I'm feeling a bit of that too, but I know mentioned that it may take a few days for everything to finalize and that he's still open to feedback! I think it may end up being a combination of us oldies getting adjusted to some of the changes and the general feedback about organizational needs being used to make a few further adjustments! I know new users had voiced that the forums felt daunting and hard to navigate, so I understand some of the consolidation. I think atm it's just feeling overboard since all the organization has gone "poof". There's probably a good middle ground between what was and what we're seeing now. I know I'm already adjusting to some of the first changes, but it is a little bit of a shock still. Almost 18 years and this lady is set in her ways haha

advertising not being in commerce is very odd to me. so is having 'general' encompass three disparate site elements instead of the stuff that's in chit-chat. also just... having two different kinds of nonspecific categories right next to each other is. not great. like it never was imo, but. is 'chit chat' really a main site feature? why does the 'nonspecific faff' section get a dedicated space over the actual focal site features, in the site features section? if i was a new user i feel like this would communicate the exact opposite of the intent to me: that no one really cares that much about pets or battles or avatars or they'd be their own thing, and that enough people are talking about off-topic stuff that it needs its own dedicated space. i ended up just not posting at all for a full day instead of doing my semi-regular HA posts, purely because i couldn't actually find the dang things. because that main-focus site interaction that some people use the site near-exclusively for has been reduced to a subforum.

(having all the HA threads be smushed together, as an aside, also creates a different issue: there's a difference between threads where people want and expect you to critique their HA and ones where they really don't want that, that feels like it's inevitably going to get some feelings hurt.)

i'm trying to think of something to say besides 'i don't like it' because that's not super helpful, but. it seems more borne of not wanting to visually have as much stuff onscreen at once rather than actually making the forums you want people to post in more accessible, especially in the wake of the push to remove or replace holiday 'spam threads' in their entirety for being a space-waster.

edit: to be clear, this is not a critique coming from a misunderstanding of what's going on; this is a critique borne of keith directly responding to a concern over this specific choice with 'i'm going to collect feedback before making further tweaks'. my feedback is that it's a weird change that makes the forums less usable. i'm not opposed to restructuring the threads as a whole, i'm opposed to this specific change.

This is still a work in progress, it's not complete!

I actually think that selling/buying of CW shold be a subforum of CW, actually!

Alright so while all change is evil and everything was better when I was 14, I actually do like the new structure. I think it's a lot easier to find the right place to post your topic now, and I'd also like to think it's easier for newbies too. There are less forums and subforums so hopefully they'll be more active too (the trending topics lists are great for this, I really like how Kumos has them listed right at the top).

I do however have a few concerns, mostly because the sub-forums did make filtering topics a lot easier. For example the advertising forum has now CWs, buying, selling and giveaways in the same forum, so if I'm only interested in CWs it's hard to find those topics. I know users will probably adapt and use more descriptive titles in the future but right now navigating all the consolidated forums is a bit hard. I'd like some way to filter the topics, possibly some kind of tagging system (maybe hashtags, a more rigid system like reddit post flairs or just a bit more subforums). I wouldn't mind seeing the topics in the subforums (or previous subforums) in the main forums too (for example all topics in Welcomes/Pets/Battle/HAs would also be visible in the main General forum), as long as I could filter them when I wanted.

The Kumos forums also look a bit busy to me, but I think it might just be mostly the background color and lack of white space between different areas? The title font sizes are also really similar, for example "Subeta" and "Announcements" right below it are very close to each other. I'm not sure I need to have the most recent topic in a subforum to be visible right away either, it doesn't really help me that much. Overall it looks good and I love having the forum search back :) Some kind of link to sCode reference and admin posts would be a nice to have too.

Aaand as other have said I think it'd be more logical to have Advertising forums be part of Commerce :D

I was just thinking earlier, Keith is probably going to cry if we make him say "wait a week" one more time xD Thank you for the communication! I'm excited to see the finalized forums. The new system seems like a good "framework" for a easier-to-navigate experience and I think the potential organizational tools that may come from feedback can really help Subeta have a top notch forum design that appeals to all users!

