I cut down on even posting in the farming threads I feel HORRIBLE for even posting in them even

I only said like "box box box me" or things like "please appear box" or I even posted gifs of my favorite things like actors, movie scenes , kpop gifs etc;P i'll stick to my group to post my gifs. I even put my favorite lyrics to songs, I mean it was really too hard to hold a conversation with how fast it was going and on top of that the thread would be locked anyways. I can see all sides of it but I don't think I ever hit the post button repeatedly.

hi, i think you're misunderstanding my post as a personal attack, which i didnt mean it as. i dont mean -- at all -- to get into a heated discussion on the forums. so if your feeling about what i wrote is that it's antagonistic or pointed, i'm sorry it came off that way. i'm not here to poke or prod until people are angry or dislike me.

"In this case, it was negative feedback, but it was also tongue-in-cheek (the aesthetics of the box? really? I hope no one took me too seriously on that one). " my mistake for misinterpreting that. tone is hard to convey over the internet and i'm notoriously bad at interpreting it.

"No one is saying, "this thing sucks and i have no ways to improve it, but i just want you to know that i hate it." I literally gave reasons in my first thread as to why I was frustrated." i'm not trying to say that you don't have reasons, but i am saying that your post didn't propose solutions or alternatives. other people coming up with them isn't really what i was getting at. you dont like the feature, which is fine, but what would you rather see? staff listens and if it were me, i'd rather see "i dont like this but i would like this other feature"

"You also can't just see a negative thread and assume they're all negative. " the negativity is a trend i've been seeing a lot lately, a lot more widespread than just this thread. not at all trying to say that you and you alone are the source of the negativity lol just that it's something ive been seeing around the forums

my main thing is that i think the staff is underapreciated in general. i think people (not necessarily you, since you are making appreciative threads) lose sight of everything they do for us and get caught up in the little thing they dislike. i'd feel really bad if i was on the staff team and a lot of what i was hearing from the user base was negative.

the spam thing -- you're right. if it's against the rules, it should be discouraged. i think subeta has a fairly inactive forum situation lately and they were hoping to facilitate that instead of spam, but it's hard to have one without the other imo. but you're right. the economy, to be honest, i'm not concerned with it. i know some users are as they probably have more stock in it, but the economy's seemed inflated to me lately anyway so maybe i'm just on a diff opinion. but if people are upset about that, i'm not trying to say it's invalid.

I tried not to take your post too personal, but it did make me defensive. I'm sorry for that. I too would rather not fight. I prefer constructive dialogue - which is, as I was trying to say, my whole reason for this thread in the first place.

I also can't always voice what would be a better option. Maybe it's not fair to crowdsource it, but I also don't want to propose an idea that won't work. I was going to say something along the lines of "the free shop was better, can we go back to that?" but I figured that there were reasons the staff decided to go in this direction. Some of that has been discussed here.

So all in all, we agree on a lot of points. I think we just differ slightly on some of the methods of implementation.

Aw crap, I'm sorry y'all, I didn't actually realize that those farming threads were being discouraged by staff, so I kept posting in them. ): I was really apprehensive about it at first bc of how spammy it felt, but I figured as long as the threads weren't being locked it was acceptable. If forum gift boxes ever come back, I hope that spam threads won't be tolerated and that we'll see a revival of the forums as a whole.

I have to go to bed so I can't really add to the conversation, but I just want to say that, OOH YES, I agree completely! You explained this way more eloquently than I ever could have. Thank you so much for saying this and I hope other users find inspiration in it!

I never been able to get many gift boxes in the past, mostly because I hate how forced the whole thing is. I don't post a lot in the forums, I'm not great at conversation, I don't want to feel compelled to post because staff think it would be nice to increase forum activity for a bit. It feels like a parent trying to get a reluctant child to go to a party "Go on! You'll have fun! There'll be other children there and you'll make friends!" I don't think the farming threads were ideal, but they are an inevitable result of the conditions that have been set. However, they were generally contained in one place and easily avoidable, and as long as you weren't actively spamming, then there's no harm done. It's like people who hide their masks behind their avatars; it's not really in the spirit of things, but there's no reason why you can't.

