Yeah, the forums have definitely been dying for years. New user retention is low, and vets leave the site as they lose interest/get busy in life. I agree that a lot of discussions have moved off site. Even forum groups I'm in are fairly quiet on the forums because we primarily talk in Discord. Almost all of my forum use in general is lurking, posting on the CW market forums, or posting in the art market.

I think the forums ultimately need more focus. Forum search has been broken for as long as I can remember. The forums load only 50% of the time. Clearer, looser rules for posting. Etc.

Forums as a whole are a dying platform. In this day and age, there’s just so many more convenient and direct ways to communicate.

As far as Subeta’s forums go, it’s a combo of things really. The fact that there’s least and least users, the fact that people now communicate elsewhere (cults used to communicate a lot on the forum, now most groups have their own discord servers), and most of all the fact that the forums are the least reliable feature of this site.

I can positively say that the forums are slow or broken at least 50% of the time. They take forever to load (when they do load, and don’t even get me started on trying to load them on mobile), sometimes pings don’t go out, sometimes posts don’t show up immediately, sometimes your posts are eaten (I always write my longer posts in a notepad before posting, since I never know if something will happen or not)… Why would people use such an unreliable platform to communicate? Even most of the artists I’ve commissioned in the past year now use Smails to send WIP and such.

Platforms like discord are so much more convenient. They’re fast, mobile friendly, they’re up 99.9% of the time, there’s no lag, posts don’t get eaten, and they’re a lot more direct than forums.

Sometimes I wonder why I even bother buying wears - with real money, no less! - because nobody sees my HA outside the forums and I never post.

And the same for pet TCs, because nobody but me looks at them... And that's Subeta gone, whoops.

I wish the RP forums were more active. Or more 'mature'.

we need a revamp ;D we need to bring new users in and keep them here.

It's really sad to come back after a long hiatus and see how slow the forums are these days. Even though I never was much of a poster, I was always lurking and reading threads. Things were so lively years ago with such big Subeta personalities, but that all just seems totally gone now.

I think the forums are lively when there are certain events going on but that's really it these days. Like when you need to get bitten or bite people for a skin, kiss people, etc.

It makes me sad because Subeta feels so much lonelier without an active forum. : ( I'm one of Those People who has trouble talking to people directly, so posting on the forums for the general public to see, instead of one-on-one communication or small discord servers, is a much easier way for me to feel connected to other Subetans (if that makes any sense). I don't really know if there's a way to fix it though, pet sites aren't exactly popular hangout places anymore and most established users would probably prefer to stick to their forum groups.

I do agree that changing the forum rules would potentially promote activity, though. It seems silly that we can't post on threads that are literally not even half a page down from the most recently updated threads.

It's a bummer because I can see the life and activity of the site in the news comments. People have lots to say and look forward to new things on Subeta, you can tell! Plenty of news posts still get 100+ comments all the time.

i'm with everyone wishing the forums were more active ;;

like idk if it happens to others too but for me like, knowing the forums are so dead makes me less likely to start threads and try to get conversation going? bc then i'm like nghh what if nobody posts and i just look dumb :' ] so welp it's a vicious cycle ahaha

Absolutely this! I feel exactly the same. After returning after a long period of being away I actually felt quite repelled again by the fact that all of those great personalities had totally vanished from sight. Such a shame and makes this place half as fun!

It's impossible this afternoon to load anything, and it went back to normal only briefly tonight before it takes several refreshes to get the stubborn posts to load :(

And I feel like the atmosphere became too sterile recently these years. Not a whole lot of humor or entertaining posts. I guess nobody's taking risks on the forums these days.

Absolutely this! I feel exactly the same. After returning after a long period of being away I actually felt quite repelled again by the fact that all of those great personalities had totally vanished from sight. Such a shame and makes this place half as fun! Thirded, came back for Lumi and Melody and thought about trying to get the 200 posts out of the way for the Blue Building and there's not really anything interesting, especially nothing that will keep me posting

I mean, I thought Roleplaying would, especially if we incorporated D&D rules or settings but the only part that doesn't have the most recent post being months old is [OOC] RP Planning and there's lots of requests for players to roleplay one on one instead. :/

not just the forums the quests also sigh

so not fun!

Sadly even when there is something going on to keep users here and bring in new people, the site tends to stall or temporarily break and that turns people away or makes most of them wary of posting.

Plus the forum homepage itself was broken for a bit not showing the topics with the most recent posts so that too could have thrown people through a loop. (It's being worked on but yeah.)

Man I'm really sad about this too, I kinda want to try and socialize around here but everything feels so stagnant and unfriendly these days u__u

I think they took away the debate forums because it was easier to find someone and target them for their beliefs. I’m not saying I agree with what some said in that forum, but that doesn’t make them any less human beings. I don’t think it was appropriate that some people smailed others to off themselves for what they posted there. If you want discussion, you can always got to the news comments or shoutbox. Not sure those are regulated.