Eng:Add Everything Studios

An Add Everything studio (often abbreviated as AE studio) is a studio that allows Scratchers to add any project they made or have seen, without a restriction on what types of projects to add. Add Everything Studios were controversial throughout the community, as many Scratchers feel that they lack creativity or a specific focus.

Overview
An "Add Everything" studio is a studio where any and all projects are added in great quantity, often with the goal being to get the largest collection possible. This trend was started in early Scratch 2.0, when the gallery features were replaced with the new studio ones. "Add Everything" studios have been known to get larger than 40,000 projects. People once utilized the "add by tag" option to quickly add projects.

Social
AEs have the social purpose of multiple Scratchers becoming curators. Then, they talk to each other in the comments. They then get to know each other. Part of why this works is because usually, if someone gets interested in AEs, they usually stay interested in them.

Project Popularity
An add everything studio is helpful to some users because it can make a project more popular. For example, Project1 gets featured. It is in AE1. Project2 is in AE1 and AE2. A Scratcher views Project1, then follows the link to AE1. They see Project2 in AE1. They follow the link in Project2 to AE2, which contains Project3. This repeats for several Scratchers.

Common features
Common features of add everything studios include:
 * A list of goals Add everything studios often contain a list of goals to reach, such as the amount of projects, the amount of curators, and the amount of followers on the studio.
 * Separate jobs Certain big add everything studios offer different jobs to curators, such as adding projects and adding curators.
 * Random thumbnails Add everything studios have a variety of humorous, usually random, thumbnails, from snakes and waffles to kittens and dancing monsters. Some AE studios have the default thumbnails that show the most recently added project.

Popularity
According to Google, at least 2,290 studios use the exact phrase "Add Everything".

Different studios use different phrases, and sometimes the context the phrase is used in is different, making the exact number difficult to count. Nevertheless, the number has been estimated at over 53,000.

Some individual projects have been added to twenty or more "Add Everything" studios. More popular projects go into more "Add Everything" studios, as users often add whatever projects they have last seen, favorited, or loved. The more users who have seen the project, the more users will have added the project to "Add Everything" studios, for the most part.

Opposition
Between June and July 2013, topics arose in the Suggestions forum to protest against large amounts of "Add Everything" studios. On August 14, 2013, a large topic was created, which has received over 1,000 replies. Once a project opposing "Add Everything" projects became popular, many different users made similar protests, although projects had been made before. The project was removed from the front page because it could add to harmful conflict that began between both sides of the issue. Even some people sabotaged AE studios by pretending to like AE to be promoted as manager and then vandalize by removing projects and curators and even giving new titles.

"We realize that there is a lot of animosity regarding the state of Add Everything studios. But I suggest everyone on either side start cooling it down. The situation is making Scratch unfriendly, which is against the Community Guidelines. The situation regarding Add Everything studios isn't something to be overly aggressive about here."

- Cheddargirl

Problems
Some users do not really like these kinds of studios. Paddle2See, a member of the Scratch Team, posted this in the Scratch forums:

"I'm not a big fan of “add everything” studios. They don't help people find projects with a particular theme - because they have no theme and accept anything. It's possible, though, that they might serve a social purpose, if they can attract enough people interested in seeing the studio grow larger.  It doesn't cost the site much to host them - just a few more thousand rows in the project-studio relationship table.  And there is nothing in the Community Guidelines that says that a studio needs to have a specific theme - so they might as well enjoy their project collections."

- Paddle2See

Several projects have been made against "Add Everything" studios as well as forum topics and studios.

Common Reasons for keeping "Add Everything" Studios

 * They do no harm and take up little space.
 * They can be helpful to New Scratchers who are looking for projects to remix.
 * They can be very fun for users who add to them.
 * The Scratch motto is "Imagine, Program, Share". They help with the "Share" part.
 * They might serve a social purpose or popularize their contents.
 * They help new people get popular/meet new people
 * They do not violate the Community Guidelines.

Common Reasons for trying to stop "Add Everything" Studios

 * They do not have any specific theme which means it's unlikely people will want to look for projects in an "Add Everything".
 * "Add everything" studios can outnumber studios with certain themes in searches and distract Scratchers from studios with similar projects in the "Studios" bar on project pages showing which studios the project is in.
 * Some Scratchers find them bothersome and do not want their projects added.
 * They are easily vandalised by managers.

Suggestions
Various suggestions have been made to solve the problem during the debate about those studios.


 * Keep them and do not try to do anything that might make it harder for them. Some people like them and want to keep being able to use them, for purposes such as extending the explore feature, which only shows projects shared less than a month ago, or finding good projects with little views.
 * Ban them. Some people feel that they should not exist and should be deleted by the Scratch Team.
 * Limit the number of projects in studios. This idea is for studios to be limited to a certain amount of projects so they cannot get too big. The limit would be high enough for other studios (which usually contain fewer projects) not to hit it.
 * Allow project owners to reorder studios on the studios bar This idea would allow project creators to put certain studios above other studios on the projects bar.

Outcome
After the conflict, the Scratch Team removed the "add by tag" feature from studios. However, it was not due to campaigns. Later on, they made a more significant decision of allowing users to remove their own projects from studios. After that, the Scratch Team are experimenting with an algorithm to prevent Add Everything studios from appearing in search results and they also made all studios only show the number of projects up to 100, after which the studio just says 100+. This is to prevent people from focusing on the numbers. Many still are unhappy with the studios despite that, although most of the arguing regarding these studios has died down.