As a 2009er, I have to agree with fellow 2009er iamaqtpie that forum culture is slowly dying and you can see that with people even just suggesting that there is an official discord made instead of keeping in onsite. If people really felt comfortable to chat, they would do it home grown on the site. I really like the bbcode functionalities of the site and CS has a soft place in my heart for teaching rudimentary code to me. I agree that a census needs to be conducted for staff to take a hard took at their demographic and react accordingly. I have a feeling the age base is older than COPPA but still has a healthy number on the young side.
I like tenyangz’s suggestion where there are forums that allow casual chatter, short replies, and the like. It’s just how people usually use discord and it’s been the way communication has changed. I agree that the General Discussion board is too rigid. If it’s not part of a clear question in the title, it gets locked and redirected to another forum that fulfills the over arching idea, instead of just letting that user chat as an individual without jointing the general discussion flow of one post per user/per day.
In the FR general discussion boards, we have “kpop fans?” being the newest, but it doesn’t get locked and redirected. Or there is one called “What are you listening to? Give me recs”. I think the key word is “me”, it’s a personal interaction between a small group of people, not something you just put into the void when I post on “What song are you listening to right now” on CS. There is even a board that says Chicken Smoothie staff are amazing and it got locked for not having a directed discussion topic orz. I think casual chatter is important and will organically help forum activity.
I think pings would also help people reply to each other and create conversation threads as well. Though!! Connect the ping to the id number and not the username because of how people like to change usernames often here.
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Given the issue around mod tones though, I feel like people’s interpretation of coldness or bluntness is a byproduct of how many new people who play come from non forum board environments. Those places might be video sites where it’s easier to get tones across, or people can freely use gifs and emojis. I’m a pet site fossil and hard agree with the way ShorahNagi phrased modding on howrse. It’s a time consuming volunteer position where being straightforward is the easiest way to get someone to understand without needing to double back and rexplain it. Maybe the mods can develop a better copy paste in their arsenal. I like the suggestion where mods type out the warning similar to how they would actually text tone wise. They can still be straightforward but not sound robotic.
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Gosh this will be really long, I have lots of thoughts now that I’m typing things out.
I really like the suggestion of user made items. It adds more community based development that CS has always been known for to me, but everyone always seems to miss when they just start playing because all they see is the adopt a monthly pet series. I have never been a huge trader but I am a huge fan of the forum boards, user driven activities, and user customization. User made items are HUGE on other sites with FR’s user made accents set. They bring in lots of activity and money for people because dressing up dragons are integral to the site. I am not sure how well it will do on CS with how optional the pet side of CS is. I think people making shops will generate some sort of interest and a secondary market for C$. Many people have a lot of C$ but not enough ways to use them and sink them back into the site.
With FR’s user made accents, each sale of 10 prints sinks 50-66% of the gems back into the site and the artist keeps the remaining portion. Accent blueprints are 2500g for 10, artists usually sell the lot for 5000g, while skins are 5000g and they sell for 7500-8000g per lot. I think this forms a huge currency sink if it’s handled well. There will be growing pains at the start by saying it’s too expensive, but when it settles down, I think it will be fine!
If it goes wrong then!! Oh boy you are in trouble. There obviously needs to be an approval queue, but it needs to be streamlined. Dappervolk bungled this step up with month long queues, so the customization market was dead as soon as it started. The items also need to be tradedable to encourage a secondary market of interaction or else it will grow stagnant too. The items should be easy to purchase and easy to handle for everyone, staff and players. I know a storefront like lorwolf was made after they saw how labourious FR’s system was.
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Last big thought, I have taken hiatuses from CS but what always brings me back is the community driven interactions. Closed Species/User made adopts are my favourite aspect of CS and people always seem to overlook that part. It’s just buried in the forums and people who aren’t in the know, never seem to find them, or find them too late. CS has so many free closed species opportunities that I have not seen anywhere else and I would like to see that part grow.
I have seen the popularity of many species rise and fall, but the state of the forums are looking rather sluggish. I think it’s normal for 1-2 big species to dominate at any one time, but would like to see it friendlier to people. It’s a big clique like but that’s only because people don’t apply to adopt these often anymore. Staff Kalons only got a handful of pages for long adopt prompts but 10+ pages for raffles. It’s clear people are still following, just not participating for long adopts. Why is that? What is the barrier to joining? I have always seen closed species as just jump in to join. It’s participating with the communities after that gets a bit dicey.
As an aside, if I wanted to survey people new to closed species, where would I even ask because the oekaki/closed species board is divorced from text only boards. If I wanted to just talk about closed species on CS in general without having a pointed question, where would I do that?
I think it’s interesting that a big closed species adopt, Heartcatch, went discord only a few months ago. Partly because artists didn’t want to work with oekaki. I think revising the rules to be more flexible and allow user submitted images be the oekaki image as the adopt would make it more enjoyable to host closed species community hubs on site. There is a concern for image hosting of these off oekaki art, but maybe they can jump through the hoop of uploading to a photo hosting server like imgur first before linking it to CS.
I saw it brought up here, but I think it’s disingenuous to compare success of closed species vs user made adopts by the number of adopts that are made. That’s just not what they are both about. Closed Species take a lot longer, but it’s the hope that the community develop a full fledged character to use in the long run. Re: why aren’t people entering prompt competitions?Usermade adopts can be about personality, but it’s also about collecting and easily customizing it to the moon and back with items. You can see that with how extensive the item catalogues are, like with Wermz. It’s just not that easy with Closed Species where artists draw items on with oekaki instead of editing it in a different program.
All in all, I would love to see a revamp and revival of oekaki boards to make it more obvious to new players and sweep existing players into the fold who only noticed the pet side and not the forum board side. Easier said than done since this needs coding, but even just finding a space to talk about closed species and invite new people in would be great.
I have been around the block, and CS is doing well compared to other pet sites, 500 users per day is still impressive compared to sites like khimeros, aywas, felisfire, etc. Even the relatively new dappervolk only has 250 users a day. It seems dire because we are in the middle of it, but CS has already weathered a lot. It just needs to keep going and retain its user base!!
FR is just a powerhouse and what I call the international trading pet site because if you trade into FR gems, you can trade out to literally any other pet site that allows it because of how strong it is.
thanks for reading!
