Official note on "chicken flipping" + forum thread for discussion

Hi all, many have come forward with concerns about both chickens getting released immediately after purchase for a small profit ("flipping") and the blocking of people who do it. I think that there needs to be a conversation, so I have set up a forum thread to support a constructive conversation about it. Principles I go by:

1. Chicken flipping is not against the rules. It's a legal way to use farmhouse and release.
2. I want players to have the ability to curate a game experience that is enjoyable. This includes setting up notices about ways they don't want to be interacted with, including not having their sold chickens immediately released.
3. This conflict is not surprising, other game websites have seen big disagreements about this exact same issue. It can't be helped that there are players in both camps—those who dislike flipping and those who prefer to do it—because these two groups play the game in a fundamentally different way. I do not see one as "truer to the game" than the other.

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• Because this is about people's different preferences and playstyles, keep in mind that you're playing this game alongside others who approach the chickens in a completely different way from you. It's not in my purview to police how people play, beyond rule breaking behaviour, so I can only ask you to be open minded about this.
• For those who don't like flipping, use a neutral tone when referring to the action, on the site + in the Discord server, i.e. "please don't flip/immediately release this chicken." Focus on the action, not the person. Focusing on people risks being hurtful/targeted and builds an atmosphere of distrust.
• You can use the block button however you like, but I'd also like to ask for people to consider a range of ways to address this in addition to blocking.
• For those who flip chickens, note that there's a subset of users who feel strongly negative about chicken flipping. This is usually because they have sold chickens cheaply with the intention of helping new players, or the sentiment that the chickens are living beings with stories, personalities and effort put into them. This may be noted in the sale listings/forum threads, and I suggest keeping those requests in mind to keep the space comfortable for all.
• EDIT: Also, always keep in mind that once you give a chicken away or sell it, you no longer have control over what happens to it. If you do not want your chickens "flipped", always sell for higher than the release reward.

I would also like to apologise if the wording sounded targeted/coercive and have been revising the message as thoughts have come in. The truth is that I do have an opinion on this - as in there's one way that I prefer the site to be - and incorporating other people's ways of playing in how I administrate the site has been an evolving process as well! I think this site is past the point where I can simply decide for other people what I want it to be, it's too big and socially complex. I am currently too busy with the rest of my life to actively keep tabs on it so I would just like people to be kind to each other and remember we're all just humans who do things differently, and that is the best we can do 🙂