Scratch moderation kinda sucks. One step onto the Scratch kid reviews on Common Sense Media will prove my point. This post will probably get taken down within an hour, which will prove my point even more. Scratch is also biased toward younger kids imo.

I made an alt account asking people about their experience with Scratch's moderation, and most said they hated it (before the account got deleted by the s.t ofc) but this topic almost never comes up because we've all learned that the s.t isn't going to do anything and speaking out about this will either get you muted, banned, or all of the above. I'm kinda fine with my account getting deleted right now, as I quit scratch almost a year ago. I'm just leaving this as a final message, and I hope a lot of people see this. I understand that the S.T is small, but that doesn't excuse their rude behaviour towards people appealing their bans, the pointless bans, and their attempt at silencing people who don't agree with them.

GG, and goodbye.

when green flag clicked
forever
scratch on!
end

Fudgecrumb wrote:

(#1)
Scratch moderation kinda sucks. One step onto the Scratch kid reviews on Common Sense Media will prove my point. This post will probably get taken down within an hour, which will prove my point even more. Scratch is also biased toward younger kids imo.

I made an alt account asking people about their experience with Scratch's moderation, and most said they hated it (before the account got deleted by the s.t ofc) but this topic almost never comes up because we've all learned that the s.t isn't going to do anything and speaking out about this will either get you muted, banned, or all of the above. I'm kinda fine with my account getting deleted right now, as I quit scratch almost a year ago. I'm just leaving this as a final message, and I hope a lot of people see this. I understand that the S.T is small, but that doesn't excuse their rude behaviour towards people appealing their bans, the pointless bans, and their attempt at silencing people who don't agree with them.

GG, and goodbye.

when green flag clicked
forever
scratch on!
end

Well I think you should use PenguinMod because you can share projects there and there a TON of new blocks you could use!

groot55a wrote:

Fudgecrumb wrote:

(#1)
Scratch moderation kinda sucks. One step onto the Scratch kid reviews on Common Sense Media will prove my point. This post will probably get taken down within an hour, which will prove my point even more. Scratch is also biased toward younger kids imo.

I made an alt account asking people about their experience with Scratch's moderation, and most said they hated it (before the account got deleted by the s.t ofc) but this topic almost never comes up because we've all learned that the s.t isn't going to do anything and speaking out about this will either get you muted, banned, or all of the above. I'm kinda fine with my account getting deleted right now, as I quit scratch almost a year ago. I'm just leaving this as a final message, and I hope a lot of people see this. I understand that the S.T is small, but that doesn't excuse their rude behaviour towards people appealing their bans, the pointless bans, and their attempt at silencing people who don't agree with them.

GG, and goodbye.

when green flag clicked
forever
scratch on!
end

Well I think you should use PenguinMod because you can share projects there and there a TON of new blocks you could use!

I'll check it out

bump

Fudgecrumb wrote:

bump

Topics don't need to be bumped unless it has been 24 hours/the post is no longer on the front page.

Fudgecrumb wrote:

Scratch moderation kinda sucks. One step onto the Scratch kid reviews on Common Sense Media will prove my point. This post will probably get taken down within an hour, which will prove my point even more. Scratch is also biased toward younger kids imo.

Yeah, it will get taken down because Scratch moderation is perfectly fine.

Fudgecrumb wrote:

I made an alt account asking people about their experience with Scratch's moderation, and most said they hated it (before the account got deleted by the s.t ofc) but this topic almost never comes up because we've all learned that the s.t isn't going to do anything and speaking out about this will either get you muted, banned, or all of the above. I'm kinda fine with my account getting deleted right now, as I quit scratch almost a year ago. I'm just leaving this as a final message, and I hope a lot of people see this. I understand that the S.T is small, but that doesn't excuse their rude behaviour towards people appealing their bans, the pointless bans, and their attempt at silencing people who don't agree with them.

Please prove that the Scratch Team silences people. I hear this so often, but funnily enough, I never hear proof.
Please prove that the Scratch Team is rude towards those who appeal their bans. 99% of bans are reasonable, and for the 1% that get unfair bans, they should use Contact Us to appeal. Unless you were banned fairly, your ban will be removed.

If you are one of those people who hate on the Scratch Team because you did something wrong, but don't want to admit it and instead hate on them, I have this to say:

Grow up. Learn your consequences have actions and stop hating on the people who are simply doing their jobs.

I get your frustrations and all, but to the Scratch team what you’re saying is probably quite disrespectful towards them. Also, they are about 60 people moderating 150 million + users, you should give them a break. Under 100 people can’t handle all of that alone, so they made a report system where if a Project is reported enough it’s automatically deleted. Sure, it’s flawed, but Scratch is very low-budget and, like I previously said, their very small team has to watch over about 1/16th of the ENTIRE population.

sonic__fan wrote:

Please prove that the Scratch Team is rude towards those who appeal their bans. 99% of bans are reasonable, and for the 1% that get unfair bans, they should use Contact Us to appeal.]

