Eng:Welcoming Committee

The Welcoming Committee (commonly abbreviated SWC or WCS) is a program that was created to help welcome New Scratchers to the website, and help them out with any questions they might have. Scratchers can join the committee by creating a welcoming project and asking for it to be added to the Welcoming Committee studio.

History
The Welcoming Committee was created in August 2012. The intention was to show New Scratchers a "connect" link on their My Stuff page. This led to a random "Welcome to Scratch" project.

How it Works
When a Scratcher creates a project welcoming new Scratchers, they can request for it to be added to the studio. A Welcoming Committee curator will view the project and give suggestions for changes until it's ready for the studio. Once the project is accepted, the creator is a member of the Scratch Welcoming Committee. If you're a New Scratcher, you can't submit a project yet. When the Welcoming Committee curators review projects, they check for if the user is a Scratcher or not. If the user submitting their project isn't a Scratcher, they will be told that they can't submit it now and that they can always re-submit their project once they get the Scratcher rank.

Members of the Welcoming Committee are expected to help, greet and answer questions that new members might have, both in the Welcoming Committee studio comments and in their welcoming project. You don't have to be a member of the studio to help out in the comments, though, anybody can answer comments in the studio voluntarily.

When a user registers, they'll see three links the Front Page in their "What's Happening" section. The first link goes to the project editor with some tips on the side on getting started in the program. The second link goes to the starter projects made by the Scratch Team. The last link, "Connect with Other Scratchers", links to the Welcoming Committee studio. This is shown until the user uploads his/her first project.

When the studio was first introduced in Scratch 1.4, the links were displayed on a user's My Stuff page, and were only present for users with odd ID numbers.

How to Join
To join, a Scratcher must make a project to welcome new Scratchers. Then they must submit their project by leaving a comment with a link to their project on the Welcoming Committee studio.

How to Curate
When a Scratcher submits a project, the Welcoming Committee curators review their project. If it meets the requirements, they will add it to the studio.

Current Curators Include:


 * gobo (Controlled by the Scratch Team)
 * scmb1 (Scratch Team Member)
 * P110
 * LiFaytheGoblin (Scratch Team Member)
 * cheddargirl (Scratch Team Member)
 * ricarose (Scratch Team Member)
 * EH7meow
 * dolphingirl36 (Scratch Team Member)
 * CrazyNimbus
 * Really_A
 * chacharosie8888
 * Hamish752
 * Denciethepenguin
 * amateurradiogeek15
 * Abstract-
 * -Cherri-
 * ItchyCatIII

Welcoming Committee Forum
The Welcoming Committee has a private forum that only curators can see, this forum is pictured below. The Welcoming Committee Curators use this forum for many necessary tasks that include: "...to improve the review system and to coordinate reviews, as well as to easily exchange resources for curators."

- LiFaytheGoblin, Scratch Team member