The app is not made by us, let alone supported by us. Contact the developer of it or just, you know, use the site.
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So basically if people break the rules and you catch them and submit a ticket, expect to wait for months before anything(if anything) is done.
Fake giveaways and people using multiple accounts to enter giveaways just to trade the games they win away will go unpunished.
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respect !!!
also, guys, bannerclick from time to time so he can afford getting bestest coffee* quality !!!
*-best coder's friend
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Hey, cg, thanks for this. Really. Thanks. It's nice to see a long post about the situation from your point of view. Part of the issue I believe is that the communication between you and us new guys wasn't very good. Loko was the one we always went to for advice and news on where the site's going next. With him out of the picture, I think we all felt out of the loop to an extent and felt we couldn't really come to you. I know Ichigo felt that he could ask you four questions and only get one answered. For example, not even a basic ETA on the powers was a big one. "It's done when it's done" is okay for Half-Life 3, but gets uber-frustrating when I'm just sitting at Support looking at two-thirds of the page filled with so-called "urgent" tickets and just decide it can go to hell for the day because I couldn't do anything about it all anyway. So being removed from support, while even more frustrating (I'll admit, I was massively pissed off at first, mostly because of the lack of warning), I'm starting to get over that and I'm gonna go game and get my mind in gear for when I can actually help again. So, yeah, thanks for your point of view. Sheds some light on a couple of things and eases the frustration a lot.
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Glad to hear his announcement eased the frustration at least you've been feeling. When I officially stepped down, which was weeks after the announcement, I wanted to do it after updates. I knew you guys would be stranded and overwhelmed, due to me being the only person with any powers. Unfortunately, with no ETA due to the nature of the updates and lots going on at once in my life, I wasn't able to wait. I know how you guys felt and have been feeling, I've been there, but definitely not on this scale. We weren't even 50,000 users at that point.
While it's also unfortunate Ichigo and Yatterman stepped down, it's understandable, but cg usually has a lot going on at once and a real career outside of SteamGifts. Guy juggles a lot. Glad to see everything calming down and this announcement by cg posted. I was beginning to worry about the state of SteamGifts due to the recent outcries I'd hear and read, but now I'm just worrying about cg's sanity dealing with Support by himself. :\
This is a great community, and with patience, everything will eventually work out.
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Thanks for the clarification, was really scared witless when the quitting threads popped out.
I know I've only been here for a month or two, but I love this site to bits, warts and all. Hope it all gets sorted out eventually, and thanks for all the fish.
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This will surely address most of the issues, chat wise at least (like the random assumptions on what happened, people asking about support and where the site is going). Having to explain things as vaguely as I could repeatedly wasn't doing much. This will be much easier and less people will misunderstand.
Thank you for posting this. I vaguely know how support was, I mainly know how the chat (concerning support PMs) was and I know how frustrated both Support mods and members got due to all this. This looks like it's going in the right direction, I saw the chat from the other day and the system you have in mind for support seems complicated to make but quite the upgrade. Will give moderators more helpful tools to do their duties.
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Thanks for the thorough explanation and clarification of recent happenings. I'm fairly new to the site, but I'm very impressed by what I've seen, which is only further expounded by this post - it's always nice when developers/owners inform the public...it's not something you had to do, but it certainly builds credibility in the community.
As for your coding issues, if you need some help, feel free to add me on Steam and message me. I was a programmer for about three years (.Net and ColdFusion, mostly) with some database experience too (SQL).
Either way, good luck!
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Regarding deleted giveaways.
There could have been a message like this:
A giveaway was here, but was removed by [USERNAME]
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That's not enough of an audit trail. Giveaways should be hidden, not permanently deleted, with the appropriate actions being taken on peoples' points, etc. cg should be able to see every giveaway ever made, including fake ones and removed ones. Currently, there's no such journaling. The audit trail also needs to be more detailed. If a giveaway was removed, WHO removed it and WHY did they remove it. Because sure as shit if I had a giveaway get nuked, I'd be demanding answers, and if the mod who deleted it wasn't around -- well, cg is only going to be able to say, "Uh... it must've been deleted, but I don't know why."
And it's unprofessional and sloppy to be forced to say that because there's no audit trail or recovery feature. cg is doing it right in his redesign.
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A simple suggestion for the site that i think its easy to implement and would be really helpful : a dark skin !
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Thanks for the update, it defiantly clears up a lot of misunderstandings. I hope some of the old mods comes back, it looks like misunderstandings may have let to people leaving on incorrect terms.
If you ever need more mods, I would love to give a hand and if not, GO FUC.. I kid, that's cool also :)
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A very nice explanation and one that makes a lot of sense. Thanks for all your hard work, cg. You seem to always keep a cool head and steer the site in good directions.
In addition, I appreciate all the hours of work support users have put into this site, even if things didn't work out as planned.
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So eh, hate to push the topic at a time like this, but what's going to happen with the currently unresolved support tickets?
