I think, if I understand what was saying, these NPC-controlled threads will allow people to post without necessarily making conversation. I mean, of course you can respond to other users, but you can also respond to the NPC - in which case you're not exactly having a "real" conversation, at least not with a "real" person.

Maybe even some NPCs can start those game-like threads that require thoughtful responses but not so much conversation.

Depending on how Subeta implements it, it might be a good compromise that can help stimulate conversation for those who want it and yet doesn't leave the quieter folks out in the cold.

I think the necro rule still needs to be revised, though. Trying to find something to reply to in Chit-Chat isn't easy for people who have nothing helpful to say about other people's problems or relationships. Also, current event topics only last for as long as an event is current. I had a look at the Entertainment forum as well - so many locked topics on the first page. I know nothing about Games & MMOs or Anime & Manga, I'm physically incapable of going to the cinema now and reading a book is painful. I suppose I could tell people what I'm listening to every so often and surprise people with what music this 70 year old likes to listen to. :)

I think that's a great idea. People who find talking to other people intimidating can reply to the NPSs.

PS - If I want people to know what music I'm listening to I can share a YouTube video to Facebook with a couple of clicks and the video shows up on friends' news feeds so they can listen to it on FB. I can also paste the video's URL as a comment to a conversation. On Subeta I'd have to manually add the URL if I wanted to suggest that people to listen to some music and then hope my choice doesn't break some rule or other.

Maybe figure out why users aren't spending as much time on the forums? Might mean looking back through archived data and seeing where the dropoff occurred, and from there, figure out what happened around that time and see if there is any correlation to the dropoff in forum usage.

There's always an explanation for something. And at the moment, this isn't the best way to try and get people to actually communicate effectively with each other. Once the dangling carrots are gone, so too will the rabbits, who came out for them, disappear back into their safe little burrows.

I'm sure there's many reasons why some people are less and less on the forums. Majority of us are getting older, have other commitments to tend to, and maybe simply can't relate with whatever people talk about now, or nothing to talk about. There's nothing to bring us all together. Not even holidays matter as much since you can still complete those mundane tasks by keeping a list of links of users to dance with or kiss or flower.

I'm similar. I'm in several forum groups but I don't post in there too often because I'm not the biggest talker.. How many years have you been on Subeta? I've been here 4 years and only have 2 stars under my username.

I have trouble finding topics to reply to sometimes to get forum boxes.

I've been here almost 11 years. I had 4 stars before spending an all-day car ride in the box farming threads lol

Something in my brain keeps trying to connect forum points/raffle tickets to this topic. I guess maybe it's weird to me that everybody is so passive about them.

Ah, I understand. But now I have three star under my name, yay I guess. ;)

I agree with that some users don't have the motivation to post on the forums. I don't normally post, I just lurk unless it's a contest or pet adoption thread I'm interested in.

@ keith Yeahh... I'm still not into forum boxes as a concept. I'd rather have new stuff periodically added to the forum shop and also having someone take a look at the bigger picture of the forums vs. having sporadic bursts of lukewarm activity purely for the sake of getting a reward and ignoring the forums for the rest of the year.

If you want to figure out what's choking the forums besides the standard "oh it's not interesting as a communication platform" reason - poll the community. See if the current community guidelines are a little bit too choking and restrictive and what, if anything, they'd like changed. See if there are places that need more TLC.

A lot of the subforums & subforums are... dead. The roleplay forum a very good example - except for Wayward Squirrel, nothing really happens there. People occasionally look for smail & email roleplays but that's about it. Even the minimod hasn't been online in a month. For a site that's supposed to encourage community, creativity and a safe place to express yourself, it's kind of sad to see.

Comb through the forums & subforums. See which ones are dead. Merge & compress what you can, trim off the rest. If you're going to have a rule involving dead topic necroing, consider implementing auto-locking for old 9+ month old public forum topics. Clarify the site and forum rules. If I could bold and underline this three times, I would. Your own site's rules list is still spotty and outdated and we're still waiting for it to get updated. ._. I understand you have a really small team, but the rules are kind of the backbone of the entire site and they also regulate any and all social interactions you expect us to have. Clarify the date display. This has been suggested so many times over the past years and I'm still surprised that it hasn't been implemented. Not everyone runs on the MM/DD/YYYY system. Dates like 4/2/2019 are really confusing and I'm willing to bet they're part of the reason why topics get necroed. Is the date I mentioned the 4th of February? Is it the 2nd of April? It's super confusing for new users when it really doesn't need to be. Add a mute feature as a form of soft-blocking. Because sometimes, you don't want to read someone's posts but you don't dislike their guts enough to block them. Get feedback from the community to see if there's anything in the community guidelines that needs adjusting and tweaking, which forums should get merged, which should get deleted and so on.

The forums are meant to be the primary means of communication between staff and users. You clearly expect us to communicate and post more on the public forums, so let's do something beside motivating people with shiny trinkets to encourage that activity. :P Data is great and fantastic, but I think this is one thing where data won't actually help you guess what the community would like. I mean, sure, you can see that I've gone into the forums and clicked a topic, but you don't know why I've closed the tab 30 seconds later. You don't know why I haven't reported that clear topic necro. You don't know why someone doesn't want to post in the roleplay forum even though they're a roleplayer and writer.

@ see The pool of items you can get with forum points is small - 106 items in total. The forum giftboxes included cash shop items and the standard free shop stock (common, rare, retired, etc.). People weren't clearly reminded that spamming is not allowed (and lbr, everyone would like free cash shop items), so things got way out of hand.

