(Typed by @FrogHoppy ) Recently, I've seen a lot of people against the Scratch Team. I've seen rants, jokes, angered fan-arts, even poems. And at their core, they all have on message: "The Scratch Team is unfair." "The Scratch Team is lazy." "The Scratch Team loves censorship." Well, I'd like to say a few words on my view of this. Scratch is a coding-based platform designed for ages eight and up. Every year, it receives thousands of new members - many of these stay, whilst some only briefly visit and move on. Since, 2020, one of Scratch's most prominent fan-made features has been its large, active studios - filled with people posting new comments by the minute. And in these studios, Community Guidelines are frequently broken. This has become a great problem, and, over time, many studios - despite being wonderful places to foster communities - have ultimately been removed. As sad as this may make longtime members, this is simply a necessary measure for the moderators of Scratch. Scratch is a platform made for for children, including very young individuals - to have them have to see inappropriate content is unfair, for the enjoyment of older contemporaries. The former has just as much of a right to a safe and friendly community as the latter - and one cannot outweigh the other. On another topic, one "issue" I see frequently is anger at the automatic filterbot that moderates Scratch comments before they are made public. And what I've mainly seen is a response to "irrational" mutes - which, on a closer look, is merely cautionary. Some of the popular displays of this regard words with spaces in between each of their letters, like "t h i s". For two examples of genuine cases, I see people spacing out the word 'grape' or 'spider'. For the first, it is pretty obvious - it contains the name of a terrible crime. But the second, I've seen no recognition - in the English language. Simply put, it contains a homophobic slur in a Slavic language. And, as Scratch is a place welcoming of individuals of all languages, this is just as bad as any hateful word in English. Another example of this is mutes in response to "keyboard smashes". I've reviewed a few of these myself, and, every time, I've found a reason why they've been censored. From accidental abbreviations of curses to literal slurs being accidentally included, Scratch is just trying to detect a harmful message - whether intentional or not. (And for keyboard smashes, when genuinely wanted, one can simply type the middle row of keys, to create "asdfghjkl".) I've seen another major cause of anger - the Scratch Team doesn't always go that thoroughly into investigation before taking down projects accused of theft, inappropriate behavior, or simply any violation enough to lead to a report. This is, indubitably, annoying. But there is one thing that I would like to add to this - the Scratch Team is composed of around 60 people. And Scratch has over 92 million users. Simply put, the moderators of Scratch don't have the time to manage every case of a taken-down project. And appeals still work as official ways to inform the Scratch Team of an issue - but, all in all, one cannot expect to receive extra attention and time from the already rushed moderators. Lastly, I would like to regard the growing concern over personal issues. Depression is a bad thing no matter what, and people afflicted with it deserve help. But on Scratch, I've seen people go into deep descriptions of their depression - and talk about very, very bad subjects. I have seen people fake their deaths on Scratch - one person, three times in a row. This is, simply, inappropriate behavior. Personal issues deserve recognition. But Scratch is not where they should be. There are other ways to deal with problems. Scratch is a site for children - they don't deserve to have to see someone describing harmful and disturbing subjects. And, all in all, the Scratch Team is a busy assembly of moderators that do their best to keep Scratch a friendly, fun, and appropriate space for children and young adults to share creations of their own imagination whilst learning basic elements of code. And as much as they occasionally misstep or blunder, they have done a great job. They have created a wonderful platform where countless users have made lifelong memories of friendships and journeys - and in the end, it is this that they deserve to be recognized for.
