Scratch Wiki

* S:SW
* S:WIKI

The Scratch Wiki logo

The **Scratch Wiki** is a collaboratively-written wiki available for free that provides information about the Scratch programming language, its website, history and phenomena surrounding it. The wiki is supported by the international Scratch Wiki community, and is mainly edited by Scratchers. The Scratch Wiki is a popular source of information for the website, scripts and tutorials and it continues to grow as Scratchers use it as their primary source of information. The Wiki also includes advanced articles for Scratchers around the world to build, share and see.

There are currently 2,098 articles on the Scratch Wiki.

There have been 293,181 edits in total on the Scratch Wiki.

There are currently 2,379 users registered on the Scratch Wiki.
An example of an article on the Scratch Wiki (this article)

## History

The old Scratch Wiki logo

On December 6th, 2008, LukeTek created the Scratch Programming Wiki, a normal wiki created solely (meaning without anything or anyone else involved) by himself; the Scratch Team was not involved at all. He handed the wiki (gave admin privileges) over to JuiceyBox, who later handed the wiki to Lucario621. He 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 noticed the wiki. They liked it and wanted to advertise it on the Scratch Website, but they had some concerns: it had advertisements (like other wikis on Wikia), it was not on 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 on June 3, 2010. The new wiki was hosted on the Scratch servers. 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 (which can be done here).

### Server Transfer

On February 16th, 2018, the Scratch Wiki was transferred from its old domain wiki.scratch.mit.edu to its current domain, en.scratch-wiki.info. The original link now redirects to the current domain. As Scratch grew, the Scratch Team had to devote more time to it; consequently, they did not have as much time to manage the Wiki. Therefore, they decided to hand control of the English Scratch Wiki over to the inter-language community. This had a number of advantages:

* The Wiki community would have full control over their own backend. This would mean that extensions would be installed quicker, user rights would be transferred quicker, and blocks would happen quicker.
* The domain would match the domains of Scratch Wikis in several other languages, e.g. nl.scratch-wiki.info for Dutch and fr.scratch-wiki.info for French.
* The upgrade would update all broken extensions currently installed, and would add all the features that came with the new MediaWiki version.

The transfer was collaboratively effected by colbygk (from the Scratch Team), ErnieParke (long-time Wiki admin), jvvg (long-time Wiki admin), Kenny2scratch (active Wiki user, elected Experienced Wikian immediately prior), MartinWollenweber (sponsor of international Scratch Wikis), and akhof (international Scratch Wiki backend). An official statement written by Makethebrainhappy was released by the Wiki bureaucrats, admins, and Experienced Wikians after the transfer was confirmed to be working.

### Server Transfer 2

Over the course of December 26th to 28th, 2018, the Scratch Wikis (note the plural) were moved between servers. No domain changes were made, but the Wiki administration gained far more control over the backend, which was the primary advantage and purpose of the transfer.

The transfer was mostly done by Kenny2scratch, with assistance from MartinWollenweber and akhof.

## How to Become a Contributor

*Main page: Scratch Wiki:Become a contributor*
If people could freely create accounts, it would be possible to impersonate other users by creating an account with their username, as well as it being easier to vandalise the wiki. To work around this, Scratchers must request for an account.

To request an account, Scratchers go here, read the guidelines, then request an account. They will be asked to comment a verification code on a project. This is simply to make sure that they are who they say they are. It is required to read the article on how to request an account before requesting an account.

If an administrator or Experienced Wikian creates the account (which can take up to several days, but it is often shorter), then the user will be told on their profile by the accepting administrator. The user can then log in with the username and a temporary password sent to their email.

Not all accounts are created — administrators and Experienced Wikians or above review all account requests and decide whether or not to create accounts based on their respective requests. They will only accept requests that follow all of the instructions.

People wishing to join the Wiki must fully read and understand everything on it before requesting to become a contributor.

## April Fools

*Main article: April Fool's Day#Wiki (since 2014)*
Every April Fool's Day, since 2014, the Scratch Wiki revamps many articles into satirical articles joking about either the subject of the article or Scratch itself.

## References

1. ↑ ar-topic:37179
2. ↑ topic:292170