"Please include either screenshots or copy and paste the conversation."
I think it should be screenshot only, because, well...
22:11 - lokonopa: dude im kinda desperate right now
22:11 - Monolight: why is that?
22:12 - lokonopa: i dont wanna spend gift on 2nd acc
22:12 - lokonopa: so im here again
22:12 - lokonopa: and im asking you: would you be that kind and help me out?
22:13 - Monolight: I already told you I'm not gonna helpyou cheat the system
22:13 - lokonopa: plz
...because it's easy to lie. No idea why anyone would do that though.
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I'm pretty sure that the said user doesn't have to say anything because any action will only be taken after specific evidences are present. I doubt that any member has ever been banned or even warned based solely on an editable text file or post. Plus the moderators surely contact BOTH parts not only the member suspected of breaking the rules but also the member who reported him. You make it sound like the moderators' work is taken lightly to the point that action will be taken the second they see someone being reported in the forums.
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"My point is that if User-A reports User-B, sends the chat that never was and when asked User-B just mumbles something in bad English and swears in Russian how would you know who to trust?"
This one? That wasn't an argument, that was a hypothetical question. And it certainly wasn't against your statement, if anything it implied everything you said was true. Well, except your last sentence.
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So I've been warned for a potty mouth? Oh come on, at least warning me for the post above would make sense, since it could be considered a sexual assault. Talking about sexual assault, feel free to spank me, after all, I have been a bad boy.
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"implied lokonopa didn't give a damn about imporoving the site and couldn't care less wether the current methods work or not"
Actually I implied that he gave up trying to do anything about beggars/whatever we were talking about.
I know it's not like that, but his argument did make it look that way...(dramatic dot dot dot)
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Oh, for goodness' sake, it wasn't an impression of you as a whole, it was an impression of one badly worded argument which was an equivalent of saying: "Why put more locks on doors, thieves are gonna steal everything anyway".
I just looked at that thread, we were actually talking about people creating alt accounts.
"if someone can find a way or afford to boost a dummy account over $50 to meet the minimum, another $30-40 shouldn't be much of a problem."
Again, I don't think the minimum should be raised, I'm for keeping it as it is, however your argument against raising it is a bad one.
It's OK, everyone sometimes makes mistakes and bad arguments. Well, except robots... and Jesus... and me...
Hey, look on the bright side, that means you're not completely a robot... yet.
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Sorry, your exaggeration of what I've said does not dissolve the reasons stated. If you would remember the comment what cg and myself mentioned in that previous thread, increasing the requirement would only serve to block legitimate users who would like to join, but have an account under $100.
If someone wanted to try to game SteamGifts in any manner of ways and believe spending over $50+ on a dummy account is worth the chance, which it isn't, they'll find a way around $100. The escalation would only snowball and the rate would only increase when new bad apples are reported.
Judging by your other comments, you only seem to argue about anything in this community. If you're bored and on Steam, well, you're on Steam. Please play a game and just relax.
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"If you would remember the comment what cg and myself mentioned in that previous thread"
I probably haven't even read it.
"increasing the requirement would only serve to block legitimate users who would like to join, but have an account under $100."
Sigh. No. No it wouldn't just block legitimate users, it would also block most dummy accounts. In that thread there was a guy struggling to make a $50 dummy account. In the end he would have made it. He only needed like 1 more game or whatever. If the minimum was a $100 he wouldn't even try creating a dummy account, because he would realize that that's too damn much.
Why does this site even have the minimum of $50? Why not $15? If they find a way to make a dummy account worth $15 they'll surely find a way to make it worth $50. This is why the argument is bad. It disproves itself.
And again, I'm not for raising the minimum. There's a lot of great arguments for not raising the minimum. Dummy accounts are rare, they're not a national problem. Raising the minimum would block a lot more legit users than dummy accounts. Dummy accounts are easily detectable and banned anyway. Stand behind one of those, not an abortion of an argument.
"Judging by your other comments, you only seem to argue about anything in this community."
Only about the stuff that doesn't make sense or I think is wrong.
"If you're bored and on Steam, well, you're on Steam. Please play a game and just relax."
This is a lot more interesting and enjoyable for me, sorry.
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"So your arguments have no real meaning because you find too much interest in conflict."
No idea why you think that. It's not the conflict, it's "Someone's being wrong on the internet!!!!111". Plus I enjoy the conversations.
"So, I can't really take what you say seriously."
