Scratch Wiki

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The Scratch Wiki is a free, collaboratively-written wiki that provides information about the Scratch programming language and its website, history, and phenomena surrounding it. The wiki is supported by the Scratch Team, but is primarily written by Scratchers. The Scratch Wiki is a popular source of information for scripts and tutorials, and it continues to grow as Scratchers use it as their primary source of information.

There are currently 826 articles on the Scratch Wiki.

Contents

History

A Scratch Wiki logo used on the support page of the Scratch website.

On December 6, 2008, LukeTek created the Scratch Programming Wiki, a normal wiki created solely by himself; the Scratch Team were not involved at all. He handed the wiki (gave admin privileges) over to JuiceyBox, who later handed the wiki to Lucario621. Lucario621 advertised the wiki in the Miscellaneous forum, and many people helped contribute to it. However, the articles were of projects, users, and the like. The wiki was cleaned up, but by then people had lost interest. A few people stayed behind though, and the wiki steadily grew.

Eventually, the Scratch Team saw the wiki. They liked it and wanted to advertise it on the Scratch Website, but they had some concerns: it had advertisements, it wasn't in a scratch.mit.edu domain, and there was no way to tell if a user on the wiki was the same user on Scratch. To solve these problems, andresmh, JSO and Lucario621 created a new Scratch Wiki, hosted on the Scratch servers.[1] All three problems were solved: there were no advertisements, it was on a scratch.mit.edu domain, and there was a way to ensure that users on the wiki were the same users on Scratch: Account creation was locked; people would request for an account instead.

How to become a contributor

Main page: Scratch Wiki:Become a contributor
Warning Warning: Account requesting is currently down due to the recent transition to another database. Please post a comment on an admins project requesting an account including everything except your password, which will not be needed since you will already be logged in and we will know you are the one requesting the account.

If people could freely create accounts, it would be possible to impersonate other users by creating an account with their username. To work around this, Scratchers must request for an account.

To request an account, Scratchers go here and request for an account. Their Scratch username and password must be submitted, along with a message on why they should have an account.

If the administrators create the account (can take up to several days, but it is often shorter), then the user will be told on one of their projects by an administrator. The user should then go here to get their Wiki password.

Not all accounts are created — administrators review all account requests, and decide whether to create the account. Having no projects will dramatically decrease the chance of a user getting a Wiki account, as will not giving a reason, or giving an extremely brief reason. One's reason should explain why they think one should get an account, what experience they have and any other information if the user wishes. The reason, the correctness of grammar and spelling in a user's reason, and the amount of experience a user has, all go into deciding whether an account is created.

Scratch Wikis in other languages

German

Main article: DACH-Scratch Wiki
Logo of the DACH-Scratch Wiki.

The Scratch Team encourages Scratch communities of other languages to build up their own Scratch Wikis. The first, and currently only, of these international "sister-projects" was the DACH-Scratch Wiki in the German language, that started in Februray 2012, and has over 300 articles (as of March 2013) and a very active community from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.

It is separately hosted, because the Scratch Team advised the founding Scratchers from Germany to start independently, but it got its layout and some MediaWiki extensions from the original English Scratch Wiki. Though it is not only a translation, many articles in the German wiki have a link to their corresponding English article in the so called "Servicekasten" (Toolbox) at the end of the article. Some English and many German speaking Scratchers are looking forward to connect the Scratch Wikis by Interwiki[2].

If your native language is not English or you are interested in foreign languages, you are invited to found a wiki or contribute in an already existing Scratch Wiki of your native language.

References

  1. http://scratch.mit.edu/forums/viewtopic.php?id=37179
  2. Scratch Wiki talk:Community Portal#Please start with Interwiki
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