due to the incredibly messed-up nature of the code structure the new guys inherited, trying to get anything accomplished without screwing something else up is a nightmare...as far as the Forums and Ledgers (and the Samaritans as well as near as i can tell), they may well have pulled the code sections out to work on separately without risking them crashing some other function...in a twisted sort of way this might be a good sign, they saw functions going down (Friends, gifting, etc) in the course of code repair and are trying a safer way to fix things...i hope.
an ominous occurence - and one we hope was a legitimate system glitch and not deliberate...a member of our acquaintance had their credit info accessed and used in advance of their renewal date. we are hoping that the worst this may signify is a hangover bit of coding from the previous regime, where it was known to occur from time to time.
messages seem to be running more smoothly, along with InstaCare and m.foo care - for those who need to access pets for absent friends, we figured out a trick (by a happy accident, but we'll take credit for it anyway, lol). as long as you know the person's site name, just google it. you should get at least one hit on FooFotos - open that and click on their name link off any picture, it should take you to their profile page. if you hit an error message (we did), just refresh and it should come up properly. as it seems that the Samaritans are a casualty of the recoding effort at the moment, we'll need to keep an eye on as many pets as we can, i'm afraid.
if anyone sees any post 2/23/12 updates anywhere - the FooPets blog, FaceBook, Twitter, wherever - please let us know as soon as you can so we can keep this as updated as possible. Twitter link is in the post following this one, and Foo and Parrotlady's FaceBook links are in the one after that (i think). thanks!
there is a recent - and far more detailed and apologetic/considerate than in the past - update on FaceBook, and i see that member Tweets on the Foo Twitter page are actually getting answered - i may faint. for them to not only respond, but do so publicly, is a good sign indeed. so far the friends page and gifting are now back in business, hopefully the Forums (with a banner now up stating that their closure is in fact a temporary measure) will be operative soon...let's try to go easy on them at first so we don't blow the new fuses, lol. it's possible they have Ledgers offline at the moment in order to gather data on who is owed what, as they have posted that they will be dealing with that across the board rather than requiring individual Support requests.
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.
Thanks for your faithful updates. I turned to this site when I got mad kit when I logged in - over 5 times - one or two mad kits is the new normal, but today, no getting past the kit. (aside - wouldn't it be nice if some of the other kits could share mad kit duty with the long haired silver. Poor beast is getting a bad rep. My LHST is insulted, highly insulted.)
ReplyDeleteI Really appreciate your code explanation. Where I work we have the same problem - but with our own products, but they're so old and worked on by so many different engineers, that it is an ongoing crazy making issue for the present engineers. So - it's easy for me to be patient. I hope they can be too!
Thanks again from Ma Wooze and the Foowoozles
very welcome - and the problem you describe is the same here, with the addition of inefficient/shortcut coding and code emplaced before debugging. they seem to be making a sincere and strenuous effort to get things running the way they should have been...hoping that this is a good sign for things to come. (my Silvers agree with you - the kittens are picketing and say it should have been a black cat to begin with, lol)
ReplyDeletei see that they got friends page and gifting sorted out, and now have a PortH2O up on the Forums letting folks know that they are doen only temporarily - due to "load", whether this means their current server can't carry them in addition yet or the code needs to be fixed first, i'm not sure.
heheh my black cats refute your allegation :) But Toro agrees with you that he is getting a bad name!
ReplyDeleteFor me, the feeding is still slow but does work and I get errors when I try to log in. Hopefully I shall be able to get around the fosters and frozens today at last!
I add to the thanks to you for being here for us all, and for keeping as up to date as possible. Hugs and happiness!
i think they're (the silver litter) thinking that since black cats have an (unwarranted) rep for bad luck anyway, they can handle the gag better, lol. m.foo - which i use for 95% of care - continues to need patience and periodic refreshes to show care, but continues to improve : InstaCare seems to be fully operable, at least here on my FB4U account.
ReplyDeletesomebody (i think on the previous post) was looking for the key to shifting a single pet in order to close an account made experimentally during the crash to see if an alternate Foo site would go through, take a look if you get a chance...thanks!
