[ written by a friend, not the owner of the account :) ] Now, to start off, this isn't really a rant, nor is it really advice, I'm guessing it might be a petition? though I'm not sure that's it either. Maybe it's a suggestion to the scratch team if they see this, although if that was the case, I should probably move this to the suggestions forum page, but I want to talk about other things as well, so for now, it's going to be posted on pleaseread- on a project. If anyone wants to take it to the forums, go for it! Anyways, a couple days ago, a friend sent me a link to this page: https://en.scratch-wiki.info/wiki/Friend and it was super interesting to learn that before, followers used to be called friends, and that got me thinking. Why did they change it? Friends seems much more friendly and since the call scratch promotes themselves a coding site targeted at kids from age 8-16, wouldn't it seem more reasonable to have those kids have friends, and not followers? I mean there's nothing wrong with followers, but that puts let's say, an 8 yr old is on a coding website, I'd much rather have them asking for "friends" rather than "followers". [before I go on a full thing about followers, i'd rather you read this instead because a previous contributor wrote this about followers https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/471945555/ ] But, after researching why the scratch team changed the term, you might be able to see their side. On this page, it explains why they got rid of the term friends and replaced it with followers. https://en.scratch-wiki.info/wiki/Friend_List the main point there is "Many users have complained of randomly being added to other Scratchers' friend lists." Which is honestly understandable! It would be weird to get a notification that a random person has now befriended you, so following makes more sense. Also, wouldn’t it just be weird for someone to say “HEY GUESS WHAT!?!? I NOW HAVE 1000 FRIENDS!! That’s like 1000 x the amount I have irl ;w;” It also says that a recommendation for this problem is to have people accept friend requests like other social media platforms, but then just imagine having a young child asking their idol on scratch for a friend request and they just reject them- that would be heartbreaking! And maybe, scratch might have changed the phrase to “following” to become more like other social media platforms, but in all honestly scratch isn’t like other social media platforms!! It’s unique in it’s own way and we love it like that. So, what may be a compromise between following and friends? What about supporters? This is just a suggestion I’m putting out there, and I would honestly be blown away if this actually happened, but what if we could change the name of followers to supporters? This might not seem like a big deal, but I think if we did this, it would show that scratch is more pointed towards support for each other instead of fame. You may have thousands of supporters, or you may just have a handful. Either way, when someone clicks that support button instead of a follow button, I think it sends a stronger message than a follow would. I would love it if people “supported” because they loved me! Because they like what I did, or because I’m a great friend and they just want to support what I do as a person. This might even make follow for follow seem less fame hungry- Instead of saying “HEY! Could we do f4f?” it might become “Hello! Would you like to support each other?” or, “could you support one of my awesome friends who I believe is truly worth supporting!” I know this may not be a huge difference, but it might set scratch on a different path that’s less fame/follow hungry and more of a community with people supporting each other every which way. (it would also be super awesome if you had any other suggestions for how we might be able to change the follow system, just comment them!)
