Saying "Hi, I'm ________ and I want friends" in Welcomes & Introductions is a surefire way to get your thread locked. Because the rules do state that this is not appropriate behavior on Subeta's forum for welcoming new users.

I get that making a single thread for it probably made sense in... 2005?

I also get that friend ads might not be a good idea in Site Feedback or Art Market. I think it might even be kinda annoying in General, but where is the harm in letting people do it in W&I? The people who post topics there do so because they're NEW. As in, they might be slightly confused and overwhelmed. They might not even speak English as a first language.

Do we really want to start their time on Subeta by telling them that their thread is now locked and to please try again in this obscure Chit Chat thread?

Yes, that does seem like a very welcoming experience when we're boasting about how friendly this site is compared to X, Y and Z.

I have a better idea for you. Let the thread in Chit Chat finally die and make a subforum in Welcomes & Introductions for pure friend ads and returning "old" users (who are currently banished to General where they are summarily ignored) while allowing new users to have a board be both a an intro and a friend ad. If there's any place on Subeta where friend ads actually fit it's under Welcomes & Introductions.

It won't hurt anyone and it might even make more new users stick around.

There's no reason to kill the chit chat forums, people who have friends already establish talk there frequently. It would make more sense to have a stickied thread where you can post if you're new. Other new people can meet there, old people can welcome people on it, returning old people can be welcomed on it. (I'm not sure if this isn't what you meant, I suck at reading sometimes) But I agree, the welcomes & introductions forums are kind of... meh. Someone posts a thread, a few people post hi welcome here are some guides, then it dies. It would be nicer if it could be more user-friendly.

That thread scared the hell out of me when I was a newbie. It's not friendly at all and posting a blurb about yourself in the hope that someone will reply or add you is stressful.

I started out as a major lurker and read all the rules / faqs / guides (unlike so many newbies) so at least I wasn't scared off by aggressive (if not deliberately so) moderating. However, I didn't end up making any friends until some kind users sent me gifts at Lumi and we got to talking.

If nothing else, a more open chat thread for newbies would be great. Not locking friend threads in W&I and Chit Chat would be brilliant too because that's just idiotic.

I've never understood the banishment of old returning users to General. Is the forum really that crowded and over packed that it couldn't handle older users who are basically newbies who haven't played in years?

Pretty much got the ignore treatment when I came back and made a thread in W&I. It immediately got moved to General and I got no responses after the move. I mean, it was years for me, I would've liked some people to give me a refresher or something. :/ [edit] I should probably add my two cents instead of putting stories here. I agree with adding a forum for new and old members to chat on without there being all these threads that die out in a day or two.

I think this is a good idea, I was on here ages before I dare talk to anyone,Now I make a point of saying hi sometimes and sending gifts as well, I made a couple of really good friends there too :0) if theres anywhere a newbie might post it would be within that Header. it would also bump up their post count as well.

I agree that older, returning users should be allowed to stay in welcomes and introductions. Just because they're old doesn't mean they even made an introduction to begin with, they could have just started and left, and then returned way later.

But even if they did already make an introduction I wouldn't be offended if they did so again, years later. Sometimes it's tough to remember how to do things on a website after an extended leave and someone who left 5 years ago and came back again may need to be treated like a newbie.

I've been on neopets for the past ten years, but I haven't done much of anything there since I joined here almost four years ago, and so I'm pretty lost whenever I check back in on neo. Like I really don't even know how to do basic things on there anymore. I imagine that people who take breaks from subeta would be in the same boat, regardless of how long they played before their leave.

i've never really understood the mindset behind automatically moving older/returning users' threads to general, where people aren't specifically looking to meet new people (as they are in W&I). a returning user could potentially be months or years behind on site content and updates, and would benefit from the same kind of "modern subeta 101" treatment that newbies get.

not to mention, it's the welcome and introduction forum, why limit introductions to someone who's brand new to the site? i for one went years before i started becoming actively social on here, and it'd have been nice to kind of establish myself among the social crowd, even though i was perfectly familiar with the site and its mechanics.

A more laid-back W&I sounds like a great idea in general.

A greater diversity of threads making W&I move faster can have benefits and drawbacks of course: on one hand it can make the site seem more active and less intimidating, but if too many threads end up with 0 replies it could have the opposite effect.

I'd love to go even further and start seeing threads like "Looking for friends who like _____" in W&I but I could already imagine how it could just as easily turn out to grow annoying. The only way to know for sure is to try though. A nice mix of individual introductions and general friendmaking threads might be a good way to provide "something for every kind of newbie" and show how flexible and diverse Subeta can be.