I can literally second this, once I did something quite stupid and got banned for a while. However, I appealed and the ST weren’t rude at all and eventually, after consideration unbanned my account. I do not get why so many people say that the ST are like supervillains.

BendyOl183 wrote:

I get your frustrations and all, but to the Scratch team what you’re saying is probably quite disrespectful towards them. Also, they are about 60 people moderating 150 million + users, you should give them a break. Under 100 people can’t handle all of that alone, so they made a report system where if a Project is reported enough it’s automatically deleted. Sure, it’s flawed, but Scratch is very low-budget and, like I previously said, their very small team has to watch over about 1/16th of the ENTIRE population.

According to the page about the Scratch Team on the Scratch Wiki, there are about 60 Scratch Team members, and not all of them are moderators (for sake of argument, let's say half of them are mods).
That's 30 people moderating a website of

• 137 million projects
  
• 113 million users
  
• 842 million comments
  
• 33 million studios
  

sonic__fan wrote:

BendyOl183 wrote:

I get your frustrations and all, but to the Scratch team what you’re saying is probably quite disrespectful towards them. Also, they are about 60 people moderating 150 million + users, you should give them a break. Under 100 people can’t handle all of that alone, so they made a report system where if a Project is reported enough it’s automatically deleted. Sure, it’s flawed, but Scratch is very low-budget and, like I previously said, their very small team has to watch over about 1/16th of the ENTIRE population.

According to the page about the Scratch Team on the Scratch Wiki, there are about 60 Scratch Team members, and not all of them are moderators (for sake of argument, let's say half of them are mods).
That's 30 people moderating a website of

• 137 million projects
  
• 113 million users
  
• 842 million comments
  
• 33 million studios
  

My goodness, that is less than I thought. Yeah, they’re not gonna suddenly change their moderation, it’s like only having 30 guards very far away from a crowd of 100,000 people that they have to somehow watch over ALL 100,000.

BendyOl183 wrote:

sonic__fan wrote:

BendyOl183 wrote:

I get your frustrations and all, but to the Scratch team what you’re saying is probably quite disrespectful towards them. Also, they are about 60 people moderating 150 million + users, you should give them a break. Under 100 people can’t handle all of that alone, so they made a report system where if a Project is reported enough it’s automatically deleted. Sure, it’s flawed, but Scratch is very low-budget and, like I previously said, their very small team has to watch over about 1/16th of the ENTIRE population.

According to the page about the Scratch Team on the Scratch Wiki, there are about 60 Scratch Team members, and not all of them are moderators (for sake of argument, let's say half of them are mods).
That's 30 people moderating a website of

• 137 million projects
  
• 113 million users
  
• 842 million comments
  
• 33 million studios
  

My goodness, that is less than I thought. Yeah, they’re not gonna suddenly change their moderation, it’s like only having 30 guards very far away from a crowd of 100,000 people that they have to somehow watch over ALL 100,000.

But some people think that the Scratch Team has to be perfect at this.
Don't listen to them, they're either entitled or ignorant.

The above is correct, but slightly flawed. Not all members are on at once, due to time zones.
So let's say there are 50 members moderating (Not taking into account members that sadly left)
There ade also 160 Million users, so let's say 15 mods are online at any given time, which is really leaning towards them being miracle workers. Now, let's say there are constantly 150 reports or more any given second. Well, that's a bit low but this should prove my point.

Popular arguments:
“Hire more mods”
They rely on donations to run.
“Reform!”
They have to be strict. Of course they'll be biased to a younger demographic, the site is to teach kids to code.

The mod team is overworked as is, and the auto mod is really overly hated. It doesn't permanently take down anything, just until a mod can review it, and bans from it are rare. That is, 12 hours long rarely. And that requires a bunch of reports.

And they'll take long for reports. That's inevitable. But, they're of the best mod teams in the world.

Fudgecrumb wrote:

One step onto the Scratch kid reviews on Common Sense Media will prove my point.

Yeah, Common Sense Media is full of dumb people. Someone literally said their kid killed themselves over Scratch, but if that was true, wouldn't there be news stories about it?

EDIT: Just realized this was a day ago, oh well. Apologies for that — I'll leave the debunk here anyway.

Just to start off, what's the suggestion? This is more of just saying “ST abuses power” and how “ST needs new moderators”, which isn't true.

