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, such as 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.
Hidden Locations
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This article or section documents something not included in the current version of Scratch (3.0). It is only useful from a historical perspective. |
Scratchers discovered that two-letter country codes (such as "US" for the United States) could be set as a location in place of traditional countries using 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 was used 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 were active in the Advanced Topics forum set their location to "AT" (Austria). Another popular example is to make the location the abbreviation of Norway, which is "NO".[5] Several users have become popular by using such methods.[citation needed]
The ways to get two letter locations or "Location not given" have since been fixed.[6]
Adding/Removing Locations
Some users have suggested to add locations to the list, like splitting the United Kingdom up into its individual countries.[7] Some users have also suggested to remove locations, such as "Antarctica" or "Heard Island and McDonald Islands", with the logic that either they are not real countries,[8] or that very few or no people live in those locations.[9] However, despite nobody living there permanently, some Scratchers may be temporarily residing in a place like Antarctica — very unlikely, but possible.
Adding or removing locations to Scratch is rejected, as Scratch uses the ISO-3166 standard for its list of countries. [10][11]
Opposition
Some users have suggested to remove the location feature as a whole. This suggestion has been officially rejected,[12] because the Scratch Team wishes to see which countries users are in, so they can understand which kinds of users use Scratch, which helps them understand which events are happening where, broadening participation overall.[citation needed] Additionally, some find it nice to seeing all the users' countries as a reminder that Scratchers live all over the world, and it helps users relate to others.[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]
- ↑ raldesco0001. (19/8/2020). "I've seen a few people's profile, and there, I see their location as NO." topic:432452
- ↑ -ShadowOfTheFuture-. (21/11/2017). "It was a glitch, now it's been patched." post:2897268
- ↑ dertermenter. (5/2/2021). "Countries should be separate, and I am English and I want to be seen as it's[sic] own nation." topic:482015
- ↑ 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
- ↑ 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
- ↑ 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
