Alright, so per the discussion in this board, I'd love to come up with some ways to replace pinging from groups and put that power directly into the forums instead.

Mostly I want to take the cases where forum groups are used to ping on a single topic (or a few) and move those to the forums themselves. So, some cases would be giving board creators the power to ping everyone who's responded to a thread (like staff can currently do) or powers like that.

Come up with anything, nothing is too hard or too complex for us to at least consider. If you want to go into how you wish CWs were sold an entirely different way, feel free!

( your feedback here is very welcome / appreciated / sought after! What sort of things could we make so you can drop out of 100 of those groups? ;))

I think the issue with groups that are pinged only to one thread is that its very rarely only the person who owns the group who pings.

In the case of the Subeautique, Token, and Battle groups (just to name a few) - pings are the responsibility of the group as a whole (whoever catches the restock first pings everyone). I think Deadlines is one of the rare groups that uses one thread and is also only pinged by the group owner, NewCW is another. Most other groups, from my experience, are pinged to a variety of threads. I don't honestly see a solution that will make it possible to replace that functionality and pare down the number of groups we use.

I feel like the major issue is this push to include more activity within the group itself. Groups don't and shouldn't function like a cross between a forum group and a cult. If I had any interest in a cult I'd have joined one haha. Removing those features from groups and leaving them as a means to ping like-minded individuals to a relevant topic is what we all enjoy about them. If Cults need a revamp, then revamp them, but please don't merge them with groups and then limit our ability to socialize unrestricted.

No really. I'm not opposed to your idea of turning ping groups into like subscription pings, and I think by having various degrees of ping management this could be a good thing (ex: users who've been blocked can't join mega!pinggroups owned by people who've blocked them, which is silly when it's like -the- TS group).

I'd like to see:

• Only the board creator can ping
• Anyone in the subscription group can ping
• The boards for subeta related things created by staff/minimods so no user can get excluded because the OP has blocked them (sometimes valid, sometimes not so much)
• Board creator can select other users who can also ping the subscription group if they want to (helpful for event boards/CW shops/list, help, and guide based boards)

I also hope that ping groups don't totally go the way of the birds, too. While I'm sure subscription pings could cut down on a lot of clutter some of the biggest groups are big for a reason: they're so so so useful for all users, not only the power users.

I'm not entirely comfortable with the idea of the board creator being able to ping everyone who ever responded to a thread because there are times when people post just to comment on something and would rather not be bothered with a notification after that. I know of a few users who already abuse the cw group pings and giving those people the ability to flood my events even further is not something I want.

I had an idea,

Instead of using the forums to release CWs, what if users could create a shop of their own, similar to how user shops/the CS works, to sell their CWs. This would get rid of hundreds and hundreds of CW ping groups. I know I’m in over 280 groups, almost all of which are CW related.

This could also potentially get rid of confusion many new players have with the current CW market. I’ve had quite a few come to my shop and ask how the CW process works, and even ping group functions.

Users could maybe even be able to decorate this shop in a way that makes it more unique, such as different color backgrounds, special art, etc. Maybe have some approved colors so we don’t get any blinding neon green/orange lolol

Although, if this feature was implemented it would need to have a few featuresto make everyone happy…or at least most people happy, such as the ability to set their own price, whatever that price may be. Allow for shop partners, so that they can share all responsibilities. I know people like and would only stay in the CW business if they were allowed to keep shop together. And maybe a “follow” feature where you can click a button that maybe says “follow” and whenever items get added it alerts a user, similar to how pings work now.

I believe this could appease the majority of users who are upset at the moment.

I did a mockup of what it could look like, sorry for it being messy….I didn’t spend too much time on it.

This preview shows already approved CWs, and how they could maybe be sold in the shop.

Shop Preview One

This preview shows how new CWs that have not been approved and how they could be sold in the Shop.

Shop Preview Two

This Preview shops how new items would be added to the shop. It's basically the same thing as the Custom wearable’s submission page, except you fill in all the info before adding it, and once slots are filled, in preview two, it gets submitted immediately.

Shop Preview Three – Owner’s Area

I admit I'm not into CW's much, but those mockups look great to me! I hope some CW folks would come in and give some input on that :)

If we're really going to put in these limits and change the system in a drastic way, I'd also like for ping groups such as SubQ, TSrestock, etc. and event related groups to be administrated by staff- but every person who joins these groups should retain pinging privilege, of course.