Well, not everything. My brilliant jokes and silly comments aren't meant to be taken seriously. The other stuff is. When it becomes "not serious" and we'll start arguing about pink flying whales I'll lose all interest.
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I didn't take it as him implying anything about Loko.
Just voicing his concerns over a hypothetical conversation report. When it was pointed out how silly it was, and how Loko and the mods actually look into the situations, Monolight carried on with some silly comments.
That's what I saw. Just joshing around not to be taken as any viable consideration :/
Edit: Obviously I was not privvy to all that was stated in the "it's shit like this..." thread. Therefore all my comments here are meant to be seen as my interpretation with the limited info I had. I do apologize if those comments piss anyone off.
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Once again this subject has been discussed and clarified by lokonopa and cg countless times before. Those specific games were at some point able to be acquired through exploitation may it have been through leaked keys or promo's exploitation or whatever it would be. Hence they are not counted to one's account value.
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http://www.steamgifts.com/forum/k30Mq/policy-update-exploited-keys
http://www.steamgifts.com/forum/L2DbS/dont-submit-keys-you-got-from-fkn0wned-you-will-be-banned
Covers games like Dead Island, Portal 2, and AI War. Previously exploited keys are Dirt3, Eets, and a few others I can't think of right now
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I knew about the old bans (Dirt3, Eets, etc), but I guess I missed the updated policy. What a shame; Dead Island and Portal 2 were two of the games I was most likely to enter for.
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I went in and read the thread after posting my comment and forgot to change it, but thank you very much for the clarification.
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$50 value on Steam actually means like $10 when you can buy games like Alpha Protocol for $2. And I'd personally support a raise not only because of cheating but because of a minimum level of dedication to this particular hobby. It'd be nice knowing that a Skyrim giveaway for example goes to someone who will actually appreciate it, not someone who's barely even a gamer and is just here to get whatever free stuff they can. Yes, I realize saying this is discriminative and harsh but if you already discriminate by having a minimum requirement in the first place, make it one that actually counts for something.
Not really here to complain or change anyone's opinion, the site runs well as it is, just throwing my 2 cents in there.
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I just want to point out a flaw in your logic:
"It'd be nice knowing that a Skyrim giveaway for example goes to someone who will actually appreciate it, not someone who's barely even a gamer and is just here to get whatever free stuff they can."
This statement implies that a person who can't afford to own games, or one who just switched to PC from previously playing console, is barely a gamer. Who is more of an avid gamer: a person with 50 different games on their account but only 5-10 hours per game, or a person with a single game on their account but 500 hours in that one game. Apply this to the example of Skyrim: would a person with $1000 worth of games on their account but no Morrowind or Oblivion be more worthy of winning Skyrim than someone who has just Oblivion (a $20 value) on their account but 500 hours into it?
I'm not saying anything about raising or lowering the value limit here, I'm simply pointing out that the value/size of a person's Steam account is not a good measure of how much of a gamer they are (I personally know someone who probably has at least 20 games with less than 1 hour of play time in them).
Having a minimum requirement isn't discriminative towards people who are or aren't "gamers" but rather a way of determining how likely a person is to give a gift vs how much they deserve to win one. If a person only has $10 on their account then how likely are they to actually make a giveaway (considering that a $1 giveaway from them would be like a $60 giveaway from someone who's account is worth $600)? On the other hand, if the limit is too high then you restrict the site to people who clearly have the money to give away games, but if everyone can clearly afford to give away games then what's the point of giving them away?
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A person who can't afford to own games can't afford to own a gaming PC either. And someone who switched from consoles will build up a library soon enough and then register or if they find PC gaming unappealing, go back to consoles. I know this from experience, as I play on consoles a lot, too. As for someone who has only one game, say Peggle or Plants vs Zombies, and 500 hours in it means their interest is very very limited so if you ask who is more of a dedicated gamer I'd obviously have to go with the person with 50 games and playtime in each of them.
So yeah, while I can see where you're coming from, I'm going to maintain that having the limit at $200 or something would be more beneficial for the community of this site without making it elitist or irrational. Especially when you consider that $200 would mean about $50 of actual value since you have to consider the effect of the sales as well. Doesn't exactly mean that everyone is made out of money.
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Fair enough, I would agree that something like $200 would be a reasonable amount if they did decide to change it. As for the examples I provided, I was giving pretty much the most extreme cases out there and intended the "1 game with lots of hours" to be a larger game. The main point was that number of games/value of account isn't always a good measure of how much of a gamer a person is. It is certainly a good starting point, but ti's something that really needs to be judged on a person to person basis.
