Do you know anything about advertising? Advertising, in general, is a form of marketing communication.
However, advertising in Scratch occurs when a Scratcher posts a link to something they have created (such as a project or studio) on someone else’s profile, projects, or studio.
When a Scratcher wants someone else to advertise on their profile, advertising is acceptable; however, Scratchers should not advertise if it is known to be annoying to the Scratcher in question.
It may also be acceptable to keep a Scratcher updated on a project, studio, or forum when they want to get notified of events that go on there.
Scratchers sometimes add a note saying that they do not allow advertising.
Advertising is considered “spamming links” when one repeatedly advertises. There are also forms of advertising which are not spam.
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Where can you Advertise in Scratch?
Scratchers can post their advertisements in the Show and Tell forum, with their signature on the forums, and in projects and studios specifically made for advertising.
The advertising could be about scratch projects, scratch shops, scratch collabs, scratch profiles, scratch suggestions, and scratch studios.
The Scratch Team has created two topics about advertising in Scarcth: Advertisement Requests and Official Advertisement Creating Service.
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The first topic is where you could request that something be advertised, and the second is where you could have an advertisement designed specifically for you.
Of course, you can make an advertisement of your own if you want to, but if you lack design skills, it can be quite a challenge.
Every six hours, approximately 20 advertisements are broadcasted. The advertisement schedule appears on the front page of the requested topic.
Spamming in Scratch
When people constantly repeat the chat, it is referred to as spamming. Spam is the act of posting content that is unrelated to the situation in which it is posted and is likely to irritate other users.
Making duplicate forum topics, posting nonsense or gibberish, such as typing random keys on the keyboard, or posting off-topic are all examples.
Spamming will generate alerts if it is done repeatedly.
Spam can occur almost anywhere on the Scratch Website, including on pages where commenting is possible (such as project pages or user profiles) and on the discussion forums.
Wherever it is, it should be reported.
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Types of Spam in Scratch
Spam can occur almost anywhere on the Scratch Website. Wherever it is, it should be reported.
1. Comments and Forum Posts
Spam comments or posts are irrelevant, nonsensical, or completely off-topic. Advertising your projects in comments or unrelated topics is also considered to be spam.
A lot of spam has been controlled by the “similar message” and Sixty-Second Rule features.
Before the 500 character limit, some people used to spam by posting large texts and entire Wikipedia articles.
In the forums, posting several duplicate topics is also considered spam. Often newer users will post advertisements for their projects on more popular projects.
The trend of replying “low” on the first comment of a project is an interesting type of spam that has developed.
These are often replied to with comments like “lower”, which are replied to with “lowest”. The goal is generally to get the lowest comment on the page and usually develops on popular projects.
2. Blockspam
Blockspam is a type of forum spam in the form of nonsense scripts made with the Block Plugin such as saying a message with look blocks, doing an action with made-up blocks, and making giant blocks.
The Help With Scripts forum has a topic specifically for experimenting with the block plugin, but those who spam elsewhere should be reported. The old [blocks][/blocks] tags were also used to make blockspam.
3. Linkspam
Linkspam is a form of spam that consists of links and images. Commercial spam is considered linkspam. Harmful links and images, including unrelated images, are also linkspam. To help prevent this, New Scratchers cannot post external links or images.
4. ASCII Art
ASCII Art is the arrangement of text to look like a recognizable image. Often when posted, users will copy and paste it and post it themselves, which severely lengthens the web page and can be annoying to read through. Some popular images are a thumbs-up, rage faces, skull, Nyan Cat, the Illuminati triangle, and the popular “Doge” meme.
5.‘Chain letter’ Spam
Another type of spam is a comment telling the user to copy and paste it on other projects and then something good will happen such as romantic situations and good luck.
If the user refuses to copy and paste (called “breaking the chain”), something bad will happen such as bad luck and even death.
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There’s sometimes a backstory added to prove the claim and force the user to carry on the chain. It should always be reported since not only it’s spam, it’s also threatening.
6. Emoticon Spam
Emoticon spam, also known as ‘smiley spam’, is a type of spam that uses emoticons for no good reason. This also includes posting a big amount of emoticons (called “smiley wall”) which can lag computers.
7. Tags
The tag “Waffles” was a particularly popular spam tag, which was posted on thousands of projects.
Other popular spam tags were “username was here” and obvious descriptions like “project” or “made by username”.
The text “[+]“ was often spammed in the form of ”click [+] if you like something“. Similarly, the ”Click =>” tag told the reader to click the plus one link to its right.
Tags with rude language were also considered spam. Spam tags could be flagged with the flag button next to them.
Since users lost the ability to tag projects other than their own in Scratch 2.0, tag spam is no longer a major issue.
8. Project Spam
A spam project is easy to spot. They are projects with no exact purpose, containing either gibberish or nothing at all. Inappropriate projects are also counted as spam.
9. Commercial Spam
Commercial Spam is spam aimed at advertising websites or products. They are common in the New Scratchers forum in a form like this:
Another example of commercial spam would be
It is commercial spam because it does not contribute anything to the forum topic, and it has a spam link to a commercial site. Commercial spam can also be found posted on random topics or projects.
10. Search Engine Optimization Spam
Search Engine Optimization is another form of commercial spam, which aims at making search engines such as Google display posts that link to commercial websites, etc.
Search engines prefer “.edu” domains like “scratch.mit.edu”, thus SEO takes place a lot on Scratch.
Due to the New Scratcher status on the forums, most commercial spammers cannot post clickable links there to external sites, so most search engines will ignore them. In comments, URLs are also not transformed into hyperlinks.
11. Spammers
A spammer is a user who spams constantly. They are usually created by people who are willing to misuse the site for spamming and advertising.
Even though there are human spammers, there are also spambots (see the section below). Spammers can risk getting banned.
12. Spambots
Spambots are programs written by spammers to create accounts to spam on websites automatically.
Spambots are slowed down by certain features implemented to help stop them, such as slower posting times (for comments and forums posts) for New Scratchers, email account confirmation to stop spambots from posting spam projects, and IP bans to try to prevent future spambots from the same source from being created.
Conclusion
Advertising in Scratch is acceptable when a Scratcher wants someone else to advertise on their profile, but it is not acceptable if it is known to be annoying to the Scratcher in question.
It may also be acceptable to keep a Scratcher up to date on a project, studio, or forum if they want to be notified of events that take place there.
And advertising is not the same as spamming. Spamming is the act of posting content that is unrelated to the situation in which it is posted and is likely to annoy other users.
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