Operation Lifeboat on WordPress (clickable right) is back on board, investigating the Big Picture...give 'em some love if you have a moment.
7/21/11...well. it seems we are promulgating a conspiracy theory ... (i kid you not, it's in the Forums in black and white.) really not sure whether to be flattered, or insulted, or just laugh myself silly.
We HAVE speculated many times in many places as to both the real reasons behind the pay-to-play conversion, and, even more particularly, the WAY it was handled - and also wondered out loud what actually happened to the vast amount of investor funds (much less our own contributions) that comprised the site assets, as there seems no logical way they could have been legitimately consumed by the site's normal operating costs ... yet they are broke and starving. Hmm.
Still, none of that makes a conspiracy, theoretical or otherwise - simply what we feel as (dis)affected members are legitimate questions that have never been answered.
... and still aren't.
Addendum : and when we returned, our post asking about the post about us (how's THAT for convoluted, lol?) had been neatly - and pretty much instantaneously - deleted. The gist of ours had been that if we had a conspiracy theory it was news to us, if we had made misstatements we were more than willing to amend or retract them if presented with information and/or counterarguements that held water ... and that the best and fastest way to give speculation credence was to suppress it.
as it is a suggestion thread, we then parenthesised something to the effect "statements about the statement are also dangerous?" and put up a couple of site-valid (i.e. money for them in return for something we'd like) requests. checking back short(i)ly thereafter, we found the requests in place, but the parenthesis deleted. Big Brother is most decidedly watching - and no longer cares if it becomes obvious.
It would seem that it is now essentially illegal to say anything even remotely negative about the site. Known "enemies" and "troublemakers" (which we seem to qualify as, though we think we love foo far more than its handlers) get their posts and/or threads deleted - those in favor get them locked, with a scolding and the ability to repost them if they keep it clean. Anyone else know of a site sufficiently insecure to ban criticism? Apparently it's spelled out in the new TOS as well, along with an attempt - though i'm not sure how they could enforce it - to shut down foo/mojo/rivet-critical commentary OFF-site as well.
By the way, it is now officially and publicly stated that open fostering will never return ... supposedly because of competition for specific foster pets creating contention.
Um. we quote one of foo's fair-haired, though she may no longer like them quite as much now : "You can't overfeed a Karma Dog!". on quite a few occasions, someone has fed animals simultaneously with me (as it happens, my personal pets). Both got "credit" - if that has any value to those involved - and the pets did not mind.
i doubt if anyone here really thinks foster pets, especially long-abandons, can be personal property, and if they persist in being territorial, as far as we're concerned they deserve what they get. if they are tending for a friend by request, it's quite simple for the friend to restrict the pets ; if not, they have nothing to say. we see nothing in this that warrants a blanket fiat by the site, and once again are left to speculate as to the real, site-beneficial reasons.
7/22/11... Now it seems that the site's commercial sponsors have pulled out ... all pet care products here, food, meds, etc, are now "private label", and any public speculation as to why is being ruthlessly and immediately squashed.
We are informed by someone who queried Support that the change was planned and voluntary ... if so, they might have waited until they had a slightly more "finished" product to present, art- and copy-wise (or even had a member contest to design the art and text, both saving money and giving their bored customers something to do) - the fact that they didn't suggests that there was a reason to hurry.
Speaking of saving money - doesn't it seem a bit odd that they would not only voluntarily cut off paid sponsor income, but spend money designing and inputting these house brand items (however poorly) ... when the site is so desperately in debt (we are told) ?
... perhaps we should look for these new fooproducts in our grocery stores soon - Rivet seems quite content to spend its income from the site and its investors elsewhere ...
if anyone is interested, links for the two threads referred to above (the locked original, with our - gasp - dangerous conspiracy theory(s), and the current sanitised version) are here. it's not a big enough deal to sidebar them, so you may have to copy/paste if so inclined.
