You make a very good point that I'd forgotten about. I've never really understood why posts have to load separately from the rest of the page. Nor have I encountered anything like it on other forums/posting places elsewhere on the internet. (The closest would probably be some articles that have comments on the bottom that load separately, but I rarely want to see those anyway. And they aren't the main reason for visiting the page, unlike when wanting to view a thread.)

That delay can kill conversations before they even start, because if I go do something else while I'm waiting for it to load, I may never think about posting (that particular thing) again. Cool but trivial things that may or may not interest other people just aren't worth it. And if the lag or loading issues are particularly bad, it might be a few weeks before I venture on the forums again.

The only forum I go to with any degree of regularity is the Adoption Center, because I am addicted to adopting pets and I'm always interested to see what's available. (I have it on "speed dial" - it's one of two Subeta-related links that come up when all I have to type is AD. You may be able to guess what the other one is. ;) ) So it doesn't often occur to me to look elsewhere unless I'm particularly bored. One of the reasons I think the compartmentalization is a bit too much.

I almost responded to your post that the AC threads are pretty safe and welcoming, which is true, but there are (very) occasionally bad seeds. And also, it's not really conducive to conversations.

oh wow... I remember you being active in the forums, but the last time I was actually active was about 3 years ago. I guess the overall mood has turned to this terribly self-censoring mess since then :/.

I can agree on the sentiment on "cotton candy and rainbows tone"... it gets tiring pretty fast.

I'd rather not talk about politics etc here either because it's nice to get away from all that. I was just using those subjects as examples.

Where our forums are concerned there are two things to consider. (1) What's PG13 here and (2) what's suitable for Subeta which, as you put it, is a doll dressup and virtual pet site not a social media site trying to rival Facebook. I don't think we're justified in saying "No politics because of minors". I do, however, think we're justified in saying "No heavy stuff because we can find that all over the internet if we want to."

I think it's a very good idea to merge some forums etc because it would make room for a greater variety of forums. Maybe we could have a place where users can talk about things like history and archaeology. We'd still need to sort out PG13 first, though, otherwise it's the same kind of problem as with my experimental topic. "This is an interesting article about mummies. I know we have rotting zombies and all kinds of other gruesome stuff on here but the article has photos of real mummies. Perhaps I should send in a ticket about it."

For what it's worth RE: warnings For all the drama I participated in a couple months ago, and for all the people that blocked me, I didn't wind up with a warning. I did at one point get a "hey we deleted your post and this isn't a warning but maybe chill out a little bit" but nothing official.

I would absolutely love an actual clarification on PG13 by Subeta's standards. I do think since a lot of us came from sites like Neopets, we're all erring on the side of caution, meaning nothing worth posting ever gets posted. We make acquaintances on the forums and then shuffle off to Discord where we can talk freely. Or just post on a subreddit where you know exactly what's allowed to fly and what'll drop the banhammer.

Then there's the issue of off-site drama blogs, but idk what Subeta's supposed to do about those. Every time one closes down, another pops up.

Yep! And I'm also of the opinion that while it would provide an incentive for interaction, it's not exactly going to result in a massive surge of spammy thank-you comments. At least from what I can gauge from the userbase. From your post, that's what I got was your main concern? Unless I misunderstood, in which case I'm sorry. ._.

I know there's lots of ways to "stalk people", but you can literally play Subeta without ever interacting with anyone. You can even self-stick stickers now, and stickers were added as a means to nudge users into working together on a collection. I wouldn't mind having a few less ways of hiding in my own bubble of anxiety, but that could just as well be only me. Not trying to start shit, just explaining my point of view and I'm okay with agreeing to disagree on this.

Considering all the offsite drama that happened in the past, I get why they decided to crack down on things, but at the same time it's kind of smothering people who might want to talk about something besides Cinthia's favorite kind of cupcakes, or which brand of hair conditioner Saggi uses. I'm glad that the rules are actually enforced this time but I'm also a lot more likely to not bother engaging in a topic out of fear for those rules being directed toward me because someone I've bumped shoulders with months ago still has beef with me.

Today's social media dictates that anything you say can and will be used against you. If not today, then 3 years from now, when someone who doesn't like you takes umbrage with you for posting that strawberries are gross, so they see it as you calling them gross for liking strawberries and they decide to go through all your posts with a fine-tooth comb and report all the "problematic" ones because how dare you call them gross. Yeah it's an extreme example I've used, but callout posts and tickets were made over less.

