Reduce dark UI patterns on site

This is not even slightly a dark pattern. Main purpose here is to give away games, not leveling up. If you are here to participate in higher level giveaways, sorry but that's just a bonus. And this system exists to protect this site from leechers and bots.
Red asterisks clearly say what this is about and you should've read the FAQ before creating a giveaway, it's that simple.

Here, how it looks.

View attached image.

Also, Hi Canis39!! :)
I'm a web dev, so I'm always thinking of web ui design and how to improve it on the sites I'm managing, so I guess that's where I'm coming from with suggestions like this. I'm always trying to avoid dark patterns in my professional career, and it's hard work sometimes, so I didn't mean to cast aspersions or anything. :)

Exactly my opinion. OP is going on about that "dark pattern" bs (really, if you can't read and understand the FAQ/rules, don't blame the website, blame the user) - This could be a great suggestion thread to improve the website, instead of complaining about the website attempting to "deceive" new users despite all the info being clearly stated multiple places.

If we look past this bit of nonsense, I do agree that there is logic in the suggestion you are making. It would make more sense to have the asterisks there than on the selection dropdown menu, but having it on both also works fine.

Well, I can tell you that it definitely came across as casting aspersions... and as you found, we take our little community pretty seriously around here! We also have some "experience bias" -- it's easy to forget what it felt like to be new to the site.

I've been here for 4 years. Based on my experience, I don't think the site admin and staff intended to be deceptive when describing CV. I do think it might be intentional that it's not front-and-center, because CV is really not what the site is about. It's about giving away games, period. CV and "leveling up" are just side effects. But there's really no deception involved. I had never heard of "dark patterns" but now that I've read a bit about them, I can say that in my opinion, there is nothing like that going around here. The site rules are definitely not always clear, but there's no malicious intent behind the lack of clarity.

The site can always do with some fresh eyes, so keep making suggestions -- just cut down on the conspiracy theories and you will probably get a warmer reception!

You know what is the true dark pattern....

Those values can be set to 0 or reduced retroactively. So as long as giveway was made after date deemed to be start of bundle, discount or giveway it will get reduced value or even 0 value.

Dark patterns are not conspiracy theories, they are just ways of nudging someone to do something that they might not otherwise do. It might not be intentional, but the creators of this site are guiding behavior of the users of the site to some degree, because it definitely doesn't highlight contributor level on the "Giving" side very much, although it's pretty prominently featured on the "Entering" side of giveaways, which is what made me pay attention to it at first. I think it wasn't clear based on reading anything on the site why a game is no value or reduced value, so I figured that I would get some flashing red warning about it, turns out all I got was a little red asterisk and I even missed that because it popped up so quick.

Yes, those asterisks don't appear on review page but you cannot say it's a dark pattern because dark patterns are intentional. You may call this a "gap" at best, or a "missing feature".
The asterisks even informative if you hover your mouse.
Sorry about you learned it by experience. If you want to level up fast, you can always give away non-bundled games. It doesn't affect your contributor level if that game becomes free after you gave it away.

View attached image.

I think it's a conspiracy theory if you assume that any unclear information on a website MUST be a "dark pattern."

If I understand dark patterns correctly, "deliberate intent to deceive" seems to be the key component.

If a site is simply not great at posting clear information, that doesn't necessarily imply that they're hiding something intentionally, or attempting to guide user behavior.

In this case, points to enter giveaways is different from contributor value that's gained from hosting giveaways. They're related, sure -- but they're not the same.

All users need to understand points -- since ENTERING giveaways is the primary activity promoted by this site -- so that information is prominently featured.

NOT all users will need to understand contributor value -- since HOSTING giveaways is an optional part of the site -- so that information is not featured as prominently.

Alrighty, I added some edits to my original suggestion at the behest of zpangwin,, with images of what I want to suggest, check em out and see what you think. I think arguing about what is a dark pattern and what is unintentional isn't really constructive without the original developer here to defend themselves! LOL ;)

Others have said this before, the thing with the asterisk is not a dark pattern. There is no "encouragement" there or deception. It doesn't misinform the user. Dark patterns are about deliberate intent to decieve someone to act against their self interest. That is very very far from what SG does.

make it very clear how much your system values the game UP FRONT

This requirement is impossible to fulfill. Games added to bundle and free games list manually (and there is no way to reliably automate it), so in most cases this thing is retroactive, in best case - by a few hours, in worst case - it can be even years.
So, we have two choices: allow users to abuse CV system (that's what you would like probably) or make it not 100% clear how much CV you will receive.
But it can't be considered a dark pattern, grey at worst, because nobody encourages you to gift games. On top of it, this site is not about CV, it's about gifting. It's not a competition, it's charity. You want to share games? Go ahead. You want to abuse site to get more games? Well, if that's your intention - sure, you will get troubles. So, even if we use your terminology - site has dark patterns only for abusers ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Yes everything becomes meaningless if you choose on your own to ignore them. Is that a dark pattern inside of you that you're just seeing everything else as dark through?

This is a DARK PATTERN

I looked at the hall of shame on that dark patterns website you linked, and it seems like quite a few of them are just people clicking the giant button without taking two seconds to read what it clearly says and realizing that isn't what they want ("it took me 3 times to realize I was always going backwards" is my favorite). So yeah, maybe this does qualify as a dark pattern after all. ☺

I'm a web developer, and avid hobby web enthusiast. I love playing with user interfaces and I even built and maintained a bunch of greasemonkey userscripts for sites that I used to frequent. I'm also a new user here, I figured the suggestions board here would be the best place to relay my new user experience in hopes that someone could learn and improve that experience.

I also suppose I could build a userscript for this site that would place the asterisk there without requiring the developer of this site to make any changes, but I still think this is a problem and a somewhat dark pattern, because it takes advantage of a new user's inexperience and could result in them giving away a game thinking it would somehow help them with their contributor level when it in fact did not.

My new user experience is what I'm providing here, to help make the UI better. You can't get the new user experience from people who have been on the site for years and who understand all the ins and outs. When I've been working on sites in the past as a web dev, I always LOVED it when new users were willing to share their new user experience so I could learn from it and try to improve my UI in pages I was building. I was simply trying to share that here, and just by me saying it's a dark pattern doesn't mean it's intentionally bad, there may be a good reason it is like that, but seeing as I don't know if the actual developers are on here, I will reserve judgement in that area.

I even changed my original post to add some solid suggestions with mockups that I designed. I hope you can appreciate that at least.

I honestly don't care about all that. In comparison to others with your suggestions 23 hours ago you were bordering on toxic with people here. I haven't even been here for a year yet, this website has not changed since I got here (apart from the removing of SGTrades and the Deals button) and I have understood the site just fine.
All suggestion been made for this website have been constructive and helpful, questions have raised issues and things have changed. All of these that have happened did not start with some twat that was half way to toxicroak capitalising Dark Pattern over and over again like it's a k-pop group and your a rabid 13 y/o fangirl.
You may have changed how you've said things now, but a lot of people here have seen your post and responded to be met with your immaturity towards the situation around 23 hours ago.

You might have provided good suggestions, you might not have, but at this point I'd rather hear them from someone else.