So the forum groups were meant to replace cults and serve as a sort of guild/friendgroup/community option that made life easier, especially for artists and people with manymany friends. But sadly, they kind of fell a bit short with some things. I've seen topics pop up here and there with various ideas, but nothing really got done and the topics gradually got buried under other suggestions. Figured I might as well make a masterpost to try and keep things grouped together. [sub]No pun intended.[/sub]

Existing topics up to 15 pages back will be linked so that locking and cleanup is easier for the minimods if/when a particular suggestion is implemented!

If you have your own ideas or suggestions, post away! Or give me a nudge through comments or sMail if you're shy. I'll gladly add more suggestions to the first post! Feedback and discussions about any listed suggestions are also appreciated! And without further ado... Here it is: The List.

[box=#ccdfec]💖 QoL updates[/box] 🌟 Forum group tutorial - thank you, ! "You have certain options when you create groups and I would like definitions of those (like group joining options). What privileges an owner has vs an admin. What the results are of hitting the tick boxes when you post. Which options are permanent and which can be modified later. And many more!"

🌟 Suggest QoL/important ping groups to non-members - thank you, !

Siteupdate, # Tinyupdate, # Deadline, # News and a few other very useful groups easily belong in this section. List the official update groups first, then list the others based on member number, or number of pings, or something.

🌟 View a user's groups If I want to be nosy see if my friends are members of any cool groups, I should be able to go to their profile and see which groups they're a member/owner/admin of. Groups that you're both members of should have a little message notification of that, private groups should be displayed by name/owner, but inaccessible to non-members.

🌟 Limit number of pings per day New group admin option - you can set it so the group can only be pinged every X hours (up to 72) after the last ping.

🌟 Clearly list important information - (sparked by this site feedback topic), thank you, ! Currently, it's not listed anywhere that the max number of groups you can own is 20. That should definitely be clearly listed on the Your Groups page. Ideally, it would be added along with some kind of highlight for groups you've created to make it easier to find & delete groups you no longer use. The same goes for any currently unlisted rules & notes that apply to forum groups, either owned or in general. Please list this information either on the Your Groups page, or on the Create A Group page.

🌟 Revamp the "Your Groups" page to be more user-friendly and accessible - a good thread with a light visual example - thank you, !

🌟 Cleaner display of your status within a group - thank you, ! Are you the owner? An admin? A mod? A trusted user? Organize the Your Groups page into three categories so it's easier to tell at a glance!

🌟 Quicker way to mute groups from pings - thank you ! An easier way to mute form groups would be very nice, especially for those with lots of groups during site events. In the Your Groups page, there could be a little icon to mute/unmute group pings without going into individual groups. Example

🌟 Being able to favorite groups

Example image of overhauled Your Groups page with favorites, ping muting & categorization based on your member status in that group Highlights:

• favorited groups show up first in that group category
• you can quickly leave lots of groups without reloading the page. An "Are You Sure?" popup is up to staff's discretion.
• you cannot quick-leave groups you own, you need to delete them from the group's admin panel page
• quickly mute/unmute group pings
• "last pinged" so you know which groups are active at a glance

🌟 Confirmation for leaving a group - thank you, !

🌟 Display birthday cake icon in groups - (relevant to suggestion) - thank you, ! What it says on the tin!

[box=#ccdfec]🔍 Search updates[/box] 🌟 Paginated search results/updates to the search option I really don't want to be immediately slapped in the face with 200+ CW groups if I search for the term "CW". It does not make my PC happy and my phone would probably combust.

If there are no results for a particular search, the page should reflect that and give a "sorry, no forum groups found! :(" message instead of staying blank.

Fun fact: if you search for "sarah", no quotes, the search page breaks and displays no results. Additionally, storing sP in forum groups to get at Sarah's quests is a big nono, especially for quest-a-thons, so staff might want to look into sorting that out. This is confirmed to be a bug: link to bug topic - thank you, !

🌟 Customize search variables If I want a small group with a specific range of members (2-50), no private groups displayed, food groups only - let me specify what I'm searching for.

🌟 Toggle in/out of search results Because maybe I don't want my private group to show up on search results. Alternatively, exclude private groups from search results by default.

[box=#ccdfec]💰 Bank updates[/box] 🌟 Make the bank more user-friendly - (relevant to suggestion, old topic), (relevant to suggestion, old topic) A history log, so that admins know who exactly donated and who took sP out, when they did it and how much was added/removed. PIN protection for donating/withdrawing money to a group bank. Disabling the bank if the group doesn't need one to prevent accidental donations.