((hugs)) I already found that person who was looking for help and, I believe, they have understood and are happy :)
ReplyDeleteI find that whatever I use still produces the madkitty, I try m foo and instacare and they both are maddeningly only sometimes effective. I am still only getting around some of the frozens in a day, where I used to get them all done and fosters too within about half a day.
Cheers, keep up the great work!
I just had to reclaim my 17 cats from the Fookennel, one by one (they should have a Reclaim All button!)...but their return date from the Fookennel was supposed to be Feb. 20! So I had to reclaim them before I could board them for this weekend!
ReplyDeleteonce the site is fully functional, that is a terrific idea, and ought to be easy to implement as they already have coding to put them in as a group. (were they fed during the overlap?)
ReplyDeletei just had an interesting thought...they may have Ledgers offline for now to do a rundown on what is owed to whom - if they plan to make amends across the board as promised, they would need to extract the info, and that will be a lot easier if they are not dealing with a "moving part".
Yes, they were Instacared as soon as the site went back up enough for it to work. It works sticky sometimes but it does work with some patience and determination.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of ledgers, I have not yet been able to view mine since before the transition.
The good news is I can play Yarn Barn, which funds my weekend boardings. It doesn't always play perfectly by letting me keep the FGs but most of the time it does. That was my main grief long before the transition.
I spoke my mind tonight on the FB foopets page and I have been "eliminated"...you will see over and over "oscar" referred to but you will see no oscar comments because I am now blocked, deleted and no longer able to speak my peace....I said nothing disrespectful, only made comments about wanting to get what I was paying for as a customer...beware...BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING AND DELETING ANYTHING THEY DO NOT WANT TO HEAR OR SEE
ReplyDeleteI frankly do not believe there is a new owner at all. I think they have pulled the code off of rented servers (thus allowing only limited usage) and are limping along in hopes that someone will buy it. I have nothing to base this on other than the fact that no one has come forward to say "WELCOME or this is going to be great or it takes a while for us to get all of the code on to our servers but when we do it will be great." That is what new businesses do if they want to keep current customers and get new ones.
ReplyDeleteInstead members are falling off like flies. Not even Arking but deleting in droves. And we are threatened and kept in the dark just like always. I have 4 accounts coming due in the next 3 weeks. I will keep one active. But the rest are going dormant. And they better not charge my credit card either.
What this company has done in the past and is now doing is shameful.
I can testify to the harmless nature of the comments that Oscar Cat made on that FB thread; I have snapshots of it just before her comments were all removed. Looking at the thread as it now is, it looks as if people are talking to themselves about a nonexistent troll. Whereas in fact, she simply stated her opinions clearly and explained that she was unable to play properly as opposed to those people on the thread who were stating that the speed etc had improved. Incidentally, for me also there is no improvement yet in speed and accuracy of gameplay, so I agree with Oscar Cat.
ReplyDeleteHere are exact quotes of a couple of Oscar Cat's postings, taken randomly from the thread:
"ok so foopets it's simple. WE WANT OUR GAME BACK THAT WE ARE PAYING FOR...please...we are not demanding...we are your customers! we send you money! you should love us for that because without our money you cannot have a game...pretty simple...come and love us and take good care of us and get us back our game"
(Some of these were in response to Shorti who told her off for speculating and suggested that she go to customer Support -- which we all know is not really useful at this time.)
"I never said they did it on purpose to get to me! I just don't think they can pay their bills...that is not a conspiracy theory! hehe...just a basic business theory...what I think is that they were losing money, couldn't pay their bills"
and
"yes well all you have are theories as well...hehehe..because they are not telling us the facts and the whole truth..but that is OK...you have ideas as do I...I don't suspect you know any more than me...my ideas are based on actions...and they all lead to some shaky business...but is okay...we shall see won't we"
Not, to my way of thinking, the actions of a troll. So it seems that any discussion of the problems, anything that is not sweetness and light, has to be blocked; that much has not changed since before Rivet was disbanded and their staff all sacked.