Original (locked) Thread : http://www.foopets.com/topics/show/2150534?forum_id=28
New Thread : http://www.foopets.com/topics/show/2154938?forum_id=28&post_count=28
About Me
- GOLD RUSH
- Tabby Road, New Furrsey, Foo S. A.
- i am a seven-year-old virtual Cream Persian FooCat (born on Little Christmas, 1/5/10), the mascot and spokesfurson for FooBA4U, the FooPets members' cooperative service site.
I am stunned, shocked and saddened that foo has come to this -- open censorship of any discussion which does not fall into their bright sparkly how-great-we-all-are image.
ReplyDeleteThey censor us massively and rap our knuckles, so now we have to look carefully at every word we say in case it could possibly be construed as some kind of conspiracy theory. It also seems that we must not ask for anything at all which could possibly be a suggestion that what they did before was wrong, yes?
I am also stunned at the stated reason for not allowing fostering. I have done a lot of fostering over the years and never come across persistent fights. The occasional little squabble, perhaps but not fights. People knew that they did not own the pets that they fostered.
So, despite my experience, fostering was productive of the worst fights in foo history, and the protagonists were so persistent that they even came back to the fight after suspension... Well, what do you know, the ban-happy ambassadors seem not to have wanted to ban such people; instead, the admins chose to cut all non-friended pets off from care. Oh, but there is the petsam! Silly me! Of course, they get all that same special care that the frozen accounts get, don't they. Geez...
Looks like the sweet game about kitties and puppies is actually a game about controlling the players to death and has very little to do with the pets.
I have no conspiracy theories and have no hidden agenda. I joined this game when it was about pet-care because I loved the thought of caring for pixel pets, and I made amazing friends who had a similar concept. It is no longer about pet care and friendship, it is about selfishness and I am disgusted.
the use of the artMart scandal to shut down the Legacy collectors/sellers was essentially the same game - and we know of old that their stated reasons (which, by the way, were NOT the reasons they gave at the time for restricting fostering) are seldom if ever the actual ones.
ReplyDeletewhat intrigues me most - and what i will be pursuing (probably via Lifeboat/WP) is the fact that the lion's share of what i said had BEEN said before - repeatedly, in many places, and by many people besides myself - without this hysterical reaction. ONE STATEMENT was new - and apparently struck a very tender spot. (go ahead, guys - wave a red flag at me. i WILL pursue it, you butterbrains.)
i will be doing some serious digging into the premise that provoked such an overreaction ... and also talking to some friends in the pet-care industry, out of idle curiosity. wonder if it was just a reaction to bad publicity, or whether the sponsors were preparing to sue for misrepresentation...
The censorship is absolutely ridiculous. It's taking a huge toll on any joy that was remotely left after all these (also) ridiculous changes (or rather the sense of cutting down the site to the bare minimum). I find it extremely frustrating to KNOW, beyond any scope of a doubt, that these MODS (particularly one, and I'm sure we ALL know who they are) are on their self-righteous soap box focusing on the most inane "issues" (repeat posts? really? that's grounds for suspension now? how about enabling the search feature again), rather than focus on the larger issues at hand, y'know, the REAL problems?
ReplyDeleteCensoring player discontent isn't going to help anything out, period. Censoring almost everything that doesn't have a coating of sugar on it isn't helping. Oh sure, they may be sick of dealing with it, but guess what? It's happening for a reason. Unfortunately, this place is only going to get worse and worse as time goes on. I don't see it as gradual, but happening quite fast now. It's now been established there is no trust in the MODS, because they happily suspend anyone they feel like. What is there left now but 5 minutes a day to feed and water your pets? Nothing, because Gawd forbid you step on some precious toes.