🌟 Being able to see which group bank you are donating to with a single glance. I don't always see the tab title, nor can I remember the individual IDs of the forum groups I'm in.

🌟 Bank should only be visible to members Ain't nobody's business except my members and Subeta staff's how much I got in my forum group bank.

🌟 Shared items ??? Does this even work? What is this even? If it works, more info about it would be appreciated because I have no idea what it's even supposed to do.

🌟 An item bank/group shop - thank you, ! Very useful for raffles, donation runs, or even lotteries. Ideally with an enable/disable toggle for those who aren't interested in holding those activities.

🌟 Make group banks count toward owner's onhand sP If you are a group admin or owner, the group's bank should count toward your account total. Too messy and too easy to exploit, gave it some thought after pointed out the issue with Richest User achievements. Could also cause issues for members who are admins of certain groups, effectively locking them out of Sarah's quests for quest-a-thons.

[box=#ccdfec]👓 Owner/admin updates[/box] 🌟 More "staff" ranks - (relevant to suggestion) If I have a small group and I want to make someone a minimod/trusted user rank so they can double-post, but I don't quite want to make them admin, I should be able to do so. And on that note...

🌟 Customize "staff"/member permissions and abilities Maybe I want my admins to have complete bank access. Maybe my group is small enough that I want my regular members to be able to double-post. Or maybe I'm just throwing ideas at the wall to see what sticks.

🌟 More customization in group descriptions I can't make text bold, italic, nothing. I can't add emojis. Hitting enter to create multiple paragraphs doesn't work. Literally can't do shit to make my group description look a little more interesting.

Add a character limit to this, if there isn't one already, and let us customize, at least a little! Lemme change the background colour, lemme add emojis and limited text formatting for flavor. Custom icons for different subgroups on our forums! IDK if it's just picking from a preset number of them, would like to actually customize 'em. Let me at least be able to link to a forum topic in the main Subeta Groups forum that describes the group more. Also, the group avatars being without a border just looks bad to me, srry. :( Border toggle? Border colour choices? idk, I might've gone off the deep end here.

🌟 Streamline private forum group acceptance - (original topic, old topic)

🌟 Let the group owner invite new members - thank you, ! Add the ability for a group owner to invite a user regardless if the group is set to friends-only, open to all or closed to all. So if you own a private CW group, you can invite someone without having to bother with changing settings, inviting, waiting for them to accept (idk if the invite cancels if you set the group to closed), then changing settings back. To prevent abuse, limit the number of invites that can be sent in a day, or add a toggle in site settings to disable receiving group invites.

🌟 A page that displays invites you've sent out - thank you,

🌟 Sort events by ping group - (relevant to suggestion, old topic)

[box=#ccdfec]💬 Group forum updates[/box] 🌟 Limit custom forum access/admin-only subforums If I'm running a roleplay forum group and we have a plot going on that only me and the other 2-5 admins have knowledge of, having a way to set a topic (or a subforum) as "STAFF ONLY" would be rly useful to discuss plot stuff, private group goings-on, and whatnot.

🌟 More forums - (relevant to suggestion), (more recent topic) Set the soft max at 5 please, possibly make it so you can buy more than 5 with sP or a small amount of CSC (50? 100?). It would help and users wouldn't need to make multiple groups in order to have extra forum space. Especially useful for very big groups.

🌟 Subforums for group forums - (relevant to suggestion) Because it would be super useful. A limit of 3 for each group forum, maybe?

🌟 Better custom forum organization & customization - thank you, ! Drag'n'drop sorting, or any easier way to sort custom forums instead of forcing it to be alphabetical. Custom subforum descriptions! Because sometimes you just wanna get creative. Easier navigation between forums without having to go back to the main forum group page.

[box=#ccdfec]✨ New features[/box] 🌟 Subgroups - thank you, ! Existing topic with a lot more info. Keep the discussion of subgroups there please!

🌟 Claiming inactive group hashtags This is kind of an odd one, but people asked for it so herewego: If a group hasn't been pinged in 2 years and the owner hasn't been on in 1 year, the group's hashtag should become inactive. When a group goes inactive, a user can fill a ticket and get permission to claim the hashtag for their own group, like one does with petnames and usernames. The old group would get a string of numbers added to their hashtag.

