New Scratcher Status

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"New Scratchers" redirects here. For the forum named New Scratchers, see New Scratchers (forum).

A New Scratcher in the forums.

An example of a New Scratcher on the website.

The New Scratcher status is the title given to a Scratcher who has recently made an account on the Scratch Website.

New Scratchers are invited to introduce themselves to the Scratch Community in the Welcoming Committee and the New Scratchers forum.

History

The New Scratcher status was put into action in order to stop spam and troll attacks that had been attacking the Scratch Forums in June 2010. Originally, images were disabled to stop attacks, because that was what the attacks primarily contained, but many users argued^{[citation needed]} and the New Scratcher status was put into action. The New Scratcher status gave many limitations that the Community Moderators and Scratch Team did not believe spammers and trolls would bother working around.^{[citation needed]}

MyRedNeptune, a Community Moderator, jokingly said New Scratchers are manually upgraded to Scratcher status if they are "nice and cute and don't flame too much." In the actual procedure, however; users are automatically selected if they meet certain requirements, at which point they receive a notification with a button to become a Scratcher.

A new member with 600 posts.

Users must be active on the main site to gain Scratcher status. To be promoted, a New Scratcher must be active to some degree about the site, have shared, loved, and favourited multiple projects and made several comments, along with other requirements. After at least 2 weeks, but usually around 1 month, they are notified to become a Scratcher through an alert in their messages. When they accept a notification, as an invitation to become a Scratcher on their profile page, they get the Scratcher status. They also have a link to become a Scratcher on the top of their profile page, next to the "New Scratcher" status.

New Scratcher Restrictions

New Scratchers:

• Cannot post images on the Discussion Forums
• Cannot post clickable links on the Discussion Forums (unless they are to pages on the Scratch Website)
• Have the 120 second rule, rather than the 60 second rule, on the Discussion Forums
• Cannot close topics via the Close topic button
• Cannot use cloud data
• Have to wait 30 seconds between comments, in contrast with the usual 10 seconds (details)
• Do not have an edit button after leaving the page in the forums
• Cannot create or host studios (since the July 2021 studio overhaul)
• They cannot join the Scratch Wiki, except for the corresponding scratch accounts for wiki Bots.

In addition, recently created accounts with no activity are not able to participate in the Discussion Forums until they are around 5 days old, and have activity on the site.^{[citation needed]} However, this did not apply to New Scratchers who were already on the forums before the update. This is effective from 30^th November, 2023, when the new forum update was released.

These restrictions are believed^[who?] to have been applied to reduce spam and troll attacks.^{[citation needed]}

Although not prevented by Scratch's code, New Scratchers cannot propose projects to be featured.

Requirements for becoming a Scratcher

To become a Scratcher, a New Scratcher must:

• Have a verified email address
• Share projects
• Comment helpfully on others' projects
• Have been on Scratch for enough time (usually about 2 weeks)
• Be active on the website. This is a big part of becoming a Scratcher. Sharing projects regularly can be a way.

This also is not a definitive list; that is, having these does not guarantee one will become a Scratcher in any specific timeframe, as the exact requirements are not made public, but generally being active on the website will eventually result in becoming a Scratcher. Receiving alerts may also lengthen the time it takes to become a Scratcher. However, posting on the forums does not affect how long it takes to become a Scratcher.

The process for becoming a Scratcher is automated, and the Scratch Team will not manually promote a user upon request.

New TBGers

This article or section documents something not included in the current version of Scratch (3.0). It is only useful from a historical perspective.

Likewise, if a user had joined the Text Based Games Forums for the first time, they would have obtained New TBGer status. They became TBGers in the same way, although status in the Scratch Forums and in the Text Based Games Forums were not directly related. New TBGers could not edit or delete their posts, however.

Welcoming Committee

Main article: Welcoming Committee

In late 2012, the Welcoming Committee was created to help welcome new Scratchers. When a user registers, they'll see a link to a random welcoming committee project on their My Stuff page. This is shown until they upload their first project. The new user is expected to ask questions they may have in the comments on the project.

Bug

In early September, there was a bug that caused some more experienced New Scratchers to not be Scratchers. This was fixed, however, on September 16, 2024.^{[citation needed]}

See Also

• New Scratchers (forum)