-- these both sound like great ideas.

Lypsyl -- I've come with:

I'll see if I can come up with a few more in time.

Mayla -- what resources do you need to carry out a good vampire game? Is there anything I can do to help?

- I really just need to know or set a cap on how many people are signing up. From there, it's just writing out role sheets and then setting a good time every day to go through the actions. As long as it finishes before I leave for grad school, we're all good. lol

Ha - Is yours "Another One Bites the Dust"?

: that's it! What's a reasonable number of players that will make for an interesting game that doesn't last too long?

Yeah! I figured yours out without seeing Mayla's answer, but it required some thinking! Great one :D.

- Looking at past games, the biggest game I ever ran was 35 players and it lasted 16 days. Hopefully the game would be a little smaller than that though because I remember that being a little intense.

Okay. How about 25 max? Write up a little description for people who aren't familiar with the game (I'm kind of one of them!) and we'll include it in a news post.

- 25 max sounds alright. We can also put in a little disclaimer that says the game has to end by Wednesday, July 6th due to my real life commitments.

How about this for a description and details:

Join us for a game of werewolf, hosted by mayla, run right here on the reliable SubetaLodge forums. The game is limited to 25 players maximum at this point in time. Sign-ups run from Sunday, June 19 through Tuesday, June 21. Roles will be sent out on the SubetaLodge forums on Wednesday, June 22 at 8:00 a.m. with the game starting at that point in time. FYI: The game must conclude by Wednesday, July 6th due to my real life commitments that take over for the month of July.

For those unfamiliar with werewolf, there is some good information ">here.

To sign-up and/or read more information about the game, click here (link to be inserted tomorrow once I've made the board?).

I intend to make this a news post tomorrow. If anyone objects, let me know.

The following piece is the opinion of the author and does not reflect an official position of SubetaLodge or any of its staff.

Introduction

Today marks a sad and shameful day in Subeta history, the final step in the permanent othering of an important class of its members. Under the guise of resource conservation and improving site performance, Subeta disabled large collection galleries. In doing so, they created a group of second class citizens within its community -- scapegoats who were blamed directly and indirectly for a problem of Subeta's own making.

I. This was not about about resource conservation.

The official line at the time was that the disabling was necessary in order to reduce site lag. While it may be true that disabling galleries had a nominal effect on site lag, it was not ever necessary to disable them in order to accomplish that goal.

We know this because galleries and shops did not create the same demand on resources, even though they used the same code base. We know this because there are wardrobes and vaults in 2022 with far more unique items than the largest galleries of 2016, and they are not under threat. We know this because the "Filled Wardrobe" achievement is still alive and kicking, even though it differs little from the retired Hoarding achievement. Most importantly, we know this because ">Keith said so himself eight months before disabling our galleries.

II. Galleries could have been saved, but Subeta chose not to.

In Keith's quote from June 2015, he suggested that galleries be "spun off" into a separate feature. This would have required some recoding on the part of the programmers.

Recoding a feature in order to keep it sustainable is not a rare occurence at Subeta. Since 2016, these features have all been recoded by Subeta programmers: the wardrobe, the Donation Center, Spectrail, Mysterious Melody.

There was a deliberate decision to recode those features, but not to recode legacy galleries so that our collections could be preserved.

III. Users were scapegoated for collecting items.

Subeta originally welcomed collectors. The site had tens of thousands of little pieces of digital art long before the notion of NFTs entered the collective vocabulary.

But Collectors became personae non gratae after April 2016. As an example, Keith accused a user of "breaking the site" over a coding mistake, when the accused user had no access to the code. He openly dismissed constructive suggestions from users not in his internal circle (i.e., if he hadn't granted you access to "the Subeta internals", your advice was taken with a "grain of salt".)

He described even creating these welcoming galleries as "something I was stupid about".

IV. Marginalized people paid the price.

Some users took the loss of our large galleries in stride. Others left the community and won't be coming back, making our community a little less rich and a little less diverse.

In her book, Inside the Head of a Collector: Neuropsychological Forces at Play, Dr. Shirley Mueller describes the benefits of collecting for neurodivergent people and people with social anxiety. Item-based interactions can be easier for some people to navigate because the item itself lends structure to the interaction by leading to natural questions like ("Is this item effective against Careaper?", "How does this wearable look on a dark-skinned avatar?", "If I buy both of these, can I get a discount?")