To put it bluntly, Foo has turned into an elitist group of twits who expect all their members to bow down to them and praise them in all their glory. Vague and secretive motives is their breakfast, while they sup on bitchy sneers and suspend buttons. Useless.
i think a lot of the problem is the ignorance of much of the actual workings of Rivet that the resident big and little A's are left to labor under - they are told to watch for (and step on) certain things, but not why...they really don't have much more hard info than we do. (not that that justifies abuse of power - and i suspect a gentle dig i took at that was one of the offending items, lol - not that they could admit it)
ReplyDeletethe rewrite of the "rules" for the soi-disant "CF" Forum is a case in point...no duplication? we are expected to go through all the threads before posting and see if ours will overlap? half the time, i can't get it to advance to later pages anyway...plus i seriously doubt if the overlap is THAT close, everyone has a somewhat different perspective on even the same basic issues - and different answers.
Who cares if there are multiple threads on the same suggestions! Not saying your wrong or anything, I'm simply saying that all this focus on locking threads is completely ridiculous. Maybe these MODS have nothing else to do, so Rivet sent them on a pointless journey to keep their mouth's shut. I'd rather deal with multiple posts than mega-trolls, sexual content written by 12 year olds, abusive adults, or killing and maiming.
ReplyDeletei far from disagree - the business about overlapping threads is in the new CF Forum rules, and is obviously designed to let them pick and choose which threads are allowed to run. i have been lucky, i guess - most of the trolls and cheerleaders i have attracted were at least partially literate, if (like most) essentially deaf.
ReplyDeleteJust wondering if there was something a little over-stated in my last message here? It seems to have disappeared... Sorry if I over-stepped the mark here too heh I guess I should learn to shut up xxx
ReplyDeleteThey really do not care what the players want, so the locking of threads and the heavy-handedness on the forums just makes the complaints sink into a nice comfortable obscurity. I cant recall if I said before -- it looks as if they are not intending to change the appalling PetSam. I have been watching the frozen Admin accounts and, up until about a week ago, they were being fed as normal by the Admin feeder bot. After a few suggestions in the forums that the admin bot could be used instead of the PetSam bot in order to do what was promised (care for the frozen pets), suddenly the Admin bot was stopped on those accounts and they now have the bog-standard PetSam. How dire is that... the Admin bot actually kept the happiness and bonding bars high, without increasing the bonding badge, and it fed every 24 hours. It would have been an ideal upgrade to the PetSam bot, given that fostering is almost impossible now (non-friends not allowed and capping of gems enforced). But no, this site which cares so much about animals and setting a good example to kids chose rather to starve their own frozen admins.
ReplyDeleteWell, they wouldn't want any more favoritism, now would they? :P I don't know what they are trying to accomplish by removing everything bit by bit, handing control over to the MODS, creating new and even more restrictive rules......it's miserable there, at least for myself. Seems like they don't want the money for that place anymore, hey at least got their wish from me. Sounds so cliche, lol!
ReplyDeleteCarrie - your original comment is still here - you must have sped past it, lol. there is NO censorship here, regardless of the source or content of the comment...the only time they are removed is for space reasons, and they are then copied to our back issue archives, NEVER deleted, and the fact they they have been moved bannered.
ReplyDeletedon't you DARE "shut up" - we need to share our feelings here, as other recourse is being rapidly narrowed.
the "A"bot literally fed under the A's names, giving even more than kenneling (which merely holds the bonding badge in place), by acting in loco member, which not only allowed the bonding to maintain but increases the badge count. i would have been absolutely STUNNED had they granted that sort of benefit to the nonpaying holdouts...but a small modification in either it and/or the kenneling code would have permitted daily feeding, with or without it registering as bonding. (but the pets would have been pleased either way...)
as far as the A pets now being equally deprived - unless these so-busy people find time to actually tend their pets themselves - well, i'm sorry for their animals, but i can't say i can argue with even misplaced evenhandedness, as it is so very rare these days.
fostering is difficult, but not impossible, as long as the pet is not owner-blocked and you are willing to go to a little trouble : bring up the foster's "pet" (rather than "play" code, and amend as follows - from ...foopets.com/pet/(link #), edit in browser bar to ...foopets.com/widget?pet_ID=(link #) - which will give you access to tend. either bookmark the link or copy and paste into your profile. for pets already listed there, just edit the code as above.
