- This article is about when a Scratcher is temporarily blocked from posting content. For the sound editor tool, see Sound Editor#Mute. For the block that stops all sounds, see Stop All Sounds (block).
- Not to be confused with Ban.
A mute is when a user is blocked from making comments and forum posts and from interacting with studios for a short period of time. Users may be blocked after previous posts have automatically been detected to be inappropriate or disrespectful or when they are muted by a moderator. For comments, this action is performed by an automated bot, but a notification is sent to the Scratch Team.[1] Because the filter tends to be stricter for New Scratchers, they are more likely to trigger a mute without intent.[2] If a user is muted repeatedly for inappropriate comments, the Scratch Team may issue a ban, but the filter will not automatically ban anyone for being muted too many times.[3] On the forums, attempting to post inappropriate content will result in the filter disallowing it to be posted. Users cannot be muted on the forums.
Mute Times
A user is muted for five minutes for the first inappropriate comment detected, with the time increasing for each subsequent detected comment. A Scratch Team member can manually set the duration when they are handling an inappropriate comment. The duration automatically resets after a certain amount of time without any inappropriate comments.[citation needed]
Update
On the Scratch 1.x website, there was a "bad word detector" which blocked comments, but did not mute the user. In the original version of the Scratch 2.0/3.0 website, the filterbot muted users for 24 hours after a certain number of inappropriate comments were detected. However, on February 17, 2021, an update was added merging the filterbot and bad word detector, bringing the filter into its current form where users are only muted for five minutes for the first offense, since the Scratch Team thought 24 hour mutes were too long for minor violations and the high amount of false positives.[4] Additionally, functionality was added to issue alerts when mutes expire so users know they can resume commenting as well as different categories of muting (for example, inappropriate language vs. sharing personal information or linking to unmoderated chat sites).[5]
Controversy
While the update was much more lenient than the original system, it still has faced controversy due to being excessively harsh and the occurrence of false positives.[6] Suggestions have been raised to allow appealing mutes for false positives[7] and showing a warning instead of immediately muting the first time the user posts something that triggers the filter.[8]
References
- ↑ cheddargirl. (12/11/2019). "The Scratch Team then either dismisses the robot filter's alert if it's a false positive, or sends a notification to the user if it's a true positive." post:3755989
- ↑ Paddle2See. (22/05/2019). "Close - but not quite accurate. New Scratchers are far more likely to be muted by the filter than full Scratchers - but a full Scratcher account can still be muted " post:3555934
- ↑ Za-Chary. (15/3/2021). "[N]o one will be automatically banned or “perm muted” for getting muted too much." post:4996155
- ↑ cheddargirl. (27/03/2021). "The previous filter would have muted you for 24 hours, which is overkill. Five minutes might be annoying, but it's short. We think this is a pretty lenient upgrade." post:5044616
- ↑ ScratchCat. (18/2/2021). "Updates to the filter system[title]" topic:485973
- ↑ AmazingMech2418. (25/3/2021). "You figured out how to make the muting system worse!" topic:497268
- ↑ Tronche2Cake. (7/4/2021). "We need a way to appeal mutes[topic]" topic:502814
- ↑ pavcato. (23/3/2021). "There should be a 3 chances system that resets every day...before you get auto muted since the comment isn't posted anyways" topic:496888