Initially, I was pretty excited for these changes. I still like the idea of a live chat option, and I see where the site is coming from regarding the attempt to make it easier to navigate. I also love the forum search feature coming back. However, I feel like it's almost become harder to navigate? The forums went from organized to unorganized by squishing everything together.

For example, the art forums and creativity forums are squished together now; it's hard to pick through the misc. creative topics to find the buying/selling threads. After navigating the forums like I normally would, I feel as if everything is just squished together into one forum instead of the ease of having subforums.

I understand there's still things that will be tweaked, but since Keith and staff are going to be referring to this thread for feedback in the future I figured I'd add my two cents. I personally go "eek" now when I see everything squished together; it makes me not want to navigate the forums at all. Maybe it's just me. [edit] I also noticed that the freebies are now mixed in with all the misc. art topics and buying/selling topics. Maybe it's just my OCD but I felt as if the subforums made the forums easier to navigate.

Day 3, continuing to mentally struggle with the change of the forums. More forums have been Thanos-snapped, although I don't think Web Design will be missed much. He always brought the fruit cake to Christmas parties. Good riddance.

Just dropping some feedback, as I understand this is an evolving situation.

Even though I am a Chit Chat lover, I think this is a really good point. Having all of the actual features of Subeta just filed away under the General forum feels weird. I'd much rather Pets and Human Avatars continue to be their own things.

I'm also in agreement with others that it feels more difficult to navigate the forums now than it was when there was more thorough separation and labeling. I have seen a few people mention a tagging system, so I'm hoping something like that gets implemented along with the reinstated search function at the very least.

Finally, I'm not interested in live threads, so I will be avoiding that feature if it is added.

hoping for the best, and also hope that our comment didnt come across as dismissive or negative ! honestly to find posts and forum places we have been using our post and topic history to find out where things are, things arent intuitive yet but hoping it'll all make more sense when the squish happens fully.

also adore the idea of pinned sub places. we lurked in ideas/suggestion, feedback, and brag/complain, so finding all 3 right now is ah! having a way to pin those (although pinning the whole of brag/complain might be difficult since it'd been diffused into just single topics, we liked reading about folks achievements in one streamlined place)

ITS A LITTLE challenging to get around rn but im sure we will get used to it lol

Edit I CHANGED MY MIND I DON'T Like it Re-ilerating everything everyone else said. It's a freaking mess 😭 I'm not trying to be mean but OMG. I don't understand why the advertising boards are jumbled up and the forum games are jumbled up I don't even want to post anymore 😫

I'd rather there be less forums and subforums, because activity was spread out more thinly. At least with this way, I'm hoping for more activity, because no one is trekking to a subforum. C:

As long as there's a head's up from either you or another UA or otherwise, I'm satisfied with this answer. I hope it goes as smoothly as you want it to.

Seeing all of Advertising be squashed together is startling but I can see why it's done that way now.

Oh my are some of these changes not working for me, and I can't even imagine new users... I'll preface this by saying that i'm all up for change, and that we did have too many deed forums before. But I feel like it's clear that some decisions were made without thinking that the forum is MORE than just a place to chat, but is also an utility board that supports some core site features:

• Squishing together ALL of the pets talk into one SUB FORUM sure is.... a choice. The old adoption sub-forum was very needed imo. It's one of the very forum I looked at when I started on the site 18 years ago. It's an utility forum. It's now very hard to find adoption threads, or that thread with people looking for various dates.

• Mixing discussion threads with sales/commission boards in the graphics, art and CW forums makes it so freaking hard to find anything. Profile and Graphic is now shops, freebies and discussions all mixed together and it's a mess. Don't get me started on the CW board. CW are the site's biggest source of income, and now the sole forum dedicated to them is a hot mess with dozens of pinned threads, shops, commission board, questions, ressources board... It's a major disservice to sellers and commissioners to make commission boards so hard to find in EVERY forum.

Since there's no 'personal ads' section on Subeta, some subforums served this purpose. We cannot have 'utility' threads all mixed together with regular conversations.

If we are to keep the forum like this, we need a 'tag'/'flair' function so that people can tag their boards with things such as 'Commission board' 'ISO' 'Adoption' CW Shop' 'Question' 'Ressource' 'Freebie' etc.

