🔍 Improvement: Forum points now reward starting conversations. We retired the old random-chance forum-point system (where you'd occasionally get a point for any reply, including one-word forum-game posts). Now: the first new topic you start each day in a Social Scene forum earns you 1 forum point. If five different people reply to your topic, you get a +3 bonus. Staff and recognized users still award +1/+3/+5 on great posts anywhere. This was always meant to reward activity and building community on the forums, and this is more in line with using it as a carrot to drive activity.
👑 New Feature: Five new forums for movies, music, books, games, and life! We've revived the Social Scene category with five new homes for the stuff you actually want to talk about: 🎬 Screen & Stage (TV/movies/streaming), 🎵 Sound Booth (music/concerts/podcasts), 📖 Library (books/comics/manga), 🎮 Game Night (video & board games), and 🌿 Life Outside Subeta (photos, hobbies, what you're up to). Start a fresh topic in any of them and tell us what you've been into.
🎨 Visual Update: Prompt cards in Social Scene forums. Each Social Scene forum now opens with a "this week, try writing about…" card with three rotating ideas, a prominent "Start a topic" button, and a list of the freshest recent threads — to help break the mega-thread reflex and make it easy to start something new.
- 📖 Improvement: New "How Forum Points Work" guide page. There's a full explanation of how to earn and spend forum points, including what changed and how staff recognition works, at /help/forum-points.php.
At first glance, Forum Points now have become actual rewards towards active participation, which I find interesting, but when you read into it... Overall this proposed system doesn't seem to have been discussed at all with the community. And it is surprising to me it is still being pushed after backlash and poor community feedback in a radical "I like it the way it is and it will be done period" way. That is, considering the change is supposedly centered towards community. I'd like to add that I expect the reduced supply of Forum Poins to likely push the fp to sp ratio upward, which is not in itself a bad thing, although it may impact the economy downstream. Besides, Lyonid said it all. Have a good evening!
I dont mind getting a forum point for starting a new topic. i get it. I DO think you should still get forum points randomly for replying, though, since it really does encourage participation.
But what I don't like about this is the "recognized users" thing. So basically some users are better than others? yikes.
I've read every comment here, the blunt ones included, and I want to answer the big stuff honestly, then move the conversation somewhere it can actually breathe.
Replies are going to earn points too, and that part's already done. This is what most of you said, and you're right: rewarding only the person who starts a thread leaves out everyone who shows up to talk in it, and that's most of you. So your first real reply of the day now earns a point, the same way starting a topic does. I held it back at first because I wanted to watch one piece at a time before opening the next, not because replies don't matter.
On "recognized users." I hear that this is the part that stung, and I get why. Nobody wants a hand-picked in-crowd deciding whose posts are good. So here's the change: each night, a random group of people who posted the day before get the ability to hand out points for a day. Post something real and you might wake up able to recognize the posts you loved. It rotates, anyone taking part can land it, and it gets pulled from anyone who games it. It's the opposite of a clique. ⚠️ This is something I'm excited about seeing how it works out, but something that could very easily have the plug pulled very quickly if it doesn't work. Let me know what you think (in the thread not here please)
On why I changed the random version at all. The old roll wasn't dependable and it wasn't recognition. It was a coin flip that paid a guide which helped half the site exactly the same as a one-word "post the number above you" reply. I want a forum point to mean one of two things: you took part, or someone saw what you did and valued it. Random meant neither.
you said this isn't my site, it's yours, and that I'm beholden to you. You're right, and I mean it. That's exactly why this is a beta in one forum I can switch off tomorrow, not a decree, and why I'm sitting here reading every word. But being beholden to you doesn't mean never changing something that isn't working. Leaving the random roll alone, or flipping it back, would have been the easy choice. You asked where I've seen this work: this exact system has been running on Kumos for two years, so I'm not guessing. I'm bringing over something I've already watched play out. So here's the deal: it's a test, I'm watching the threads, and if in a couple weeks the forums are quieter or spammier than before, I'll say so out loud and change course. I'd rather be proven wrong by what actually happens than win an argument.
Going forward, forum-points talk has a feedback thread built for it so that it doesn't get broken apart by future updates (and has a much larger input box)
is this feature actually live? i havent gotten any when i've been trying to reply to social scene stuff. or have i just not been posting enough
nvm disregard i havent been putting in enough text
who is being rude? I haven't seen anyone replying rudely. This isn't about not liking change, there are plethora valid critiques & concerns going ignored here. Responding critically and/or with open disappointment or simply being direct is not rude. This is all constructive feedback, which is supposedly encouraged here.