Anonymous, I too am not convinced that this is really a new owner. There are two possibilities that my mind toys with.
One is that yes, it was sold by the along with the other bric-a-brac of the company that was broken up and put up for sale by the liquidator, and that the sale was to one or more of the employees; if so, then the lack of information is pretty much par for the course, they are used to not telling us things.
The other possibility which would explain the lack of info regarding the new owner is, as you say, that they are keeping it limping along still hoping to sell it. That might explain why they haven't shut it down during repairs with a robust notice and progress reports visible to those who try to log in; it would make much more sense for a new owner to do exactly that, as well as make it clear what compensation the players can expect to receive when the site comes back up.
As you say, more members are leaving even deleting accounts.
i just got back from the FB "event" thread we are running in parallel with the Foop - Oscar had posted there and when i went to look into it was obviously not able to see their side of things. MUCH thanks for those foresighted enough to preserve those posts, as they paint an entirely different picture. sadly. (though i still think that, as in so many cases on Foo and in the Forums, the active agency here is samll rather than large "A"s)
ReplyDeleteit has been my sense all along that the new crew was at least partially composed of the old crew - though several points remain...first, that they care enough about the site to make the attempt to save it (they sure aren't doing it for the money, lol) - that they (not the ambs, but whoever is trying to keep this flea circus jumping) are trying like hell to restore ops here, no matter what it takes out of them personally, time or effort wise - and that if they had wanted to sell the hijecked database/proprietary code, they could have done that without ever restarting the site.
i still retain the (getting a bit more forlorn) hope that the far greater effort being shown, and the higher level of communication - yes, i'd like names and more details too, but i can see the reasoning behind how they are handling it...if they mention something specific, it creates expectations and even more furor, plus as they have their hands full with coding they may likely be letting the ambs who have time and inclination run with that aspect of things, poor as that choice may have been, lol...is a sign of better times to come. i am deeply saddened to hear people after all this time are impatient enough to delete rather than just stepping back and awaiting developments, just when a real change may be about to occur. as much as we have all gone through here, for this to send people over the railings seems tragic.
off now to amend my FB event thread - would you folks want a link to that set up here?
putting it HERE for now (too lazy to log out as canaan and back in as fooba right now, plus i'd rather see if there is a demand for it first) - i am told for some reason it's been dropped from their event listings, but it's still running and will continue to be linked to the Foop and updated as well.
ReplyDelete@AnonymousFeb 24, 2012 09:23 PM
ReplyDeleteI have been thinking the same ever since this mess started 2 weeks ago, and we did not get notified of the new owners. I think the game is just running on back up servers, thus the huge amount of errors, while they are hoping someone would buy it. I have no official confirmation to that. Just how I see things. So do not take my post as a source of information. But this seems to be only thing making sense. I refuse to believe that any pay-to-play company would actually treat their customers like we have been treated.
well, if my suspicions are correct, we don't really HAVE a company at this point, just a bunch of diehards trying their damnedest to save the site.
ReplyDeletethey inherited pay-for-play along with everything else, and can't do anything about it yet even if they want to...and if they don't - it's a proven moneyLOSER, so i don't see why they shouldn't be willing to ditch it - we'll convince them there's a better way.
they are trying to fix badly-machined-to-begin-with parts on a running engine in a too-small garage, a herculean task and one at which they are making (slow) progress, and as observed above, if they just wanted to sell it, could have just peddled the database and proprietary code without even putting it back online.
until someone other than an ambassador gets on my nerves, i'm inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt.
And if the bankers are in control (because of extreme credit problems and huge debt) then they will just keep taking our monthly money as long as they can. If there is a real person and not a giant conglomerate bank or capital venture group in charge, they better start talking fast. Maybe the creditor has keep just a few former employees on retainer to keep it limping on these weak servers? Has anybody asked them yet what the price tag is? heeheh...
ReplyDeletebanks would not throw good money after bad - and would have the grassy good sense to know that no one is going to spend to renew until they know what's going on, i think. the money already invested is THERE, no need to pay people to not only restart but repair the site.