LOL Oh right, I must have been tired heh It's good to see a lively discussion going on here.
ReplyDeleteAs for the Admin bots, until they changed it to petsam on those abesntee A's, the point was that it was acting more like the kennel, which does not increase the badge. The active A's get an increase yes, but in the frozen ones the badge disappears just as it does for kennelled pets, so it does not increase. Yes, it pretends to be the individual A in question, but trust me, I was watching two frozen Admin accounts carefully. And as soon as someone suggested using that bot, which itself isn't great as it only feeds every 24 hours but it does at least keep happiness going, the frozen admins quietly changed to using the PetSam.
I see that some poor deluded soul in the forums is now asking for more realism as regards sickness and vaccinations. God help us, that's the sort of thing they might well do if it's easy enough, without thinking of the realism of starving pets on frozen accounts, never treating them for fleas, and "caring" for the AC pets by ignoring them.
((((hugs))))
By the way I do know that, with a little work, we can still foster -- and indeed I do continue to care for pets.
ReplyDeleteHowever the problem is that -- given the Admins'total lack of customer care, their lack of understanding about the game that they own, and their complete disregard of any real pet care in this "educational" tool of theirs -- once enough people know about and use that fostering route, they will surely shut down that avenue too. I am sure they watch this blog, so I dare say it is only a matter of time before that little bit of pleasure is removed. It simply depends on how much of a bother it is to them and how busy they are with other things. Each morning when I feed my much-loved fosters, many of whom are already hidden and starving behind "mad kitty", I wonder if this is my last goodbye to them. I have to wonder why Rivet apparently hates the customers who made uo their backbone for all these many months.
This game has turned into a nice simple little puppy-mill and number-hunt. Not something that it is really worth paying for.
Carrie, I have to agree with your statement on Rivet hating their customers. It's a low blow, and naturally will piss anyone who's getting screwed out of their entertainment because Rivet and their volunteers are pissy. Sadly, it is no longer worth paying for. Sometimes I think that maybe they will pull their collective head out of their ass and realize what they are doing, but I've heard it's quite warm and cozy up there. :/
ReplyDeleteJust noticed this ---->http://www.foopets.com/topics/show/2155107?forum_id=28&post_count=33
ReplyDeleteA blog for the newsletter that hasn't been updated in what? A year? What are they going to blog about? "This week we are removing....."
What a freakin joke....
what they want to do (and therefore will do regardless of any feedback, but it sure LOOKS good...if you haven't been around here long) is run it as-is as an Announcement in the Forums - no comments, and reposted weekly (weakly?), i assume - to save the cost of sending all those individual emails.
ReplyDeletethey have always been aware of the "back door" in the old desktop coding that creates a widget...and for some reason don't seem to care. presumably they don't think enough will go to that much trouble, and as you can't see who else is tending without going to a different mode, there should be little of the awful contention (choking on the tongue in my cheek) that caused us to need to use it. plus, it uses supplies and gives them time-on-site cred.
ROFL a beautiful description.
ReplyDeleteYes, it's amazing how much they are able to concentrate on completely useless things. Such as the cosmetic site changes, the "own brand" food and medicine, and now this nonsense of changing the continually-recycled newsletter into an equally useless blog. If they cannot even put proper announcements in the forums whenever any change occurs to gameplay, how is a blog going to help? Really what they want to do is stop having to make even a nod towards a newsletter. I guess the problem is that it will soon be third time around for the recycling.
What amazes me even more is that they do manage to find rah-rah types who still take them seriously and who can get all excited about the various rather badly-done cosmetic details.