🌟 Theme "tags" for various groups - no idea how feasible it is Think WAY BACK to when interests were a thing on Subeta and you could find people with similar interests as you. So if you run a food-themed forum group, you could tag it with food, dessert, sweets, whatnot, so that people get the result for it even if your group name has nothing to do with food. Limited number of tags to prevent tag-spamming with irrelevant shit. (srry, don't want ur group tagging ALL THE SHIT to get to the top of every search result) Example: Nerdy Noms as a forum group name. Group specializes in real life recipes made to resemble gaming foods as close as possible. To make it easier for people to get it via search results, group admin could put these in the theme tags: food, dessert, gaming, video game, recipe.

🌟 A direct chat option Subeta was testing something like this a while back, but it kind of died. Quickly. Not the slightest idea what became of it. Considering most users are likely to go to Discord or Skype for ease of use when it comes to group chats because they're WAY faster than forums, this might be something to consider to keep users on-site. If it hasn't been taken out to the eternal pastures already, that is.

[box=#ccdfec]📓 Other[/box]

Good suggestions!

1. Don't know if there's any interest but I made this suggestion before: Birthday Icon, groups

2. Another suggestion I would like to see: Group tutorial of sorts. You have certain options when you create groups and I would like definitions of those (like group joining options). What privileges an owner has vs an admin. What the results are of hitting the tick boxes when you post. Which options are permanent and which can be modified later. And many more!

3. Paginated search results/updates to the search option: fun fact any time you search for a word beginning with "s" you will break the search page and get no results. I don't know why, its a really, really weird glitch that has existed for a long time. That's why you can't search for "sarah." ! Forum Group Search

4. Shared items does not and never has worked. It was something put in at the very beginning, part of the original idea of changing cults to groups. It was never fleshed out/fixed or removed. I'm not even sure what I would like to see here - just make it go away or create some functionality.

5. Other ideas that may or may not be feasible. An item bank - where people could donate items, like for draws and so forth. Possibly a group shop where only members can 'buy' from the shop. These could be a function of the "shared items" if they ever finish working on it, or something new.

6. a better/easier way to find groups. Imagine a new user, joins today. What groups do they pick? How do they know where to even start - things like bathhouse pings, token shop pings, siteupdate, etc. Not even talking activities and fun here, but truly useful groups.

As long as it's only for Sarah. I don't want this total to show up on my dashboard since I feel like it isn't quite mine. I also feel like that would make it easier for the richest user achievement, which Staff may not like?

Couple of Suggestions:

Can we have the ability to drag and drop what forums we do have? It's only alphabetical right now. The forum group I have is one for biters during Survival, and I would like to have the 'Survival' part of my forum group be first during Survival, without having to fiddle with forum name.

Similar to your suggestion of group descriptions, I would like to describe my forums too.

When you go to your forum groups (in the forums drop down menu), it would be nice if the groups you are the owner of/admin of were separated from groups you're just a part of.

And I don't know how to 'fix' this problem, but I feel like it should be easier to move between forums? It feels kind of clunky to have to go back to the main forum group page just to go to the other forum.

Added most of your suggestions!

I still have no idea what to even start with the shared items feature. I guess it was meant as a kind of special group wearable that people only in that forum group had access to. Kind of like a club uniform, or something. I don't really see the point of it, but that could just be me. x)

Yeah, you bring up a very good point and it's kind of... pointless and overcomplicated, ahaha. :'D Good in theory, impossible in practice, so I'm axing that. Thank you for pointing it out! I've added your suggestions to the first post.

Full support for these suggestions! Forum groups need a lot of work imo and these suggestions would be super helpful.

Technically, you can see a user's groups if you know their userID (but the links to the groups don't work and it's also just a weird page). Here's yours: link

Yeah I never really understood that sharing thing either.

Of course, I never really understood groups - thought they were kind of silly actually. Then I started using them, mostly the ping groups, and found that pretty helpful. Then I started using them more and I'm beginning to see way more potential.

LOL now I think they're really limited and we can do so much more!! Its been a really interesting learning experience.

-casually lurks-

There are tons of possible forum group names still available, but sometimes there are forum groups that are old and unused that have very nice hashtag names.

I think that a forum group should be logged into at least once a year. If not, their hashtag should be up for grabs like usernames and petnames are.

Like the owner has to visit its main page or that it doesn't have any posts or pings in a year?

yes I like the way you wrote it better!

I just think that groups should be cleared when the account is inactive, just like pets and usernames. I don't know why users who haven't been on in three years and have had their accounts cannibalized still have their forum groups.

@ bug 👀 Heyo! Glad to see you're feeling better!

