Eng:Announcements (forum)

The Announcements forum is a forum in the Scratch Forums where updates from the Scratch Team can be found.

What the Forum Contains
While the content of the announcements varies, they usually fall under these areas:
 * A new release of Scratch
 * Changes to the website
 * Experimental tests
 * Wanted feedback
 * Downtime
 * Scratch Video Updates

As only the Scratch Team can create new threads, there is no risk of users posting false information in a new topic.

There is often a post in the Scratch News corresponding to a post in the Announcements forum.

Activity
The forum is one of the least active ones, as new topics are slow to arise and normal users cannot post new topics in the forum.

The announcements posted are not always things that will die downone of these is a place where users can submit holiday logos, and another was where users could apply to be curators. While those threads are not continuously active, they amount for many of the forum's posts.

This forum is very vulnerable to spam, mostly posted by New Scratchers. The stickied Announcements Directory is especially vulnerable to spam as it is the only stickied thread open for posting 24/7. Notable examples are listed below.

Post-Number Spam
Often users will rush to the forum to try to get the first post in a new topic. Some posts will just consist of "First post!" or "Xth post!" and are technically spam, but they are not deleted by the Scratch Team and do not affect most topics.

If scratchers see posts that only contain "First post!" or "Xth post!", it should be reported. Some topics about new features will also have users suggesting new ideas in them, instead of in the Suggestions forum, and sometimes users will also post questions on topics, instead of in the Help with Scripts or Questions about Scratch forum.

Blockspam
This forum is the most vulnerable to blockspam as new scratchers use the block plugin to communicate.

Besides the Scratch Team
Only four normal Scratchers have had topics in the Announcements forums. joletole's topic was moved there when he announced that the Scratch Team changed any mention of "pi" to "3.14159265..." on Pi Day. ImagineIt posted in the Community Moderator Appreciation Day topic for 2011 in 2012, after which Paddle2See made a new topic, merged his post and the later ones on the first topic, and since posts are sorted by date, his became first. The posts have since been rearranged. blob8108's post explaining scratchblocks was moved to Announcements when the [scratchblocks] tag was released. The user Makethebrainhappy, along with his collaboration, the Services Planning Department, also had their Announcements Directory moved to the Announcements forum in June 2017.