Like others, my main issue is with the manual restocking of the prize pool. Was the Free Shop always manually restocked? I get why there are reasons for this system, but there has to be a better way. We shouldn't have to wait for hours with an empty prize pool because the one person who can fill it up is still asleep.

This is the first time on Subeta that I’ve seen “farming” topics, and we’ve hit a new low imo. There are plenty of topics that are less social that fulfill the purpose of “farming” already. I do hope they’re a help to the socially anxious, but that seems like a silver lining.

I like the prizes, and the activity in the forums that isn’t as meaningless as the “farming.”

I don't mind the gift boxes, but then again I rarely post on the forums. I can see why the "Nothing is stocked" message is annoying, because I really don't want to have to keep checking. I'm much more of a "Do it once and be done with it" type of person. I'm hoping you can sell them, because if its out of stock when I have one, Im just going to end up chucking it in my shop.

I took this to mean that some people were hitting the post button multiple times in hope of getting duplicate or triplicate posts.

As others have pointed out there are many spam topics in the games forum. Maybe the Free Shop is a better way of going about things, though.

spends an hour writing this post

It's contained to the spamming threads, so why does anyone have a problem with it?

People already do this stuff for forum points anyway. It's called the user run games section, and people just post random foods. How's that any different?

Also, the "kiss/flower/dance/whatever the user above you" threads. They don't involve social interaction or meaningful conversation. How are they any different?

I'm new, haven't made many close friends yet, and because of time zones they're all asleep anyway. I've got to put huge amounts of thought into anything I say because conversation feels like riding an escalator with one leg (scary, slow, out of place, likely to fall over). If I had to rely on actual conversation for event stuff, I'd be completely screwed.

Also, the relaxed, fast-moving nature of those spamming threads really loosened things up and I got into a lot of sweet conversations and made some friends. It's really fun, and that's what the whole thing is about, right? And I'm not the only one. Buried in all that spam are people befriending each other.

So really it did, in its own way, encourage conversation and friendships. Much better than it could've done if it was forced.

freaks out

I'm not smart enough to be on this site :(

hides

Same here. I've been here for 14 years, 4 months, 2 weeks, 6 days and have only managed 10,528 posts. Most of those have been in event threads where I can kiss, dance with or give flowers to the user above. Others have been from the game threads where I say what I got from Mallarchy Pond etc.

I think that the main problem with the Forum boxes was more free items going out than intended.

I like the giftboxes. They're kind of fun and exciting. The forums have been sad and slow for a long time now. This is the first time in a while I've seen a spike of activity, with people actually posting in places. Staff should simply put the kibosh on 'farming' threads, and direct people to the conversation part of the chit chat forum.

I'm really torn on the boxes.

I like free stuff, and I admit I've participated in a few farming threads in hopes of getting a box. I don't mind at all that the pool needs to be hand-added because as we've seen with things like Morty Cards, there's an economic impact to tons of free stuff thudding down onto the site and unregulated free stuff is asking for trouble.

That said I'm dismayed there are threads specifically for farming now, and I see upthread that it's been discouraged. But where? If there's been any post, I haven't seen it, and clearly the threads are still going on. IDK maybe a news post and a couple of thread lockdowns might get that point across if folks wanted to put a stop to the farm threads?

I didn't realize people were post spamming as fast as they could, although I guess I should have expected it.

The other big downside is that I see people becoming confused about dance claim threads versus box farming threads. Folks, especially newer users, are getting sad and frustrated when they don't get dances from people in farm threads, and I'm not sure if there's a trend but it seems there's less "oh yes, I need to claim/ask for dances" in claim threads in the last day or so.

