🔍 Improvement: Forum points now reward starting conversations. We retired the old random-chance forum-point system (where you'd occasionally get a point for any reply, including one-word forum-game posts). Now: the first new topic you start each day in a Social Scene forum earns you 1 forum point. If five different people reply to your topic, you get a +3 bonus. Staff and recognized users still award +1/+3/+5 on great posts anywhere. This was always meant to reward activity and building community on the forums, and this is more in line with using it as a carrot to drive activity.
👑 New Feature: Five new forums for movies, music, books, games, and life! We've revived the Social Scene category with five new homes for the stuff you actually want to talk about: 🎬 Screen & Stage (TV/movies/streaming), 🎵 Sound Booth (music/concerts/podcasts), 📖 Library (books/comics/manga), 🎮 Game Night (video & board games), and 🌿 Life Outside Subeta (photos, hobbies, what you're up to). Start a fresh topic in any of them and tell us what you've been into.
🎨 Visual Update: Prompt cards in Social Scene forums. Each Social Scene forum now opens with a "this week, try writing about…" card with three rotating ideas, a prominent "Start a topic" button, and a list of the freshest recent threads — to help break the mega-thread reflex and make it easy to start something new.
- 📖 Improvement: New "How Forum Points Work" guide page. There's a full explanation of how to earn and spend forum points, including what changed and how staff recognition works, at /help/forum-points.php.
Awesome, that sounds like JACK CARDALE will be getting a lot more visitors, since he is the forum shopkeeper! Maybe he could get a more personable greeting, or some little explanation of why he is the forum shopkeeper, lol? I've just always wondered. And always welcome more Jack Cardale lore. Maybe some new items at some point too, although I think many of us have a lot of catching up to do with the items already there still.
Popularity contest?
I can see what you mean. But it will also disrupt conversations and chatty threads and lead to a lot more "dead" only opener post threads. Maybe not remove the random chance entirely? It will also prevent people from looking first if their topic has been covered before instead of immediadetly posting. I don't remember when I last created a topic - usually I found others had already adressed it so I posted on their threads.
I see the idea behind this, but I don't really like the concept of everyone opening new topics for points, while the random conversations die out. I wouldn't open a new topic if the chances are high that nobody would interact with me, even if I'd get forum points, just because it's so disheartening.
Do we only get the forum points if we start a new thread in Social Scene, not any other part of the forums? That seems a little strange that we get rewarded for talking about non-Subeta-related topics, but not anything actually related to the site. (I also disagree with removing randomly rewarded forum points as well, which seemed to be very rare to begin with, but others have already addressed that.)
And what are "recognized users"? I never even knew that that +1/3/5 thing was to reward forum points to other users, but how do we get to be "recognized" so we can do this?
Oh n/m the question about "recognized users"; the help page explains it. The staff chooses who gets to be a recognized user "when they notice you consistently picking out posts that make the forums better." Now my question is, what does "picking out posts" mean? How do we pick out a good post to get recognized, other than awarding points to it... which we can't do if we haven't been recognized? ^^;
I do see the idea behind this, as the forums are a bit stagnant. A refresh is a great idea. However, I don't think the balance is quite right. It will kill threads that are going strong. The the one word games, or saying thank you, is still valid interaction. I don't start anything new unless there's a real point to it, because I don't want to just spam. I also think the 200 characters requirement is a bit steep. What if someone wanted to just post a question? That would count the whole thread out. And, if I understand it correctly, there's no incentive for anyone to participate in a thread you started anyway.
So this is encouraging people to make random spammy threads just to get points...? I don't see the point, especially since unless I'm misreading it, it sounds like this only rewards the thread creator and not anyone posting on it? I very rarely make new topics... hell I don't even post on the forums much anyway, but at least before it was nice having a chance of getting a point whenever I DID post. This just sounds like a popularity contest and also encouraging spam? So now we'll have to wade through 300 duplicate topics to find anything? Yeah, not a fan of this one.
I also agree with that it seems strange to be encouraging people to talk about anything BUT the site we're actually on ^^; "the stuff you actually want to talk about" c'mon, we love Subeta, we want to talk about it! like yeah it's nice to be able to talk about other stuff too but you can do that anywhere else on the net, why not reward us for talking about Subeta too?
No, I don't like this. I can only get points if I START threads? No thank you. You're leaving out people who are more on the shy side and don't do that type of stuff.
I liked randomly getting forum points and a lot of the time those "one word game posts" were the only way I got them.
Lame.
Also, the fact that you took something that was si and turned it into something that needs a full page of explanation... should tell you something.
*took something that was
s i m p l e I can't post the word S I M P L E????
Wow I just got HUGE neopets vibes there. Gonna need to just leave for a bit, that's just ick
So you want me to go out and start a ton of stupid threads every day in order to get the forum points? I swear I have never posted only closely as much as I have since our input on Kumos was asked for - just to help build it - and continuing now, with the rewrite and the community again being asked for input.
I guess I received most of my points from kissing, dancing etc. during events. I haven't participated in the "try to get forum points" threads very ofte, either.
No, I don't usually talk a lot, not in real life either. And I don't want to start here :-( Opposed to this idea!
See? Things like this can't make me keep my mouth shut :-)
I wondered, where awarding extra points to people had gone - I noticed it and did for a very short time, even though it had caught me by surprise and I had no idea, why it was there all of a sudden, rofl. But that's a nice thing.
This.. really doesn't seem fair. Why only social scene? Why only thread starters?
(Also, I thought to be eligible for forum points, a reply needed to be a certain length. But I may be misremembering that!).
My friends and I have been chatting on the CCA threads since before the forum revamp.. and before the forum revamp before that. We have long, thoughtful conversations daily (well.. give or take. We're all adults, now!). Just because we didn't start the thread, or it's not in the right category (because, let's be honest.. we really are just chit-chatting) they don't count?
This seems like a way to get a lot of spam, instead of actual conversations.
adding to the whole "this feels like a miss" in that why not give the bonus to a thread starter when their thread gets lots of traction, and keep the random chance for regular posts.
and also not limit it to a forum that is not about subeta. those are. weird choices to make, even if i can see the vision. if this is a "temporary system monitoring to see the the functionality/check for bugs/how effective it is" then that would be fine if that were just expressed? (which, would be fine! smart idea, even, before shoving it into the whole forum to see if it breaks anything/if it does in fact lead to either exclusively spam or people boycotting the forums)
Wait so, if we can see the +1/+3/+5 on posts, we can give people forum points for good posts? I didn't even know that's what they meant, let me shower the good folks of Subeta with forum points! I'm not so much a social butterfly, so the chance of me making topics in the Social Scene will be quite slim, even if they would earn points. I'll stick to my habitat in the Help and General ones. ^-^ But if it would help to draw in more people and increase activity to the rest of the forums as well, all good to me!
Adding: I do hope that the random forum points for other categories return! I didn't get that many forum points before anyway, so even a small chance for random ones would be appreciated.
Starting an entirely new conversation is the only way to earn forum points? Not interacting with existing ones?