The Location is a feature used to identify a user's country and can be found on a user's profile page. This can be useful for users who wish to easily know what country a user is from.
Setting a Location
Creating an Account
When creating an account, all users must choose a location. Most users have selected the United States.[1] Those who do not wish to reveal their location can use a fake one, like Antarctica.
Account Settings
After registering, a user may also change their location in Account Settings on the "Account" page.
Statistics
A map showing how many Scratchers have set each country as their location can be seen as part of Scratch Statistics.
Fake Locations
Definition
Scratchers discovered that two-letter country codes (must exist to work) could be set as a location in place of traditional countries, such as "United States", which could be replaced with "US" with Inspect Element.[2]This is because the form accepted any string as a valid location, and while most arbitrary strings would show as "Location not given", a valid country, or two-letter code, would show up on the profile page. The string can always be viewed via the API regardless.[3] It has also been discovered that users could go to account settings and double-click on the "Save my Changes" button to set it to "Location not given".[4] This has become a way to make an account look interesting or even funny.
One of the most popular country code locations is "ST", a joke reference to Scratch Team. In reality, however, ST refers to São Tomé and Príncipe. Some Scratchers who are really active in the Advanced Topics forum set their location to "AT" (Austria). The ways to get two letter locations or "Location not given" have since been fixed.[5]
Another popular example is to make the location the abbreviation of Norway, which is "NO".[6] Several users have become popular by using such methods.[citation needed]
Controversy
Some users have suggested to remove fake locations, such as "Antarctica", "Heard Island and McDonald Islands", or "Christmas Islands", with the logic that either they are not real countries,[7] or that few people, or even no people, live in those places,[8] so they believe there is little point in having a location feature. However, this is rejected.[9] Users like to use fake locations to hide where they live. The Scratch Team likes to use those to hide their locations if they do not feel comfortable saying it publicly;[citation needed] they respect privacy. Plus, multiple users like to make joke accounts, such as pretending to be a penguin, where the "Antarctica" location is useful. Also, some Scratchers might possibly have temporarily moved to Antarctica — very unlikely, but possible.
Opposition
Some users have suggested to remove the location feature as a whole. This suggestion has been officially rejected,[10] because the Scratch Team wishes to see which countries users are in, so they can understand which kinds of users use Scratch, which in turn can cause them to understand which events are happening where, broadening participation overall.[citation needed] Additionally, some find it nice to see all the users' countries as a reminder that Scratchers live all over the world, and it helps users to relate to them.[11]
Adding New Locations
Some users have also suggested to add locations to the list, like splitting the United Kingdom up into their respected territories.[12] However, this has been rejected as Scratch goes by the ISO-3166 list for countries, and decided they will not add countries if it is not on the list.[13]
References
- ↑ As of July 12, 2021, 37.87% of users have it selected according to scratch:statistics
- ↑ ghhg67754. (1/5/2015). "Inspect Element!
" post:983446
- ↑ https://api.scratch.mit.edu/users/comp09
- ↑ projects:75946968[dead link]
- ↑ -ShadowOfTheFuture-. (21/11/2017). "It was a glitch, now it's been patched." post:2897268
- ↑ raldesco0001. (19/8/2020). "I've seen a few people's profile, and there, I see their location as NO." topic:432452
- ↑ TheHockeyist. (13/9/2015). "There is no country called Antarctica." post:1406300
- ↑ eugene2005. (9/7/2015). "The human population of Antarctica is zero." topic:132172
- ↑ post:5743550
- ↑ Paddle2See. (29/11/2018). "We talked this over on the Scratch Team ... We decided to keep it for now." post:3326935
- ↑ Za-Chary. (18/11/2018). "It interests me to see where other Scratchers are from." post:3315831
- ↑ dertermenter. (5/2/2021). "Countries should be separate, and I am English and I want to be seen as it's own nation." topic:482015
- ↑ Paddle2see. (5/3/2021). "Hello folks! I did raise this suggestion with our localization group - they handle how Scratch should be “localized” for specific regions. They rejected it on the basis that they go by an international standard that determines these kinds of things - and we were going to continue to adhere to the standard. " post:4965047
