I'm glad. I know everyone (including myself) responded so strongly initially, but I am hoping that we can create a positive place were actual options are made available. Sometimes a situation just needs another set of eyes to find a solution. I am hoping that we can.

I think we have to fix the (from what I've been told) EPIC back log of edits to be done and we would have to staff a lot more editors AND let them do more than 2 a day for points. But I like the idea, just hard with not enough people editing.

I as well just pushed all my points pre-chaos onto a gift card. I as well have a previous gift card with a remaining balance. This would be nice if they were generated to a system generated gift card so we could use them fully on purchases, like you said.

I also like the idea of 500 for extended and 100 for standard reviews as well as the limitations.

I know I would personally love to stay here, the community is great and as well as shopping for me is great. However, I also believe 15% is low, like many others have said we could be using our affiliate codes to receive that. Maybe taking that percentage just a little higher and I would have no problem paying OOP when I could.

This 15% is ontop of the code. So you use the code to bring the item 15% down in price and than you can use points to cover another 15%. So that's 30% if you do it with a buy out it is 45%. I know that this is still short of what we are used to, bu it is better than 15% a lot of people are making it out to be.

I have no suggestions for what the community can do because at this point, the community are not the ones who have done something wrong. We can only wait and see what the staff's next moves are. My suggestions to Fred and his staff:

1. Honor the points that were earned before the system was changed. This is the first and most important thing that needs to be done. I realize this change was made because of financial reasons but ultimately you will lose all of your contributors if you do not do this, meaning you will lose more money than you are hoping to save by eliminating any feasible usage of the points that people worked hard to earn and agreed under very different guidelines. Many of us worked so hard to churn out QUALITY content for SexIS and EF and are unable to use our compensation from that because this decision was made KNOWING that none of us here can afford to drop $1000 on a single order. Making these changes retroactive without warning was what made everybody angry. Obviously do not apply this to blatant point farmers.

2. Decide whether you want to have a community focus with this website or not, because as it stands now, the entire community feels used, betrayed, and lied to... and that is not the way a healthy and positive community should be made to feel. If community is really an important facet of EF as a whole, then this situation must be made right, or the community will crumble, and then there will be nothing left. If we want to maintain the EF community, y'all need to seriously change the way you interact with us (see below)

3. Listen. I mean actually listen. No canned responses like "we appreciate your feedback" if you're blatantly ignoring it and are just asking for our thoughts to keep up appearances. No going through threads and snarking/arguing with customers who feel wronged (that is poor customer service and I know I would get fired if I were to act that way with my own dissatisfied customers). If you say our input is important, then you have to actually listen to what all of us are saying. I can't stress that enough. We've been told "We're open to suggestions!" but all subsequent suggestions have been passed over or gone unacknowledged, which means that y'all were not so open to begin with.

4. Be up front and honest with us. Everyone will have much more respect for the staff and for the company as a whole if the lying stops. No more bait and switches like this, either. Good, honest business practices - like this website was once known for. The community was positive when its interactions with the staff were positive so again, until the staff make this situation right then I don't see any real way to save this.

5. If none of these are an option, at least give contributors the option to remove their content from the website, or make it so that a person's contributions are removed when they delete their account, or something.

6. Start over with a completely new, fresh slate. Sit down with employees and top contributors, past and present, and have a meeting to discuss a loyalty program that is impossible to abuse. Hell, close down the site for a week in order to figure out the changes that need to be made, rather than dropping them on everyone so suddenly. Re-open with every new change laid out on the table and promise that things will be different, in a good way, and follow through on that promise.

That's it. That's all I got.

But with a buyout we are forced to write a review. I don't think that should be a requirement to get that deal when before we could use all our points. 15% is the only really non strings attached discount we get with this new change.

I think we should be able to spend what we earned before this how we want. Unless that happens I can't support this site any longer. If it does happen I'll be happy to give suggestions but I'm not going to now when they just screwed us over without warning.

You should remember that you, a member and a few others, have been asking how we can change for the better but not fred, he's no where to be found when chaos happens.

Thank you

Agreed, I did the same with my points as well. The only points I will be earning are for forums, or the reviews I was obligated to write.

I have loved this community since the day I joined, but feel at this moment like this change has been far too drastic. I have hope that it will sort its self out and continue to be amazing.

Eden, please figure out a way to make everyone happy.

Makes perfect sense to me.

A few things to perhaps think about.

1.Perhaps Sexis writers could be compensated with an actual gift card rather than points.
2.Editors and Mentors: I fully believe that they should be compensated via gift cards too.
3.Reviews: Perhaps use a tiered method for point redeeming.
4.A Quality Control Team could easily implemented to ensure that spam with reviews and articles are kept to a minimum. That would cut down on abuse and on people attempting to “farm points” and “gift cards” via Sexis and reviews.
5.Either slash point redeeming or maybe you can only cash in and use $25 worth at a single time with the option for extras to be used to cover shipping costs (could made an option at checkout)
6. I know it was tried before, but perhaps cut down on the amount of points that can be earned with instead of a daily cap perhaps either a weekly cap or monthly cap instead.

Now a little about this idea of a Quality Control Team. The actual members could be picked from a pool of volunteers. They could be compensated in a variety of ways such as either a higher point redemption to an extra X percentage taken off their orders. If this is something that sounds like something that could be useful I wouldn't mind chatting this over more with either Stormy or Fred in a PM so as not to dull people with the mundane details on this.

1. Perhaps.
2. Mentors are. Editors are being considered.
3. Already in the works.
4. Exists. It's the Editing Team.
5. It's an 85/15 split. (Cash/points)
6. Been there, done that.

Interesting suggestion, but it would come down to opinion. There's no way to put a value on an opinion when it comes to a forum discussion.

I bet you wish you could today!

I like that one...I'll see what stormy has to say about it.

The part that sickened me about number 6, is that I watched the shit storm (for lack of a better word) and was shocked how people seemed to view this less as a business and more like an organization that was "required" to give out points for things. It made me sick to see the total lack of understanding that others seemed to have in regards that a business can only stay afloat as long as there is a profit being made and that the points might be hitting into the profit heavily...which I am sure that is was.

It's not 45% for a buyout. It's 40.5%, so that's really only an extra 10.5% off.

Example using $100
100 - 30% = 70
70 - 15% = $59.50

I was thinking less by individual post than by posting category, so posts in The Lounge = 1 point, whereas maybe a post in Sexual Health = 5. It wouldn't stop people from contributing but would encourage people to contribute more in areas of the community directly related to the mission of the site as a whole.