Games merged into General. Eww, they need to have their own sub-forum. Shoo them away!

I just want to second what Paddy said about missing the Adoption subforum under Pets. I visited it often looking for pets UFA, and I was super confused when I found the adopt threads lumped in with all the rest ^^;

Welcomes&introductions is now a subforum of general

Overall I understand logical consolidation and totally acknowledge that some of my "discomfort" is just the big change after a loooong time with the old setup. That being said, I absolutely agree with the request for the Adoption to somehow still be separated from the general Pet forum, or for some kind of solution here. Right now it's a mess as someone who frequented both daily it really, really made sense to have them separated out. I know the site isn't as busy these days forum-wise, but I also feel like over-consolidating may be negatively impacting those who are active and engaged in response to other folks not having been.

I love the goals here, and appreciate that you have gotten feedback from newer users to help ensure the site remains appealing and can continue to grow with new audiences. Getting feedback from older users who have been consistently active on forums may have also been helpful (maybe you did this?) since they can speak to what is the most helpful separations / navigation cues / etc.

Live threads sounds like an interesting new feature that may help make the forums more active and can help keep some convo here (depending on the topic) vs other live chat site.

I love the idea of pinning answers! Kinda like pinning comments on IG - it can help post creators bring key additions to the top so things are easily accessible to anyone coming into the chat!

And search seems like a very good feature to have! Glad to have it back!

I'm glad to hear you got feedback from users across the spectrum! That was my biggest "concern". And I appreciate the willingness to continue adjusting based on feedback. I fully admit some of the feelings come from it being sudden and strange! Hopefully after a bit it won't feel so disorganized. And I mean, ultimately it's about what's best for the majority of site users.

I wish there was a way for users to "pin" 4 or 6 boards to display in their own category at the very top when they go to the main forums page. I feel like that would be extra helpful now that more boards will be on one page. Not sure if that's even possible, but maybe something to play with?

@ Keith i don't really understand why the Pets, HA, and Battle forums are all being merged though? and having their subforums removed? those are all completely different things that don't fit together at all, and have enough distinction between what people are looking for within each subforum that flattening them all into one area will make sifting through irrelevant topics a nightmare.

i don't agree with the argument that they're not active enough/don't have enough threads being made in them to justify existing on their own; HA contest and rating threads are always going on, and those should be in a separate place from general wearable discussion and avatar advice threads. people put pets up for adoption all the time, which again, should be a separate subsection within the broader category of pet-related discussions. if i'm looking for requests for TC advice to help with, i don't want to have to scroll past a bunch of UFA and LF threads, or vice versa.

it doesn't matter that there's "not that many" new/active topics in those subforums; it's a matter of organization and tidiness. seeing all those unrelated topics jumbled together makes it physically harder to see what you're actually looking for. a search function shouldn't be seen as a replacement for clean information architecture.

I think so! Looking at Kumos, that would be its own "headed" box (like "recent posts") and the "pinned" boards would show up similarly to how they look in the "recently answered" or "trending today" boxes?

If so, I would love that and I think a lot of folks would find it helpful! It would make navigating to the boards you use on a daily basis a total breeze!

In addition, the Kumos site main forum page looks super busy to me (a personal preference thing, not saying it's "bad"). It's more info / colors / fonts at once compared to the legacy site, so being able to have those boards I frequent easily accessible at the top would be very nice for my brain. Not to add another idea, but maybe drop down "spoilers" for the sub-forums on the main page would make it a little cleaner and easier to take it? lol. Or maybe making each major section collapsible and we could toggle for default collapsed or default open? Little things that could maybe make the site more customizable and thus more comfortable for a variety of users?

I’ve been here for coming up on 180 years and I’ve never been a fan of all of the sub forums. It’s an absolute nightmare for anyone who isn’t a mega forum user. Every time I want to post and need to figure out where, it feels like I waded into someone else’s personal subfolders for their niche focus hobbies. It is a frustrating experience. I am looking forward to this change. Especially a search. And I like the idea of the Reddit-style sticky links.

Oop, ignore! The mythical double post has come for me lol.

