Scratch Wiki

* S:SW
* S:WIKI

*"SW" redirects here. For the event celebrating scratch's birthday, see Scratch Week.*

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, program, 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 46 articles on the Scratch Wiki.

There have been 553 edits in total on the Scratch Wiki.

There are currently 32,694,992 users registered on the Scratch Wiki.

## History

On December 6th, 2008, LukeTek created the Scratch Programming Wiki on the wiki hosting website Wikia (now called Fandom). It was a normal wiki created 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 hosted 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 allow updating all broken extensions currently installed, and would add new 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.

See also:  § Hosting and Administration

### 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 vandalize 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.

## Scratch Wikis in Other Languages

The Scratch Wiki team encourages Scratch communities of other languages to create their own Scratch Wikis.

If the user's native language is not English or the user is interested in foreign languages, they can start a wiki in that language or contribute to an already existing Scratch Wiki in that user's native/interested language. Every editor on the English Scratch Wiki is welcome to help as an "International Scratch Wiki Coach", even if they do not know the target languages for motivating, coaching, and teaching English works.

### Starting a Scratch Wiki in Another Language

Because it is difficult to set up a MediaWiki instance and to establish a community, there is a "Scratch Wiki Incubator" or "Giant Multi-Language Sandbox" at the Test Scratch Wiki and the explanation tw:How-To-Scratch-Wiki How To Scratch Wiki to start a Scratch Wiki in a language that does not exist. There is also an international community that can help such users.

#### How to Start

* scratch-wiki.info  Domain of all International Scratch Wikis
* tw:International-Scratch-Wiki-FAQ  **FAQ** about how to create and maintain a Scratch Wiki in another language
* Ask new questions  in this Scratch Forum Thread
* Translating the wiki  Forum topic about translating the wiki
* International Scratch Wikis Stats  Weekly refreshed numbers of edits, articles, active users, and admins.
* tw:Test-Scratch-Wiki:Scratch-Wiki-Watch  Tables about all existing Scratch-Wikis and their users, admins, activities, setup-parameters and so on.
* Apply for getting "International Scratch Wiki Coach"  Thread for those who would like to help building international wikis by coaching new international authors

#### Current Test Scratch Wikis

* Italian Scratch Wiki (about)
* Spanish Scratch Wiki (about)
* Portuguese Scratch Wiki (about)
* Turkish Scratch Wiki (about)
* Bengali Scratch Wiki (about)
* Polish Scratch Wiki (about)
* Chinese Scratch Wiki (about)
* Hebrew Scratch Wiki (about)
* Slovenian Scratch Wiki (about)
* Korean Scratch Wiki (about)
* Arabic Scratch Wiki (about)
* Latin Scratch Wiki (about)
* Ukrainian Scratch Wiki (about)
* Albanian Scratch Wiki (about)
* Hindi Scratch Wiki (about)
* Gujarati Scratch Wiki (about)
* Romanian Scratch Wiki (about)
* Czech Scratch Wiki (about)
* Slovak Scratch Wiki (about)
* Maltese Scratch Wiki (about)
* Finnish Scratch Wiki (about)
* Lithuanian Scratch Wiki (about)

### German

Main article: DACH-Scratch Wiki

The first of these international "sister-projects" was the DACH-Scratch Wiki in German that was started in February 2012 and has an active community from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. It has 951 articles (as of May 2022).

#### Hosting and Administration

As of April 2022 all Scratch Wikis, including the original English Scratch Wiki, are connected and all hosted on the same web server. When it was first started, the DACH Scratch Wiki was hosted separately from the English Scratch Wiki which then was hosted at MIT, because the Scratch Team advised the founding Scratchers from Germany to start independently. Years later, the German Scratch Wiki Community helped many other international Scratch Wikis to start and provided them all with hosting. Because of this, the Scratch Team asked the admins of the DACH Scratch Wiki if they would also like to host the original English Scratch Wiki, so that the international Wiki community could take more responsibility of itself, and many issues that the MIT Scratch Team had no capacity to care for, could be solved. Trusting in the community of international admins, who promised to provide strong help with the administration work, the DACH Scratch Wiki admins accepted. The resulting Server Transfer in February 2018 and the development of the international Scratch Wikis in the following years demonstrated that this worked quite well.

### Russian

The Russian Scratch Wiki (Скретч Вики) was created on March 16th, 2014 and has 186 articles (as of November 2022). The Russian Scratch Wiki can be found at ru.scratch-wiki.info.

### Indonesian

The Indonesian Scratch Wiki (Scratch Indo Wiki) was the third international wiki to be made. The idea for an Indonesian Scratch Wiki was discussed in 2013, but it did not have enough contributors to be created until 2014.

With help and assistance from the DACH Wiki team, the Indonesian Scratch Wiki was created on September 5th, 2014. Its first article was about backdrops and can be viewed here. The Indonesian Scratch Wiki is also known as Indo-Scratch-Wiki (short for Indonesian Scratch Wiki) and Scratch-Indo-Wiki (as related to Indonesian grammar rules whereas the adjectives are after the nouns). It currently has 152 articles (as of May 2022).

The official Scratch account for Scratch-Indo-Wiki can be accessed here. The wiki is located at id.scratch-wiki.info.

### Japanese

The Japanese Scratch Wiki (Scratch Wiki Japan) started in March 2015 after a user applied for it in the Scratch Wiki in Your Native Language topic. The DACH-Scratch-Wiki Team later answered and accepted the application. It has 1,229 articles (as of November 2022).

Its logo was created by shuprogram and posted here.

### Hungarian

The Hungarian Scratch Wiki was started on September 10th, 2015. It has 67 articles (as of May 2022).

### Dutch

The Dutch Scratch Wiki (not to be confused with the *Deutsch*, DACH or German wiki) was started in September 2015. It has 36 articles (as of May 2022).

### French

The French Scratch Wiki was started as a Test Scratch Wiki on November 7, 2015, and became an independent wiki on October 4, 2016. It has 635 articles (as of May 2022).

## April Fools

Main article: April Fool's Day § Wiki (since 2014)
See also: Scratch Wiki:April Fools
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.

## External Links

* Scratch Wiki on Wikipedia
* A blog post by ErnieParke about the server transfer

## References

1. ↑ ar-topic:37179
2. ↑ topic:292170
3. ↑ ru:Обсуждение Скретч Вики:Портал сообщества#Создана русская Скретч Вики
4. ↑ topic:12655
5. ↑ http://scratch-indo.info
6. ↑ post:863444
7. ↑ post:872386

de:Scratch-Wiki:Über
id:Scratch Wiki
ru:Скретч Вики
ja:Scratch Wiki