I believe that would be me. I got bored trying to count my groups yesterday, but I'm fairly sure I'm well over 200. I don't even use the forums that much, really, but I'm in a ton of art and CW groups so that I don't miss the few things I do buy. I would miss out on so much if I was just in customwear and artsale. ^_^;

I've mostly stayed out of this topic because I don't know how to express my thoughts on this without sounding like a whiny kid. All these ideas for replacements sound like unnecessarily complicated ways to do the same thing, only not as well. There really isn't a way to change ping groups' coding to be easier on the servers?

I can't picture these subscription pings working well. People remake their boards all the time. Artists have freebie threads and auctions on different boards. CW artists have WIP boards, commission boards, and ping their groups to boards selling items they've made. How are we supposed to know when these things happen if we only get notified for one topic?

ROFL, what about "Creates ALL the lag" xD

xD I wonder if there really were only 7 of us! give me my title, haha

But yeah I feel like I'm trying to go around the forum groups concept while essentially wanting to achieve the same, which is... a bit frustrating. Reworking CW shops would be a massive help, but when it comes to art/graphics shops there's much less that could be done, at least not without cutting down on some of the current forum group features (like the ability to ping anywhere) :c

Whatever happens, though, will need to be in beta test for quite some time. I foresee lots of tweaks being needed n_n

that is... weird because another user commented me some hours ago that they had over 200 groups, too. are we even only seven or...?????

there is a possibility that we are more... we had six, now seven (see above) people confirm in this thread and one commented me. Did Keith say "above 250", maybe? Cause then I'm out~

I like them all and I want them all. :D

To limit the mass number of groups, listing an average of what would be reasonable, based on a few users having an exponentially large number of overages does not make any sense atall. I know you have many unhappy Subeta users displeased with this limit. Honestly, I stopped receiving pings like I needed (to maintain my search for CWs, etc) when the last few updates were done to the silly forums. I thought it merely due to the changes in the forum, and maybe the ping groups were affected. Sadly, I am required to locate the artists that had done such amazing wears (providing the site with extra daily $$$), or not purchase any further. The sadness is that I can honestly say, just by having the ping groups and being able to be pinged, I would estimate my spending via Subeta to be an average of $100+ per month, in addition to having a year subscription. That changed, and I wonder at how many others it changed their spending, as well. The sadness is that by limiting to such a tiny number, it also limits more of what a Subeta user would spend in your site. If 20% of the Subeta users spends based on pings, and that is limited so severely that they have less to spend on...the income for the site also is affected.
Skipping over the awesomeness of the artists and CW sellers, that cost me so much to enjoy...why not increase the ping group to 50 per user, knowing full well that the majority of users may never utilize the 50 mark, but providing enough to be reasonable, and not so many that the site would be crushed more than it is (it goes down, we all survive and continue on when it goes back up). If 50 is too much for the site to handle, what would it take to get it to that point? How would this be feasible and reasonable, for those who have been and will be dedicated to Subeta. 10 years is amazing, but many of us want to be around, and enjoy for many many many more! (I do not plan on keeling over anytime soon, and I expect that I will have at least one of my three "angels" interested in this site, as they head off to the real world. - Okay, that is a few years yet to go, so keep up the work for another 10 years, and we will have a whole generation started, and who will likely take on their mother's tendencies) LOL Just a random batch of thoughts from another user...

I suppose one of the issues is that the money coming into the site simply just isn't sufficent enough to pay for upping the servers yet again to handle all the load for the ping groups in general. But I think there are ways to lessen the load in other ways rather than making such a pitiful limit on how many we can join.

I myself am in over 60 groups. Like others have said, I could leave a few of them I'm sure. Some people do disban them. But as I have (I thought) already stated once, that if the ping groups are made to be subscribed via thread and the system will simply utilize the ping coding from the subscription to notify users of that thread, how in the world are new threads suppose to notify anyone of what they're doing? They won't have anyone subscribed! The point of the pings, was to say "Hey, I'm here come see my stuff!" and then you subscribe. I will subscribe to threads because being in a ping group only tells you who owns said group, doesn't say where this person posts regularly or where their thread(s) are.

Like I have my cw ping group I let other people use to ping people to let them know the item they are selling was made by me. So they know it's a commission. It can draw people to that thread knowing it was done by a certain artist (like or for example). If it's limited to only subscriptions, then commissioners, that some only ever sell once- won't be able to generate interest for their item because they can't PING anyone to their shop to let them know they have something for sale. And they wouldn't want to ping friends, because many people have diverse amount of friends and not all of them will want a ping about something they don't want/can't afford/aren't interested in. So changing it to subscription only is still not a solution as it will make it more difficult for people to find things to want to buy!