I don't like that the line's gotten fuzzy between dance claim threads and "I'm just posting for a box" threads.

As someone with anxiety, I didn't participate in the box farming because I didn't want to bother. The spammers would get all the boxes anyway, so I saw no point in even trying when I saw that happening. But there are also dozens and dozens of other threads on Subeta like "what did you get from the rift" or "what did you get from the bathhouse", etc. Ditto with tons of other topics and user-run games in the chit-chat forum. Topics that you can post on while staying on-topic without engaging in any kind of conversation with a person, but also without mass-spamming. Even with "Dance with the user above!" threads, you still have participation. Post "claim", dance, wait until your timer's up, repeat. Yeah these topics are technically "pointless", but they're also a good way for the less social among us to interact somewhat more comfortably. You'd also get reported very quickly for pasting&posting the same message on these topics with a handful of your friends because, you know, that's spamming. ._.

Spamming is against the rules. Period. If you're going to bend the rules for this, then we should also bend them for forum point farming and forum post farming. Mass-spamming lead to the item pool being depleted more quickly than was intended, hence people getting disappointed that their forum boxes were empty. Going by her posts, , could literally not keep up with the rate that items were going out. 20k items poofed quickly. That's not well-balanced or fair, especially when there are people who got a hundred-something of the boxes just for posting "boxboxbox pls".

Possibly limit forum boxes to one every ~30 minutes or something. The free shop has a cooldown between purchases, so why not this? That would hopefully nip the spamming in the bud. Also brings up a very good point - remind people about the no spamming rule next time forum boxes go live. At the rate the spamming topics were popping up, it was really hard to control the situation. A site-wide reminder would go a long way too.

[edit] ">https://subeta.net/forums.php/read/899978/Box-Farming-The-Revenge/216/ ">https://subeta.net/forums.php/read/899981/Forum-Box-Farming-21-Dont-Lose-the-Farm/37/ Two posts, but the farming topics continued regardless so it didn't have as much impact as a news post, or a blue bar reminder would have. ._.

Cool, thanks. Still, the target audience there wasn't huge, the threads are still being created and being posted in, and short of having Amber or other staff constantly post warnings in every new thread, I'm thinking maybe a blue bar alert or other similar idea would be handy.

I like your ideas of a box cooldown.

I'm still confused about what Amber said in the topics -

This suggested that the Farming threads were OK as long as people posted then waited for others to reply before posting again. What added to the confusion was none of the Farming threads being locked until they'd reached the maximum number of posts.

I took this to mean people repeatedly hitting the post button in hope of getting duplicate posts.

I admitted in the first post that I've participated in the spam threads. I want to explain my rationale for doing so - not to defend myself, but to help people understand.

• At first, they seemed like they would be totally against the rules of the site and the spirit of the forum giftboxes, so I didn't participate. I figured staff would put a stop to them pretty quickly.
• When the threads remained and flourished, I began to think that maybe this was allowable. In some ways they're very similar to the kissing/dancing threads allowed during event times. The threads were only being made in the event forum (to my knowledge), so I figured this was a special event allowance.
• People kept mentioning cool things they'd get from the boxes, and I occasionally got some cool things too. I wanted to see what else I could get. Call it greed, call it addictive-reasons-I-should-never-gamble.
• So I started posting on the designated threads.
• At the beginning, I just posted at the same time/frequency as I posted on the dancing thread. But as time went on, I realized I wasn't limited by any sort of cool down like I was for dancing. I started posting whenever I thought about it.
• I got a bit spazzy/nuts about it at one point. It wasn't pretty.
• Then I had a sort of about-face. I realized that my post history was filling up with useless posts, and I felt embarrassed that anyone could look that up. I noticed I'd managed to get another star and felt that it really wasn't deserved. I returned to my original reservations about the posts and stopped.
• The staff still didn't say anything until well into the last day (and only on a couple of threads that I didn't know about until posted them here.) So it was a very confusing time. It didn't feel right, these threads, but they were being allowed to continue. Maybe they were okay?
• Which eventually led to me creating this thread. I had to express my frustration somewhere and also find out if others felt the same way.

