def sarcasm():
Scratch > Makecode
Alright, it’s essay time. I mainly stayed quiet over the whole Forum-dying situation, however, I figured I should reveal my voice on it.
To be honest, I’m overall fine with all the new users coming in, and “replacing the old ones”. It allows for a whole new generation of Makecoders. However, a lot of the users in this discussion have made a lot of nice points. I guess I side with them, like @personalnote and many other users, I couldn’t really connect with all the new users, I feel like the forum went from Makecode-Share-Project-Hub to something far off-topic. That’s not a positive thing for something about the game engine forums.
Plus the forum has deteriorated in terms of quality and organization over the years. It lacked the enthusiasm it used to have. I remembered that everybody was looking at the legendary mega collab, Makecode Kart, waiting for someone like @Kiwiphoenix364 and @KWX to give us this new, mind-blowing update. While the collab was never finished, it remained one of the most fondest and greatest things to every step on this forum, and rightfully so. However, I no longer see this, many great collaborations being discontinued, new collaborations that may as well be deemed as hopeless, and the new mind-blowing stuff almost ceasing to exist (like something half-decently cool only pops up once a year). But again we’re not limited to collaborations, we cannot forget about the other projects, it is for some reason so much harder to find NEW and great projects. Sometimes, I feel like huge (official) game jams are our only hope for finding great stuff, and they are rare.
What happened to @Kiwiphoenix364 3d Platformer? @KWX Carrier? @theCobolKid Tiny Soccer Cars? @PixelDoodle The Biggest Smash Bros Game? and so much more? The forums used to be a place of greatness, a place where people could share their passion for coding, no matter whether they use Blocks, JS, or Python. I can’t see it anymore, many Makecoders are close to blind. I left the forums temporarily because of life issues, but now I realize, there is another major factor, it is because my interest in the forums has exponentially decayed. @Unique probably said it best
Now, I’m not remorseless, so I apologize if I offended any of the new users. However, a reminder, the forums are run by us users, but the majority of the users are mostly off-topic with every single thing they post. The way I currently see this situation, more users joining = Forum Vets decreasing, Correlation = causation in this case. They are causing big problems. I feel like Scratch is now better than Makecode, not just because of their game engine, but because of their community as a whole. Like, have you seen what is happening right now?
Example:
Dinocraft:
July 2023
This is going in the right direction, great game, great potential. A well-deserved game-jam-honoree. Fast forward to 2024, and it escalated quickly.
Now, I can accept that whole off-topic posts flying around. After all, as long as a community exists, there will always be people who decide to make off-topic stuff, for some reason. However, the main problem is all these off-topic posts obstructing the great content. If you’re going to make off-topic content, feel free, I’m not a dictator, at least make the off-topic content somewhat beneficial to the forums. Stuff like Chatting Area! Have fun!, and Weekly Topic, are MASTERPIECES at doing this. Everyone loves them, they allow us to bond with each other in a good way, compared to most of the off-topic stuff I see today.
Now, time for the million-dollar question, how can we save these forums? I suppose we continue to create great stuff, no matter what kind of off-topic posts anyone makes. We push it out to the forums for all to see. Get everything back on track. I also took a look at other people’s approaches to this issue, I’ll respond to 2 of them
This sounds like a good idea, but I found some holes in it though. I won’t point all of them out, but the main hole I see is the “dedicated members that had been active on the forum contributing for a while should be a thing though”. It is a broad category, by dedicated, I don’t think it only means people who create high-quality content. Maybe it could mean the people who collected the most badges, the people who liked the most content? It is a broad category, the way I see it (subjective), and every member is dedicated to these forums, even if they post off-topic content. They continue to post stuff, even if they get a warning from the mods. Also the whole separate chat category, only for dedicated members might result in problems, since this may result in a gain of a higher power. More power for the dedicated, less power for the not-as-dedicated users. Giving specific users more power may result in some serious problems since we have no idea what the powerful might do. Maybe they will use it fairly, maybe they will unwarrantedly exercise their power on the lower users. So it is most likely best if there aren’t any separate chat categories, better safe than sorry.
I go more into depth here.
This is not a good idea. First, it is pretty offensive that we have to rely on an entirely different community just to save ours. Second, griffpatch, ggenjie and the chipm0nks weren’t the main reasons that coding communities exploded in popularity. Scratch has over 103,000,000 users, and Griffpatch only has 330k subscribers, so YouTube isn’t the best way to save Makecode. Plus an increase in users may not have much of a benefit at the current time being.
Plus, I feel like @personalnote said it best
And done with my rambling, after so many words and characters, I can finally rest my case.
This is so true. Everything you said. I couldn’t agree more.
Well said @Taser. Well said.
Definitely. You pinpointed the issue. I know that my solution wasn’t perfect, but I was trying to think of something within the parameters of the forum, without many changes to the forum itself. That solution would still be less than ideal, and would probably only slightly fix things. People would have to post separate threads on the “outside forum” to give updates to other people, and it would be a chaotic user experience. And yes, this is flawed because it would probably be possible for people who aren’t actually “good” members of the community to get into the higher level chat, so things could degrade quickly.
