I like HA contests, especially if you can use items that you don't own! I've made some beautiful HAs for these contests.

I would like another one of those somewhere down the line.

Yeah, I'm with on having more of these activities.

Yes, I am very well-acquainted with that argument and I agree completely. :) That's the same thing I used to tell people on Neo way back when they introduced Neocash and there was quite a backlash against the very notion of spending money on a website. Spending money on virtual items for entertainment is just as valid as paying for movies or video games. I don't have any qualms about that.

But yes, actually, I do kind of feel bad about spending money on things that don't last as long as I'd like them to. I prefer to purchase a copy of a movie rather than go to a theater. When I buy a video game, I know I'll have it available for as long as I have a system/console I can play it on. When I purchase clothing or anything else, I prefer to buy quality products that will last (and I do everything I can to extend the life of everything I buy through careful use, maintenance and repairs as needed).

I'm a collector by nature; I kind of tend to hoard things like a dragon. X'D My favorite IRL hobby is rockhounding. I very much enjoy the experience of going out in nature (or to a shop haha) to hunt for cool minerals. But it's not ALL about the experience of the hunt; I'd be extremely disappointed if my collection disappeared one day. I know nothing lasts forever, but I definitely want to hang onto things I've collected for as long as possible. I wouldn't bother collecting rocks if someone was going to take them away from me at the end of the day, or a month later, or whatever. Likewise, I wouldn't see the point in collecting virtual items if I had a strong reason to believe they would disappear soon. Websites come and go, I know that; I've been online for a while now. I don't expect Subeta to stick around literally forever. It's just, if we're already talking about it entering a death spiral now, I find that pretty discouraging and hearing that from the owner does not inspire confidence in someone like myself who invests a considerable amount of time and money collecting stuff and achievements here. I'm just giving feedback about how that statement struck me. BUT, I don't think it has to be that way. This site is truly amazing and stands out among every site of its type I've seen. It deserves to have way more active users than it has. It's worth doing everything possible to salvage it (such as making sure it runs more smoothly at all times). By the way, Keith's more optimistic comments did not go unnoticed by me and I appreciate the candor. I'm happy to hear there are active plans for the future and even some hope the site might be around for another ten years. I sure hope so! It's just that "unsustainable/dying" thing...I would be careful throwing around comments like that no matter how much truth there may be to them. Something something self-fulfilling prophecies... =X

Anyway, , sorry for all the words. I do agree with you 100%, I just don't see it as an argument against my point. I personally prefer to have some expectation of longevity for my investments or I'm not going to be as comfortable making them, simple as that.

Well that's just it, what the fuck is this memory leak? Why hasn't a news post been made about it? Because to me it makes it sound like important information is getting leaked out to bad folks. Whether that's true or not, how would I know? Shit like this needs to be reported by staff to make people aware and clear up any confusion surrounding it.

I will ask again, since it keeps getting ignored or missed: for a new user, is there still that 3 day wait period before they can talk on the forums?

Also, polls do provide insight for those who DON'T interact on forums, SB, etc. Not everyone is a social butterfly, and you are possibly missing out on a chunk of data that could help. Also, what about those who have their privilege to talk on the forums revoked? Surely there are a good number that do. Just because you can see what these silent users are doing daily, doesn't mean you know what it is they may truly want.

Looked around the welcome forum to compare a few dates. Looks like that, yes, people who join today can make topics and post on the forums on the same day as long as they read the community guidelines.

[edit]fwiw, heavily gravitating away from what keeps the majority of the userbase on the site is going to kill the site. I could be wrong, but I sincerely doubt there are enough pet people or battlers on Subeta to financially sustain it in the same weight that CW makers & buyers do.

I'm not saying it's amazeballs that everything is wearable, but like... I'd prefer Subeta to make what money it can off of the features that are popular so that it has a tiny bit of wiggle room to work on things that aren't quite as popular.

Normally an application requests memory from the OS, uses it for its task, clears it, and releases the memory back to the OS. The OS then checks the memory to make sure it's cleared, then gives it to another application running on it. Memory leaks happen because an application fails to properly release the memory back to the OS, so it continually grabs more and more, and in bad cases can consume enough system memory to slow things to a crawl or crash your application or OS. It's a denial of service, not a case of the application spewing infos out into the void for bad guys to pick up.

Here's an OWASP article on it: https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Memory_leak

Is it honestly necessary for people to have that many items, or the ABILITY to have that many, for that matter? I realize it's probably too little too late, but is there any way to add a cap to the wardrobe capacity? (I guess that would probably require people to willingly relocate/downsize their massive wardrobes which would be a nearly impossible task that most of them would refuse, but perhaps it is possible?)

