Thank you :). Yes, this time I will. Though I took the day off yesterday. I plan to feed at least what I have set aside, a couple hundred more items. After that, I'll see.

Heyyyy I got 2015 achievements for the year 2015. Well, hopefully I will get more this year, but you know.

I have to thank you again for the info about the lizard minion spray. I got the 10th one today. All that refreshing at the free shop paid off in another way besides the good items!

Congrats! I'm still working on getting the item ones...only 3 so far. I get that one so rarely! Once I have those, I'll remove the spray to try for the other ones.

Have you gotten the items, or just the comatose lizards?

thanks (: I got the item ones first. I had more than 10 before they thing was fixed and the count started working. Though eventually they did post a topic where we could keep track of what we got and get the count adjusted when it was finally fixed. I think I had 6 posted in that topic so I only had to get 4 more once it was fixed.

Now I really should start playing all those tedious games again and work on those. :/

Well I started going over my achievements yesterday. As a result, I picked up 3 new ones.

There are new Rock paper scissors ones, and I don't have all the new levels, probably because I never liked the game. I'm at 64 and the next level is 75. But its for actual wins, not ties or games played. So its a bit annoying. The announcement implied that they plan on adding item prizes, so I may delay trying to earn these until they actually come out with the items.

Scratchcards - I've been buying lots, but scratching, not so much, but I'm less than 100 away from my next achievement.

Tiles sucks. I actually like playing the regular game and I have a bunch of stone tiles waiting for me to get around to playing the bonus game (where you earn wooden tiles), I have the potential to play at least 45 bonus games and I only need 2 more tiles for my next level. But I hate playing the bonus game.

I need to get playing street team again, and feeding minions. Both of those are just a matter of taking the time to do them.

Congrats on your new achievements.

I did not realize there were new tiers for rock paper scissors. Guess I need to check them out. I am with you on street team and minion feeding. ugh.

scratchcards. I was so relieved when I finished them!

Are you not part of the siteupdate group? I get all sorts of info from there. Makes me feel like I'm actually in the loop now.

I am part of it. Must be I did not read the post thoroughly. I do really like that they have been using that group though.

I agree. Its the second best group ever! And exactly the sort of thing we've been asking for.

and what is the first best? :P

Fishing for compliments? Why this one, of course :P.

lol I guess the :p did make it look like I was fishing but honestly I wasn't! I was actually thinking something along the lines of....FIRST BEST? Stupid. Best is best, there is no first best!

Seriously though, this group forum has been really good for me. I'm terrible at communicating, in terms of actually talking/chatting. I do have lots of posts, but the majority are providing info or feedback, not talking to people.

Even in this forum, its my default, though I'm way chattier here than anywhere else. It's even bleeding into a few other places, like Eric's forum, where I occasionally get chatty.

I have never been good at chatting on the forums either and really tried to avoid it. This is still really the only place I chat and even mostly post. Seldom post elsewhere. And I feel like after all the years you ahve been working for sbl I am finally getting to know you. I guess I should be thankful they gave us the ability to make these forums and the incentive of points to actually post!

The really funny part is that when they first went live with this, I really had no idea why anyone would ever bother making threads for forum groups. But now that they exist, I really appreciate them.

Still no replacement for cults (which was the intention), but I think they are useful just as part of the whole onsite communication system. And I think with a good cult revamp, combined with groups, could make the whole cult system way more active and interesting.

we actually have a sbl cult but really never used it other than to collect items for the time we had a big give away in the DC. Which we actually advertised ahead of time and then subeta was down for days and we missed the dates. had it anyway but it was not the big deal we had hoped for. This was way back when we were first starting out, before you or any of the other current wonderful staffers were with us.

I never knew that.

I think running a cult is something that needs a lot of time. At least it does if you want it to be lively and interesting. People need a reason to drop by, to check in. And people need a reason to talk about it, to get others interested in joining.

My own cult has a good basic premise - a daily challenge. But then it fails at being more than that, so while it generates some interest, people eventually get bored and move on.

I guess since I have never been part of a "good" cult I haven yet to figure out their usefulness.

That's something you have in common with Keith and the rest of the staff. I think cults were added here because other sites had similar things and it seemed like a "thing" to have on a pet site. The very fact of how they've been neglected here, tells me a lot about how staff views them.

But Keith et al are missing a huge opportunity. Cults, at least the idea of them, are very popular. Even with the complete lack of attention, with the lack of support, with the crappy tools, cults keep getting built. But they die out, or they never quite come to life - and a big part of that is lack of site support for them.

What they can do for a site is enormous. They can be a large part of why people keep coming back. They can tide a person over if they become burnt out or bored with other parts of the site. Even if they don't do anything but login and visit their cult, chances are good that their interest in the site will revive. It can help keep people here, logging in regularly, and tide people over if they're bored or annoyed with the site in general.

On top of that, beyond putting in some time and effort in designing a good cult system, its run and maintained by the userbase, so staff doesn't have to do anything past the initial investment of creating the system. Or if they want, staff can be involved, spend time on it and create an incredible cult system.

Keith talks about encouraging the site to be more social, to add tools to make socializing easier, and so forth. Yet one of the best tools they have to do that already exists in the cult system. Only its so broken, was never created right in the first place that they continue to ignore that resource. They repeatedly re-invent the wheel (groups, group forums, adding features that MAKE people depend on others, etc), instead of fixing the very thing that could accomplish all that for them.

I'm not a social person, I'm not really into the cult concept. I like my low key cult where my participation is solitary, its the perfect cult for me. But you can have different types of cults, some way more social than others. That's all part of what makes them so appealing.

Then to really encourage the system, they could create a yearly 'cult' event. The snowball fight would have been perfect for something like that!