The example of 1 game with many hours was aimed as a more direct reference to the fact that you determining whether a person would appreciate 1 specific game based on the value of their account. Overall you make an excellent point, I was merely pointing out the flaws in the specific details you used for your example.
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But what difference would this make? The current system IS working. From this previous thread's OP we can all see that a previously suspended member was not able to create another account and bypass the 50$ limit without having to pay for it himself. And I seriously doubt anyone will pay whatever it is just in order to create another account let alone several others.
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Come holiday time when the company bundles go on sale, it's ridiculously easy to boost your account's value by roughly $100, so increasing the minimum by such a small amount would be pointless. For example, my first big purchase on Steam was the Eidos pack. It cost me roughly $50 or $60 to buy and it contained over 20 games with none of them being worth less than $5 (it actually had Arkham Asylum on it while it was still a relatively new game).
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I think we need to consider that with open registration, the $50 limit is basically used as a way to deter scammers from creating hundreds of alts to enter into raffles. It's basically to complement the existing policy of only one Steam account per IP address. The $50 limit ensure that scammers can't use proxies and such to use their alts.
And given the relatively low odds any given account has of winning, creating a bunch of alts with even cheap bundles that add up to $50 in retail, doesn't make much financial sense as loko has already pointed out. Since even with 100 accounts you're not guaranteed to win most auctions (especially the high profile ones like Skyrim/MW3/BF3 that have minimum 2k entries, and up to 5k in some cases). It's like buying up all the numbers in the lottery. Yes you win the lottery, but you lose financially in the end.
It is not designed to limit beggars. Beggars can be a user with $50 in their account, or even $15,000. Which is why users who experience such abuse should report them in the Support section.
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"If someone is able to afford to boost their account to $50, I can guarantee you another $30 or $40 added to the minimum wouldn't make much of a difference. Also, a member boosting their account with legit games in this way will possibly be banned for reasons why they needed a dummy account anyway. Believing that someone is going to spend over $50 just to boost their dummy account with the high chance they will not only be banned, but absolutely not profit, is a bit of a stretch."
First of all, you're right that $30 or $40 might not make a difference, but I haven't seen anyone advocating the $30 increase you keep bringing up. $50 or $100 extra would be far more realistic. It would make it significantly more expensive to set up a dummy account, without raising the bar to a point the average Steam user would have any trouble getting in. Steamcalculator tells me the average account value is somewhere around $800 which, while obviously unrealistically high to set the minimum at, does demonstrate that there's some wiggle room here.
Second, the point you seem to be missing completely is that someone doesn't have to spend over $50 to get their account approved. Even if you only relied on Steam sales and didn't use any of the other readily available methods to get cheaper/free games, it wouldn't take more than 10-15 dollar to set up a dummy account, something you'd make back with a single giveaway.
Now, if you're saying "there's no need to worry, I have sufficient faith in our security measures to stop such behaviour", then that's fine by me. You're in a better position to judge that than a lowly user, so I'd take your word for it. However, I don't see the point in stifling discussion by misrepresenting the issue.
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Please refer to my comment above which outlines the basics of what the system is designed to achieve. The $50 is not a system to define who is a 'good' or 'bad' Steam user as you are suggesting. It's designed to address the very specific issue of creating lots of free alts to increase your chances of winning.
Note that statistically right now your chances of winning are pretty low 0.2% for a public give away. Any 'scammer' is going to want to win the 'big' stuff. Note that most popular gifts are easily hitting 1k,2k even 5k. Thus even if a scammer opened 5k accounts at $1 a pop. YOu'd be spending $5k at a 50% chance to win the recent MW3 gift which had 5k. Note opening 5k accounts would be more accounts steam gifts sees in a entire month, and thus easy to see. Plus having to manage 5k email and steam accounts to check your winnings, etc. To win $50. You can see how the math isn't really working on the scammers side here.
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You would be correct if not for two little details you missed.
First of all, making one fake account to cheat a ban or double your chances is not nearly as obvious as creating 5000 ones. Exaggerating a situation to the absurd doesn't help your point. Second, you're assuming that a cheater would only enter one giveaway. Just one extra account gives you a 100% advantage over everyone else, which might not pay off the next day but it will sooner or later, especially if they're, as you pointed out, $1 accounts.
The math is only working against them if you do the math wrong.
Also, no one ever said anything about "good" vs "bad" users. It's about "users" vs "dummy accounts".
