I'm working on the new forums, and paying particular attention to the new Forum Search. Search is something we've had not work great over the entire history of the site, and is something I'd like to priortize making sure we get right this time around.

What that requires is "indexing" all of our posts, taking their content and making it searchable by a piece of software built for that. If we had millions of posts with different information in them, this would be an exciting problem! Unfortunately, we've encouraged one piece of social activity that has made it hard for the system to do this indexing, and that's our holiday threads, like:

(This not me calling out the users listed here, it's just the screenshot I managed to take!)

Each of these posts has to be indexed (and kept up to date) with a single word entry, and the same word (making it impossible to search for the word claim in any other context). It creates huge boards that don't have any social or communicating priority, but have a lot of activity otherwise.

So I'm wondering, is there a feature we could build to prevent the need for these kinds of threads? A place where you can add 10 people and have it automatically trick or treat those in the background, or put yourself into the random queue somehow to be presented to another user more frequently? I'd love to have something to give to replace this kind of board, instead of just making a rule that it isn't allowed!

(This post looks better on the Kumos forums: https://kumos.subeta.net/forums/t/938003/feedback-needed-holiday-claim-threads)

Possibly dumb question: could you just have the index exclude the holiday forums? Maybe the “Games” forum too since that one also gets a lot of spam. But each holiday forum is temporary and gets cleared between events so I’m not sure including them in the search function is even worth it when they’re only around for a few weeks, then become inaccessible.

I think for some holidays a feature like this could be really amazing.

However I think the one holiday it wouldn’t be useful for would be luminaire and the tree filling threads. Those ones are a little more complex than just claiming to use an event feature, many people have different gift pricing levels, some are just for sP items, some are just CWs, and some of us check WLs before we claim so I’m not sure if a feature would even be possible for that.

That being said there’s always some scamming with those threads too which does dampen the mood :(

i agree that the threads probably aren't the coolest way to use the forums function and could be shifted elsewhere (an autoqueue system you load with the people you want to tot, kiss, dance, flower, egg, tp, whatever sounds nice!), though i'm not really sure how you could encourage chatting with that function. i guess creating an 'event group' where you want to fill all the group slots so you can use the autofunction to rotate through each house group (with moro as an example), but that would still lean on people wanting to encourage chatting within those groups. maybe you get bonus event rewards for (substantial...?) posts in a group-formed thread?

i also wonder if chatting could be encouraged in eg contest event threads by automating those to some extent? there's quite a lot of admin involved (for the contest holder and those entering - having to keep track of entries, who's winning, claimed prizes etc), so would probably be handy if there were some kind of system maybe built into the forum topics that could link to number of tots, gifts sent or whatever. maybe not plausible with the systems we have as i know contests often use not just the event function but giftboxes as well, plus may include the host asking you to tot their friends as well and that might get messy coding-wise(??), but thought i'd bring it up anyway! reducing the amount of times someone need to post to update their counts, prize claims, whatever might be handy and could encourage people just having a yap in the contest threads each day of the holiday instead of having to focus on numbers etc.

In my perfect world, without these huge claim threads that stick at the top of the threads, that instead we'd have threads of users trying to find the new algorithm for houses, or discussing the holiday in general.

In fact, a lot of those discussions happen now, just in the middle of the claim threads while folks are bored / chatting in between the 'game'.

I think one thing to at least keep in mind while making a feature is that claim threads are useful because it's a 'give and get' system, assuming everybody actually does what they're supposed to do. One post gives you a chance of getting currency or items twice. People are probably not going to move onto a feature if there's isn't a give and get back system.

Also adding to what is saying with the biting threads too. I like to think they aren't too spammy since it's a bunch of people working together to give people the strains they want, so I hope they're excluded from this sort of feedback.

I'm gonna second this - if it's largely the holiday forums then those can just be excluded, problem (mostly) solved since they're pretty ephemeral.

Could we make those 'claim' threads a SUBforum within a holiday forum, and just have the forum search code thingy exclude the claim subforum?

This would also shoo those claim topics away from the more communicative topics in the main holiday forum and not bump them down and out of sight.

Is there any way of just including the forums that have information that people would actually need to look for? For example, Announcements, Site Feedback, Help, Problems and Bugs and Battle?

Besides excluding elements of the ephemeral holiday forums, others could also be missed out. For example, Achievements, Games and sub forums such as Avatar Contests and Games. I've just made a post in the topic How many HA likes do YOU have? but this thread doesn't have important information that anyone would need to search for.

Survival kiss the user above, bite the user above Vesnali flower the user above Masq dance w. the user above Moro TOT the user above, Egg the user above, TP the user above Lumi Hmm, I think Disasters' is right about Lumi. The first thing that comes to my mind is the "empty trees" threads where trees with few or no gifts are posted by other users. Separate pricing levels and separate item types also make a single solution for that forum tricky.

I feel like I'm missing some? But maybe not lol.

