Dear Tess and Nick

[nyabeille]

this is not meant to be taken as an attack, as hostile, or as anything malicious. thank you for understanding my
concerns.

i've been a user on this website for a while, longer if you count old accounts. i still remember the giddy feeling i got when i adopted some of my first pets, excited to see them grow up. excited to see the designs. this site has definitely shaped and changed me, and i thank you both for being such a big part of my childhood.
i understand that running a pet adoptable site with 49 official staff members, with an additional (active) 14 guest artists, is hard. i know that you guys work very hard to make the game enjoyable for everyone, to moderate and handle all the cogs and gears behind the scenes. y'all are even addressing the issues with the oekaki categorizing, which i love and appreciate.

however.


- this is a link to site suggestions, active / declined. the very first active suggestion is from 2011, with 8 pages of support. another suggestion, further down, from 2014, still active with 13 pages of support. another is one tess personally commented on involving the 'delete pet' option, still active with 29 pages of support.
and so forth.

- a personal suggestion of mine, a ramadan event.
seeing as some of the arguments were:


We do not particularly celebrate specific holidays regularly other than New Year, CS Birthday, Easter, Halloween and Christmas/Hannukah. Anything else is not mandatory and may or may not be left out. Because CS is so universal it would be impossible to do everything but also unfair to do some things repeatedly for fear of making others feel left out.
- Vampiric, 2011, on the topic of a Thanksgiving Event


yet after this comment, in 2014 we had a thanksgiving event, as well as a mardi gras event in 2012. i feel its only fair to consider and implement atleast once, a ramadan event.
i don't want this post to be too textheavy, so for more information please read through the thread. it shares a lot of good information regarding ways to go about the event, from muslim cs users, as well as others.

- this post, this post and this post highlight the main reason im reaching out like this. heres a quote of mine from the first post:


mods are busy with everything else, i feel as if suggestions get pushed all the way to the end of the chain, the backburner if you will. some get implemented, talked on, but there has been a plethora of great suggestions that have been on this forum long enough to have the coding done for it. its just the admins don't pay attention to this. they pay attention to the site as a whole, the community, money, and their own livelihoods. with everything on nicks plate, im not surprised he doesnt hop onto the suggestion forum once a week to review all the great suggestions.
hiring more coders would be the most beneficial action, right next to increasing community communication with the people who actually created the site. sometimes it feels like tess and nick are more figureheads now, not actual admins.

nobody is doing anything wrong. all the community asks for, is communication between admins and users. more updates on the front page, interact with different users. actually acknowledge the suggestions instead of mentally acknowledging it and putting it on a to-do list. tell us what you're planning, thinking, keep us in the loop.


at the end of the day, i know tess and nick dont owe anybody anything. but the lack of response has been dismal. i'd also like to clarify to anybody who it might pertain to (like vampiric) i hold nothing against you. things change, that's why i feel it's so important for this to be addressed. all my love goes to you both for making this site a reality, and i really do appreciate all you do.

TL;DR / plethora of unacknowledged suggestions, dating back as far as 2011, event suggestions/backtracking on statements and lack of communication/community.

[Flatterina]

To be honest I'm starting to believe they don't really care too much. I've posted my suggestion around one and a half months ago and there has been no reaction whatsoever.
You'd imagine that if a mod or admin assistant saw the post, they'd let the admins know. I can't imagine they haven't heard or seen of it at all, and therefore they must know it's an important topic to us.
But there's no reply and no acknowledgement, and to me that sounds like communication isn't a priority to the admin team at all, which is super sad.

[Tailish]

Support in full.

I also wanted to agree that the conversation that's been set up with the Oekaki boards is great! Knowing that the staff acknowledges and responding to user input is absolutely wonderful, and I'd love to see more of these interactions in the future. However, it would also be great if there were a process for acknowledging and responding to existing suggestions. This board exists, after all, so it would be great to see it put to proper use.

whoops ninja'd by flatterina
I... honestly did expect more response to your post as well, Flatterina, especially since it's not the first of these. It's entirely possible that the mods/admins have seen these posts and are working on a way to implement a solution. Unfortunately, we haven't heard anything either way... which is exactly the issue.

[nyabeille]

To be honest I'm starting to believe they don't really care too much. I've posted my suggestion around one and a half months ago and there has been no reaction whatsoever.
You'd imagine that if a mod or admin assistant saw the post, they'd let the admins know. I can't imagine they haven't heard or seen of it at all, and therefore they must know it's an important topic to us.
But there's no reply and no acknowledgement, and to me that sounds like communication isn't a priority to the admin team at all, which is super sad.

i'd like to hope otherwise, but it's been too long for a timely response to our threads (suggestions, all of it). i know for a fact that an admin assistant saw my ramadan thread, there's no reason to think they haven't seen these posts. for tess to at least leave a reply that they're working on communication would be enough, but its radio silence on this topic.

Support in full.

I also wanted to agree that the conversation that's been set up with the Oekaki boards is great! Knowing that the staff acknowledges and responding to user input is absolutely wonderful, and I'd love to see more of these interactions in the future. However, it would also be great if there were a process for acknowledging and responding to existing suggestions. This board exists, after all, so it would be great to see it put to proper use.

whoops ninja'd by flatterina
I... honestly did expect more response to your post as well, Flatterina, especially since it's not the first of these. It's entirely possible that the mods/admins have seen these posts and are working on a way to implement a solution. Unfortunately, we haven't heard anything either way... which is exactly the issue.

mhm!! when i saw they had started taking polls for changes to the oekaki forum i was really happy - but to say i didn't take a double take, would be a lie. of all things to address, they choose art boards? it felt odd to me. i love that they're doing it, but why not at least acknowledge us? or other suggestions?
i agree, of course moderators are on this board a lot, but they aren't who this is mainly addressed to.
i'd also like to emphasize what you said here, cuz it speaks real loud:


It's entirely possible that the mods/admins have seen these posts and are working on a way to implement a solution. Unfortunately, we haven't heard anything either way... which is exactly the issue.



it really does hurt that they haven't responded. i understand it isnt as small as a community as it was before, therefore interaction is harder on a more individual basis, but.. :')

[Seasonal]

I'm sorry, but I feel this topic is beginning to seem more like a rant about ignored suggestions rather than an actual suggestion to improve the site.

Staff are hesitant to post on these topics because it is not our place to speak on behalf of Tess or Nick, nor can we assist with the addition of site features. I can assure you that Nick is incredibly active behind the scenes and he regularly fixes things around the site whenever needed.

I understand where these concerns come from, as I have been a part of many websites - as both a regular player and as a staff member - where admins were nearly nonexistent. I can promise you that our admin team is active. I cannot speak on anyone's behalf of adding certain features, but I think it is important to remember that Chicken Smoothie is not similar to other games like Flight Rising where content is added frequently. CS is a game about collecting pets and having a finite number of things to obtain; it is unlikely that features that dramatically impact the game are going to be added. This is often why suggestions are not considered (I understand that these are different from smaller, "quality of life" suggestions).

I cannot guarantee that any particular suggestions will be added as, again, it is not my place to speak on behalf of the admin team. However, I can promise you that many staff members have read these topics, and we want to find an answer that satisfies the community without making false promises or speaking on behalf of other team members.