I love the mockups that did - but I don't like that people could sign themselves into a batch. I still have things that will not be available everywhere or that are limited and will be released solely to people I ping first before I open them to the public. In that vein, allowing people to sign themselves up (and/or think they're signing up for a slot) doesn't seem useful to me. I would instead have to comment or message every person in my ping group individually (assuming we got rid of our groups).

I love that suggestion! It'd make it a lot easier (I think) to find potential new releases as well.

[edit] reads 's post Maybe instead of people being able to sign themselves into a batch, they could still comment / leave a message somehow, to express interest, then the CW seller could still retain control over who buys it (like if it was a private / limited-to-certain-people item)?

Ok so now that I'm awake I can reply to this xD Let's see if I make any sense with any of it.

Disclaimer: These could turn out to be very bad ideas, lol.

I think 's idea of keeping certain 'public utility' groups' ownerships in hands of staffers could be nice. Especially if staff-owned groups were excluded from the limit, in a way that you'd still be incentivized to join these groups and stay up-to-date / active within the site (tsrestock, hustlercs, battle, customwear, artsale, etc, keep you doing things!) without them taking space from different user groups!

Plus, I have never been fond of how people can be potentially left out from joining certain of these groups if they were blocked by the owner, as they escape the "personal forum groups" purpose entirely.

I like the idea of having our own customisable corner for selling CWs, like what suggested! Shops could be listed by "latest activity" on some sort of directory (similarly to how they are now, in forums), they could have an owner and mods / be co-owned and ultimately someone could have the power to delete and restart them, if needed. (Like how user shops are now.)

That also allows someone to have their own, individual CW shop. In the forums, there's always that need to get someone else to hold the second/fourth posts of the thread, so you can organize your things, even if you're going to operate the shop on your own...

People could be able to follow a shop and the list of followers could be visible to owner/mods, so in case we ever wanted to call those people on the forums for making some sort of announcement (like if we're splitting shop, or remaking it for some reason), we'd have those names!

Instead of having people automatically sign themselves up for slots, they could maybe apply for slots? Then whenever a mod logs on, they can "approve" people in order of slot "application" (there absolutely must be a timestamp on claims!). Like how now we can "reject" a slot payment assigned to us, a shop owner can "reject" a customer that has proved to never pay on time, etc.

I have seen many newbies / non forum users feel discouraged to take a dab on the market because the interaction makes them nervous, so that could be helpful for them indeed c:

Threads on the art / graphics subforum could also have that "follow" feature, plus the option to give "mod privileges" to a second other person. Followers could be pinged by either of the two people whenever there are slots open, etc, but they wouldn't receive alerts on every post, like submissions currently work! *note: the necro rule will probably have to be lifted there.

(I'm aware most of the regular art or graphics shops don't have this need for a second person, but I'm also thinking of design shops like the one and have; just like CW shops, it can be much nicer to share a design thread with a friend, especially if it's a collab design c: )

Unfortunately this would remove the possibility of art groups being pingable outside of a thread, which is a tough downside... I mean, artists could still ping these people individually, but that isn't too practical. Unless that idea is combined with the preset groups one I'm about to mention?

Actual private CWs probably fall on the "friend groups" category. I was just reading 's post on the other thread,

I think having a few preset groups within your friends at least (much like "favorites" currently work?) would be a nice idea, but I also don't know if it would be feasible at all. For people with long lists of friends, it could make for a neat way of organizing them by interests, etc. I could theorically make a "cw people" friend subgroup I'd ping for private CWs, without bothering the rest of my favorites / having to temp unfavorite them xD

Maybe the idea of having preset customizable groups could work even outside of friends, for groups you already know won't be used often. You have this box, you throw some usernames (or userids, better!) inside of it, some months later when you need to call those people you can just go there and click something. Maybe n_n

So if you were that artist, you could pick all of your followers' names and tuck them in a box if you wanted to ping them to the thread of your best friend who is also an artist and is just starting a shop. Or for your event contest. Or if you want to tell them you're taking a hiatus, etc.

*note: I just realized it's important to still label these as some sort of ping group, for quick deleting purposes on the receiver's end x:

[edit] come here xD

thanks for the ping to here! Can you as a seller have a look on what I wrote?

No seriously, as I just expressed on the other thread (I'm sorry, Keith! I didn't see this one, sorry to ping you again there!) the problem with people being in over 200 groups would definitely solve itself if even only all the personal cw ping groups were converted into subscription threads - or even personal shops. I'm in the same boat as and here, ~200 of my ~230 ping groups are cw groups that I'm in to keep up with new releases.

