Forum going down hill?

[Butterfly]

I like the idea of pushing another skin for the first choice, rather then using the same old. Remembering the fact the classic forum skin, is the classic (in which it is a retro theme).

[myke]

i don't use the forum as much anymore because i see a lot going on that i don't necessarily agree with but nothing can be done, it seems now that once something is decided, it happens and that's it. it doesn't really seem to be about the members anymore.

[Hecktix]

Having read through this thread, I have to agree with a lot of the points being made.

However although I see some of it possibly down to Hx staff not doing the right things, more of it down to social decomposition of members (this meaning the older members 'dying out' in a sense, leaving the forum and they aren't being replaced) however I think one of the biggest parties that we can blame are Habbo.

"Back in the day" all we had was the Habbo Hotel Client with a VERY crap Habbo homepage which was mainly focused around competitions. Fansites like Habbox were very much needed for in depth News, Rare Values and even just a place to discuss things about Habbo (like this forum).

Now, Habbo shoves so much News down your throat when you're online you don't want to check a fansite to read it again, they've introduced their own forums on the website, hell I'm surprised they haven't released a rare values guide.

Most of the people on this forum are from a generation that needed the Habbo fansite because the hotel client was all we had.

My main opinion, is that Habbo has killed the fansite generation and by Sulake moves such as banning us from selling VIP make me think that it's actually intentional.

We may be able to preserve Habbox, however we need to take on Sulake and get them to calm down with what THEY provide people, because they are doing us out of business. And that's not gonna happen easily, if at all.

[Nixt]

i don't use the forum as much anymore because i see a lot going on that i don't necessarily agree with but nothing can be done, it seems now that once something is decided, it happens and that's it. it doesn't really seem to be about the members anymore.

I'm confused by what you mean here, care to give examples? The majority of changes we make are changes that have been suggested by Forum members somewhere along the line. Yes, we may change their suggestion slightly... or considerably, but ultimately members of Habbox Forum have a big say in the changes we implement than other before. So yes, I don't really know what you mean here?

[xxMATTGxx]

Having read through this thread, I have to agree with a lot of the points being made.

However although I see some of it possibly down to Hx staff not doing the right things, more of it down to social decomposition of members (this meaning the older members 'dying out' in a sense, leaving the forum and they aren't being replaced) however I think one of the biggest parties that we can blame are Habbo.

"Back in the day" all we had was the Habbo Hotel Client with a VERY crap Habbo homepage which was mainly focused around competitions. Fansites like Habbox were very much needed for in depth News, Rare Values and even just a place to discuss things about Habbo (like this forum).

Now, Habbo shoves so much News down your throat when you're online you don't want to check a fansite to read it again, they've introduced their own forums on the website, hell I'm surprised they haven't released a rare values guide.

Most of the people on this forum are from a generation that needed the Habbo fansite because the hotel client was all we had.

My main opinion, is that Habbo has killed the fansite generation and by Sulake moves such as banning us from selling VIP make me think that it's actually intentional.

We may be able to preserve Habbox, however we need to take on Sulake and get them to calm down with what THEY provide people, because they are doing us out of business. And that's not gonna happen easily, if at all.

Agreed to be honest. When you log into habbo you get tons of news in front of you, it's silly. Then they don't even give fansites any benefits and them stopping us having any major funding what so ever. (Another stupid idea) But Sulake is a business and all they seem to care about these days is money. I'm sure we will all come together and pull out of this and make sure HabboxForum comes back alive once again.

[hah]

God know how many times competitions said they are going to change yet no one has seen this, there comps are still 1000 word essays that only get people who hardly post entering them because they have nothing else to do.

I remember making a thread on events saying they need to do bigger things more often like big brother, the apprentice, funfairs etc. Not once every blue moon. . Im sick of seeing the same events whenever i go on Habbo, and id hardly call putting loads of games like falling furni, beat the bunny, dyp, and other predictable events on together where you can win points a good idea... Its ****.. like that summer thing you do

I don't think Mattgarner is doing a good job, im sure some of the mods think something similar to this, he should just resign instead of sitting there doing nothing but editing rules every second Sunday.