LOL Gold Rush, you gotta do something about that tongue, we need you not to choke hehe... Yes they must have been aware of it, and my guess was that they feel it works for too few people for it to matter. I hope so anyway, because as soon as they think it is important enough they will surely remove it. One particular charm of it which I discovered, back when there was all that nonsense of the AC bot hiding the pets, is that we get some of the old animations when we play with Shelter pets. Another wonderful thing about it is that one can take fotos the old way -- actually taking the snap at the moment of clicking. I actually prefer it to the awful widescreen play page.
ReplyDeletelightyears better in many ways...i wonder if we could buy the rights to that "outdated" animation coding and go off on our own with it...
ReplyDeleteWOULDN'T THAT BE AWESOME gosh I wish we could... Hoo boy hang on while I wander off and dream a little :)
ReplyDeleteInteresting fact, the Admin bot is back to feeding the frozen Admin accounts. The little episode with the PetSamaritan was perhaps due to the Admin bot failing for a while, the only surprise there being that the PetSam did not fail at the same time as the Admin bot which it usually does. So no, we are not getting a level playing field which is no surprise really.
ReplyDeletehow fascinating that they have built in a fail-safe of sorts for the Royal Family...
ReplyDeleteHave you noticed that they have listened to us carefully and "improved" things such that you can no longer pull up a cached player profile from Google any more? They did this very quietly a few weeks ago. Gosh they have been busy haven't they -- it seems that anything which is in any way helpful to us in caring for lost friends' pets HAS to be taken away. They cannot make any real improvements to gameplay in Foo (where we pay) but they can take more and more away for our money...
ReplyDeleteIt's certainly not about what the players want, not at all. It's all about what they choose not to do, and that's give a shit. There whole thing is PT, and anything they can do to knock another nail in FP's coffin, they're all over it.
ReplyDeleteYes -- and I have to laugh, you know how the foopetter is just recycled old ones, complete with "great new collectable" and the only different thing being DrJane's amazingly exciting tip? Well, of course they want to change that to a locked blog. And people got a bit upset that the foopetter has those "new" collectables, which also show up in the mart as sold out. Player suggestion -- let us actually buy the things again since we are no longer allowed to trade anyway, so re-set them from "unavailable" to "available". Rivet's solution? simply remove them from the mart. Bingo! no more collectables! Yay for no effort at all.
ReplyDeleteyou can't pull caches anymore? that goes beyond wild...and i'm wondering HOW they managed it, as far as i know cachepages are a basic function of the browser - they must have somehow eliminated caching from the site altogether. do caches show up predating the fiat?
ReplyDeleteIf you look at the google terms, you can see that anyone can request that pages not be cached. Darn drat and bother. It was one of my mainstays when finding out such things as previous names of pets since the AC strips that out (the pets who went there in the days of the old Shelter still have hidden names but not the new AC ones), as well as of course finding profiles to care for. Obviously it is too dangerous for kiddy eyes to see the profiles of deleted accounts. And while on the subject of deleted accs, WHY is it so damn hard for them to do as promised and send the pets to the AC??? Gah! But oh yes, they can let the sweet kidlets be scammed, at their own risk, by offering impossible prices and trades for "rare" pets. If Rivet were consistent in their over-portection of the babies who are their target market, some of their idiocy might make sense. But all they have done is stripped and stripped anything that relates to "care" on this sweet site that advertises itself as caring for kitties and puppies... sorry for the rant
ReplyDeleteno apologies needed...i'd LIKE to think that Mojo/Rivet is stripping out old code (or at least deactivating it - the lion's share is still sitting there dormant) in an attempt to see what does and doesn't cause glitching...not that i necessarily expect THIS site to be the beneficiary. we're just the ones that made it all possible (sigh).
ReplyDeletebtw - brave words (from Feb'10) aside, have they actually DONE anything other than launch the FB app and spend money?
(also, i was just prowling the Forums, and someone is actually requesting a restoration of the old FooSams that repossess untended pets...interesting. the POV is the "value" of bonding badges, but still...