Bragging and complaining is now mixed with forum games? I’m so confused. Hoping this is still in progress! :)

/reads about battle getting merged with random other things It was already really hard to find the specific battle threads I needed! D:

i think bragging and complaining should be it's own section. i got confused too. :(

just a heads up, you tagged me on Kumos forums and it comes up server error when i try to read it.

omg PLEASE tell me the art and profile forums are at least going to be split into discussion and buying/selling subforums!!!! totally flattening the organizational structure isn't actually "simpler." i frequent the profiles & graphics discussion forum specifically looking for people in need of coding help. unless you're going to implement some sort of tagging / color coding or some other way to tell at a glance what type of thread something is, with the commerce aspects of those subjects being much more active than the discussion aspect, we're once again in the position of being forced to sift through irrelevant posts just to find the topics we're actually trying to contribute to.

(also, does this mean there will be some consolidation for where pet overlay threads should go? because that's always been a pain to try and explain to people the nuances of why they're split between two separate categories.)

Can you tell us what the final version is expected to look like?

Is there going to be a different form of organization implemented for some of these boards? Is it possible for users creating a board to perhaps check a box indicating what kind of board it is, and then the forums are color-coded or grouped? And in forum preferences users could opt to toggle color-coding "on" or "off" (for how they see the forums, they would still be selecting a label to post). Another way to maybe make the site customizable and friendly to a range of neurodivergences?

I really am trying to give things a fair try I swear ^^' and there are some nice positives to what you've expressed so far! While some things like adoption being squished into general pets or commerce and discussion of art/graphics being smushed together are things I don't prefer, I can (okay I am trying to, lol) understand. But the advertising forum today x.x

Maybe (fingers crossed) it's not staying this way, but IMO having "wanted", "giveaways", "R200 selling", and regular advertising in one forum is really, really unpleasant, messy, and overwhelming. If they're all going to be in one giant heap I would think maybe users will now be expected to label their boards in the title - Wanted, Giveaway, Selling, R200? Trying to determine what is what atm is very difficult, especially R200 vs regular selling (which imo makes sense to be separate selling boards). TBH how disorganized it is atm feels like it complicated things verse simplifying them. Some things really do make sense as different "groups" of boards when it comes to ease of use.

I'm really trying to give things a go, but I am struggling to see the vision. Maybe sharing the "end product" could help since some of the bouncing around that folks aren't liking won't be how it is in the completed form?

Another idea for advertising would be for Custom Clothing to be added to Creative Corner, and then Commerce be separate forums of Market, R200 Market, and Giveaways (or maybe giveaways gets added somewhere else like chit-chat or general?

Ohhh, or like "Social Scene" is a header w. General, Arts and Graphics, Chit-Chat, Forum Groups, GA, and the holiday board and then "The Marketplace" is another header with "Market" (buying and selling and giveaways), R200 Market (buying, selling, commissioning), Art and Graphics (buying, selling, freebies). And "Help and Questions" would go into the grouping of "Subeta". I think at this level it would still help to be able to color coordinate or label boards though.

IDK if sharing ideas if helpful or annoying lol. It's ingrained in me to always offer something constructive (possible "solutions") if you're going to "complain".

exactly this: if we're creating a situation where users are basically required to preface every single post title with an explanation of what category of post it is in order for the forum to be meaningfully browsable... then those posts should be in different categories to begin with.

by making it so we need to label absolutely everything with clarification of what it is, we're just recreating a makeshift approximation of what subforums were already doing. yes some were ambiguous or confusing (looking at you Human Avatars > Avatars) that doesn't mean we're not benefitted by any second-order categorization.

The wanted subforum of advertising is one I looked at a lot. To see if I could sell something, or send someone a gift, or whatever. I seldom looked at giveaways, the cw one, or the main forum. Now that everything is lumped together, I don’t want to look at it at all.

Please at least move the CW sales subforum into the custom clothing forum rather than the main advertising forum. It’s hard enough having CWs mixed in with normal trades.

this decentivizes us to participate in forum activity as we actually have no idea where anything is, which is disheartening!