It's a shame that wardrobes are contributing to the site issues, especially since Subeta has not only encouraged but actively REWARDED people for hoarding as many items as possible by making site achievements linked to how many items are added. I change my avatar maybe once or twice in a year, but I realize I'm the minority.

THANK YOU.

Very, very many thank yous.

Not even so much for tackling the problem ... but for COMMUNICATING. A small message like that goes a very long way towards keeping people happy! Knowing that you know there's a problem, that you are working on it, and most importantly that you care about us enough to let us know ... that feels ever so much better than only knowing that there is a problem.

Also, thank you for fixes! :D Subeta has been running fast and smoothly for me since you fixed the memory leak. It has been very fun to play, with lots of questing and dancing. It just got laggy again a little while ago ... and now seeing that message, I feel fine instead of frustrated/disappointed. I even feel supportive.

This is the first day in about 2 that the lag came back, so knowing this is probably a small blip (and knowing....within 2 hours and not 2 days...) is great.

I don't know why so many people are acting like the staff never communicate. They communicate all the time, even on this issue alone there have been dozens of staff responses (on this thread and in other places), a whole news post dedicated to it and now a banner announcement, and yet people keep behaving as though the staff are silent on the whole thing. IIRC they've done banner announcements lots of times in the past to help address issues, too.

I think some people just need to pay a little more attention, personally.

Thank you for the transparency/heads up, it's appreciated!

The lag overwhelms me. I have anxiety and can't leave home, so the internet is the one thing that keeps me connected to the rest of the world. Dress up sites were popular even in the early 00s, so my love for them has been with me a long time. I adore Subeta, don't get me wrong, but I've also been on and left plenty of sites whose staff didn't listen to the userbase and the site either died or got bought out by greedy CEOs. (coughGAIAcough). I'm rude, I know, but my experience with said sites show that sometimes cynicism and rudeness and disbelief in anything getting fixed is the only way to get the staff's attention. They never listen to suggestions.

I shouldn't have called today's sticker a bribe like I did in the news thread, but the arrival of it seems... let's just call it convenient.

Also, I do agree with both stopping events AND stopping with wearables. A site with this much horrendous lag and this little of staff interaction with users is pathetic and doesn't deserve a steady money flow if they can't spend the money in a way that makes the site usable. My CSC and GA comes strictly from those CSC cards you get from quests. 5CSC at a time is hell, and it's going to be forever before I'm rich enough to afford all the CWs I want, but with my current money situation, there is no way I can afford nor justify spending money on a site like this. Sorry.

edit:-

Another point I wanted to make but forgot - I'm kind of a completionist. clothes-wise. I want to check out all the stores and all the cities and all the previous event's clothes, but all these events make it hard for anyone to do that. There's just more and more being piled on top of an already gigantic pile, and it's stressful. Maybe chill for a bit on events, we don't need them every month.

Howrse did that and now it sucks to play because it depends on its users buying passes and items to literally play the events. It's not fun when a site ends up at that road.

I really appreciate the transparency of the message about why lag might occur today. It certainly alleviates a lot of the frustration for me. One minor suggestion--could these notifications have some sort of timestamp on them? The one right now says that lag will occur over the next 30 minutes or so, but 30 minutes from when? I think that would be really useful for folks timing when they want to do their quests for the day.

, do what's been previously mentioned in this thread and make a news thread about it, not a mini blurb. More people including me would've noticed. Those blurbs are usually just pet spotlights for me so I dismissed it without much thought.

Ahem. [Topic=886030] This thread is populated with only suggestions from users. And on average, we move things to the Implemented post every week.

These are smaller user suggestions typically, yes, but saying that the staff doesn't listen is completely incorrect, and frankly, incredibly rude.

For Pete's sake, we have an entire board dedicated to suggestions, and a whole other one for feedback!

.

Thank you for the updating blurbs up top. That's handy. The lag has gotten significantly better, compared to a few days ago.

I think it is fair for the users to ask for a site without lag. I think it is fair to ask questions when lag persists. I think it is fair to be frustrated. But let's not be assholes about it, shall we?

@ keith Staff communication (aside from this one tiny hiccup) has been much much better than it used to be, but I agree that there need to be one or two clear places to post important information when something like this happens.

The blue bar on top is useful, but it doesn't have a "message log" (or timestamp, as pointed out!) and it can be (accidentally or intentionally) removed. Flight Rising's home page has an interesting little "Site Status" box that lists various things like updates, downtime announcements, etc. I think Subeta would really benefit from something like this in those instances where the site is useable, but laggy. Plus, that kind of box makes it easy to keep an eye on important things like downtime notices & important fixes without having to go digging through the news page for the post announcing it. If the site is down, pleasepleaseplease use Twitter. A lot of people avoid Facebook and the status site is barely used. I'd rather have the status site removed so there's one less thing to update and fuss over, but that's just me.