That's insultingly accurate XD

I would find it easier to talk to an NPC because they are not a "real" user. Characters are easy to talk to as you already know something about them to a limited extent. Anxiety does not respond to logic, but for some reason I'll talk to a guy dressed up as Santa, or Iron Man, or a dinosaur no problem. The same person dressed as a normal person? backs into burrow

Nah, I get what ya mean. Lord knows i LOVE picking on Kain whenever he pops in. It'd be nice to get him to meet some awesome bug type Pokemon so maybe he can work through his fear.

I agree with a soft-blocking or a way to mute messages from players I may not agree with on some things, but see no purpose behind fully blocking a user. I'm of the old mindset that people from all walks of life can find common ground of some sort, they just gotta try and find it; blocking differing opinions is naivety of real life. Blocking should only be for if someone feels threatened or is being stalked/harassed. Echo chambers are a very dangerous thing to live in, as you suffocate from your own air.

And yes, quantitative data is only part of the process. It only ever suggests a potential correlation. That's why I keep saying that staff needs to ask what we the users want, beyond just looking at numbers. Even with the suggestions forum existing, I might admit, it probably is daunting to try and look through every little suggestion. Ideas get lost easily. Maybe staff could consider making a forum thread that asks players directly? And I mean numerous types of threads so suggestions can't get lost; one thread could ask about pets, another about items, holidays, NPCs, new features, etc..

That would be a good way, a better and genuine way, to get some silent players to maybe speak up a bit, and garner meaningful conversation. From there, staff need to figure out what's possible and keep focused.

Wouldn't a forum with threads asking for responses be intimidating to users who do not like posting on the forums in the first place? It doesn't offer the safe and quiet anonymity of, say, a poll or something like that.

I'd love to see some NPC threads during events, absolutely. I think that's a wonderful idea and helps feed my "omg I hope there's plot" hopes I have for every event.

That said, tying forum boxes to posting and conversation in NPC threads sounds logistically difficult. Looking back at the flood of posts and threads that popped up this last time, I'm trying to imagine what an NPC thread would look like with all that frantic, hopeful activity and it isn't pretty.

I think the concept is great. I think in practice the idea would definitely need tweaking. If it's implemented, I think it's important to very clearly state rules and expectations up front in bold font in every thread that might produce a box, and implement a cooldown so that people aren't tempted to post as fast as they can.

As someone who has posted in an NPC thread maybe twice in my Subeta career and gave up after one post because it didn't feel very natural and felt a lot like an embarrassing "sempai! notice me!", I suspect there will be a significant swath of the population that will decide to do without forum boxes if something like this gets implemented. That's probably unavoidable, there's no way to please everyone, but I'd be definitely in favor of a solution that increases reward availability to a wider demographic.

I absolutely, wholeheartedly second every bit of 's post of suggestions upthread. There are things that can be done to address forum activity that don't have to do with rewards, and I think that's worth considering.

This may be an unpopular opinion, but I wouldn't mind seeing Forum Boxes retired completely.

Edit: For what it's worth, the reason I'm not posting a lot in a few subforums is the necro rule and that it's not easy at a glance to see what's "dead". I look briefly to see if there's a topic in the first five lines I want to talk about, and if not, I close that forum. I've accidentally necro'd a thread that was maybe 15, probably only 10 lines down the first page, and so I don't post now because I don't ever want to do that again. Clarifying the rules and implementing some management on old threads I think would go a long way to help. The first concern upon entering a subforum shouldn't be "will I get punished for posting?"

I'd like more stuff in the forum shop as well. The downside is that forum points are very rare. Game threads like What Did You Get From The Galley and user run games are invaluable for people who find it difficult to join in conversations but I find it tedious to spend all day on them in the hope of getting a point.

A very good point. I'm in England where 4/2/2019 is 4th Feb 2019. This is another reason why I avoid Chit-Chat because I have to remember to reverse day and month when looking for a topic I can post in. Displaying a date on the lines of April/2/2019 would save any confusion.

That's why I'm a fan of the big, fat, regularly updated suggestion compilation threads. Like the list of usability and random improvements, the holiday suggestion & forum title ones, or like some of the ones I've made for shops, galleries, forum groups and such. Keeps all the good stuff in one place! So when someone on the team wants to work on something, they just have a few topics to check instead of going back 10 pages and combing through unrelated threads in the S&I forum to find a nugget of the good stuff.

The list of usability and random improvements thread has a Forum section for QoL suggestions. Not trying to toot my own horn here, but I've made a topic for Forum groups and for a clean & simple view for forums. I have a few more I'm still mulling over, but I'm tempted to make one for the forums as well.

If it's not already a thing, auto-resizing oversized images/gifs/whathaveyou's. Because I like to post them but a lot of the time, they're not exactly 320x450px in dimensions.

Even fixing the forum pulse so it actually keeps the settings you've chosen for it would be a good start! It's still busted and it refuses to keep & apply any changes I've made.

Exactly that! I'm on the DD/MM/YYYY system too. A lot of other countries use that same date format. Now put yourself in a newbie's shoes: you're excited! New petsite! New friends! You find a thread talking about something you like. You post on the thread hoping to make new friends! And then it gets locked with a staff member politely telling you not to post on very old threads. |: That's a mood killer.

If old threads aren't going to get autolocked, then have a text reminder at the top & bottom of the page that the thread is old and shouldn't be bumped up.

I think that's a very good idea. It will be much easier for people to make suggestions about the forums if they have their own topic.