im happy there was an update post :)
Do you think staff should post an update?
873 Votes
Yes! I want to know what's going on!
13 Votes
Nah, I'm good
Closed! Thank you so much to everyone who helped boost this and get the mods back <3 I don't feel like this thread is needed anymore, so I'm going to lock it. <3
Original thread content:
Hello! I know there's been a lot of concern (especially in this forum) about where all the mods are. A lot of us have tickets that have gone unanswered for months - some over a year - and there hasn't been much of an update from anyone on the toyhouse staff about what's up with that. The last post in the "announcements" forum was 1 year and 2 months ago. I recently decided to email support, and the following is my email and their response. I just wanted to share it with you guys to hopefully answer some questions. I'm tagging admin, lulu, cy, minsu and jaywalk in hopes that they see this thread, so if you have any questions for them regarding this topic, or want to request an actual announcement/update from them, comment below!
My Email:
Hello! It has come to the attention of many toyhou.se users that the mods and creators of the site appear to be almost entirely absent. There is a lot of fear that the site will experience a fatal bug and go down with nobody to fix it. Will we lose all of our characters and art? What about those of use that are paying for subscriptions?
So firstly, I was hoping to find out more about volunteering to be a mod for the site. Personally I have a ton of free time (thanks covid) and plenty of experience as a manager, as well as moderating online groups and forums. If I could donate my time, I would do so gladly.
Secondly, I know toyhouse is a side project for the creators, but is there any way the community could get an update just to know that someone's still alive out there?
Thank you for your time- toyhou.se is my favorite website and I truly want to see it succeed in every way. Hoping to hear back soon. <3
- lohkiit
Response:
Hi lohkiit,
Thanks for reaching out, and for offering your time and work! The team's
currently not looking to expand, but will put out a public notice when
we decide to take on mods.
We're still actively fielding tickets and keeping an eye on server
health, and are definitely around to handle any site-breaking bugs or
outages.
With regards to a lack of updates, most of my attention right now is on
improving current code rather than introducing new features. The
codebase hit the size where it's troublesome to make changes without
breaking things, which has made it difficult to respond quickly to
feedback and bugs; I'm currently working on a partial rewrite which will
take awhile but should make it easier to make updates without breaking
the site moving forward.
My secondary priority is expanding the suite of mod tools so that it
takes less time to field tickets, which will hopefully help with the
clogged up ticket desk -- we won't be looking to recruit until after
these tools have been updated.
Unfortunately since neither of these jobs are front-facing it might look
like like radio silence for awhile, but I'm still present and available
for questions, feedback and concerns!
Hope that eases any worries; just let me know if you have any other queries.
--
Lulu
Toyhou.se Support
*All that being said, please remember to be kind! The staff of this site are wonderful people, and under no circumstances should anyone be rude to them. As they've said many times, this site is a side project.
Kind of a lurker on the forums but wanted to put in my 2c as a Professional Software Engineer(tm). It's... really hard to put into words for non-engineers how much the difficulty of running a site multiplies as it gets bigger. Fixing performance issues isn't as simple as, say, just buying bigger servers, and even if you're super conscientious, horrible site-breaking bugs slip in very easily, especially when you're dependent upon outside tech that other people can suddenly screw up with an update of their own. (Which you pretty much will be for any significant project.) I've been woken up at 2 in the morning, repeatedly, because one of our upstream systems decided to hiccup and send everything flying.
And, yeah, running the site on top of a full-time job... I personally would not be able to do it, especially in the hellscape that is 2020. I haven't been able to draw for months, or write, or get invested in fandom, or do anything with my OCs. All I can do after work most days is sleep or game. It's not as draining as retail (I worked min wage for a year and god, never again) and granted, I do have chronic health issues so my situation isn't everyone's, but that eight hours a day absolutely does take its toll on you. Especially if you un-luck out and end up on call or with a team with very poor work-life boundaries...
(I had a lot of thoughts on the moderation side of things too but I'm very tired so this is all you get.)
Anyway, I'm glad Lulu finally updated us on the situation, and I'm cheering her on in getting the site fixed up and ready for more mods. And for goodness's sake, I hope she takes some time for herself in-between her job and this job.
I agree with Red and nevermore. It's been over a year and many people haven't gotten responses to things they've sent in (me included), even if it's just a small "I've seen your issue and I'll get back to you once I've solved more important issues" (which would be very nice to get). It took this thread and people starting to get irritated for them to post an update. I'm glad they did, and I'm more sympathetic now that I know it's just one person (honestly, I thought it was a team of people, not going to lie), but it is frustrating. I hope that they can get more staff to help them out, as it does seem like there is a lot going on for them.
Random thought but in the future I hope they give warnings BEFORE freezing accounts since it takes months or longer for them to actually address it. Seems like it would be easier on their part as well.