[Hecktix]

God know how many times competitions said they are going to change yet no one has seen this, there comps are still 1000 word essays that only get people who hardly post entering them because they have nothing else to do.

I remember making a thread on events saying they need to do bigger things more often like big brother, the apprentice, funfairs etc. Not once every blue moon. . Im sick of seeing the same events whenever i go on Habbo, and id hardly call putting loads of games like falling furni, beat the bunny, dyp, and other predictable events on together where you can win points a good idea... Its ****.. like that summer thing you do

I don't think Mattgarner is doing a good job, im sure some of the mods think something similar to this, he should just resign instead of sitting there doing nothing but editing rules every second Sunday.

You make good points until we get to the last one, you can't just say "Forum Management arent doing a good job" without justifying it or linking it into the problems we're having at the moment...

[hah]

You make good points until we get to the last one, you can't just say "Forum Management arent doing a good job" without justifying it or linking it into the problems we're having at the moment...

Not the Management as a whole, just Matt

From what I have heard MattGarner does very little to benefit the Forum. I mean, from what I can tell you don't see him around much, you don't see him posting actively, *REMOVED* You don't see him getting involved with the members whom he is supposed to essentially be working for, unless of course they go to his college.
Of course I am not aware of what goes on "behind the scenes" and one can be sure someone will post and tell me he does a lot behind the scenes.
However I do speak to a number of Moderators and Management and I also hear things. I am not going to pretend that gossip can result in misconstrued reality but the simple fact of the matter is gossip and rumours would not start if there wasn't an issue in the first place.

Edited by invincible (Forum Super Moderator): Please don't be rude to forum staff

[GommeInc]

Habbo should get rid of the news and have the informal "HabboHood Happenings" make a swift return - that newsletter made Habbo news bearable to read, and was so informal and funny Do they still do Funky Friday? That was an awesome competition

The forums are pointless, heck the userpages are verging on pointless (all you really ever care about is the Habbo avatar and badges, which appear in the client, unless they've changed that now? )

[FlyingJesus]

Rare Values has been wrong for a long time, items should be pressed on rarity, because at the moment, values are being changed from mostly people trying to sell things for more to bump up the Habbox price. Some of the Habbox RVR's make up prices, for them to either get profit in their items or just to produce their 6 reports a week... You should base it more on the rarity, like thrones shouldn't be anywhere near as high as 80.0 IMO... And things like Russian samovar's are VERY rarely seen in Habbo IMO, they're price should be much higher...

Rare values, as has always been stated, are based on what the reporters see them selling for. Habbox doesn't set prices, it just calculates averages and trends for what items are already going for on the hotel.

It is my feeling that, as Gomme has said, Habbox is losing it's previously dedicated members. It is therefore important to attract new members, so as to replace the members we are losing. In attracting more members we must retain them. Retention is difficult, however, and for this reason I feel our focus should be on gaining new members - the more we gain, the more we retain (in theory).

Going to have to outright disagree with you there I'm afraid. A little while back there were a couple of threads about what to do concerning the dwindling activity on forum, and having looked through what figures I could (obviously I can't see all banned members and deleted posts when I do my searches) I found that we aren't really getting much less in terms of new membership, but posting has decreased massively nonetheless. Conclusion was that getting more people to join wasn't the problem at all, but rather making those who are here stay. Something horrific like 67% of members signed up in the first half of October (when I did these checks) hadn't even posted once, while only 6% had made 10 or more posts. These figures are likely to be different now because it's a new month and things like this obviously don't stay static, but it's obviously not looking good.

In order to achieve this it is important to increase our presence on Habbo itself. Restoring Habbox's previous Habbo glory is the key to increasing Forum activity. In the coming month's every department is planning big things for Christmas and the fansite week.