Ideally, stick to using only two places exclusively so that people (& staff!) develop a habit and learn where to post/look for info. It's silly that we have to go stalking & hunting down individual staff posts on Subeta and it's going to sound all kinds of creepy and stalkerish, but I have to have several staff members' recent posts bookmarked so that I can easily find out what's going on and pass the word on to friends via Discord. If information is posted in news comments where it's not visible unless you go out of your way to comb through them? We're SOL unless someone else points it out on a feedback topic like this.

[edit]Just to clarify, I'm not saying that staff shouldn't post on the forums with information. :P They should! That's what makes Subeta staff approachable and human compared to sterile, downright unnerving sites where staff are seen as something to be feared. I'm saying that it would be useful to have information listed in one or two regularly updated places instead of users playing Where's Waldo with things that are kind of important for people to know about.

There is the Staff Forum Post link right on the first page under the check out box. That brings you to Admin posts. That loads all the official staff forum posts and links to the respective topic.

@ Permanent I know. But that page only lists posts that are flagged as staff posts by staff themselves. It does not list news comments and gets clogged up with various staff posts on a plethora of topics. With admins moderating forums, programmers working on various bugs and artists chiming in on interesting suggestions, important information can very easily get lost. And in this particular situation, where important info was posted in a news comment... well... The staff forum posts page doesn't do anything. :P

There have also been instances where interesting or important info was posted when it wasn't flagged as a staff post. Staff are human, so naturally mistakes will be made.

Yeah it's really jarring that people perceive that there's just so little staff interaction and communication when, out of all the websites I go on, this is literally the only site where a staff member will respond to you anywhere outside of a ticket/email/whatever. The communicative subeta staff is what encouraged me to leave neopets and stay here (neopets ticket system is literally useless). I mean the site owner has responded here several times, for pete's sake.

Yeah, there are situations where subeta can do better in transparency, but it feels like it gets blown way out of proportion at times, especially with how much they already talk to us and work with users to get problems resolved and add quality-of-life updates.

Yes, the site is slow. I get as annoyed as anyone when I can't play because of the lag. But it feels like common sense to point out that you can't expect subeta to use the money that it doesn't have because you won't give it to them... because you're waiting for it to magically improve before spending. After paying for the site to just plain exist and paying the employees who run it, I don't know how much is left to stretch towards site upgrades and improvements. But it really doesn't feel like the answer is to withhold spending and hope they'll just get it together. That kind of boycott isn't going to get you the result you want here, unless you actually want to see subeta disappear.

Subeta is the equivalent of a local mom and pop shop, not walmart. Subeta has never come off as money-grubbing to me. In fact, I feel like subeta is too nice for its own good and sometimes actively throws away the opportunity to make money so they can have a happy userbase. I mean, I appreciate the benefits as a user, but they really do give away so much for nothing.

Site messed up? Here's a free GA. Remember Morty Cards? Here's some free csc for using the site. Pet slots too expensive? We'll reduce the price. Pet slots still too expensive? Now you can buy them for the fake onsite currency instead of real money. Still too expensive? Here's a free one for participating in the site. Like cash shop items? We put a bunch of them in the free shop. One GA perk is 5 extra pet slots? Just give it to users for free now. (Assumedly) all info related to pets takes up space and costs even more money to host? Increase the pet slot cap.

They don't have to do any of that, and I know some people will scoff at being placated with free stuff when they would prefer the site to not be so dysfunctional. I just find it hard to believe that people think staff doesn't care about its users, when I think subeta loves its users to a fault. They don't push for more cash shop sales at the risk of appearing money-grubbing, they don't want to make the site pay to play, and they don't want to sell out to a large company and lose the community they have. And if people are choosing not to spend money because of the uncertain future, then subeta doesn't have what they need to secure a future.

I'm not trying to guilt trip people in spending money but you gotta be realistic, that's all I'm saying, even if people don't like to hear it. I understand that Subeta may not always exist at this point. I understand not being able to help financially, and I understand the hesitation if you are able to. And I say all this as someone who has only ever spent 20 dollars here and can't afford to make it habit, as they say. Sadly it seems like a neverending loop of "not worth buying because the site is broken; the site is broken because it's not worth buying" and I don't know what the solution is, if there is one. Yes, I'm tired of the lag. But I also know that the site is very old and the code is bad and at this point the site feels like a skyscraper built on a pile of gravel. And I don't think it's wise to shift the focus away from what the data says the majority of users interact with and pay for just because you're not interested in it.

I don't really know where I was going with all that, and it's probably all mostly incomplete thoughts. People may not agree with what I say, heck I might be completely alone and people will now dislike me for it. I don't really like writing my opinion because I dislike conflict but I want to get it off my chest. I appreciate the updates that are now appearing on the banner at the top of the site.