KACP Revival Proposals

This asks for a lot, and as far as the Khan Academy development goes, I don't see much of this happening easily or soon, especially since KACS is such a niche thing on KA, but it's undeniable that the computer science part of KA contains the strongest community KA has and a strong community is necessary for a thriving business. Maybe it's unrealistic but I personally would be very grateful even if only 10% of the things requested here were fulfilled, KACS would be very positively impacted and it would reinvigorate my passion for coding on this platform. I also know that several other KACS users would feel very similarly. The proposals here already stress the desires and reasons and I really hope the message gets across because it'd be a shame to see my favorite free programming learning environment and its community evaporate. 

This is plan seems to take allot of brainstorming :) and shows a incredible amount of teamwork.

I agree with you Jett I hope the CS community can be revived, STEM is playing a major role in education today being someone who seen many sides I have benefited from programs developed in the technology sector focusing on Health Care.

The Health care industry is being transformed and many Doctors , Nurses and other health care physicians are learning to code new apps that critical to delivering care to patients. We have allot of students who want to work in the medical industry knowing how to code will greatly benifit students futures.

Also Girls are still not encouraged or have open access to STEM or Computer Science think about the impact this has for third world countries that have access to Khan Academy. We allow the ability to interest more Girls in Stem based careers.

Another point is Khan Academy teaches entrepreneurship lessons when you teach coding to students you unlock the ability for creativity to take place.

Should Khan Academy does hire someone I highly recommend hiring a Teacher who has work in bringing a STEM based Curriculum in their school or focus on the education sector having a teacher to overlook and consult to make sure our CS community is benefiting students and is teaching them valuable content, in this also hiring someone to develop new CS content and that is a CS programmer.

If funding is a issue then reaching out to various charitys and non-profits that are delivering CS coding cirriculum and support is the next option after all who wouldn't benefit as a Khan Academy partner.

Go Revive! =)

Amazing coordination and work from you guys! KA is lucky to have such dedicated community members!

Let's #Revive KACS! 

Woah, you guys sure have put a lot of effort into this! Here are my thoughts:

1) I think this is one of the less important issues right now; while it would be nice to have more in-depth and well-explained errors, I think some of the other points are of more importance. But it definitely would be cool to have the Live Editor be a community project.

2) New coding courses would be amazing. I personally had an interest in C++ but the lack of a real coding editor made it hard to practice and I eventually gave up (as you might be able to tell, I would like a C++ course on KA :P). I've already gotten pretty far in JS, dabbled in HTML/CSS and done a bit of SQL, and now there's nothing else on KA. This would be absolutely amazing if it could be done.

3) Contests would definitely be fun, but would it really get new learners into KACP? If the users are inactive and not even involved in the KACP community, then how would they see the contests and get involved? Perhaps it's just an oversight on my part.

4) The Featured List would be nice as well... but it would definitely be demanding on the "curators" to be constantly finding new programs. No matter how often the list is updated, the curators would have to be constantly looking for good programs in order to try not to let any programs go unnoticed.

5) This has been brought up several times. I'm personally not a huge fan of tagging programs. What would you do to mis-tagged programs? Flag them down? Or would the same group who makes contests / monitors the Featured List re-file them? I think it could lead to some confusion (especially for newer programmers).

6) I've loved this idea ever since Lionofgd introduced it a while ago. A rating system would be (in my opinion) one of the best changes that could undergo KACP. This, I think, should be the #1 priority to complete first.

Overall, I think if all these changes could be completed, this could restore KACP to the way it was a few years ago. But realistically, this is asking for a lot, as Edward mentioned. 

I'm not too seasoned on Zendesk here (I just got my account a few days ago). Does having votes make it more likely to be seen by Guardians? If you can't answer comment on Zendesk, could you answer on KA (if you don't mind)?

PS: I support the movement, and voted up your post. :)

I agree! Thank you (and everyone) who worked together to make this. I support Revive all the way! 

Within four days, this post rivals the vote count of posts that have existed for three years. Can the administrators of Khan Academy possibly ignore it now?

I think the rating system could be incredibly discouraging to new programmers. Instead, there should be three levels of rating-

1. A vote for any good project, you can only vote 10 projects per hour/day

2. A star for a truly great project that actually shows effort, you can only star a single project per hour/day

3. A favorite for only the most amazing projects you ever see, you can only favorite a single project a month, you will have a section in your projects that shows the projects you have favorited

For every project you view, you can only do one of the above options. Votes will now be displayed as votes + stars + favorites, Stars will be displayed as stars + favorites, and favorites as favorites.

For example, if Joe makes a racing sim, and 21 people click vote, 5 people click star, and 1 clicks favorite, then Joe gets 27 votes, 6 stars, and 1 favorite.

Khan Academy has introduced the KACP Challenge Council! More info can be found on the announcement here (https://khanacademy.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/115003830072-Community-Update-Introducing-the-KACP-Challenge-Council-) and on the Help Center article here (https://khanacademy.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/115003790912). 

Well said, Jett! Hopefully this movement can catch on =)

I REALLY hope this gets somewhere, because if it doesn't, I fear that KACS with go down with it.

Perhaps add a search bar, in case you know what program you're looking for? Also, where can I request permission to join Revive?