I wish users active in the major forums (pets, CW, Battling, Advertising etc.) would've been consulted before making such big changes. Changes like these are difficult to make with a 'do it and figure it out later' approach, especially when there's no timeline for when necessary features like a tagging system will be implemented. It can make or break sub communities. I won't be surprised if it drive away casual players that won,t know how to do basic things like finding pets that are UFA, commissioning a CW or opening an art shop

this is also an important point. i just noticed that a thread people use to help complete the Holiday Helper achievement has been moved to Forum Games under Chit-Chat. this belies a fundamental misunderstanding of how people use these different types of forums and what collaborative achievement threads are for.

go look at the Forum Games page right now. what's on it? from top to bottom, a constant stream of new posts of "what did you get from ___" and "how many ___ did you do today?" this is not a subforum for finding useful posts and never has been; it exists for people to get their post count up, and maybe just kind of check in and see who else is there and what they're up to.

so now any achievement threads that have been shoved in there are going to be constantly being buried under the deluge of "posting for the sake of posting" threads. "gift the user above through the gift center" IS NOT A FORUM GAME; it's a method of organizing ourselves to work toward an achievement with a little give-and-get collaboration.

users who want to find these types of threads, which no longer have a home, now have no practical way of knowing where to find or create them (Forum Games? General? somewhere else entirely?), and this also makes it much less obvious that such a category of posts even exists in the first place; on top of that, as already mentioned, these slightly slower-moving but practical threads are now constantly being shoved onto later and later pages by the faster-moving posts in forum categories that have been excessively and inappropriately combined.

i also recently found out that a thread i and others use to help with sticking stickers is also being subsumed into a broader "sticker discussion" thread. not only is this illogical and impractical, it honestly comes across as disrespectful. we're basically being told we're not allowed to create threads to serve a specific and useful function for ourselves, because there might be other threads that are deemed "too similar" even though they're not the same at all, therby DISCOURAGING forum activity. what happened to wanting to mitigate the problem of users being afraid to make new topics because they're scared they'll get in trouble for doing something wrong?

now i can't subscribe to the "new" version of that thread because i'll get notifications for posts i don't want to see (e.g. conversations about stickers) instead of the posts i DO want to see (trade lots for stickers someone needs stuck to them). i want no part of it and am irritated that i am being dragged into it against my will. this is all being done over our heads with nobody bothering to ask us HOW we actually use & conceptualize the various forums and which subforums & categorizations users actually DO find confusing, redundant, excessive, etc—because i agree, there were some of those for sure!

i just now looked at the forums and now i was so confused........... im reading back this forum now but im like where's the bragging & complaining and the art sales??

also on the topic of bragging and complaining: like i can see it being replaced but i do really think a place is needed for like "Thank your Anonymous Gifter" and stuff like BHH Restocks being posted there

Art sales really should also be separate from general art discussion IMO.

I definitely like the idea of a restructuring, but those are my thoughts about whats throwing me off the most rn

Really dislike all the advertising threads thrown together. I would go specifically looking to buy or sell and now I have to try and wade through every advertising thread. Especially hard work this time of year with all the giveaways going on.

Having adoptions mixed in with general pet conversation is making hard to see who needs pet help and who is looking to adopt or put up for adoption.

I also noticed a lot of threads talking about subeta games (like random, recycling, hustler) have been moved to forum games but these are not user run forum games making it very hard to find these boards.

Just because a forum has lots of locked threads and not a lot of activity I don't see why that means it should be less Big thumbs down, if anything I'd be less likely to bother with the forums now.

Just wanted to add - I see they also combined the Custom Wearable threads like they did all the Art forum threads. It's a huge mess now. Maybe my OCD just doesn't like going from having everything organized to one huge pile of threads.

It reminds me of if you took a very organized grocery store and started mixing everything together - IE mixing shampoos in with conditioners when they were separated, or combining all the fruit together instead of separate sections, etc... and now it's hard to find things. I'm excited to hear there's possibly an organization feature in the works because currently it's all just a jumbled mess and harder to navigate imo

[edit] After a month or so of getting used to it, my brain goes "eek!" less. I still miss having everything perfectly organized in their own subforums BUT I'm excited that Keith may have an organization feature in the works.

Where is the bragging and complaining boards, they are no more?