hey everyone—just a quick note to acknowledge the forum squish has officially kicked off! i know big changes like this can feel a little nerve-wracking, so i wanted to give you some clarity about what’s happening, why we’re doing it, and what you can expect going forward.

first off: the forums as they stand just aren’t very active. in some cases, the sections we’re merging haven’t seen a post in weeks and get fewer than 100 posts a year. that’s a clear signal we need to streamline things. this shift will happen over the next few days (merging forums with millions of posts isn’t exactly speedy!), but here’s why it’s worth the effort:

1. creating more active, user-friendly forums: i’ve heard from a lot of newer users (signed up in the last two years, <100 forum posts), and their feedback was pretty consistent: the forums are overwhelming. too many options, no clear path, and not enough context for where to go. many users told me they clicked in once, closed the page, and never returned—except for events. that’s a problem. by consolidating things, we’re aiming to make the forums simpler, livelier, and easier to navigate, even for folks without years of forum muscle memory.

2. introducing better tools:

   • live threads: think of these as chat rooms, where posts appear automatically, and you can see who’s online and typing in real-time. it’s still a forum (posts are searchable and saved), but you can toggle between “live” and “classic” modes. if you didn’t catch the recent Q&A thread, there’ll be more opportunities to try this feature soon!
   • answers: as seen here, topic creators (not just staff!) can mark a reply as an “answer.” this makes it float under the original post, so it’s easy to find even if the thread has lots of replies. this is great for troubleshooting, bugs, or any discussion where you need to quickly surface the solution.

3. search is back!: try it here. more improvements are coming soon, like filtering by forum, adding multiple keywords, and splitting results into topics and posts.

i know this is a big shift, but it’s one we’re making with a ton of thought and a long-term vision. the initial squish is just step one—there’ll be plenty of tweaking, tuning, and optimizing (and a feedback post coming your way after it’s all done). my goal is to create a healthier, more engaging forum experience that grows with us for years to come. 🤞 thanks for your patience and trust while we make these changes! ❤️

Interested to hear more about what you're thinking about with tags. Would topic creators be able to tag them like, 5 of them (e.g. "-culture, , ) and then you'd be able to search by them?

That could be an idea!

[edit]

oh no i'm so sorry i pinged the CW group 😭 😭 I APOLOGIZE

Completely agree. I expected it to be done in a fell swoop and to announce it afterwards, that didn't happen and I've been keeping track of how long it will take. It's always an exercise in judgement and I made the wrong call this time.

It's not currently completed, and portions of the code for re-ordering the forums relies on the actual merging and movement to be completed.

thanks for sharing this—feedback like yours will be super valuable once the changes are complete and things have settled. it’s also great to hear your thoughts up front! we’ve got a plan in place, but if you find the updates make it harder to find the information you need, we’ll definitely be open to making adjustments.

That is a design challenge I'm working through today 🎉 I'd love for there to be more stickies, but not have it be scrolling through 20 stickied topics before making it to what you're going for.

so what i'm trying today is a kind of reddit style, where each forum has a sidebar on the right with a description, and links out to important threads like stickies but with context.

The site is moving to kumos only -- it's inevitable and is going to happen.

here is a great thread for kumos layout feedback that I've been pulling from and trying to make the site more mobile friendly. Earlier this week I pushed out a major update that should make the navigation significantly easier on mobile and am taking feedback / suggestions to keep moving in the right direction.

I don't want you to throw up your hands and feel like you've got to leave, but we need to move over to a more modern architecture. subeta won't exist if we don't -- it's a matter of the site falling out of being able to get things like security updates.

plaease take a screenshot of what you're seeing, it should look more like:

Bear with us. There is a lot more going on than just merging, and further organization is underway, along with lots of cleanup by our hard-working forum staff.

i get where you’re coming from, but i’d suggest giving it a few days or a week before landing on any final judgment. this plan has been in the works for a while (i posted about it back in may!) and we talked to users from all over the spectrum to come up with the forum squish that (i thought) made the most sense.

the decisions were based on:

• how often people post in a forum
• how often minimods or UAs have to move threads around
• how long it takes for new topics to show up
• how many threads are actually active—like, is there even a full page of recent posts in the last month?

plus, we got input from both newbies and long-time forum regulars with thousands of posts. the goal is simplicity and better navigation. if that’s not working after some adjustment time, i’ll make tweaks 💖

i hear what you’re saying about the differences between those areas, but i've decided to move forward with this structure for now. the goal is to see how these changes affect forum usage patterns and adjust if needed. like i mentioned earlier, i’m going to let things settle and collect feedback before making any further tweaks. i appreciate you sharing your perspective!

I like that idea! I haven't finished implementing watched threads, but I think i could make it so that you have a section for your watched threads, and if you 'pin' one it shows up there if there are new posts or not. would that be helpful?

i’m going to step back from responding to this thread for now, because repeating “please give it a few more days to let the MMs and UAs finish moving threads around” doesn’t feel very productive. just know that i’m reading all your responses and feedback, and it’ll absolutely be taken into account when we’re ready to start making adjustments.

here’s the plan moving forward:

1. finish the squish as planned (dill has a few more tweaks to make, but they don’t work weekends).
2. collect feedback—both here and via surveys—while keeping an eye on data: number of posts, new threads, how often people post, and when frequent posters drop off.
3. use that feedback to develop tags, organizational tools, and create any new forums we might need.

reorganization, by definition, means things won’t be where you found them before—that’s kind of the point. i know it’s an adjustment, but the goal is to make everything more intuitive in the long term. if feedback (from this thread, MMs, or elsewhere) shows that some changes need to be rolled back or refined, we’ll make that happen.

Forum games will be getting a significant revamp. There are also some really awesome organizational tools in the works. This is under construction, and not a final version you're seeing right now. Pardon our mess. :)

I'm working on a tagging system once I'm through wtih the layout + melody changes I've got on my list for today 🫡