Take this for a real life example: Stores can't advertise on TV, billboards, magazines, newspaper, movies or internet ads any longer. The only way people are going to be able to see info on a store is to sign up for their subscription bulletin which will be sent via email to alert customers of new info and merchandise. So new stores, who have no following, can't advertise so how are they suppose to let people know they exist and have stuff for sale? You may say "Oh someone will see the store, be curious and wander in". Sure, but how many will wander in with the intent to buy? Curiosity will bring them in, but unless they know what it is to begin with, they most likely won't stay to buy and they won't word of mouth advertise. So... does this sound like the best solution? It cuts down on a lot of wasted time, resources, lag, waste and ect (as well as jobs, but that's beside the point lol)- so it's better and easier right? Yeah.... right.

Just saying. This can't be the ONLY solution. If you can't think outside the box, get a different box.

Also, I was thinking, perhaps there could be a way to make the limit easier to swallow. You could make "tiers" in gold accounts. Like, basic, advanced and "Power". So those that have the Power status have more perks and those that are basic are limited more and those with NO gold account are even more limited. So like, the basic user gets 15 forum group join limit. A basic gold account gets 50. Advanced gets 100 and 'power' gets unlimited (i guess?) lol. I don't know if this would actually help... but you never know? I just find it really hard to believe that these so-called "Power" users are breaking the whole of subeta... and if they are, instead of taking everyone in the metaphorical "school" and smashing them all into the "janitors closet" because the auditorium has broken floor boards, and deciding to call the closet the new auditorium, just fix the auditorium.

Whoever said it... lol- but I agree that I think the userbase would be patient if you said "You won't be able to join/create more ping groups while we rework/rewrite the code for it. It'll probably be (months) until then. Thanks for your patience!" I do think so.

Yeah. I don't think "cults" will be what we all hoped they'd be, which was actual little "clubs/guilds" we could join with mini functions of what the main forums have here, but with other perks. I guess it could be that the server can't handle all that either. It'd be like, mini-sites within subeta and too complicated. I don't think they ought to be too complicated, but just- better than what they are now. If they can put the code into the forum groups, they can write the code to stand alone and be "cults" instead of a hybrid mutant baby of ping groups.

No worries!

And I think it would be hilarious if those that have over 200 ping groups got a title... HILARIOUS! Gold star for you!!

Brb joining two more groups so I can hit 250 and be on the cool kids club, lol xD If I had to guess, I'd say a good chunk of CW buyers / people who have any interest on the market is well above 100... I'm curious to see what happens when the new system gets in beta totally want the shop from your mockup noww, but really really hope it won't be randomly pushed on us before it's done with testing o.o

We're actually brainstorming how pinging could work in the future over here - come and join on in! I just have to protest your suggestion of making the ability to join more forum groups a perk for GAs - no, no no no. There is an extra forum for GA people and that should stay the only forum upgrade they get. The forums are one of the absolute basic features here onsite, and it would be more than unfair to restrict it so much to users without gold accounts. You can get so many other perks when having a GA, don't make it a basic thing like this.

I'm really really curious what will be done and how everything will work. It does seem to be kinda not clear yet, and I'm happy that Keith just goes and says "yeah people come on throw me all the ideas, we will do basically anything if i can kick out ping groups for that" cause that is something I can live with wayyyyy better than "too much server strain? we'll just cut everything down lol" And I still can't believe that I'm one of so few persons with so many forum groups - how do people keep up with the market? xD

With all this talk of averages, I hope you're tracking mean, median, and mode for this stuff. It's always good to have more numbers. :D

Glad to know my enjoyment of the site is what is in fact breaking it. Thanks for making me feel bad about it? Because I'm sure my "over-use" of other features is breaking the site too. =/

PS, I'm trying to go through and leave a bunch of groups so as not to further break the site. You might want to look at the delete feature. I'm apparently the owner of a group (I'm guessing through ownership transfer) that is never used and has over 200 people in it. I tried to delete the group and it doesn't work.

I sort of understand the idea behind limiting forum groups even if I don't like it. Of course people have explained and debated the bad points better than I can (mainly because I don't understand programming that well and so can't say what points are really bs).

But having the forum groups be LIKE cults? No.

My own forum group is basically me going: I think you'll find this interesting.

And the others I'm in are like that too. Be it for events, token shop restocks, ect.

Cults are much more of a social thing in that there are cult events and cult chats and just all around talking about things with other members. I don't get WHY the two need to mash into sort of the same thing.