I can't stress this enough: OH NOES HAS TO BE CORRECT ABOUT WHICH ERROR IT IS. It's really annoying when I am programming something, do something wrong, and I get 23 pages about what could possibly be wrong with the program, sometimes all of them and sometimes most of them being wrong.

Let's do this! 

I like the vote system idea - however, could you expand on the "ratings" part of the Hot List section?

Incredible! 

One: I would recommend a plan for the rating system: I've been thinking this over for a long time.

I would propose to add tags: like the Google feature for movies, such as incredible graphics or nice message and not interesting. Thus, the hotlist could become projects that are rated with the positive tags rather than votes or star ratings.

Number two: I agree  about he Ohnoes errors: more descriptive content and maybe how to fix the problem?  

Also, can I be part of this group/debate/thing?

Sounds great! Getting Golden Winstons would be a huge motivator for me to code, and probably would be for others also. I have to do Python for school now, so having it on another website would be helpful as well. Looking forward to Revive!

You guys are awesome! Let's get this revival going!

I think these are great ideas. I would hate to see KAPC die!

The problem with C codes is that they need to be compiled. That is not such an easy thing to work with, and I don't even know if it would be possible to make live editor for it. 

And then any of those codes would have to be made secure, like the ones they have now.

Basically, it would take a lot of work, and those codes might not be as enjoyable as the current ones. 

However, I know Python, and there are definitely some great things you can do with it that you can't do with Javascript. 

Sadly, there is no way I'd be allowed to be one of the teachers for any new coding languages (if they ever are made), but I do love helping and teaching coding to other people. 

For lack of anything better to say, Go Revive!! I'm proud to be part of this group and I support 100%

@Emily, I have connections with some KA Staff, I'll make sure they all see it and it is reviewed by the right people.

@Jøʞeℜ That isn't really practical. Building a coding website, or any website with a large number of users for that matter, takes a lot of resources and money. Not to mention staff and people with the skills to make it work.

Hey folks, be patient! 

The KA Staff have actually already seen this post, one of them told me they are writing up a big response for us, so sit tight! :D

They will... actually just minutes ago I received an email from a staff member who said the official response is in the works and will be released to us soon... although I'm not sure exactly when.

Hurray, thanks to the help of everyone here we were able to make this the #1-voted feature request on Zendesk! Thank you all so much!

This is a great idea Jett, but I have one question: if the rating system is changed to stars, what will the programs start at? If at 0, it will be hard for people to find them, if 5, then the most recent programs will be at the top of the hotlist, while anything between 3 and 5 would pretty much post it to the hotlist and anything between 0 and 3 would make it hard to find. I also totally agree with needing new languages and separating the languages into different hotlists. I have been wanting a Java course on here for quite some time (3 years) and just recently really wished they had a C# course. Also, I would be willing to be a volunteer at least a little in creating these new courses and fixing the error buddy. I think the best way to carry out the production of these new programs and projects is not to hire a new CP lead, thought that is a very good possibility, but to create a group that volunteers could apply to be in and the people already in the group decide together whether the new member would be an asset to the group. Then this group can work together using their programming skills to create new courses and hotlists and contests. The group can be organized into sections, each working on different projects, and their can be established leaders to organize each group according to the individuals expertise. The only part that would be really important to get right with this is to make sure the established leaders really know what they are doing. To enter said groups you could set up some quizzes like the others on Khan and you would have to pass the quiz and then be accepted by the group to enter. This would help keep the group full of people who knew what they ware doing. I realize that this would be a HUGE project for Khan, but after it being established, it would greatly facilitate the progress of creating new programming courses on Khan.

This Revive movement is GREAT... except one thing. The rating system will completely mess everything up! For one, how will the Hot List be accurately determined? If a program gets 10 ratings with an average rating of 4.9, and another program gets 1,000 ratings with an average rating of 4.7, the one with 10 ratings does not deserve a higher position in the top list. Instead, we should have an implicit rating system. We can vote up a project like we always do, but we can also "Love" and "Star" a project. A love is when you absolutely "love" a project, and "starring" a project shows that you think the person put a lot of effort into the project.

Another problem a rating system will cause is discouragement amongst new programmers. A person could work so hard for a project that is not too good. People will not rate the project well, and the person will be discouraged and will more likely quit. This will create a smaller community of programmers here at KA. This rating system will make people feel intimidated by programming. There are people out there capable of being a great programmer in the KA community, as well as people that are capable of working as a computer programmer for a living, but don't meet that great potential because their first impression of programming was watching an hour of programming videos at KA, and working 2 hours on a project, only to get bad ratings.

When I started KA, I remember working hours on making my name out of rectangles, months before I discovered the text command. I remember spending hours making as little as a picture of a tree and ant in a grassy field. Now, I could make it in as little as 5 minutes, but then, I was just new. I didn't get any votes nor dislikes (that was a thing back then), but what if new programmers get their program seen more, and what if they are given bad ratings? I know I would have been discouraged. But I wasn't, and now, even though I am not as much as a part of the KA community, I am seriously considering studying programming when I get out of high school. And I know that I would still absolutely suck at programming if I was given 2 or 3 dislikes on the programs I made. I think it was right for them to take out the dislike so new programmers don't get discouraged, and the rating system will only defeat this purpose.