There's been mention that, since trees have not been released, people are still leaving gifts under them. This might be complicating the recovery process for the stocking glitch, so maybe access to leaving gifts under the trees at this point should be cut off. People can (and according to Amber, should) be using the Gift Center instead. But not everyone reads all the news comments or watches the SB, so they might not know that. And with the trees still accepting items, they wouldn't guess from that either.

Agreed, I'm surprised this wasn't done when the error first occurred. No need to just add more to this mess.

if this is the quote you're thinking of:

1. that was Rah. I'm not sure if Amber said something similar though.
2. She said gifting under trees should be okay, but if you want to be safe and get the gifts to people sooner, use the gift center
3. if this was actually causing a problem, the trees would have been shut down already. Keith isn't clueless. let's try to give staff some credit for once.

This EXACTLY. Came here just to post something like that, actually.

Ah, that is the one. Thank you for the correct attributing.

However, it's a little unkind to imply that I'm not giving staff any credit. :p I'm not over in the 'fix trees COMPLETELY' thread, for instance, precisely because I figure they're sorting out those particulars as best they can. I also put this in Suggestions and Ideas rather than Feedback or Problems and Bugs to make it gentler and less confrontational, a discussion as it were.

Plus, as I understood it from staff feedback so far, Keith isn't even really involved yet since he's on a religious holiday with limited internet. So invoking him is kind of a red herring, isn't it?

If it's not an issue, cool. It was, as the forum I put the thread in implies, just a suggestion. :p

I'm not sure if Keith is still gone or not, I just kinda figured he is in charge. either way, replace Keith with whatever relevant programmer, my point stands. I don't think the staff needs a bunch of threads "suggesting" on how to best fix a problem that we aren't exactly in the loop for. They know what can and can't be done, they know what is causing the problems at this point. Sorry if I come across confrontational but the users right now need to try to understand that these kinds of things are what programmers do. If something is causing a problem, it will be taken down. There's also a cost/benefit analysis they need to do when fixing things though, which is why we may or may not have some gifts go out anonymously. As time goes on, they may be able to fix everything. but is the extra time worth the wait and growing impatience for more users? that's what they're dealing with.

If something is causing a big enough issue, yeah, but per that cost/benefit analysis it might still be a problem that was overlooked with the bigger issue and could stand to be pointed out or addressed. Or not, per the useful and informative quote from Rah. That was really all that was required, rather than 'give the staff some credit'. Patience with each other is a virtue for everyone, after all, especially right now.

it's a general frustration I am having right now with a lot of people. I don't think staff is getting enough credit. that + a lack of sleep makes me a lot more blunt than usual, so sorry if that did come across harsh.

Hence why the post here, actually, in a more conversational forum, to give staff the chance to make a more visible statement in response OR remind someone of 'oh yeah, if that is a problem we can do that right quick'. Sometimes if I'm working on something big, a small reminder of some minor part of it that could nevertheless help comes in handy (or reassures someone watching to say 'oh, don't worry about that, it'll be fine', as it turns out Rah mentioned).

It was a thought, that's all. Not an aspersion on staff. I think most of us appreciate their hard work, and the gold account and CSC and weekend quests (plus I'm excited to see what they include with the trees when they go up). And the exact quote from Rah was useful, so thank you for that.

Yeah I haven't put any gifts under trees since the 25th, just figured it would aggravate the problem or possibly risk sending my SP into a void of nothing if somehow the late gifts can't get sent. Better safe than sorry.

Agreed. I stopped putting gifts under trees on the 25th too, didn't wanna further complicate anything.

Uh, if it was causing a problem, they would have disabled the ability to gift still. Patience is the key here, but if you want to be absolutely 100% safe, then I'd just use the gift center from now on. But yeah, supplied the post from Rah, so anyone reading this thread can see that now.

I'm not doing it just in case, but grelca did mention it should be fine as well I believe.