Most importantly I feel like there REALLY needs to be a "So you're new here" board with helpful links and go tos and tips and tricks (y'know like-- Quentin gives out amulets sometimes which can be sold for a good chunk of starting off sP). With If you're interested in _____, maybe you should check out these places/some of these boards. Here's a list of all subeta's quests, and how they work (if you quit, you can do the next.. which isn't the case when neopets best I recall), vending machines.. what they do-- where to find them.. where to get tokens... what else you can do with tokens.

And also shoot them in the direction of chat boards/forums relevant to their interests instead of just chit chat? Like hey there's a battling form or pet form or writing form or hey if you're an artist or hey you like avatars and over in general discussion there's restocking chats!

I also agree that locking newbie boards seems, outdated. Maybe instead there can just be a suggestion of hey why not tell us about yourself and where you came from and if it's another pet site what you liked to do there!

I also also agree in regards to older users coming back haha... maybe make a subform in welcomes for returning older users.

.. lastly, can you get forum points for posting in W&I? Making a note of that (assuming that's the case, if it's not.. it needs to be) might help older users take a few minutes to welcome some new comers (;

[edit] So there looks like there's a things to do on subeta board-- in General.. made by a user. Any particular reason this is the best way to go about doing that? I really feel like a staff created formal board with images (images are freaking important, okay, they make things look nice and welcoming) and a more vague outline of the different types of things to get into and everything I already said would be great.

(I can help if needed I like lists, they're kinda my thing)

But yeah basically I agree with all of this

I feel like there should be a subforum at the very least in W&I. That would 100% solve any sort of crowding issue. And it would make more sense to me that those threads old users make when they return be made there, rather than in General.

Also I agree with this entirely:

I think I remember the thread mentioned in the OP and I posted there, but I got nowhere with it, and, three years later, I'm still super shy when it comes to talking to people on the forums. :(

I loved W&I when I first joined here a few years ago. Everyone who posted on my topic was so nice and that was great. It really set the tone for me that Subeta's userbase is great. I'd love if it was a more laidback environment for everyone so that everyone can enjoy it fully.

I only just learned that you can't make threads like that in W&I, which is really weird to me -- it seems like part of the whole idea of that subforum would be "introduce yourself and/or look for friends"?

But I also really like that there's a designated thread for friend-hunting; I really hate having to make my own threads for stuff (I would kill for a general "Good Thing That Happened To You On Subeta Today" board in B&C because every so often I want to make a post about something but I don't want to make an entire thread), so having a pre-existing thread I can jump on is really nice.

...Not that I've really made any friends on here, lol. I just sort of run into a board, make a post, and then run away again. Socializing is hard.

I love lists!!! And I 100% agree with everything you suggested, but snipped to save space. As a new user to subeta (but definitely not pet sites or games) there were a lot of things I ended up having to find through search engines. It would have been nice for a single go-to post to reference. Especially stuff like, "This is where you can train your pet," and "Here's where your pet can get a job."

I also totally agree that a subforum for pure friend ads and/or returning old users could be a great idea.

I feel really lucky that some friends came with me (Neo refugees to escape the lag) because we've been able to find stuff out and help each other, but I can't imagine what it'd be like trying to figure things out without them... or without past pet site experience. D:

When I first started here back in 2010, I spent most of my first month on here lurking. I was scared to death because it's like "Do this, this and this or get warnings or your thread locked. Or better yet, get banned!~ Enjoy!"

The fact that I joined with a group of then friends (I'm the last one active on here from it) helped some, very little but some.

There needs to be something done with the FAQs that are handed out to newbies and that week or whatever it is probation before they can post needs to be done away with. Mostly because, again referencing my own experiences, I needed to post within the first day because I didn't know what I was doing.

It's very impolite to throw someone into a site as complex as Subeta with basically no safety net and punish them for simply not knowing better.

Yeah, even if new users can't post in most of the forums, maybe they can be given access to W&I and Help & Questions only? It's kind of weird that users are just tossed into the deep end and not even allowed to ask older users for help (unless you're a referral and can contact a user without going through Subeta) without waiting waiting a week.

It would probably help keep newer users around -- I can't imagine it's very pleasant to join a new site, get lost, and then find out you can't even ask for guidance specifically because you're new (I say "imagine" because I'm a stubborn jerk who would have floundered around without asking for help even if it was allowed, lol).

Why is it called "Welcomes and Introductions" if we're not allowed to introduce ourselves, even if we're not new? Users shouldn't have to find a random thread in Chit-Chat to find friends. The thread should either be in the relevant board or be locked.

I think this forum would be better off as a subforum for Chit-Chat and open it up for anything involving welcoming and introducing users: new users, returning users, asking for a lot of help (outside of of the one-question Help Forum type topic), looking for friends, chatting, etc.

But then it's buried away down at the bottom of the forum homepage where new players won't find it.

Chit-Chat already has too many subforums as well. I like Welcomes and Introductions to be well, a welcoming forum, so some of these rules really have to go.