This should help hopefully, I agree that presence on Habbo needs to be stepped up. Most of us older lot don't go on any more and as far as I can tell a large number of upper management are no longer regulars. A bigger show from the bigger names (and behaving properly, here's looking at you HxHD if you haven't improved since the times I complained ) would be useful in terms of making sure we're still the foremost in fansites and community. Maybe a Christmas panto where Sam does front of house in the foyer would be a good idea or something along those lines

Why is everyone glaring at me all of a sudden

Because you're bl

oody gorgeous mate

I agree with Prof-Alex. The forum is highly inaccessible for new members. There's the 5-post approval stage (yes there's the reasons for this and 5 posts isn't so bad but it's bound to turn some people away), the lack of an arcade

Post approval as far as I'm aware is there just to stop spam bots, but surely for this only 1 post needs to be approved? Just a thought and I may be wrong on that. Arcade isn't a massive issue for me but if it really would bring more people in then perhaps it ought to be opened up to a few more people than just donators/VIP and whatever userranks can use it at the moment. Maybe allowing comps to make, well, comps for it would be a good step, especially as I believe there's been a drive recently for forum-based competitions of late.

lack of support from the cliques that can be found on Habbox.

This is something I've spoken about time and time again without much happening. Social cliques are a part of humanity as we all like having friends and feeling like we're a part of something, and our own downfall here may be that the forum is now (and has been for some time) too big for just membership to feel like inclusion. I'm going to just copy&paste what I put in another thread because I don't think it really needs rewording and it's easier for me to do it this way. To wit:

In the forum's history there have been plenty of secular activity from the old spam crew and the Runescape fanatics who used to invade each other's area every now and then to KKK and whatever various rivals have sprung up and all the other more general divides (new spam, tech kids, Habbo players, graphics... just basically divides based on where you spend most of your time here). What I'd suggest is something that's come up before but not been implemented - more groups that people can actually join.
Currently we only have pixel artists and IT crowd as public member groups, which doesn't really do a lot for bringing people together as far as I know because they're rather too general. I'm not at all suggesting the system CH have where anyone can make any stupid group like "we like food", but allowing people to apply for having a group of like-minded friends could be to the benefit of the community. Of course, it sounds like it would just further ostracise new members who aren't part of a group, but the reality is that people like being accepted and like being part of something, so even a "new members" group could be made so they at least can get to know the users that are going to grow to be their peers, and when they're no longer so new they'll have whatever friends they've made there to make a new group (or stick around to welcome the even newer people if they so wish).

The truth of humanity is that no matter how much you try to be individual and promote individuality, we always look for a way to connect with others and it feels good when you do. HxSS is a popular and very successful example of this - the teams are still up on group memberships page btw - so a community driven group system could if left unabused and properly managed help strengthen the forum's sense of belonging.

This is of course in direct opposition to what some others say about getting rid of elitist and closed-in group mentality, as I firmly believe that trying to fight such a fundamental part of human nature would always be fruitless

God know how many times competitions said they are going to change yet no one has seen this, there comps are still 1000 word essays that only get people who hardly post entering them because they have nothing else to do.

I remember making a thread on events saying they need to do bigger things more often like big brother, the apprentice, funfairs etc. Not once every blue moon. . Im sick of seeing the same events whenever i go on Habbo, and id hardly call putting loads of games like falling furni, beat the bunny, dyp, and other predictable events on together where you can win points a good idea... Its ****.. like that summer thing you do

I don't think Mattgarner is doing a good job, im sure some of the mods think something similar to this, he should just resign instead of sitting there doing nothing but editing rules every second Sunday.

I've thought for a while now that comps and events ought to be merged. They'd be able to get more done and not require two sets of management for what are essentially smaller jobs. Events I know can require a lot of planning, especially for Christmas of HxSS and the like, but comps really just put out a couple of threads a month and sit back waiting for it to finish. A large backlog of possible competitions could be written up in half an hour of thought and then just picked out of the vault as and when needed - an entire team isn't particularly necessary. To be fair there are more now than there were previously but it still hardly warrants a separate staff, not to put anyone down.

I agree with you to an extent in that events aren't always that great in that there are limits to what games you can do on Habbo, but that said there's nothing anyone can do about that. I think events staff do a great job of it generally, and seem to manage to make it popular enough even if it is very samey - what events would you rather see here? Not attacking you of course, just making the point that there's not a lot that can be done.

Can't really comment on Matt's work as I don't really know what he does - maybe that says a lot in itself but I know better than to judge a management job from anywhere just by what you can see. Who knows, maybe management as a whole need to be a bit more public, them being in essence the face of Habbox as it stands