I think a more ideal situation (though more difficult to implement) would be to have “projects,” which are different from posts, where there is an “inner circle” where specified people can post their game updates, and the original poster can choose who can post on it (EVERYONE CAN STILL SEE THIS, it’s just to keep an area where everything is on topic). These “projects” are reserved for bigger, ongoing projects. Then, there would be an “outside area” within the same project where anyone could post smaller replies and feedback. This, while not perfect, would fit within the forum’s parameters, I’m just not sure how it would be implemented via Discourse, the platform that the forum uses. I guess at that point I’m asking for a mini Discord server for each project within the forum XD.
There’s no perfect solution of course, so I’m just brainstorming at the moment. I just hope we can get some more bigger projects and more of a sense of a community in the future!
This is the longest post I’ve ever seen.
@Sarge
That is the exact way we can save the forum
These are my thoughts exactly, great post
More like the users have gotten older, and once covid dissipated we all had to get off our computers!
Yeah
we need to make the change WE NEED A REVOLUTION
WE. NEED. TO. BE MORE. AWESOME.
we need more good games and collabs.
Easy to say, but really time consuming and difficult to do
especially if you’re a perfectionist like me lol
totally agree.
I agree except for a few things
disagree with who?
This is SO true.
I also feel like there’s a lack of engagement in the forum. People say there’s practically no quality games but when they do show up, they’re not always supported causing those people to lose motivation on posting… or maybe it’s just me who knows…
Oh that’s always been part of the problem. When people mention ‘there aren’t any good games these days’ in reality, most people don’t have time anymore to go check every topic and play each game. There is probably more topics than ever with the growing base, and while less games could be true, it definately has something to do with engagement.
I could make a wall of text but I will not (that was a lie)
as a new user (Oct 1 23)
seeing a group of creators, not consumers were amazing and I decided to become part of the community (something I have never done) which I explained my thoughts on here
Important part
“To be a part of This community is like a coder’s dream. Having a community of creators, people who understand when something goes wrong and who know that things take time and effort. As well as everyone giving Respect Kindness, it’s just a great place to be. There have been some insanely great games I’ve seen done on this site and I doubt that we have seen the best that”
but a bit later the problem of more consumers joining the forums I made this post Here
It was mostly asking “Hey are you making a game and if not here are some ideas!”
but I wanted to see if the community was still what I thought it was
I made that post too early but now I can name over 10 users who are not making games or made a small one and now just add to the problem and spreading memes not the internet definition but the original meaning
Definition
an element of a culture or system of behavior passed from one individual to another by imitation or other nongenetic means.
the emoji spam the nothingness that are some replies clogging up topics
people being fully confident in something they know is wrong
IT’S OK TO ASK QUESTIONS AND BE WRONG!!!
it is everything I hate about the Internet
I am going to be staying a while longer after I finish my 4 projects but I can’t with this I joined right as the golden age of makecode and I got a taste of greatness now sullied by the hunger of the consumers making it empty and tasteless and I wish it could be refilled and when it does ill love this community as I once did a lot can change in 5 months and I hope it changes again
Many good points of view above, which are probably heartfelt and subjectively true, and which I don`t want to go into discussions about.
But from a more peripheral and newer user on the forum, who visits now and then, the impressions of the forum dying seems a bit exaggerated, and focusing nostalgically on the past greatness of the forum, with regards to earlier content, collaboration, forum members etc., does not seem very helpful in preventing a potential and sad self fulfilling prophecy.
On the contrary, I experience this forum as very much alive with:
-A lot great and helpful people offering help and constructive comments, even members of the @makecode team contributing a lot and connecting with its users, which is quite unique
-A lot of new breakthrougs in various technology(3D, extensions, multiple games on hardware, AI etc.) and still in games(smooth movements, more 3D etc.), even though the community might have hit a temporary plateau with regards to new and revolutionary game ideas or collaborations
-Nice initiatives with game and extension databases and wikis, to help navigate and find nice games and tools, which inevitably gets harder and harder as forums grow
-Even though the novelty and excitement from the early pioneering beginnings have cooled down a little, new members are joining and new contributions are made all the time, bringing the community forward, though maybe at a relatively slower pace than in the beginning
-Theres is a nice mix of kids just starting out with MakeCode(which is an important investment for the future of the forum to welcome, support and help), more experienced members, tech wizards, educators, industry representatives, the makecode team etc. and older fossils like me.
-Generally a very nice tone between people, and a relatively high acceptance of fun and jokes from the moderators
-There are a lot of good topics and posts for noobs to learn from both from the past and in newer ones. Off topic posts and multiple new topics about issues already known or answered is unavoidable IMO
-Many examples of good humor and what seems like some kind of online friendship between strangers evolving
So, while I agree that collaboration is hard on the forum, due mainly to the long approval times for posts*, I would say that this forum is rather constantly changing, but still evolving forward, rather than dying. -And generally quite good!
*Maybe the most trusted and helpful members with a long and proven good track records, on a certain level could be allowed to post without a priori moderation to speed things up a little while still keeping the forum safe. And if they make mistakes, depending of course on the severity, maybe just loose this privilege for a while instead of being kicked out. I don’t know, I do not have personal experience with running a forum, but the moderation sure is slow and holding the forum back in some aspects. Maybe @randomuser`s AI extension could relieve the moderators of some of their manual work?