ReplyDeleteRivet may well be having the problems you describe - but they're out of the picture, as of shortly before the site crash. (will drag that thread over later, found out from one who was effectively there...held that back while the site was down to avoid causing REAL panic) there may be Rivet nee Mojo people involved in the hijack and restoration attempt, but they are not now employed by them - or any other company, i seriously doubt they've had time to get that far.
Yes but when businesses go into foreclosure, the banks try and squeeze the turnips for the last drops of blood. I hope you are right CanaansChild. One thing I have to give you is that you are always optimistic! I on the other hand tend to be more realist and worry wart. I live in the business world every day and I see these things in action, and it would be pretty rare for a "business" as compared to a more non-profit framework, to be operating out of love and loyalty. FooPets is ultimately a business and whoever is in charge will be trying to turn a buck...on or off our backs. I cannot imagine that they will care to much about a core customer base that has defended them through thick and then, even when we have been so mistreated. But who knows, maybe they read your blog and will see. My dream was ALWAYS that they used a core group of true FooPets fans as their consultants. I worked hard to get a group together, which was then thrown in my face. I only bang my head on the wall so long before I stop. All that blood in the eyes makes it hard to see clearly. Time will tell whether they can turn this Titanic and get it back home before the fail.
ReplyDeleteI am glad that I was able to give the direct quotes from Oscar Cat's postings so that people here could see things clearly. There were even sections of the thread where she was amicably (along with the others) talking about things such as cleaning her house. I strongly disapprove of the kind of censorship practised by Foo, which effectively creates a "smear" against the censored poster. You may be correct that it is ambassadors doing it, but they do what the large "A"s tell them to do, something which Snacksthecat was clear about on the forums a while back.
ReplyDeleteAs you say, it is an interesting and positive fact that whoever is in charge appears to care enough about the site to try to save it -- yes, they did not need to re-start the game, and it is intriguing that they did so. It would have been more logical, given the obviously difficult task, to have kept the site down during repairs and had a really good, well-updated and cheerful, message on login -- similar to the message we get when trying to enter the forums, not using the poor mad kitty and actually making clear that pets, when they re-appear, will be fully fed, bonding and badges unaffected, and the extra time added for free to everyone's accounts. This would have prevented the problems and would have got everyone happy apart from those who wanted to sell leap-day litters. Even those people could have been pacified with some compromise.
Yes, Rivet was disbanded and their stuff sold -- I was interested to watch as a former employee tweeted how excited she was to be successful in buying some item or other that was likely to help her future career in design, and in fact those early tweets by former staff were very revealing.
I'm with you that I HOPE that the changes signal better times to come, even though I did find that skewed censorship to be alarming. And I am terribly sad that people have not only jumped ship but have condemned their pets to permanent "pet not found" state. That whole concept, of tying the pets to DELETED accounts is so wrong-headed and, maybe, the new owners can be persuaded to stop that.
I have to say that I cannot imagine anyone other than a dedicated player caring enough about the site to keep it going like this. Intriguing.
that is what i am praying for - and i can't see anyone OTHER than a foopet lover seeing getting the pets up where we could care for them personally as the top priority (if someone tried to tell me pets on a "dormant" site had been cared for properly during the downtime they would immediately lose my trust)...and i would far rather have the site and my pets where i can reach them, glitches or no glitches, than wait for a maybe-achievable perfection with a plastic smile and compensation/bribery. of course, i'm a nut...