@ avel There's an issue with inactive groups getting wiped, or having numbers added to them like claimed petnames/usernames do. I'll try to put it into words, but don't hold your breath. :'|

Owners cannot simply pass on ownership of a group on to another member without deleting and remaking the group. So even if someone decides to quit the site and wants pass the group on to trusted friends, it's not possible to pass ownership on. So if the user owning # TSRestock quits, a year goes by and someone new grabs the hashtag for whatever reason, the old original group would end up being or w/e, which would kinda make things confusing and weird and messy to ping.

Words are hard rn, but I hope at least half of that made sense. [edit]I'll reply & add the suggestions once brain stops feeling like glop.

@ Frost I see the option to transfer ownership when I view my group members (only under admins) - does that not actually work? Or does it delete the group?

And I didn't know you could delete groups. I was looking to delete one (I just made to test something but I dunno for that testing is going anywhere), but I couldn't figure out how to do it.

[edit] Nevermind, I found the delete button. I'll be using the group to test the ownership thing though.

Also, just because a group's owner becomes inactive, it doesn't mean the group itself becomes inactive.

My own posting frenzy group could remain active without me. There are a bunch of admins and its set to accept any new members automatically. I set it up to be as sustainable as possible.

Another group I'm a member of has its owner on something of a hiatus, and yet the group is still very active.

If you want to clear old groups I would recommend two conditions:

1. The owner has been inactive at least 1 year.
2. The group has not had either a ping or forum post in 2 years.

Even then, I'm not convinced its necessary. I'm a member of yet another group that is completely inactive - I'm not sure of the owner's status - that's simply sitting there waiting for a certain event to come to pass.

👍 Good luck! Let me know what you find, because I could very easily be wrong on ownership transfers (would like to know if I am, too :'D), but afaik there's always been issues with those.

Aha, good find! I had no idea that page existed. It could definitely do with a bit of attention, like integrating it into the site layout and making it... not ugly, and have it actually link to the groups. ;P I'll add it to the first post!

You've nailed what was rattling in my brain! And the two conditions would both be very nice for determining whether a group's hashtag gets cleared. Because I have a tiny writing group that's migrated to Discord and I haven't pinged it onsite in quite some time. Having both of those set as requirements for a clearing would prevent accidental wipes.

I'm not convinced this is necessary either, but I guess it could work for groups that are absolutely and completely dead and not just seasonal?

I stumbled upon it while googling random things one day and was all 'yeahhh, more ways to stalk people' (not really) so I bookmarked it. XD It's handy for when you get those random group pings that you're not allowed to go to. Idk.

Also, just going to casually leave this here because it's relevant, although I haven't checked if these are doubles or not (from The list of usability and random improvement 2.0):

Finally, a lot of links to groups tend to just link to the main forum page for some reason. I'd like the links to work in general. x)

Ownership transfers can happen without the group being deleted, but it can only be transferred to an admin. You also get an event for it, which is pretty nifty. My group was only two members big but I always saw the option for the admins of my other group (four admins and about 50 members total).

I transferred to my friend and he transferred it back to me in a couple of minutes. I don't think a cool down is necessary but maybe people feel differently.

It also kind of messes up the members page a bit - I was still in the first slot while my friend was in the second despite being the owner. Maybe it's just a cache issue though?

Thank you for taking the time to experiment. I've also seen that button, but didn't want to experiment in my group. I'd wondered if the button worked.

the biggest issue for me is determining if the group is in fact dead. I don't think it can be done automatically like account clearing. I think it depends a lot on what groups get used for. Maybe if someone really has their heart set on a certain ping name, that they can submit a ticket and staff can take a look at it? Maybe?

You're welcome.

I also think that might be the best course. No sense in getting rid of a group if nobody even wants their ping name, and Staff can see a lot more than we can.

YEAH that's another thing I would really like clarified - when you get a random-ass ping, it should tell you which private group pinged you so that you can go snoop investigate.

I'll add some of those to the first post later. Though I am hesitant to add the one about private group posts being invisible because people can get up to rule-breaking things and nobody in their group will report 'em for it, but another user seeing those posts might.

Thank you for testing it and reporting back! :'D Now I know that it works, but it could use a few small tweaks. Like making the user list un-broken, or adding something like "creator/former owner" to your UN in the group member list when you transfer ownership.

True. I think I'll avoid adding that one to the first post, then. Instead, I'll add your idea that it should be possible to have staff look into the hashtag of a particular group and if it's eligible for "clearing", maybe other users will have something else to add to it.