? There's still a lot of update work to be done around the site, and the forums are gonna be a really, really huge project in itself).

cheddargirl wrote:

Sadly, it doesn't make sense. First bulletpoint is an extra moderation cost, second bulletpoint is an extra engineering cost. And the costs are something that have to be easily done in the span of 24 hours, for an event that only lasts 24 hours, for topics that have no continued benefit beyond that 24 hours.

Compare that to something like, say, the development of dark mode. The Scratch Team had a long time to research the pros and cons for adding it (low time cost), have it coincide with another visual-change project for cost efficiency (low money/development cost), and moderators just have to funnel any bug or suggestion discussions in a few dedicated forum threads if something breaks during its rollout (low moderation cost). I think even if the project was cut off early to not add a dark mode, any information about it would be helpful in the long run to the point that any future ST members can look into it even long after the old ones are gone.

If you want to insist on keeping AFD around in the forums, you'll have to really think hard about on how to make it super resource-efficient, otherwise AFD just comes across as fun at the expense of ending the forums faster. (Although perhaps you want to stop ignoring the stressed-out mod's idea of just sticking to the main site AFD events and leave the poor aging forums alone from AFD shenanigans? There's still a lot of update work to be done around the site, and the forums are gonna be a really, really huge project in itself).

Not to mention the whole site was left out apart from the semicolon, triangle eye, and cat blocks.

We also need to think about non-forumers too.

cheddargirl wrote:

If you want to insist on keeping AFD around in the forums, you'll have to really think hard about on how to make it super resource-efficient, otherwise AFD just comes across as fun at the expense of ending the forums faster. (Although perhaps you want to stop ignoring the stressed-out mod's idea of just sticking to the main site AFD events and leave the poor aging forums alone from AFD shenanigans? There's still a lot of update work to be done around the site, and the forums are gonna be a really, really huge project in itself).

There's no exigency to abdicate posting joke forum topics at the cost of server strain. I'm not negating the fact that server strains exist. As we've seen, the Scratch Team does have the power to add new forums, such as Project Save and Level Codes.

The Project Save and Level Codes forum, which one can view without any server strains, have 34 pages, and the April Fools forum as of April 1st stands with 30 pages, in an interval of two days. Thus saying that we couldn't continue the April Fools forum for future events because of server problems is quite nonsensical.

Prime689 wrote:

cheddargirl wrote:

If you want to insist on keeping AFD around in the forums, you'll have to really think hard about on how to make it super resource-efficient, otherwise AFD just comes across as fun at the expense of ending the forums faster. (Although perhaps you want to stop ignoring the stressed-out mod's idea of just sticking to the main site AFD events and leave the poor aging forums alone from AFD shenanigans? There's still a lot of update work to be done around the site, and the forums are gonna be a really, really huge project in itself).

There's no exigency to abdicate posting joke forum topics at the cost of server strain. I'm not negating the fact that server strains exist. As we've seen, the Scratch Team does have the power to add new forums, such as Project Save and Level Codes.

The Project Save and Level Codes forum, which one can view without any server strains, have 34 pages, and the April Fools forum as of April 1st stands with 30 pages, in an interval of two days. Thus saying that we couldn't continue the April Fools forum for future events because of server problems is quite nonsensical.

Still doesn't make sense if we don't know how easy it is to make a subforum.
Keep in mind there are still things that need to be updated on this site. one of them is this.

Prime689 wrote:

There's no exigency to abdicate posting joke forum topics at the cost of server strain. I'm not negating the fact that server strains exist. As we've seen, the Scratch Team does have the power to add new forums, such as Project Save and Level Codes.

The Project Save and Level Codes forum, which one can view without any server strains, have 34 pages, and the April Fools forum as of April 1st stands with 30 pages, in an interval of two days. Thus saying that we couldn't continue the April Fools forum for future events because of server problems is quite nonsensical.

Although the two sections are of similar size doesn't mean they're using up resources in the same way. 42 AFD pages generated over 24-48 hours is a lot different than 34 Code pages generated over the span of 2-3 years. When you consider other things that have to run in the background (such as the anti-SEO-spam bot that is summoned when someone makes a forum post), the problems seen on the backend become more glaring for those who need fast access to moderate efficiently.

cheddargirl wrote:

Prime689 wrote:

There's no exigency to abdicate posting joke forum topics at the cost of server strain. I'm not negating the fact that server strains exist. As we've seen, the Scratch Team does have the power to add new forums, such as Project Save and Level Codes.