ReplyDeleteLOL yes I thought that was an intriguing development. What I find interesting about the "bring back the FooSam" thread is that it is I think being suggested as a way to bring back some degree of gameplay to the site. There is no gameplay there really now, if you think about it -- only that awful scrabble for "rare" pets. I suppose that the (glitchy but never mind) Bonding nonsense is as good a thing to aim for as "rarity" in pet numbers. Now that pets which go to the AC are basically affordable and not altered, and that the appalling killer bot has been removed and reversed, it isn't the worst idea -- the pets are not so likely to spend forever un there.
ReplyDeleteYes, I do not expect the paying players to be the beneficiary of any improvements... and it makes me laugh that people are so hot about pointless suggestion threads regarding the requests for pets swamping "useful" ones... How exactly are ANY of the suggestions useful except perhaps as ideas to add to Pet Tales? Maybe I am simply being paranoid, but I do not believe that they will make anything new for us.
And no, I don't think that they have done anything to justify all that puff. Just marketese I suppose.
you'd think that when all they have done to gut the site and drive people away did NOT accomplish their goal of fading it out, they would perhaps start thinking of ways to restore it to its original, profitable state...right now it's in limbo, not only from our point of view, but theirs as well - a singularly useless state of affiars indeed.
ReplyDeleteYes, I am a little puzzled as to why they are not restoring it properly and also not closing it down.
ReplyDeleteOne thing which I found possibly hopeful is that they helped someone whose accounts had been "lost" to them and with which the previous administration had been useless. within the space of a couple of days this person has actually got all 6 (I think it's 6) back, even though she had got the name of one of them wrong. She had been widget-feeding and had (I thought) given up hope, but all of the accounts were located and returned complete with remaining pets. So somebody is helping to "wake up" accounts to some degree. Of course she had to pay the clubfoo fee, and it might simply be that squeezing of the last drop of money out of the dead duck was all that was in their minds, but it might possibly be that they are considering turning it into a cash cow instead of making it vanish. Who knows. It would be interesting to know what your "mole" has to say, if it is still there...
actually i had my "original" account (deleted on erroneous advice when a typo in my email caused me to wind up with stereo accounts...and utter panic as i was grassy-greeen-new to modern computers) restored by Kate of all people right around the time Canaan and FooBA were imprisoned...go figure. i know of several others who misplaced info or were accidentally deleted who had theirs restored pre-Rivet as well.
ReplyDeletei must say, experimenting with Support on Pet Tales, it's pretty much the same old song and dance - they ARE a bit more polite, but then we aren't talking about a political hot potato, either, lol.
by the way, i stuck my oar back in the water over in the Trading announcement in the Forums that DrJane so kindly called my attenetion to...about a week or so late, from what i could see...
ReplyDeleteWell well. I have found something useful. I need to email you with something that I would rather the Ivory Tower doesn't see, because it is something that actually helps distressed players who want to delete. Judging by the way in which they continue not to release the last pet on an account, and not to return pets on deleted accs to the AC as promised to players who do delete, they most certainly do not want to help players.
ReplyDeleteAnd LOL yes DrJane is so well informed isn't "she"! That cartoon of hers always makes me giggle, it looks as if "she" has a brown nose. It is insane that when they recycle those old Foopetters they don't also make the items shown in it available. Of course that would require a little effort :D
ReplyDeleteEffort? That's a laugh! The only "effort" I see around there is pointless locking of threads and the "effort" it requires to put their collective thumb up their collective arse. But that's just my opinion, lol.
ReplyDeletei'm still trying to figure out what benefit they get from keeping the overload of "stalled" accounts/pets (especially the deleted ones, and the never-were's from the Orient) - we know they aren't "holding" the unpaid accounts for the members' sakes.
ReplyDeletei just did the math, by the way...granted, i'm not necessarily typical, but in my case (particularly with Canaan), they wound up making less than 20% as much on forced subscription than they were before...why do i suspect that there were more than enough similar cases to more than carry the "free" accounts that did not spend? (oh, to get a real look at those books!)
August 27, 2011 3:54 PM