Anyway, that was my thought process. Others have expressed similar sentiments. I don't think we should necessarily feel super bad about it - maybe a little chagrinned* - but otherwise just stop and move on. <3

*I just looked up "chagrinned" on Google and its default definition is way harsher than I think that word deserves...Chagrin to me is like embarrassment but with "it happens" shrug of the shoulders. Just adding this footnote in case anyone doesn't know that word and wonders.

I sorta like the idea behind the boxes and I can certainly see why they'd try to provide some incentive for people to post on the forums, but for the reasons you guys have stated, I don't really like the boxes either.

The boxes make me feel like I'm forced to go to the forums to either spam or dance with randoms instead of just dancing with friends like I always do. (I have an event buddy who is often as inactive as me, so we like to help each other out during events - I usually almost exclusively dance/kiss/tot/etc that one person through the entire event and it's usually still enough to get everything I need).

I got lucky enough to get one box on my second post, but I don't anticipate getting more than that because I'd rather help out my friend. But at the same time, what I got from the box knocked out an expensive wishlist item (a 30-something million collection item), so I also can't help but feel that I'm wasting a huge opportunity to potentially knock out some really expensive stuff from my wishlist by participating. It's honestly a really sucky situation to be in.

I would have much preferred the boxes if they were set up as a reward for a quest. For example, every X minutes you'll get an event saying that so-and-so needs your help. You'll go there and be given a handful of tasks to do, similar to Major Drills. Making several forum posts could be a mandatory task on each quest, but otherwise they'd rotate for variety like Drills.

All that said, reduced forum activity is an issue that is not specific to this game. I've noticed it across other games that I play. It seems to have just been a shift in user mentality across all platforms. As well-intentioned as the boxes were, I don't think they're going to alleviate the problem long-term.

I participated in the farming threads because like others, it felt like it was ok because the threads weren't locked. I know the forum boxes were an attempt to increase forum activity and being social between users, and certainly the farming threads might not have been in the spirit of that. However, with that being said, comment really resonated with me:

I've been on Subeta for almost 13 years, all of my original friends from here are gone. As a result I joined a forum group recently which has been a blessing, but outside of that I have no Subeta friends. Ignoring the people typing only "boxboxbox," the farming threads were really fun for me. People posted lyrics of their favorite songs, silly jokes, I got to see funny gifs and learn animal facts, and we all complimented each other's HAs. The overall pandemonium was funny and exciting, and at the same time it was such a chill and no pressure environment. After struggling for a year to make new friends here, I actually did make some new friends and I'm really happy about that outcome.

I guess what I'm trying to say is it wasn't all that bad. And if you didn't participate, you wouldn't know the connections that were being made and the socializing that was happening.

One last comment for people who were upset/angry about farming threads: did they affect you in any way? My opinion is let people enjoy things even if it's not how you might enjoy the same thing. And if you wanted more boxes you were welcome to post there, too. Amber said it was fine if participation was like a claim thread, which imo if you replace "claim" with "box" was what was happening for the most part. idk I just want everyone to be happy T_T

I think we can all agree that spamming the Post button = bad, though.

edit: clarified some things

Dance claiming threads serve a purpose besides just spam, and they've been a part of these kinds of events for years. User run games are fun, even if people mostly turn to them when they want forum points or boxes. "What did you get from X?" threads are also interesting, again, even if most people probably don't care about the content so much as getting more points/boxes.

I'm glad there were conversations happening on the spam threads at some point, but specifically the post spammers/people just posting "box" 10 times per page, I still find that extremely disappointing to see :/

How did you guys manage to have any sort of cohesive conversation on these threads? This is a serious, earnest question. When I saw them, they were going so fast I could hardly even find my own posts, much less anyone else's. I am both impressed and confused.