Tl;dr: Moderation isn't bad, made of silencing or “reasonless” bans. That is a fallacy, and there's barely any evidence here to back it up. If you feel like you have a punishment that is a misunderstanding, use Contact-Us. If you want to send actual feedback, try being in-depth to Contact-Us, just not a rant if possible.

Fudgecrumb wrote:

(#1)
Scratch moderation kinda sucks.

If it did, they wouldn't have cared for me sending around 2.3k~+ inappropriate usernames to Contact-Us, although they were mixed. Not to mention the amount of times they helped out. Don't forget: They probably get more reports than we think they do.

(#1)
One step onto the Scratch kid reviews on Common Sense Media will prove my point.

Aight, stop right there. The Scratch Team may sound like some all mighty mega ultra insane army of people typing away and banning every gobosecondum of person that tries to even step foot into a forum topic, but that's a fallacy. Here's 1 graph and the registered user count (graph is kinda out of date but doesn't matter much)



source incase anyone is curious

Yeah, that's alot. Seems worthless mentioning, but ST is pretty darn small, and thats backed up over here on this Scratch Wiki page.

Scratch is also biased toward younger kids imo.

Scratch is made for All Ages. All content shared on the platform has to be fit to any age, but mustn't be in the gap where it's not suitable for kids either, if a project is just on the verge of being against Guidelines, however isn't — The NFE Project Review Status can come in.

This site is also intended for education, hence the “.edu” in the domain.

I made an alt account asking people about their experience with Scratch's moderation, and most said they hated it (before the account got deleted by the s.t ofc)

Community Guidelines wrote:

Treat everyone with respect.

Scratchers have diverse backgrounds, interests, identities, and experiences. Everyone on Scratch is encouraged to share things that excite them and are important to them—we hope that you find ways to celebrate your own identity on Scratch, and allow others to do the same. It’s never OK to attack a person or group’s identity or to be unkind to someone about their background or interests.

Just talk to them in Contact-Us. you don't want to create an accidental flame war or hate campaign.

OP wrote:

but this topic almost never comes up because we've all learned that the s.t isn't going to do anything and speaking out about this will either get you muted, banned, or all of the above.

If you want to HELP THEM IMPROVE, you don't want to do it PUBLICLY. So, here's an example: I'd made a BaG thread about a bug (i was not thinking it through much) which was pretty darn serious — A bug that allowed users to freely chat, something that DEFINETLY should have been to Contact-Us, however again, I didn't think it through much — I and a multitude of others went off-topic later and it was dustbinned.

That was a bad idea of me (creating the topic in the first place), yes. But ST didn't do anything else. Sure, wasn't speaking about moderation, but they ain't gonna ban you for nothing, heck, if I was banned for that, I would be accepting it, permanent or not — Bans have reasons.

“Improve your moderation!” isn't actual criticism or feedback, behind the scenes — Nobody except ST knows what's behind the curtains. If something feels unfair, talk to Contact-Us.

Fudgecrumb wrote:

(#1)
I'm kinda fine with my account getting deleted right now, as I quit scratch almost a year ago. I'm just leaving this as a final message, and I hope a lot of people see this. I understand that the S.T is small, but that doesn't excuse their rude behaviour towards people appealing their bans, the pointless bans, and their attempt at silencing people who don't agree with them.

I wouldn't say “rude” when they we're fine with me asking for an update about blocking something dangerous.

Not to forget, I won't share the email (I'd be breaching the privacy of that conversation, which I do not want to do as I don't want to annoy ST — I have respect for ‘em) but they told the Contact-Us handler I passed the repository I found (and passed over to in the email) to pass a thank you in the reply. A thank you.

I’d never seen somethin' like that from sites I'd been on, even if I only remember a singular one.

Also, “pointless” ban? Likementioned, bans have reasons. And, “silencing”… Most of the time, either you're accidentally causing a hatecampaign, or in general just probably igniting a flame in a forest by accident, or both. Etc, etc etc. That isn't silencing.

Alot of people also don't realize why the remix culture rule is also mandatory and say they are targetted or hated (PS: ST doesn't hate or target anyone intentionally), only saying this before anyone pulls that up.


Also, please — Try not to make posts like this, you might just ignite a flame. If you think there's some misunderstanding, just please: use Contact-Us, not a public forum.

Now, one more thing. I will just make it a screenshot to not make this long, as it explains it enough.

read that over here

I'd said all that I feel is neccasary to say, other than there's not much of a real suggestion here other than getting new ST Members to replace old ones, which I honestly will say: not needed, even if they had to do some laying off, a whole team doesn't need to be replaced.

Very sorry to hear that you had an unsatisfactory experience. Good luck with your journey on other sites.

Please use Contact Us to provide examples of rudeness in communications with the Scratch Team and your other areas of discontent. There's always room for improvement.