I'm trying to think about a system that would essentially give you a 100% chance to get a "return" click for clicking on someone else (hopefully that makes sense). For some this seems possible with a system where we add ourselves to a group / queue and then it just loops through that queue so each time the next person clicks, their action is to the person who clicked before them? In that case (vs going through from person 1 to person 10 for example) it would still mean that those clicking more would have more event activities, vs someone adding to queue, clicking once, and then getting a ton of return clicks while the others who are more active don't get as many. (Again, hopefully that makes sense my brain is tired). I think having it go to the person in the group who last clicked, not "next in line order of added to group" would also make sense for things like flowering where you have to have flowers to give.

Bite is another outlier, but I think with the strains now the biting is less "claim above" and more "who has X strain" and then those people are asked to bite others? I could be wrong though.

I'm not sure what can or cannot be done with coding, so idk if it's possible to exclude boards with "the user above" in the title from being included in the search. Though now that I think of it that may end up excluding some user run game boards that you wouldn't want excluded. IDK if code can easily do "exclude XYZ title phrase if it is on XYZ forum"? Perhaps requesting that users post a specific emoji or unique phrase on these vs "claim" such as a tree or present emoji for lumi?

Edit: Or Magic's idea!

Going off what Magic said, I do like the idea of a sub forum for the Holiday / Event games / contests! For example, there are several users who host great events each holiday such as HA contests or a point system for each TOT. A subforum for each holiday would mean that these are also separated from the event discussions.

Perhaps this is a good idea to try out along with the kind of system you're brainstorming? Something where we can "join" a queue of, say 25 people, for 48hrs and each time our timer runs out and we click, ours is directed to the last person from our group that clicked (meaning then the next person in the group would "tot" at our house)? And after 48hrs we're "booted" and we can elect to join again? I think this can be tricky with TOT item delivery system as it is now, so we'd have to also look at how to make sure people have equal chance of getting items even if they join a group vs clicking random on their own. Like if everyone in the group were from this event's groups 10 and 4 that would limit what items you could get for 48 hours. Hmm, the other challenge would be if one person was active at periods where others aren't though - like if I'm on for two hours and no one else in my group is I would be missing out on all the "return" clicks I would get from a "claim above" board.

I have one problem with "useful" threads on the holiday forums, and that's that the forums are removed and all content deleted after the holiday. I'd much rather the useful threads go someplace that stick around. Or keep the holiday threads year-round and let people chat in them all the time so our guides don't disappear.

Can holiday forums have their own search function? Can individual threads be added to the search function, as a kind of opt-in, so by default the claim threads are removed? Random thoughts, no idea how practical they are.

It's also worth noting that the claim threads are where most of my forum points come from these days. Removing claiming threads is going to be a big drop in forum use without a boost to make up for it.

edit: Sorry for the pings, forgot to remove the @ !

Edit: " You got a forum point while making a post! Check out the shop here!" Lmao

I was thinking about forum points too. And while it's not actual conversation, the claim threads can get folks onto the forums for the first time.

What kind of useful or high quality posts are you looking for in the holiday forums? I think brings up a good point about these not being accessible year-round, so maybe that's something to think about depending on what kind of posts you're thinking of? I like what you're saying, but don't know if I'm envisioning the same "end product" lol

I don't think there are a lot of biting the above threads now that we have the bite groups and the dedicate thread for those. It's less 'claim' and more 'I would like x, y, z strain' and they would ping the associated groups to bring those people in. We also do a lot of troubleshooting in our NVLB threads, like walking people through each step of the process and making sure they're actually getting what they want. The FAQ thread is okay but either people don't read it or they don't understand how it relates until they start going through the steps and make a mistake somewhere that we correct.

It should also be worth noting that there is no other way to bite unless somebody posts on the Survival thread somewhere. Like, it's these bite threads that our NVLB makes or the bite claim threads or you're wasting three days of Survival getting infected on your own.

In addition to this, I don't have a huge social group on this site! Holdiay interaction with the user above threads are a way for me to take part in the holiday without needing to already know a lot of people. Likewise, they're a great "in" to the holiday for new users who don't know a lot of other players yet. This way I don't have to come up with a list of however many people I know to add to a queue (who may not even be active anymore!) and I also get to interact with a wide variety of houses for different prize groups (morostide) or see lots of cool and creative HAs (masq).

I was going to say something similar to in regard to the forum points. Some people still need a lot and there’s only a chance of getting them while posting. Taking away the "claim" threads (which is basically the only place I get forum points from tbh) would slow that progress down immensely.

I can’t say I like the idea of forcing myself to make conversations I probably don’t want to make in order to make a quality-non-spam post for a chance of a forum point. Some people are chatty and friendly and can talk about anything, some people are reserved and kinda just keep to themselves.

Other than the occasional post for help or selling/buying I only really use forums for the events claims stuff - but going to those posts makes me look at other topics sometimes. So in a way it kinda brings people in?

What has absolutely, utterly rendered me speechless beyond all hope for the time I've been here... is that fact that if I take the time to write out a post in an event thread like for dances or whatever... inevitably, because I took the time to write a post that isn't going to be considered spam... I'll be five pages down and have to navigate from the top of the new page to the bottom of the old page to get the person I was technically going to do the event action with.

And I somehow get skipped over in the process.

In short, if there's a random option where I can outright skip the forum part, I will take the random part even if it's a 5-15 minute wait between actions over being outright, blatantly skipped in some cases.

I support the idea of claim threads getting their own sub forum within the main holiday forum.