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As we like to say in statistics, since your chances of winning are basically zero, doubling zero, is still zero. Having one or two alts doesn't increase your chances of winning very much, 0.02% to 0.04%. That's why I only ever buy one lottery ticket. My odds don't suddenly become super awesome because I bought a $2 ticket instead of a $1 ticket.
The main concern voiced with open registration is a flood of alt accounts. This is mitigated via the existing $50 minimum, and via the duplicate IP detection policy. My point of using $1 per account was to illustrate that even in the unlikely scenario you could create $50 of value with $1 (which isn't even possible), you'd be spending so much money to gain what is essentially very little in return. This still doesn't take into account the time and effort required to manage multiple accounts, over multiple proxy servers to avoid the duplicate IP detection. The statistical benefits of multiple alts doesn't even approach being useful until you hit a few hundred. While the cost benefit pretty much falls off the cliff at even a few alts.
Also the reason I used the 5k example is that a person trying to use alts to win a gift is going to want to win the big stuff. It would be like Oceans Eleven planning a heist of a 7-11. Why go through all the trouble of creating an alt and pumping money into it if you're just going to win a $1 Magicka DLC or some other cheap thing. Or even if it's cheap, it's going to be popular, Terraria or Minecraft are good examples of that. So the type of person to do this, is most likely going to enter gifts that are at least 1k. So you still need an army of alts to make your chances approach something even remotely useful, which is why I brought that up as an example.
The problem you describe is not something that the $50 policy is designed to solve. A dedicated user, who wants to juggle 2-3 alts, and also is willing to purchase lots of money over multiple accounts, and then manage them over multiple proxies, is not something any policy is going to solve. Such a user will not be dissuaded even if the policy was $100. Think of it like a rent-a-cop. Good for the casual low life criminals, but not designed to keep out your Thomas Crowne types.
Also after a few months when you 'finally' win something, the game is sent to the alt, and immediately the gifter notices that the game isn't in their library, since the scammer will most likely pipe the game to the primary. At which point the alt gets banned. After all that work and energy for several months, you have an alt with a bunch of games you don't want, and you probably won this
http://store.steampowered.com/app/45100/?snr=1_7_7_151_150_2
My point, is if someone wants to do all that work, go ahead.
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Well said. If nothing else, you've at least convinced me - for what that's worth. :)
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Your statements are reasonable Aargh, however what I personally feel that people don't get is that there just isn't any reason to increase the limit simply because the current one of 50$ IS in fact working. And this is clearly pointed out in your previous thread mate. The suspended guy couldn't create a second account without spending money..
Let's be realistic no scammer, or whatever you want to call them is EVER going to spend even if 5 bucks just to create one dummy account because those kind of folks didn't even want to waste money on contributions in their original account in the first place. So I honestly doubt they will pay whatever little it is just to create a single account with which they will achieve little in here..What can they do with one account? Increase their chances of winning something? Hardly. Create floods of fake raffles to increase points? Well that affects every user not just them plus fake raffles are quickly dealt with in general. Spam and troll? We already have that with original accounts.
All in all, 50$ is a limit that achieves its original purpose. Avoid the creation of multiple secondary accounts. And in the case of suspended members even the creation of just one other account. No one is going to waste money in an account they will never use just for a slim chance of winning something here or trolling around.
Anyway, this is simply my point of view and as such I may actually be wrong, but I seriously doubt it.
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Agreed, the $50 limit, while it may seem low when considering certain sales, is in fact working. Even if $5 spent on good deals could get a $50 account, it would take a special kind of idiot scammer to feel like this is worthwhile to do. The odds of winning here, outside of big spender private groups, is extremely low.
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You'll have to forgive me for not feeling comfortable with the fact that the answer to "Hey, I see a reason to start a discussion about security" essentially boils down to changes of subject (just report beggars guys, that'll solve anything!), misrepresentations of the issue ($30 increase where $100 is suggested, 5000 dummy accounts where one is suggested) and a general "Don't worry, no one will exploit this."
As I said before, a simple "we got this" would put my mind to rest, or at least convince me that it's not something I should be bothered by. Raising the $50 limit would be pointless if security was good enough to catch these people in the first place. If that's how it is I'm fine with that, but despite my asking, no one is saying it is. In stead, all I get is "no one would do this" or "we don't consider this a problem."
The question isn't "is anyone doing this," but "if anyone decides to do this, could we stop them?"