I do definitely like the idea of personal, possibly even customizable cw shops although I wouldn't consider the latter a priority. Customizability could always be added and I do think that in favor of making the site work at all functionality should be the focus. I agree with that it isn't a good idea to let people put their own name in a table. It should rather work like Blanche said, people should "apply" so the shop owner can sort through the applications (with timestamps!). This would be useful too for issues with people wanting to be in a later batch or similar things, the owner should be able to switch people around.

I'm gonna list some general functions that I think a personal cw shop should/could include. I have never sold any cws, so I'd love those of us who have and will continue to to critique these; are my ideas even making sense?

• a front page with all currently available cws, obviously.

• a single info page for each cw which in that case should include "# batch of # possible batches" "# batches are open right now" "# slots are left". You would "apply" for a cw on that page per pressing of a button.

• if possible, a comment box for extra inquiries like "can I be on the last batch" or "can you prepay for me, I'll have csc next week" because that would be way easier than managing it through comments.

• maybe even a button through which you can express interest for a re-release?

• if the batch is full, should it still be able to apply? I don't think people will apply days later when the batch is full, but when many people apply at once, like it happens for highly wanted cws, you'll get a big influx.

• possibly a "news" page on which shop owners can announce the soon release of a cw, communicate problems or a hiatus. if this happens, people should be able to ping single people here I guess

• some sort of subscription function. we want to replace ping groups, so there should definitely some sort of "follow" function or whatnot that is giving you notifications when there are new items or announcements.

• an overview of every cw ever done would be useful (I'm not a cw seller, would you guys prefer that page alphabetized? Customizable? Maybe even just a text box so you have to organize that overview yourself, like people do on their threads and pet profiles already?)

• a site for shop rules!

• co-ownership possibility!

• definitely a system to let people know they have been slotted. It could just be an automated ping like the payment pings now, so the seller only has to arrange who's in which batch and click "send", then the recipients get an automated ping à la "you have been slotted for batch # of the custom wearable yyy"

• the payment system could basically stay the same

• should shop owners be able to limit who can claim? (or who can even see the shop? or even certain cws?)

• shop owners should be able to determine the number of currently open batches, p.e. opening them all at once or opening them at specific times.

s mockups look good. So if mockups are really helping, I'm gonna try and make a few and post them later.

I really like s idea of CW shops, I think that has a lot of potential! I often find CW boards confusing (like what's being sold by who, which post has things, who do I ping for what), so a simple shop could really help hete. I totally get s thoughts too, and before this could be trialed I think this need to be considered heavily in regards to how exactly it'll work.

Like not only are there friends/groups/cults only CWs need to be considered, but there has been a great deal of price gouging ib the past, and a great many users have given themselves bad names (I imagine many have been blacklisted internally) and CW shop owners would need a means to keep just anyone from slotting themselves in a shop setting (obviously anyone can buy from the CS but jacking up prices doesn't really apply there). Not to mention blocked users etc.

Some thoughts:

• Items need different types of options, such as: --- Open (Anyone can claim a slot, once the batch is full it automatically sends payment pings etc) (Can he used for unlimited or limited batches when the creator doesn't mind who is slotted, ie: first come first serve!) --- Retired (Not open for slotting, point blank) --- Sold Out (Listed only for reference of how many batches it had and who made it, can never be sold again due to all batches being sold out) (will also help prevent sell scamming like "one batch I want 2k" only it really had 3 batches) --- Reserved (IMPORTANT! This one can be used for specific user slotting via shop owners, and maybe even co-owners? For privates, friend only, group only, or just flat out users who want to control exactly who gets slots like it's always been done in the forums)
• Shop Groups/Subscriptions
• Shop owners + the ability to designate "co-owners" who can do stuff like ping the subscribers, and maybe even help slot if the owner allows?
• Shop subscription options! Owner can allow open subscribes, closed, and invite only!
• USERS CAN BE BANNED FROM THE SHOP OR SUBSCRIPTION GROUP? Some users are problematic, or price gouging resellers.. the ability to just ban them would be helpful I think.

Lastly, maybe shops could have something like the Battle Coliseum front page? Like instead of pings the shop could instead "update" and all subscribed users would get an alert to the shops front page where an update post (think news) would be with a message from the owner/co-owner (like here's the new items/need slots filled on these/subscriptions are open/hey WIPs any thoughts or preclaims, etc).

Then people could post on said update (bonus points for allowing users to ping the poster/owner) and stuff, like they can in the news posts.

Not sure if all of this would be easy to do, or worthwhile, or would help the site... Or are bad ideas in general xD; Users with active CW shops could probably offer more insight.

