Welcome to Gaia! ::

This is the announcement I wanted to send to the guild but had to chop short due to the 1500 character limit.

(EDIT: Also, just to be clear this is not the petition thread. Just info about it and a link to it. I realized the thread title might be confusing for some.)

As you may be aware Gaia has recently nerfed tank glow times to 50 or 60% of what they used to be. Also, at the Gaia panel at the recent Sakura-Con convention DJ Helsing said Gaia intends to nerf dolphins.

A great many of us are fed up with the continual 'bait and switch' routine Gaia keeps pulling. They hype new fish and tank features, they leave things intact until they have made a lot of cash sales then they nerf the fish with excuses about needing to balance the system. Then they introduce a new fish and repeat the cycle for more cash. The positive changes are shouted from the rooftops with Announcements and front page ads. The negative changes are done on the sly with seldom ever a word said unless so many Gaians complain they feel compelled to address it. The practice is deceptive and demoralizing and many tank owners are questioning whether it is worth trying to continue second guessing Gaia's sneaky monkey tactics.



I encourage you to:
Post in the strike thread saying you (and your mules) will participate.
Remove all fish from your tank. (Note: 1 goldfish works if you are worried about maintaining tank health.)
Change your signature to inform people about the strike and why your tank is empty.
Don't purchase / use any Gaia Cash during the strike.
Don't buy any fish or aquarium items from MP during the strike.

EDIT:
If you have the fish strike in your sig another thing you can do to help support the strike is post around in the varoius forums so more people see it. Please note I am NOT advocating spam. I mean posting you might reasonably do anyway like joining in discussions in the various forums.


I realize this may not be for everyone but I'd love to see as many of you as possible join the cause. The strike is likely to last one or two weeks. Please join us. Our goal is to make Gaia aware how much they are alienating their customer base.

In case it helps anyone here is the code for my temporary strike signature:

Thanks for the code David. It certainly helped me! My two other accounts will also go on strike. One thing about your code though... I don't know how you did it. When I tried to post the entire code I wasn't able to. Kept getting the message it was too long! My signature has a 255 character limit.

@ Resurrected ShadowPhoenix

We can't blame just a single person for the glow nerf. It's the fault of the Gaia admin as a whole. DJ Helsing was only the bearer of bad news, and not necessarily the person who initially decided that the Aquariums needed a nerf.

Um removing your fish helps Gaia keeps the Gold check in balance so its only hurting yourselves. I signed the petition but I won't do as the strike part of it tells me too. I will continue to buy GCash for whatever reason I want, since telling everybody else to stop is selfish and its likes stealing a hard working employee's paycheck. Gaia costs arounbd $25,000,000.00 a year to run. Where do you expect them to pull that much from?

Astral -
I respectfully disagree.
Pulling the fish from the tanks does not only hurt tanks owners. The point is to make more non-tank owners aware of the situation and to make it more obvious to Gaia admin that many tank owners are seriously considering not purchasing more fish.

Not all admin / developers or even mods will necessarily see the strike thread. However if there many empty tanks with strike information in their sigs that is hard for them to miss. Most of these tanks are posted in many places around Gaia. A Gaia with a whole lot of empty tanks is a glimpse of what may come to be if they continue on their present course.

Regarding Gaia Cash -
I did not TELL anyone to stop purchasing Gaia cash.
I ENCOURAGED them to not purchase or use Gaia cash during the strike. It does not necessarily mean less Gaia cash purchased / used. It just means this month's spending would get delayed a bit to get their attention.

In the long run I am not hurting Gaia or the paychecks of employess; I am HELPING them. The aquarium division of Gaia is on a course that is currently causing DECREASING cash purchases because they are alienating their customer base in this area. If Gaia would deal with fish and tank adjustments FAIRLY and an in a forthright manner the net result should be an INCREASE in cash sales.

That may have once been true but I doubt it is true now. As I understand it the cash influx for Gaia as a business comes from two sources.
1. Advertising on the site (and maybe a bit from cross-site deals like linking up with Facebook).
2. Cash sales to users.

By all accounts online advertising has fallen way off across the board. I don't know Gaia's figures but the industry news has had many articles about advertising revenue falling off in the bad economy.

Also, Gaia has talked about their own money problems in so many words. For example canceling some of the convention touring last year due to cash flow issues and having to prioritize programming chores and making some fixes wait.

I have worked in a software company and seen this in action. When times are fat you just hire more programmers to get the job done. When times are lean you decide which bugs and fixes to let slide and which ones to fix to try to do the best you can for the company with what you have to work with. For a long time now many obvious and unfixed glitches / bugs / 'needs improvement' items on Gaia have been left to gather dust. This strongly supports the theory of Gaia currently being a bit cash strapped

I also like to give the admin of Gaia some credibility for being real human beings. I like to think that if it were not for a bad need for cash they would not be so tolerant of all the inappropriate (malware, misleading, obnoxious etc.) ads being broadcast by the ad vendors they partner with. Instead what we are seeing are larger ads and the addition of ads in new places such as at the top of forum thread pages.

At the end of the day people purchase a product (any product - Gaia, movies, restaurant food, what ever) because the product is worthy and/or needed by or attractive to the consumer. Nothing on Gaia is needed to survive; it is all just pretend and fun. That just leaves attractive or desirable to the consumer. In the area of aquariums and fish I believe Gaia is headed towards a major FAIL if they don't change their tactics.

Thanks for the announcement. I've already signed the petition, but I love seeing the word get around!