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But that's exactly the point mate! As both loko and cg have mentioned and as your previous thread shows us, the current limit value shouldn't be something taht bothers you because it does indeed work and prevent the creation of dummy accounts. The guy that harassed you couldn't manage to bypass it and create a secondary account without having to spend money on it.
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But that argument just brings us back in a circle to mine, doesn't it? You answer my question of "if someone does this, could he be stopped?" with "I don't think anyone would do this." It's like answering "did you lock the door before you leave?" with "no one's going to break into my house anyway." It's not exactly an answer that breeds confidence.
The thing is the guy in question already had gift codes to give out, but was trying to get me to gift him shit so he wouldn't have to use his own. Hence the "i dont wanna spend gift on 2nd acc." Since I made it more than clear I wasn't going to help him (there was more to the conversation, but I left most of it out to protect his identity as per SG rules), there's nothing saying he wouldn't have ended up using his own gifts anyway, which would have pushed him over the limit.
And my concern isn't even about that one person. If that was the case, I would've just reported him and moved on. My concern is that if one person is considering this, there's bound to be more. And not all of them will be as stupid as to reveal their plans to another member, so you can't rely on the report system for stuff like this. I'm sure it's great for catching beggars, but less so for cheaters. That's why I started the discussion in the first place. Not to go "ha ha look at this idiot", but to go "I have detected a potential problem."
If "we don't think we need to do anything about this" is the only answer I'm going to get then I'll just have to deal with it, but as I said it's not exactly a confidence-inspiring attitude.
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I think what is trying to be said is the current limit can't 100% stop scammers, it definitely reduces their numbers. All increasing the limit would do is prevent legitimate users from gaining access as well as limit (not prevent) more scammers. And as far as I know, the number of scammers on this site is low already. And on top of that if you are spending 50$ or ANY money to "scam" people you're an awful scammer and will be figured out pretty quickly.
I understand that you are upset because you got screwed out of a game you wanted, we all would, but you can't blame the system as completely flawed just because a small portion of people exploit it.
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I don't know where you got the idea I got screwed out of a game I wanted. This situation doesn't involve me in any other way than that I started the discussion. I have no stake in this other than an interest in the site's well-being and what is apparently a higher concern for security than the average person.
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I say we just make and enter giveaways! That sounds a lot happier than crazy arguments. :3
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Huh, using of guest passes during the registration... what a cheap shot! They're counted! That's lol.
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Update: Bump in case anyone had any questions regarding the recent exploded thread. Bundles count very little towards the minimum requirement, among many other games that are F2P or considered exploited do not count towards the minimum requirement at all to register. It's been in the works that cg will add a separate feature that will allow members to check for themselves how much games are worth regarding the minimum requirement for registering an account.
Please note that denying these giveaways did not happen overnight. It was months of moderators and the community deciding on what would be the best way to handle these giveaways, considering the massive flood on the front page almost immediately. The very few people demanding that we allow individual keys from all these bundles do not understand the hundreds of giveaways that would be created every few hours. We are already receiving many requests to completely remove bundles as a whole or remove the games from these bundles from the Create a Giveaway dropdown list permanently.
Again, this wasn't a sudden decision to exclude these giveaways from being submitted. It was months of listening to the community and making appropriate changes that tries to make everyone happy.
Greetings community,
I've see comments spreading false information since registration has gone open in regards to what counts towards your account value and countless other posts demanding that we raise the minimum account value requirements.
First, take this into consideration. There are a number of games that do not count towards your account value. DiRT 3, Dead Island, free games, and free-to-play games, among many others that aren't as obvious. This also includes the Humble Bundle and IndieRoyale games. When detected on your account, Bundle games are all lumped together in a cheap "value" when attempting to register.
If someone is able to afford to boost their account to $50, I can guarantee you another $30 or $40 added to the minimum wouldn't make much of a difference. Also, a member boosting their account with legit games in this way will possibly be banned for reasons why they needed a dummy account anyway. Believing that someone is going to spend over $50 just to boost their dummy account with the high chance they will not only be banned, but absolutely not profit, is a bit of a stretch.
Want to help us out, community? Report the beggars in Support. We have the ability to find their accounts, see if they have other accounts registered on the same IP address, and ban accordingly. Please include either screenshots or copy and paste the conversation. To make it clear, I have never seen a single report on the Support forum or sent to me over PM regarding this issue.
Please, we encourage you to share your thoughts, but we appreciate if those that are the loudest keep the facts in mind.
-regards
Big thanks to satoru and Pias for fielding questions. I really appreciate your detail and, you know, not having to repeat myself so often.
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