Suggestions

So many of the events users can take part in on this site are entirely community-run. What makes dom fun? The idea of a MP and lair expansion discount? Or all the raffles and games the community comes up with?

Staff seems eager to try to keep people onsite, instead of them using a third-party website or tool — but disabling mass pings will kneecap communities on here to the point where, if they don't die out completely, will probably be moved to discord anyway because it would be less inconvenient.

Support.

[quote name="Antimoany" date="2023-10-26 13:40:41" ] i'm going to make a prediction: if mass-pings are disabled some time in the future, the forums will stop being the place to find buyers for your skins, and to find cool skins to buy. discord will be, because mass-pings still work on there. GASP will be retooled to use discord users instead of fr (which really will just necessitate changing the question on the google form from "what is your flight rising username?" to "what is your discord account name?") and there will be an official GASP discord server (is there one already?) which you must join in order to get the pings you signed up for and/or to ping others to advertise your skin. and there will be grumblings about this from users like me who detest the way discord is actively making the rest of the web less usable, and is becoming a behemoth of a walled garden that you must either enter in order to access the information you seek; or you must simply accept that the information is not available to you. and that's it. do you want to sell a skin? join the GASP discord! do you want a chance at a skin from one of those cool pre-order only artists? join the GASP discord! [/quote] Indeed it would be incredibly unfortunate if these changes only resulted in large portions of the community being driven off-site. Discord is already a highly exclusionary way to set up a community space, and it is absolutely horrible for general access or preservation of information. ... But if our pings-as-advertising-tools are effectively removed on-site, these very important aspects of FR communities [i]will[/i] get moved to Discord or another off-site venue, locking the garden for many who do not or cannot use that third party service.

Support. When I read the announcement I had assumed by default that the new pinglists would be accessible by multiple user, i.e. person A makes a pinglist but anyone can tend access said pinglist. I didn't realize until I saw other people talk about it that only the pinglist owner can use the pinglist. It's just so counter-intuitive considering how off-site pinglists are currently used. The main advantage of off-site pinglists on platforms like Google Docs is that everyone can use them, so new threads can be easily advertised. Allowing only the pinglist owner to use a pinglist, and then blocking mass pings, will massively harm the economy of skin sales, auctions, and special dragon sales.

So far it seems to me the only situations that can benefit from the pinglist system as is are small but permanent threads run by a single person - such as someone's hatchery or personal challenges threads. However, that is... honestly a little pointless? Those threads often already keep a list of people to ping on a forum post, not an outsider platform. The lists are also often smaller, including below 12 people. Which means that the people who could make the most use of the pinglist system are also the ones who could just keep mass-pinging instead.

Support. I use the customizability of the GASP to get pings for specific themes and breeds only, I also use the "don't ping for" options to exclude subjects that I personally don't care for.
I dont subscribe to individual skin/accent artists because there are so many out there, and the GASP allows new artists access to pings without having to attract them to their thread first.

[quote name="creosote" date="2023-10-26 10:26:46" ] [quote name="Doglover287915" date="2023-10-26 10:16:36" ] I think one good compromise may be to keep mass pings but add the ability for specific users to block mass pings only. This way users who don't interact with mass pings can avoid them and only use pinglists they want to be on without breaking tools. [/quote] i REALLY like this option! if this were implemented it would allow the large, complicated pinglists to continue fuctioning as intended while also making it possible for users to disable mass-pings to avoid ping spam harassment. [/quote] Just want to like RT this because I really like this solution. Limiting mass pings per forum category is also interesting. If you are being harassed for sales pinglist simply block mass pings from the Dragon and Item sales forum for example but remain on the built in FR pinglists.

support. removing them is such a bad idea.

[quote name="Strangeflesh" date="2023-10-26 14:33:47" ] support. removing them is such a bad idea. [/quote] Succinct and accurate. I can't think of a good alternative for the Gen1 Hoarder's pinglist

Support. I’ve only recently started getting my head around things like GASP and G1 hoarders but they’re such well crafted tools with incredible functionality, it would be a shame to nullify their use on site. They’re fantastic for small time creators in particular, and encourage people to participate in the game economy. I for one never bought UMAs before signing up for GASP, the skins & accents forum was completely overwhelming to browse through as a newbie. Even if each shop had its own dedicated pinglist… that’s a LOT of shops to go through!

Poking in to address some GASP-specific issues as a long-time GASP moderator while I'm still mulling the overall situation over. [quote name="Antimoany" date="2023-10-26 13:40:41" ] i'm going to make a prediction: if mass-pings are disabled some time in the future, the forums will stop being the place to find buyers for your skins, and to find cool skins to buy. discord will be, because mass-pings still work on there. GASP will be retooled to use discord users instead of fr (which really will just necessitate changing the question on the google form from "what is your flight rising username?" to "what is your discord account name?") and there will be an official GASP discord server (is there one already?) which you must join in order to get the pings you signed up for and/or to ping others to advertise your skin. [/quote] At this time there is no official broader GASP discord (only a very small scale private one to ease communication between people involved in maintaining it). It feels too early to me to think about alternatives for now, though yes the proposed changes to pinglists would likely make the forums inhospitable for broader skin/accent sales. [quote name="Antimoany" date="2023-10-26 13:40:41" ] i think a lot of the issues with the death of mass-pings as relates to GASP specifically can be resolved by a much-needed skin shop feature. it grows more frustrating that we're still on this annoying system of blueprints and reprints and taking pre-orders through the forums and sort of just hoping that the skin you pre-ordered will ever be delivered (or, for that matter, approved). if we're losing mass forum pings, chalk up another reason a real skin shop is way overdue: it could handle pre-orders in a safe way and, together with a notification system for new additions to your favourite artist's shop, largely eliminate the need for GASP. that still leaves resellers with a struggle but, at least skin artists and most buyers would have a better time. [/quote] A formal on-site skin/accent shop would absolutely be super beneficial BUT! it doesn't help the mass-visibility that GASP brings to new accent makers that don't have much of a following and isn't able to accommodate GASP's more thorough filtering system E.g. someone can opt-out of being pinged for horror, or opt-in on seeing all the rainbow accents - and this isn't accommodated by an artist-specific notification especially if an artist explores a huge variety in accent styles.