By forcing users to give up their large, years-curated collections, Subeta took away an important facilitator of social interaction. User Wolf_Spirit pointed out at the time the role that galleries played for her and two other users in creating a visual companion to onsite guides. Sadly, Wolf_Spirit has left Subeta, and the guides she was working on have now been lost.

V. My wish for you

I enjoyed collecting items on Subeta. For me, my collection was a durable record of the years I had spent here. It contained prizes for achievements I had completed, Luminaire gifts from my online friends, and items from the different plots that I had participated in. I joined SubetaLodge because their checklists were helpful in maintaining my gallery and I wanted to contribute back to the site. I enjoyed visiting the galleries of users who had been around longer than me, and aspired to add to my own gallery some of the rare treasures that they shared. Subeta has become indelibly lesser to me as a result of losing our large collections.

If you've read this far, you probably weren't so badly affected by the loss of large collections. My wish for you is that Subeta never treats your style of play as something to be discarded. I hope that the activities that interest you will always remain a top priority for Subeta. And I hope that no staff member ever tells you that a feature that helped you take interest in the site turned out to be something they were "stupid about".

I'd like that post to stand alone, but then make a separate post about the song titles contest and the Werewolf game. Again, let me know if you'd prefer I not post this.

-- Here's the more upbeat post for later in the day:

We're not one to dwell on unpleasant things. Now that Masquerade is over and we have a little time until Neugarten starts, we're running TWO summer games! You may participate in either or both of them.

Game 1: Werewolf!

Join us for a game of werewolf, hosted by mayla, run right here on the reliable SubetaLodge forums. The game is limited to 25 players maximum at this point in time. Sign-ups run from Sunday, June 19 through Tuesday, June 21. Roles will be sent out on the SubetaLodge forums on Wednesday, June 22 at 8:00 a.m. with the game starting at that point in time.

The game will conclude by Sunday, July 3.

For those unfamiliar with werewolf, there is some good information here.

To sign-up and/or read more information about the game, click here (link to be inserted tomorrow once I've made the board?).

(Anyone having trouble accessing the SubetaLodge forums, please sMail osterizer.)

Game 2: Song Rebus

Each of these lists of items is a clue to the name from a well known hit song from the past few decades. Can you identify them all?

[ol]

[/ol]

As Pete says, "I'm sure I can dig up something mildly useful for you in return." Submit your answers by sMail to osterizer by June 30. We'll announce winners and prizes here shortly afterwards.

- I have the post for sign-ups ready to go: click here.

P.S. I think your initial post looks terrific. I know this is something you're very passionate about. <3

I think everything looks great!

Also to you and Lypsyl and Mayla - I'm sorry I haven't been around. I have not been able to get forums to load with any reliability nor have I been able to access the wardrobe until today. I did get the last round of CW approvals in finally at least /sigh

Also I said I could access those things but jazz hands now the forums & wardrobe won't load again. Maybe this post will go though, maybe it won't

-- thanks for the encouragement. I've posted it. Not that it'll do any good, but I put a little time and research into that post and it makes me feel a little better not to let today go by without saying anything.

I'll put the followup post with the games up in an hour or so.

Of course! It's a shame they decided to do this and didn't figure out a work around - even if it was just leaving the galleries intact and not allowing any new item additions (like freezing them) until they could reprogram them or something.

[edit] oh a miracle, able to see forums for a short time again

I'm wondering if the rebuses should have the items code instead, you can't hover and find out the name of the item as is, unless you intend it being more difficult :).

and everyone else, I'd like to play the werewolf game - but wonder if its appropriate for staff to join in? Also I'd only play if we get less than 25 players, don't want to knock off anyone else.

yeah, forums and wardrobe have been very hit an miss. I think I've managed at times only because I happened to hit "good" spots.

- I think it’s definitely okay for you to join! I’d love for you to play!

-- Thanks for your sensible comment on the thread. The item images should all be hoverable on SubetaLodge now. (Someone figured out all the songs without the hover information already!)

-- as we move forward, if you need to set up boards that are open to vampires only or villagers only, etc., let me know if I can help with setting those up.

We still have folks periodically who can't get their validation emails because of super-aggressive spam filters at their ISPs (gmail is the -worst- about this!) As an experiment, I've turned off validation completely. I won't be announcing this for obvious reasons, but if someone messages you saying they didn't get their email, you can tell them to just log in anyway.

It seems like they're starting to stabilize so fingers crossed!

Thank you for the heads up, if anyone pokes me about it I will tell them to go ahead and try anyhow :)