Going to page attention to that board now =D

we're pretty sure we're more than 7 users who are in more than 200 groups by now because we've already found 8 who claim to be, me included? It's weird. And yeah, when I first read that I was like "oh great now I'm the one who breaks the site or what", but by now I find it hilarious and I kinda want a forum title "brought the site down" :D

yes! all the attention!

I may be on the less popular opinion side, but PLEASE put a limit on wishlists. Even clicking on the WL link itself takes forever to load. If limiting it will make it run faster/smoother/better then do eeeeeet. The point of a wishlist is to keep track of items you wish to have and working towards them, right? And if you're actively working towards them then a limit (unless it's an unreasonable limit) shouldn't be a big deal. (I am prepared for backlash over this) I hope people cut out misusing the wishlist (keeping track of items you do own... why not use subetalodge and bog their servers lul). Anyways, I'm plenty off topic. Running along now

Oh, I cannot fathom being in 200+ groups. I cannot stand being in 64 and not logging on for a day or two as it is... to log into the chaos that 200 groups would bring... ugh, I couldn't do it. I like my events and pings like I like my email inbox - little to no messages.

Limiting wishlists? Lol is this some kind of joke.

Looking at 's post, I started hoping there will be a link or... some sort of indicator of the groups you own/you made. (Like have them all marked with a star and placed on top of the groups page, a special category within the same page or something like that.)

One beautiful day I logged on and a user very kindly asked for the ownership of the artsale group back. Needless to say, I had absolutely NO idea what was happening. If I hadn't looked at the group or if someone else hadn't poked me, I would NOT know I had become the OWNER of artsale. (Which I suppose counts towards our 5 owned groups total?) So yeah, I wish this sort of situation wouldn't happen anymore :/ At least give people alerts when they become owners of things, I guess.

(Also, I have no idea how ownership transferring works, artsale has lots of mods - me included-, most are older members than me so I'd see myself as the last person who would get ownership o.O Clarification would be loved, haha.)

I've just read most of this thread, and I'm surprised at myself for not taking notice sooner. I'm gonna play Switzerland for this since I'm fairly unaffected by changes being made to forum groups, cults, etc. My sole focus is battling and pets, not much else.

From what I can summarize, feel free to correct me: 1.) When the new forums happened, it led to 2.) group pings being broken and have been broken for months (but they're working now?), which brought us to 3.) the CW market being horribly affected since artists could not ping their buyers, then 4.) those artists finally called it quits and left, so 5.) the moolah went waltzing with'em, which brought on 6.) the daily support goal bar.

Onto 7.) forum groups had a limit of 15 then 50 but now are back to unlimited because it takes a village to appeal a decision, but 8.) Keith has now realized "lack of limits" has led to a major downfall of 9.) the site being choked by the massive amount of unlimited data and 10.) now limits have to be put in place to try and fix a critical error made back in 2004 ('no limits for us cause we're better than that!'). [edit] Oh, and 11.) fucking cults and the never-arriving revamp for them.

Phew.

Limits. Unfortunately, in all honesty, the site needs limits. User shops need item limits. Vaults need limits. Galleries need limits. Achievements encouraging these massive shops to exist need to be retired once and for all. Pet slots need to stay limited as well. No, you can't own 50 or 100 pets. It just isn't going to work for the overall being of the site.

The more unfortunate issue in having to fix such an old problem is going to be the userbase because we're stuck in the "limitless everything" mentality as well. My suggestion, the transition of putting limits on existing features will have to be slow-going. It's like a hoarder situation.

This means focusing on one feature at a time; come up with a plan of action to resolve all concerns and ways to compensate the imminent loss; deadlines need to be made and announced frequently to keep everyone, users and staff, informed; when the day comes to make the transition, put the limit in place, or whatever the hell the big change is, don't hesitate, just do it.

If anyone is too stupid to pay attention to what's going on in the news or site announcements, then shame on them. If they care about the site, they need to pull their heads out of the clouds.

Another suggestion I have, though I don't necessarily know if this already happens: inactive and/or frozen accounts that are just sitting there need to be fully removed. There are too many inactive accounts sitting around, waiting for someone to reuse the username or pet names sitting on the account. 9 times out of 10, they probably also have vaulted sPs, items, and other shit they're clearly not coming back for. DELETE IT ALL. Quit leaving it open like it is because it effs up the overall site statistics; when the account is set to clear, it needs to be 100% wiped out of the system.

No one wants the pets 'BubbleButt1287' or 'LOL_934', so no one is gonna miss them if they get completely wiped out of the system.