we have been anxiously following your progress with repairing the truly amazing mess that was the FooPets coding system, and salute and appreciate your efforts. while we are all eager to meet the man (or woman) behind the curtain, that pales in comparision with our concerns for the future of the site we all love so much. (and have manfully resisted the temptation to hide under the bed at the dreaded word "changes", lol)
most recently we see in your response to another tweet that the pay-to-play system is being evaluated (hurray), as the one instituted under the Rivet regime patently did not work. we see with pleasure and gratitude that you are exploring other options. we do NOT grudge you an income - without that, there IS no site - but there are so many better ways to create the much-needed solvency...
hopefully one of those you are examining is our original suggestion to offer a "basic" package, without unasked-for FooDollars, for $10 per year (or $5 for 6 months if you'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. what you lose on individual accounts you would more than make up in volume. we might also hope that once the site is liquid (say in a year?) this could be discontinued as an across-the-board policy. by that time, the artificial influx of foodollars created by compulsory ClubFoo will have dissipated, and normal package purchasing will have resumed.
i have been looking at how other sites handle the problem of income (have yet to find any site remotely resembling Foo that enforces paid membership), and the best solution i've seen is a special site currency (Aywas' Premium Points are an excellent example) reserved only for high-ticket 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 you/we 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 to level out naturally.
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.
there is a huge cadre of loyal members, many with skills and/or income we would be delighted to contribute to FooPets' betterment, ready and willing to help in any way - we fervently hope that this new regime will not reject this potentially tremendously useful resource out of hand as has been done in the past.
i may be reached directly at singingbadgerclan@gmail.com - i have made an exception to a long-standing policy of not getting involved in chat sites like Twitter in order to try to contact you via a venue that seems to be "active".
looking forward to better times for all, i remain
singingbadger, Born2CanaanCatHaven, FooBA4U...and 15 other accounts which i would love to reactivate.