The Project Save and Level Codes forum, which one can view without any server strains, have 34 pages, and the April Fools forum as of April 1st stands with 30 pages, in an interval of two days. Thus saying that we couldn't continue the April Fools forum for future events because of server problems is quite nonsensical.

Although the two sections are of similar size doesn't mean they're using up resources in the same way. 42 AFD pages generated over 24-48 hours is a lot different than 34 Code pages generated over the span of 2-3 years. When you consider other things that have to run in the background (such as the anti-SEO-spam bot that is summoned when someone makes a forum post), the problems seen on the backend become more glaring for those who need fast access to moderate efficiently.

but is that the benefit of having a april fool's forum shield tho? (you still have good points)

Here is my personal opinion, I feel like 2023… was only spoiling the forumers with the adf.

The fact that makes april fools it special is if everyone gets included. Searching up things and it's going crazy, project modes those were so cool, especially the ones where it's dark and you have a flashlight. And what do non-forumers get? Cat blocks, semicolon, Scratch cat. THAT'S IT.

I'm not saying the ADF is bad, it is effective against spam.

What they are worrying is moderating that forum itself. The problems come to be even more clear when someone makes even polls work, one that is rejected by the scratch team. Too many problems.

Za-Chary wrote:

I suspect that the forum was made hidden, rather than every topic in that forum being dustbinned.

Indeed, it was hidden. The topics (or well, at least, my topic) is still there!
Proof (I took this screenshot just now): https://ibb.co/M7vgTh9

imjack14 wrote:

Za-Chary wrote:

I suspect that the forum was made hidden, rather than every topic in that forum being dustbinned.

Indeed, it was hidden. The topics (or well, at least, my topic) is still there!
Proof (I took this screenshot just now): https://ibb.co/M7vgTh9

probably not anymore

cs3868895 wrote:

Here is my personal opinion, I feel like 2023… was only spoiling the forumers with the adf.

The fact that makes april fools it special is if everyone gets included. Searching up things and it's going crazy, project modes those were so cool, especially the ones where it's dark and you have a flashlight. And what do non-forumers get? Cat blocks, semicolon, Scratch cat. THAT'S IT.

I'm not saying the ADF is bad, it is effective against spam.

I'll have to agree with you. AFD in 2022 was more fun than AFD this year. We didn't just get cat blocks and semicolons, but we also got Easter eggs in the search bar, a prehistoric mode, an old-timey mode, and a 90's mode.
Also, you said April Day Fools' (ADF) twice.

cs3868895 wrote:

What they are worrying is moderating that forum itself. The problems come to be even more clear when someone makes even polls work, one that is rejected by the scratch team. Too many problems.

The poll feature was a leftover feature from DjangoBB's code that a Scratcher managed to find and share with everyone.

k0d3rrr wrote:

cs3868895 wrote:

Here is my personal opinion, I feel like 2023… was only spoiling the forumers with the adf.

The fact that makes april fools it special is if everyone gets included. Searching up things and it's going crazy, project modes those were so cool, especially the ones where it's dark and you have a flashlight. And what do non-forumers get? Cat blocks, semicolon, Scratch cat. THAT'S IT.

I'm not saying the ADF is bad, it is effective against spam.

I'll have to agree with you. AFD in 2022 was more fun than AFD this year. We didn't just get cat blocks and semicolons, but we also got Easter eggs in the search bar, a prehistoric mode, an old-timey mode, and a 90's mode.
Also, you said April Day Fools' (ADF) twice.

I swear ;_; I said apd now adf and it's afd I'm the fool itself
Idk but…
Since that I'm going to make a petition to bring one of them back in some time that would be fitting.
We, were actually spoiled because of that not going to lie.

Seems like all the topics just flat-out got dustbinned

DifferentDance8 wrote:

Seems like all the topics just flat-out got dustbinned

I think they’re just invisible.

DifferentDance8 wrote:

Seems like all the topics just flat-out got dustbinned

I'm pretty sure they will be restored for next April Fools though, from what I know, the dustbin is just another subforum except only ST members can access it.

Sliverus wrote:

DifferentDance8 wrote:

Seems like all the topics just flat-out got dustbinned

I think they’re just invisible.

Nope. If they're hidden (or “invisible” as you call it) then I would be able to access and read them (but not comment or anything on them) by going to a link. But I can't do that.