It's 50:50. Both a Subeta problem and a general online community problem, imo.

Its actually both.

I remember the days where people used to thank you for shopping at their shop. That was awkward because I didn't shop there deliberately, I was just buying the cheapest on the list. That was spammy and annoying. It would be the same for someone spamming thank you for liking an HA that happened to catch my eye and I no longer really remember by the time they thank me.

While the spamming would be annoying, the really grating thing would be exactly what you want to encourage by making likes public. The conversational gambit. If I wanted to converse about their pet profile, or their outfit, I would do it by commenting, smailing or posting in a thread, not just "like" it.

The like button does exactly what I want. I want to say "I noticed your efforts and appreciate it" - but I don't have any interest in actually talking to you. Maybe its because I'm shy, or anxious, or just plain non-social - doesn't matter why, really. I want to stay in my little personal bubble - there's reasons I'm in there and a place I come to play and relax isn't the place I want to be prodded and pushed out of my comfort zone.

Currently, Likes are the only thing that are hands-off, low key communication. I understand exactly why you want to see that changed, and its exactly why I don't want it to change. LOL the perfect "agree to disagree" scenario!

Ohgods, the shop thank you's. 😂 The bloody shop thank you's. Those were super annoying. Haven't gotten one in years now (thank everything for that!), but that's a very good point. I haven't thought of it that way!

I'd still like for the likes to have more of a... I don't know, purpose, significance? Something beyond just being a number, but yeah. I'm not gonna go out of my way to push it in suggestions, but they'd definitely have to make ways to opt in/out if they decide to change it. Coding the whole thing and adding the options to opt in or keep the likes anonymous... it does feel like a lot of fuss and there's bigger, more important things for the coding team to tackle.

I have 35K+ posts. But I rarely actually chat. Mostly I answer questions, or ask questions, and track my activities in the games forum. Oh, and yes I love giving my opinion!

Mostly I find that forums are simply not conducive to chatting - I post, then I run off and do some stuff. I check events and head back if I got a reply, chat a bit more. Eventually I just fall out of the conversation because I'm doing other things, and a conversation that has so many pauses just gets less exciting/interesting.

Sure tweaking the rules, fixing some of the most glaring issues may help a little, but I suspect its the format that's the biggest part of the problem.

yeah, they are very impersonal and I understand your reasoning :).

@ Lypsyl That's also very true! I usually feel awkward about posting things like "you're welcome!" after helping someone, or "I love this update!" and such because it feels spammy when I do it. So I like the post instead and get distracted with other things. :'D

Sometimes it happens that I forget to ping someone or they forget to ping me, and it feels awkward to butt into the conversation again. I'm not the Kool Aid man, can't just barge in with refreshments. Plus, pinging a lot of people with individual replies, or even quoting their last post to keep track what you two were talking about gets super clunky, super fast.

Way back in my early days I got my one and only official black mark for replying you're welcome to someone I'd helped. So, yeah, being polite is spamming.

When the conversation moves on and your last ping was 2 or 3 pages ago, it can feel a lot like barging in if you reply, or a derail. It really isn't easy to have a natural flowing conversation on forums.

@ Lypsyl Wow. That's upsetting. I really hope that policy has changed. 😬 I can see how it could be considered spammy (if you're going and replying to a lot of boards you've helped on with the same copy/paste message in a short period of time, for example), but on the other hand... I don't want to come across as a douche purely for the sake of not getting a warning. It feels like the opposite of what the community guidelines are for.

[edit]It's after 3am and my attention span has whooshed so I missed the second part of your post. It really is tricky to hold a convo with many people on the forums. Unless it's like you and 2 other friends, chatting here can be really hard to keep tabs of, or join in on. Even when some of my friends organize group chat topics for events, I feel like I'm barging in on the conversation, so I usually don't participate, or I just pop in to say hi. :'D

Then again, I have the same issue with large group chats. I just sit and watch the chat, and chime in once in a blue moon.

I'm like that too! ;)

Wow, really? I thought I was the only one. I'm in several forum groups but I don't chat all that often in those forums. I mostly lurk.