ReplyDelete(note : as far as i have seen the Sams are totally offline - which would be needed to release pets tied to closed accounts and restore open fostering, among other things - and right this minute, there AREN'T any capital A's in terms of company officials (no company, not yet), at least not on deck on FaceBook - every living soul is working on the coding)
ReplyDeleteThis just posted on FB
ReplyDeleteFooPets
In case you all haven't heard from our Twitter (@FooPets), Ownership transition and performance fixes should happen within 1-2 weeks. There will be lots of changes you'll like coming! Thanks again for being so patient. :o)
Interesting, Anonymous. So basically, they are still negotiating ownership? In other words, as of now, it's just the company liquidators (the people who are selling off Rivet stuff) in charge? They must at least have let someone have the keys early so as to have the site limping along. "lots of changes you'll like" has me quaking in my boots a bit, considering the diverse nature of the players LOL
ReplyDeleteGold Rush, I sympathise with your view of pet care and I agree, the samaritans are not anywhere that I have looked. I was stating what would have made much more logical sense, given that the site is taking so much work to get it running. And although I too would not trust them to care for the pets while the site was down, I would be willing to waive the disbelief if, at the moment of restoring the site to us, they filled all the bars of every pet on foo. I am sure that could be done at the flick of a switch heh
On the subject of feeding pets, I have always been intrigued that pets which we get from the AC via the play page always have full bonding and are fully fed and (if I recall aright) played with, whereas getting the same pet via the profile page gets you empty bonding and feed/water only. The code of the place has to be an awful rabbit-warren of spaghetti!
yes, it is...and every change and "improvement" added to the mess. i am hoping that the reason the site is online is not just to use us as live guinea pigs to test the fix-in-progress.
ReplyDeletethe twitter message (which has also been pasted to FaceBook by someone there, but the fact that they did not post there "themselves" bolsters the conviction that any actions there are by a's of whatever stripe gone wild) was relayed to the FaceBook "event" thread i am running this morning. the phrasing is ambiguous (most likely deliberately, for any of a number of reasons i can think of), and could as easily mean that whoever hijacked the database is forming a company to back it up and registering formal "ownership", which would take about that length of time. the could also mean the transition from Rivet to whomever...
yes, bonding bars have always been unpredicable...i never understood how babies lovingly raised in a profile should wean with no bonding, either. as far as what they "adopt" with, that's literally tacked on in transit, as i'm sure all are aware.
sorry if i seem a bit off...i just found 3 siblings from one of the first feline litters born here, rescued and placed as a group by Canaan at the fervent request of what i thought was a trustworthy member, chucked into the fooshelter once more - and Canaan had only one opening, so two will have to wait. at least i can attest that the FooShelter is operating normally, and that the profile from the previous owner no longer wipes on transfer, both from Boulevardier's rescue and from the placement of another cat a day or so ago that opened up a space for him.
Gold Rush, if you would like me to I would be happy to help you and Carrie get your babies out of the shelter. If you need my private email address just let me know and I'll post it as subtly as I can here or just post the babies' numbers and I'll pull out whomever you'd like. You guys here helped me in a huge pinch and have provided so much support and info- I'd love to pay it forward!
Deletethank you...i have someone who was planning to adopt a couple more, so i will wait a day or so, in order to try to keep the brothers together - bless you all! (weeping a little) if i cannot get Midnight Rambler and Dark'o'the'Moon out shortly, i will post and accept your kind offers gratefully.
DeleteOh my lord, that is so horrible for you, finding your little ones back in that shelter. I have space still, so if you need help to whisk the remaining babes out of there just say the word -- i.e. drop me a line with the ID numbers.
ReplyDeleteBack on topic, that makes sense, that the "transition" period would be the length of time it takes to register a company and ownership. I too hope that they are not running it live to use us as guinea-pigs; I rather think that they are not, since for me at least there has been no change at all since the site came back up and so I question whether they really are working on anything that they would expect us to really notice. Perhaps they are simply tidying up what they can of the code and, when they have full ownership, they will be able to shift the whole database to a reliable server? Really I know nothing about such things.
Well off I go, to see if I can feed a few more of the frozens today!
God bless and (((hugs)))
A bunch of interesting and revealing tweets at http://twitter.com/#!/foopets
ReplyDeleteOn the issue of pay to play there is this
"@LorKeeley FooPets will have to charge money to stay online, but the new owes are considering all combinations of pricing models."
hopefully one of those is our original suggestion to offer a "basic" package without unasked-for FooDollars for $10 per year (or $5 for 6 months if they're nailed into that format) - which would allow many people to reinstate single and reopen multiple accounts. also the "scholarship" program we begged for, that would allow the Haves to aid the Have-Nots by gifting a membership.