(just because these are ideas on your ideas XD!)

I like the idea of being able to write up news (as we would type up a post) + add rules on a shop's front page! That'd definitely be needed.

I think flags for items would also be needed, like open/retired/sold out, and then if the item isn't permanently sold out, instead of "apply", the button could become "express interest" on a re-release xD But I think applications for open items should be left open until the preset amount of batches are paid and distributed. After that, the list could be cleared c:

I'd love if there could be a record somewhere we could see of who we slotted in each batch and when it happened.

Since I'm touching the subject here, I'd also love an "admin" section of the shop (or a personal page, as that would be better for shopless people) where we see links with information about every item the shop admins have ever submitted, their approval dates, the denial reasons, etc. Of course this would have to be paginated/searchable. ^ This would definitely work better as an individual page, it'd probably be too messy on a shop because not all items will go there. Still, leaving it here because we need it!!

Random example of how even silly data is useful: Kel and I always wanted to submit recolors/revisits of the on the roof top's approval anniversary c: Which I vaguely remember being March 15 or 16, 2012, but I accidentally deleted the event so now I'll only know it if I open a ticket.

it'd be so fine if I could stop spreadsheeting and saving alerts with cw shop info haha, although lets be honest I just spreadsheet all the things

An "item=" list on the front page with all items sold in that shop / with their respective labels would be fancy, but if not, we could still edit it in manually ^^

I agree with having an alert to confirm when you were slotted for a batch (besides the payment alert, although they often would come together-ish), and also allowing users the control to "advertise" open batches or not / just let them sit until later. As per usual, it's scam to promise there will only be 1 batch released, but if the cap is accidentally set at 2 or even unlimited you're still not breaking your promise as long as you don't ever release any further batches. unless you promised a 1 batch cap but lets not get there Retired labels could help here!

I wouldn't like to limit visibility of items at all, I mean people could still open friend chat threads and (especially if preset groups were a thing) offer things to their friends there. YET, the idea of labeling an item "reserved" could be great to have an item still show on the shop but with an indication that slot applications would be more restrictive (like items for super frequent customers)!

The above presumes not all items submitted by a user would be auto-added for sale on a shop, you'd have to pick that after approval too. (Or before approval, depending on the situation. Ideally the choice would be possible both before and after.)

/totally stealing some of 's labels here

Haha I posted without fully reading the entire board/posts (I skimmed pkay, and in my defense I'm on my phone at work okay |D) and upon scrolling up I think I basically repeated half(+) of everything you said.

Consider me agreeing with basically everything you said XD!

I love labels and organizationnn u I think labels would be even more beneficial if all the CWs submitted to the shop (or by the owner, not sure if all items by the owner + co-owner would be dooable and/or practical?) would be pagenated via their "status". Like all open in one page/tab, all retired in another, and so on. That'd be fantastic for reference (sold out) (reserved) to know the information on what you missed, what might be private, what might take slits later, etc without getting your hopes up of all these cool things oh man I so wa-- aannd it's 'reserved'.

your mockups are great! I took some of your ideas and expanded on them a bit, what do you think? I did some more mockups with the new ideas. They're all from the normal user's view for now, I'll try and whip some for shop owners view up. What do you think?

shop main page shop rules shop news (this one has an unfollow button, too) item page, slots open item page, slots closed

all mockups

aaah I messed up the links give me a minute links fixed!

Yeah listing all items could be useful... I mean that's something we typically do manually, we could continue doing it manually if we -must-, but the more automated things we could get, the better it'd be xD (And the easiest for new artists to run their shops too, especially those who don't like the forums! xP -poke-)

I think including the co-owners on that list would be needed, but as I see it, the owners would just be the people who have the option to move their items to that shop. It's not like the shop auto-pulls every item they have submitted, so we have 2-3 people basically pooling -some- items on that interface and this stuff is the one that gets auto-sorted for customer viewing. If that even makes sense. xD

y u not wrkin tho omg

[edit] LOL I love your mockups <3 And love that you used shoes. Aaand love that we're going on hiatus to eat candies 8D

Or, you know. First rule, you don't talk about this shop. Second rule, you don't talk about this shop. (...)