(So I'm like as well...)

https://subeta.net/forums.php/gotopost/63621895

So, let's say there's a new Forum Box event and I exchange some comments about the Cthulhu Mythos with Player X. What happens after the event is over? Do I start a topic about the Cthulhu Mythos in the Literature subforum and ping them for it or do they start one and ping me? If I ask them in an sMail we might decide it's easier to carry on our conversation by mail. We wouldn't feel obliged to stick to the Cthulhu Mythos either so our conversation could wander off into other shared interests. I might have gained a new friend but it won't have contributed anything to long term usage of the forums.

In my opening post I said "Most of the forums are Subeta related" so I'll add a bit more to this point.

1. Subeta - Essential forums but I couldn't tell a new friend from a Forum Box event "See you in Site Feedback or Suggestions & Ideas".

2. Subeta Features - Essential but I couldn't tell a new friend I'll see them in any of these forums either.

3. Subeta Commerce - Very specialised.

4. Creative Corner - Very specialised again.

5. Social Scene - A place to socialise with problems which have already been pointed out. I don't know what plans Bug has to address the necro thing but, if the rule isn't going to be scrapped, sMail has a big advantage - if my new friend or myself couldn't be on for months there's no risk of our conversation passing the time limit. It will still be available for us to carry on from where we left off.

PS: Somebody added to my experimental topic so I was able to add more videos. "Here's a fun video - a silly walk road crossing in Norway. Ooops! The commentary is in Norwegian with English subtitles. A staff member hasn't said if it's OK to share a video in a foreign language so I'd better not use it."

^This. Even if friends are made on forums I think most normal people will choose sMail, external mails or other online communicator where they don't have to watch their every word and where they aren't modded. I actually talk quite a lot about subeta and items and events, only I do it on Messenger. WHY would I choose to talk here? And if by long term usage we mean "here's this interesting non-subetan thing, let's hear some opinions" chances are some opinions will spark opposite opinions and hey, this isn't a place to disagree with each other, so it will get closed. So, apart from events, when the forums get a bit more traffic and games forum which is used purely for gaining forum tickets, I just can't see what long term usage those forums are good for.

I can chat here, but I found that any sort of success I have comes from chatting with fellow zombies while we're biting people. I feel like it's easy to chat during events, but outside of holidays? We have a discord server and collectively, I think we spend a lot more time on there.

Conversation tends to meander and stray naturally, and we go 'off topic' on all the time. I feel like we can go off-topic on holiday threads and be fine. My biting group didn't talk about biting the entire time across six or seven threads, that's for sure.

Looks like everyone has had their say.

We know staff are aware of this topic because Bug said there's something in the works to address the necro thing. All we can do now is hope that a staff member says something about other issues we've raised.

PS:

Is there any news about the necro thing yet?

After letting things sit and steep, here's another forum that I think could do with a heavy pruning: Gold Accounts. It's currently essentially a glorified User Run Games forum. ._. We get beta testing options once in a blue moon, but realistically, do we really need two User-Run Games/Chit Chat forums?

Keep the beta testing & the beta testing forum exclusive for GA users. The smaller pool of users makes it easier to test new things, and having an existing onsite flag makes it easier to screen access. The rest of the forum can get merged with User-Run Games and Chit Chat, imo.

Good idea to prune the GA forum.

I'm wondering why the Necro thing is taking so long. If it was me I'd -

1. Decide what the new time limit is going to be.

2. Notify the mods.

3. Change the Necro forum rule.

4. Make a site announcement.

It would be nice if staff let us know if we can link to songs with lyrics which aren't in English and documentaries which aren't in English but have sub-titles.

Eh, they're likely busy with other stuff. Remember that Subeta has only like 4 people in programming, and the site was doing weird things with lag, 504s and quest items getting eaten. And Vesnali is also coming up fast so I imagine stability is a bigger concern than forum necros.

As for that second part, fill a ticket? But afaik only communication between users in public areas of the site is required to be English only, at least according to this rule right here. So if you want to post... idk, a link to one of Shakira's non-English songs on Youtube, or even put it up on your profile, you're fine. Or if you want to have a conversation in Russian via s-mail with a friend, that's fine too.

You're probably right about other things being more important than the necro rule at the moment.

A lot of song videos have titles which aren't in English and they would be on public forum posts if we linked to them. In Post#47, Chen said they were told off for having one Chinese character on a forum signature image; They also added this -