ReplyDeletei have been looking at how other sites handle this (have yet to find anything remotely resembling Foo that enforces paid membership), and the best solution i've seen is a special site currency (Aywas' Silver Points is an excellent example) reserved only for subscription members, accessible daily in random increments, with its own separate shop and items which can be resold for other site currencies if desired. (they also do a monthly premium item, as the original SuperSaver did). i have NO idea how they will resolve the problem of site inflation caused by the flood of FooDollars from subscriptions, but this will at least stop the bleeding and give it a chance.
subgrouping shops by tender and returning member-to-member sales will also aid both in site income and rebalancing site currency (among other things). as far as a trade protocol, there are a number of sites that have excellent double-confirmation systems : the best i know of is on MagiStream and i'm sure Tristan would share the coding if asked.
(think i might just dump a mildly edited version of this straight into Twitter)
(think i might just dump a mildly edited version of this straight into Twitter)
DeleteOh, please do! Anything that can offer help or ideas is a great thing!
okay, i broke down and registered for Twitter (cringe), and found you can only post little bitty messages - so i composed THIS to attach to the "tweet" (sigh) - let's hope they (a) read it, and (b) respond, somewhere. the Comments on this new epic are active, by the way.
ReplyDeletebit the bullet and did it...now we wait. saw THIS interesting little tidbit - "Thanks, Amy. Actually I am one of the prospective new owners, but it's not official yet so it's still hush hush. :)" - it would appear that our conjectures about the hijack and incorporation are correct...a good sign, i think.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading through all of the comments here, I realize I am in the middle of a muddle that noone else seems to be having an issue with....CF membership monthly payments. I had my 9.99 deducted from my card a week ago and two days later found my account locked and an email from Foo stating they had cancelled my account as I had requested. I informed them I had NOT requested it and then they said my card had been declined. BS. I spoke with my card company TWICE and they assure me the payment was collected by support@foopets.com (interesting, no?) I was forced to use a different card and make another payment if I wanted to get into my account so that I will have my Leap Day litters born on time. I get that they are desperate for funds but this isn't the way to fix the issue. I am working with card company to get proof of the first payment but it may be forever before this gets settled. Please be careful if you MUST make a payment!!
ReplyDeleteone other person i heard from had an (unspecified) problem with their credit card...what you describe sounds more like crapped-out coding throwing up the wrong account or card number : you are proceeding correctly with your credit company but i would suggest you also do a screenshot of the debit with payee and date (hopefully you can view your credit account online), and submit it to Support - as far as where the payments are going, the only "official" internet base extant for Foopets-as-a-business is the standalone Support site, Rivet is out of business and the new people are still incorporating and so have no way to process anything anywhere else as yet.
ReplyDeleteHey guys. Check out the new tweets. They kind of explain why there has not been advancement with improvements. Mostly because the new owners ship has no control over the site or support yet. https://twitter.com/#!/foopets
ReplyDeletewell, they do have custody of the database and appear to be making a sincere effort to get it fixed once and for all - a massive and probably largely thankless task as progress is necessarily slow (considering the mess they inherited, and the fact that they may not be/have the world's best coders) and no doubt largely thankless, lol, as what they are presently engaged in doing is just giving us what we should have had to begin with - a problem which was really no fault of theirs - and while it is gradual, i have seen a day by day improvement in site function.
ReplyDeleteif they do NOT control the Rivet-created standalone Support site, that could explain a LOT : if ex-Rivet personnel are still in control of it rather than our guys, the robber-baron tactics reported (by at least 2 people we know of, there may be others) suddenly assume a whole new aspect.
just got an answer to my Tweet to them, and it looks like they actually READ the linked open letter...pray, PRAY that this heralds a new day for FooPets!
(daddratted thing won't let me post the screenshot...will stick it in later when i'm wearing my FooBA hat)