A problem:
For a long time, games and animations have dominated tabs for other types of projects in the Explore Tab. Something i would really love would be the Explore page tabs (particularly the Music and tutorial tabs, since they're currently overrun with irrelevant platformers and games) getting sorted more accurately. For example, there's really no good reason a game-focused platformer that is completely irrelevent to music should be the top of the explore popular music projects tab… but that's how it is now (you can see for yourself), and that's how it almost always has been

A possible solution:
Here's a potential fix for the problem: the creator of a project has to use a dropdown to indicate which type of project it is when they share it, maybe a dropdown menu that is automatically set to “other” or “generic” or something like that, and then can be manually switched to any of the other tab types at any time, even after the project is shared. Using this sorting method, the Explore page can make sure that the project will only end up trending in the tabs that fit the type of project it actually is.
By making a person only able to select one type of project, it means that the project will trend only /for what it is so enjoyed for/ (or maybe what the creator is most proud of in the project, idk), not in some irrelevant piece of it, and that it won't trend in multiple categories (which could be seen as redundant), and also just like… it seems to make sense in my opinion.
If you don't select a specific type of project, it won't be able to trend in any of the specific tabs, but can still make it into the “all” category.

A drawback or two:

• Of course, people could still fool the system by setting their projects to an irrelevent type, setting their game to the art category, or their animation to the music category, or whatever, but in the long run, i dont think this would really benefit them at all. If you want it known for its suchandsuch, wouldn't it help you more if people looking in the suchandsuch category for suchandsuch projects was able to find yours?
  

• You can't select or trend in more than one genre. Idk how to feel about this, because it's definitely a hmm i feel like that's not great sort of thing because what if there's a project that has really good this AND really good that…. but i will say that usually there just really aren't very many projects with an extreme focus on two+ topics, so idk
  

TL;DR
Make it so that people can only select one category/“tag” for their projects, which decides how it gets sorted in the Explore Page.

Ah, so it's like the existing tag system, but you can only put one tag for a project? I do like that. It could also help describe more accurately what type of project it is.

There was a suggestion kinda like this in 2012:
https://scratch-mit-edu.ezproxy.canberra.edu.au/discuss/topic/135

{what method did you use::control hat
answer on profile ::motion
} ::operators

Oh, thanks. I do think these are slightly different ideas though just given that the person there was hoping for a slightly more complicated system with extra subcategories. Imo, that would just get a bit complicated and confusing..

Not sure if this would count as a dupe of it though, since it is kind of the same gist-

I like this idea it would also make it way easier for ST to take down projects with unrelated tags

^ Older mock-up, I guess the “None” option should be renamed to “All” or “Generic”.

i_eat_coffee wrote:

^ Older mock-up, I guess the “None” option should be renamed to “All” or “Generic”.

Maybe “Other”?

mybearworld wrote:

i_eat_coffee wrote:

^ Older mock-up, I guess the “None” option should be renamed to “All” or “Generic”.

Maybe “Other”?

“Other” sounds like a great idea for miscellaneous (other random genres) projects. It would be useful if “None” could be listed in the categories list and not replaced.

I actually like the idea of “none” since it indicates that the other options haven't been selected yet, especially if that option is automatically selected. Then again, “other” is a decent one too, since it can indicate the other categories don't work. What if there were both “other” AND “none”? would that be too redundant?
Or maybe the regular “Please select a category” is the automatically selected one (like how google forms and other places do it, if i'm remembering right), so that people know that the category SHOULD change off the blank one, therefore guiding them to pick a category? If they leave it blank, it can still be sorted into “all”, but none of the others?

This is better than the tag limit.

It should very importantly migrate old projects. I'm thinking of having it use the first matching hashtag, for example:

#platformer #games #game #puzzle #scrolling #colours #animations #all #art #music #trending -> Games

#platformer -> None

#art #games -> Art

mumu245 wrote:

I'm thinking of having it use the first matching hashtag, for example:

#platformer #games #game #puzzle #scrolling #colours #animations #all #art #music #trending -> Games

#platformer -> None

#art #games -> Art

That's a pretty good solution to the what-happens-to-old-projects-problem, actually.

But what if a project gets sorted into none and can't be seen in its explore tab anymore?
Using your method, it sounds like a lot of projects would get sorted into “none”, especially projects that you view most commonly in places such as the “popular” list (instead of “trending”). That would mean a lot of really impactful animations, games, etc, would no longer be as easily accessed. That seems a little unfair, because it has a bias towards newer projects.
Here's something that might work though: the old projects that, using your method, would have been “none” can just stay in whatever category they've been auto-sorted into…
So if an old project can't get sorted using its tags, instead it will get placed into the category it was sorted into with 3.0 UI.

But what if it was sorted into two categories with this UI?
Well, instead of just putting it into a bunch of categories like the current UI does, maybe it's sorted into the category that it's highest ranked in?


I'm honestly not entirely sure, what do you think?

bump

agree

Hi all, I had to clear out the last set of recent posts because they got too spammy. While we allow for suggestions to be bumped, please be respectful and constructive when posting.

cheddargirl wrote:

Hi all, I had to clear out the last set of recent posts because they got too spammy. While we allow for suggestions to be bumped, please be respectful and constructive when posting.

Thank you!!

it's the scratch team real

I feel like this is a better idea than reverting back to the three-tag limited system, because being able to include tags is nice, what with the searching links it creates. I think the ability to include as many tags as you want is totally fine… so long as it doesn't influence how many views it gets. Having this dropdown as a separate category picking thing altogether seems to make a lot of sense, and i love i_eat_coffee's mockup.

Equally, I think punishing people for including a lot of tags is a bad way to go about solving this problem, because it's reactionary rather than preventative. the reason that people seem frustrated by people spamming tags is specifically because those tags are influencing the system, and people take advantage of that. Changing the way the system works to make the tags less influential, rather than punishing people who use the system that the ST has chosen to keep in place… just seems to make a lot of sense.

1-o-v-e wrote:

(#12)
But what if a project gets sorted into none and can't be seen in its explore tab anymore?

Projects with no category can be shown in the All tab.