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So, uh, hate to point out that you can't read for shit, but cg already addressed this in the post you're replying to:
"I'll be looking after all the support tickets until we're up-to-date. The next week I'll be working on them fulltime, and hopefully that'll reduce some of the backlog."
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cg's got too many things to deal with to have time answering questions from people who couldn't be assed to read what he said in the first place.
I mean, it's not like cg ever says anything important in these posts, right? Why not make him repeat himself because you're too lazy? I could've been more polite, yes. But I don't feel he earned it.
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All the best CG! I am sure this stuff can be resolved very soon and SG will love as long as Steam lives!
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Well that makes sense, i'm assuming it's going to take some time to rework the positions for the mods/support once this gets cleared out. I have to disagree on your way of action though, you could've let the support guys know what you were up to by the time, and perhaps avoid some of the issues we've seen lately, i'm not sure if the community really needs to know, but support DOES, and according to what i've read, that didn't really happen.
Either way, it's good to see an announcement about this, hopefully things will get sorted out, good luck with the support tickets.
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I knew the TF2 servers and webchat couldn't have taken that long and said as much in Jade's Chat when we had a discussion about it, I think that was blown out of proportion by certain members. I'm sorry that you even had to justify that, you shouldn't have had to.
I for one thank you for what you do and glad the air is cleared of this nonsense.
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Hey SG, it's been an interesting few days, and I feel it's a good time to clear up some of the recent changes, and misunderstandings.
1. Where did the moderators from support go?
Everyone was removed from support the other day. It was no longer fair to the community and moderators. In short, there were too many tickets, which they did not have the ability to address. As a result, we ended up with angry users, and overwhelmed moderators. Due to this frustration, we've had moderators lose their temper at times when dealing with users in support, and complaints started to roll in about people being treated unfairly, suspensions being given for invalid reasons or personal disputes, name calling, etc. That's not the way the support section should be run, and therefore everyone was removed until it's back on course.
Yesterday there was an update to better organize user tickets, so they're easier for users to follow, and easier for moderators to organize. It's a step in the right direction, but there are still a lot of improvements to be made.
I'll be looking after all the support tickets until we're up-to-date. The next week I'll be working on them fulltime, and hopefully that'll reduce some of the backlog.
2. Why couldn't the moderators perform certain actions?
If it was that easy, and I could allow all moderators to delete and reroll giveaways, it would have happened long ago. Right now giveaways cannot be undeleted. If a giveaway is removed, it's gone, unless we get into restoring available database backups. Call it a poor judgement in coding when I first started on the site, because that's exactly what it is. The method in which giveaways are handled and removed needs to be recoded. We also need a log of all actions performed by moderators. If we have a handful of users moderating the site, and we have no idea who deleted a giveaway, why a winner was rerolled, etc, we get even more headaches. Dropping those privileges in front of an overworked and stressed group of moderators, when the above isn't setup would be a giant security risk. I wouldn't be able to sleep knowing the entire site could be deleted overnight, and it doesn't make sense to risk years of work and the trust of the community by releasing updates a couple of months prematurely.
3. Why are you focusing on browser chat and the TF2 server? The priorities for SteamGifts are in the wrong place.
The 32 player TF2 server is running on autopilot, and it's set to either renew or expire on the 10th depending on user interest. We have two 16 player servers setup for the TF2 tournament, and those are entirely managed by some of our fellow members. I've spent 3 hours working on the browser chat in the past month. You have to realize I get burnt out working day and night developing these sites, and maintaining the server. Occasionally, I need a break. Instead of watching a movie for a couple of hours, I'll code something completely unrelated, like the chat room, since it clears my mind, and it's educational. We might not need a browser chat, but it was a fun experiment to learn some new techniques, performance limitations for different methods of data retrieval, and it has a lot of potential for other Steam related projects I'm developing. We might even be able to revamp it to become real-time support, where users help users, to reduce the number of tickets we receive. If you think the chat and TF2 server is where the time is going, you're misunderstood. The site has been live for just over a year, and I do my best to listen to all the feedback from the community. Let's take a look at some of the public announcements throughout the year.
The site has come a long way this year, and the next year will be even busier, with some of the largest updates yet. I think the time was managed well, and we're heading in the right direction. However, things take a while with a development team of one, and you can't expect changes to happen overnight. The community has been amazing with all the suggestions, and some of our best features have originated from the forum. We've reached 1.2 million dollars in gifts received, 170,000 users, and 25,000 contributors. We've had the pleasure to work with a number of game developers, received tons of support from the users of Reddit, GOG, GiantBomb, Penny Arcade, Facepunch, CheapAssGamer, SomethingAwful, and NeoGAF, and our group of moderators have invested countless hours. I think we've worked together to create something incredible, and although the site has a few rough edges, I don't think that's reason to lose focus on the achievement we've reached as a community.
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