XDD

Giving all items little labels (color coding!) is tempting. Or just put them in different shop tabs? That makes a lot of tabs though. I'd rather put categories on currently availablable, category one "open", category two "sold out", category three "reserved". I think reserving items/making items private could and should as well be spelled out further in the info on the item page itself, like you'll only see a little label "reserved" or a category "reserved" on the main page, no "claim slot" button, and when you click on the item, you see "This item is reserved for Blanche's friends, please don't claim if you are not" and you're like yep, that's me, gonna push that button and claim myself a slot. Or not. Any additional info really, you will type that on the item page when you release it anyway, so that would probably the place you look for it later, too.

it would be making sense if a record of slotted and released batches would just be on the specific item's page for the shop owners, especially as there would be all the additional info on the item page, all that stuff people put in their release posts now. You know, Artist's name, possible recolors, reason for release, release date.... And if you were to announce the release of something through your news page, you could also look at the date there. I don't really think that another user's cw shop needs a personal page for everyone to see, I think if the owners see an extra page or extra options, that'll be enough.

To you both: my current problem with listing all items is - how will they be sorted? This would apply to the main page with the currently available items as well to any list of retired or old items. I mean, you will definitely have to pull all your items into the shop yourself, as they might have been commissioned etc etc. But after that - Retired: Alphabetically, timeline... most users prefer rather to put sets or recolors together, but those would have to be sorted by hand. And also only with sorting by hand you could control how much space there would be between items, if some are together and some are not, or for those who have done hundreds of items, it just won't be such a wall of items. Front page: you could let them sort into categories depending on how they're flagged (will it work to program the flags so well that they'd p.e. change from open to sold out when all slots are filled? or would they only change when the owner fills the batch and sends out the slotting notice?), but do you want customization options in the categories? Do you want categories at all or would you rather have a big page with all items on it, every item is flagged as a certain status and you do the sorting yourself?

And did anyone notice I put a link to the cs section of the shop owner (if existing)? :D I thought that could be cool... now that I think about it, it probably gets problematic with more than one owner.

I'm off for a while, will peek back in later again and maybe do some more mockups c:

ok so my eyes have kind of glazed over a lot of the recent posts because they deal with CWs, so i apologize if this point has been brought up and i just havent seen it.

but while i'm all for the notion of thread OPs being able to ping everyone who posted on their thread ala staff post alerts (such as for art shops or what have you), i would really like for users to have the choice to opt out of these subscription-pings. one of the things i like about ping groups as they currently exist is that if someone starts going crazy with the pings (or if the site glitches out and pings 12 times from one post) and i'm just like "holy shit, this is annoying," i can leave the group and it's nice and everyone's happy.

for instance, if someone makes an art shop and i buy a piece from them early on, i'd like to be able to opt out of future subscription-pings if i'm done buying art from them. i don't want to keep being called back to a shop i no longer have interest in participating in. even just a little check box near the top that shows up after you've posted to the thread and says something like like "i no longer wish to be alerted when (thread creator name here) posts to this topic" would suit me just fine.

this coming from someone who's in a very small pool of ping groups (TSrestock, battle, site update, the functional stuff) because i'm not a fan of getting huge floods of pings that don't actually apply to me on any given day. i'd like to keep it that way if at all possible.

tl;dr: jane, get me off this crazy thing

Yes to color coding (lists are not lists without colors) okay!

And yeah the more tabs the more confusing it could be. I like the idea of making your own categories but likewise if shop owners could be asked directly the preset categories/tabs they'd like to see/need then just having defaults could probably maybe work.

I love the idea of more information, especially in the reserved category. I used that term because "private" is a user term and it festers much drama and really private or reserved both mean for me/select people only so it kinda blankets. Either way I'd love little boxes for extra info, even if it's just enough to say "private" "event exclusive" "friends only" "taking slots PM about it" or something.

(Which would leave to question how CWshops would work with main group vs. friend/private/exclusive groups. Would someone need/be able to make a separate shop for that or would that require mass comments?)

As far as pre-existing, I guess it could be everything the shop owner wants to associate with the shop or if it's all the CWs then the shop owner could sort their items themselves depending on the amount of categories in the end game (open, retired, reserved and sold out could be automated for things that literally are sold out) (sold out could be where forever retired cash shop items go, too)? But considering how many things some people have submitted that might be easier said than done |D

I also love the idea of linking to their CS CWs, too! Super convenient.

I would genuinely like to hope that unsubscribing to boardpings would work exactly like leaving a ping group and not like opting out of email 'subscriptions' (that you swear to all things good in the world you never opted into) where it takes 10 days for them to ultimately deside that they'd rather keep spamming you instead.

If not I take back everything I've said because being forced to deal with pings from something forever is torture |D! (flashbacks to the CShustler group during BF where there was a handful of pings every 15 minutes for daaayss)