Eng:List of Commonly Suggested Ideas

This page lists a number of commonly suggested ideas, along with the Scratch Team's opinion. Scratchers request ideas typically on the forums or in a project to alert the Scratch Team of the community's desires. Part of running the Scratch community is knowing what the community wants changed to both the program and website. Many of these have been denied by the Scratch Team.

Bringing back the Community Moderator Program

 * Status: Denied

According to this forum post, the Scratch Team said that they will retire the Community Moderator Program, and the Scratch Team now monitors the forums and the website. Many people requested that the Community Moderator Program should be brought back; however, all those requests were rejected.

Chatrooms

 * Status: Restricted

Chatrooms, along with private messaging, have been requested for a long time, but the answer has always been no because people can say anything without any moderation. The only exception is safe chats, which have a predefined lists of words, called a whitelist, that users can say, but anything not on the list is censored out of the chat. Safe chats are hard to make because of the variety of words that must be placed in the word list, therefore working safe chat rooms are very rare. And, because they are based on cloud data, New Scratchers cannot use them.

"As you might know some members have created their own websites with forums and even chatrooms. You are free to do that as it is outside the realm of what Scratch is about. You might also have noticed that a few users were arguing about the list of chatrooms. So if that happens just with a list of chatrooms imagine what happens with the chatrooms themselves :)"

- andresmh

The Scratch Team also discourages using projects, studios, and the like as chatrooms. However, interestingly, the Scratch Team provided Cloud Data in Scratch 2.0, which makes chatroom projects easier to make.

Rating System

 * Status: Denied

Many users have suggested a 5 star rating system to rate projects, similar to what originally was on YouTube. However, the suggestion has been denied, as low ratings are discouraging and may cause users to quit Scratch.

Disabling Remixes/Downloads

 * Status: Denied

Due to people stealing art, scripts, and sounds from projects and using them as their own, many people have suggested locking or disabling remixes and downloads. However, it would be against the Scratch motto, "Imagine, Program, Share". "But wouldn't the option to refuse download be against Scratch's motto to imagine, program, and share?"

- cheddargirl, Scratch Team at MIT

Cloning

 * Status: Done

Cloning is a suggestion that would let you have multiple copies of sprites, without needing to make new sprites. This would be useful for 1S1S projects, although partially defeating the purpose.

Cloning is available in Scratch 2.0.

Previous costume block

 * Status: Undetermined

This has been suggested an amount of times. It is like the "Next Costume" block but it would do the opposite. However, it was said the people could use the following script for switching to a sprite's previous costume: switch to costume ((costume #) - (1)) It's easily workaroundable. However, some people say that it should be implemented, because there's a "Next Costume" block.

Received (Block)

 * Status: Denied

A boolean block  Received has been suggested multiple times and has always been turned down or ignored. One part of the reason is ambiguity. It is unclear whether it would be true if the broadcast were received since the project was created, since the green flag was clicked, for only a millisecond, since another broadcast was received, etc. The following workaround can be used to replicate this block: when I receive [message 1 v] set [message 1 v] to [true] wait until <(message 1) = [true]>

Some Scratch Modifications have this block.

An alternate suggestion sometimes found is ([broadcast v] received in the past (1) secs) //category=events which has not yet been commented on by the Scratch Team.

Custom profile page

 * Status: Accepted

Some creative Scratchers have suggested to have their own custom profile page, which they could edit the way they wanted, by adding buttons, images, other sections...

The Scratch Team accepted the idea of sections and implemented the About Me and What I'm Working On sections in Scratch 2.0. They planned to implement widgets but it never made to Scratch 2.0.

Changing your username

 * Status: Denied

The Scratch Team has rejected the changing of usernames because the software architecture would not be able to cope. It would also confuse people, and cause many issues and misunderstandings. The best way to change your username is to create a new account and move your projects over.

Removing the New Scratcher status

 * Status: Denied

The New Scratcher status is an effective way to stop spam attacks and to verify if the user is legitimate. New Scratchers will have to wait a set amount of time between forum posts and comments so if they are a spammer or spam-bot, they will be slowed down.

Private messaging

 * Status: Denied

The idea of Private Messaging has been declined because it would be almost impossible to moderate every single message. It goes against Internet safety rules, and could turn into a place where online bullying could happen.

Banning Add Everything Studios

 * Status: Denied

The suggestion to remove all Add Everything Studios from the site, and disallow the creation of more, caused a lot of debate and discussion in a thread in the Suggestions forum. Many users considered the type of studios to be spam. In the end, the suggestion was rejected simply because the studios didn't take up a lot of space, or break the Community Guidelines.