do cast your vote - no need to bump - 18+ 58 minutes remaining and Zero CV!!1

The Community Train is an event. That's why it attracts so much attention and so many participants, because it's an event. You make a routine out of the Community Train and kill the whole point.

The idea for the community train is that all the giveaways finish at the same date, if it's permanent, it's just some normal giveaway I suppose.

There are folks running permanent/long term trains (currently: ozo2003 and wigglenose). I see no reason for which someone could not run a similar train with other folks participation, in whatever way that person is going to set it up and maintain. This however would not be a "community train", as this name seems to me to be already claimed by the event, that from its definition is not permanent but occasional.

If you think about it, the public giveaways are already a public train, just at the station, so you can get into all the wagons

monthly train - all GAs end on 28th - every month - no bots - comments are updates too ;-)

Sorry, as Aydaylin mentioned, ozo and wiggle already do trains, and I gave up checking them after some time.
But, I'm also on the fringe, I think I've kinda become a leech, and not really participating as much in anything anymore, so I'll shut up.

To make it easier for both creators and participants, let's make giveaways public.

I already hate trains... And this probably would make them slightly worse...

On other hand maybe new type of semi public giveaway might be interesting. Have them in queue in sense. And you have to iterate through whichever you can see join.

Basically you would have two or three queues.
One with all giveaways happily mixed. New one will get added to end when created automatically with a number.
Next one ended giveaways, something ends it get added.
And last the active. Maybe taking region restrictions and level to account.

You could only access first and last by traveling through it. With maybe some account specific flag so you cannot share links to active giveaways.

Oh my, this sounds a hella stressfull. I'm with ILoveMyAlice up there, as an event once a year it's really fun, but also straining, trying to stay on top of it, managing points and entries etc. The fun for me is in scraping together my last keys to fulfill my motivation to participate, as I see it with othes happening too. It's special, only once a year, and so we all give our best. Wouldn't be the same if it was ongoing.

People have already mentioned ozo's and wigglenose's long-running personal trains.
I would also loosely consider each of these to be a form of long-term community train (in addition to others):

• Positive thread!
• Don't like bots? Post your random invite-only giveaways here
• Community Word Game!
• The perpetual I-need-5-entries-for-a-giveaway thread

So we...kinda...already have a permanent Community Train, just by another name.

I think there is already a permanent train...

https://www.steamgifts.com/giveaways

lol ;)

Caio!

I think an ongoing community train would be a bit weird. Each cart would have a different end time, so once it's been around for a while, people starting at the beginning would have to click through tons of obsolete giveaways.

Plus it wouldn't exactly bring people together at the same time... which to me is a big reason why I love community trains. It's the whole SG community coming together and taking part in something over a specific timeframe.

Never stop shower-thinking!!!

My poor mouse button is subjected to enough wear & tear as it is! 😟
I prefer clicking the wishlist giveaway button once to see if there's any GAs of stuff I actually want over going through a 2000+ link train.

For a community train to last forever, there would need to be some coordination, enough people for the train to go on forever, and all of the gifts to have their own deadlines.

If there is no coordination or not enough people who want to contribute to the train, then for this train to last forever, it just becomes like this giveaway: https://www.steamgifts.com/discussion/J3UzT/brand-new-giveaways-everyday-will-last-7-days-each There is nothing wrong with this giveaway; it is just that without support, it just becomes a perpetual regular gift train rather than a permanent community train.

Can't even see that GA, apparently I'm on your blacklist for some reason.

I think this would need something unique to make it worth doing.
My first thought is it could be a word association style game. It would need rules, here are some suggestions:

1. No user can post more than one game in a row
2. The game must have some whimsical connection to the previous one
   • It can't simply be the same genre
   • Maybe it even can't be the same genre (who polices that?)
   • It can't just have the same word in the title (unless the connection is objectively funny)
   • It can't simply be the same series
   • It can't just be a game from the same development studio (not sure about this one, maybe rule 3 is enough to stop this getting boring)
   • If you can flex your intimate knowledge by saying the same single individual developer worked on both that's fine
3. The same connection cannot be used twice in a row (eg 'if you liked that game, check out this developer's previous game" through their entire back catalogue)
4. If your connection is too boring you get permanently suspended from the whole site

Are we having fun yet?

Honey, I joined a giveaway.

(Thanks!)

🙄There are two kinds of days in the world: “Hare no Hi” and “Ke no Hi”.
about...
There are “days to celebrate” and “everyday life” in the world.
The extraordinary can be enjoyed because of the everyday.
So we need to keep that in mind.

Well, it is true that different countries have different fiscal periods, and the time when you can afford to be financially, academically, and professionally is different.
In some areas there are four different seasons, while in other places it is the same all year round.

Train events conducted privately by users who can afford them are also good.
A community train about twice a year would also be nice.

However, the events associated with specific anniversaries may be more unique in terms of prizes and preparations, while others may be less likely to be offered.

Also, since some countries are more likely than others to have Steam games available, I don't recall ever seeing an event where people from a particular country get together to make a train with a cart ready to go.⚖🔍
Well, I think there were some SG people who were group recruitment types, getting together in a particular country.

Well, it seems to me that someone might think of something like making a discussion to go around teaching about festivals and anniversaries that can be introduced to people in other countries in various places to the extent that humanity is not destroyed, and then making a train for that reason.

I agree that it would probably be fun to look at such things and would be easy to participate in.
Unfortunately, I don't run such things or force anyone to run them, and I'm still suffering from back pain, exhaustion, and the recession, so I've long since become one of those people who enjoys watching someone else create an event that looks fun.😂

Thank you to the people who always put on some kind of event.

I am actually playing Honey I Joined a Cult these days and it's fun.
As per your idea, I like it. The Community Train event is a cool event but it doesn't need to be happening at key moments to be cool.

Every good thing should end. Otherwise it becomes mundane.

I understand what you're trying to do mate but as others have already kinda mentionned, the time limited event makes it special and unique whilst your idea will make it continuous and monotonous and it will end up just being giveaways. (Imagine Christmas being a whole year instead of a few days!) The only way it will be more fresh and interesting in my opinion is if you make it a themed event where each month it has a different style or genre or point limited each month or something of that ilk. Also running one of these whilst the community and christmas trains and events will severely limit the train capacity to keep going when people are making giveaways for those events. By all means try, i just hope it gets some traction and it can be kept going!

closing this, please do enter/bookmark GA if interested

icaio reopened this, so I thought I'd comment. I think the idea is neat, because it's an attempt to encourage community and excitement. I'd kind of like to keep the super-trains not crazy common, as it seems like they're a stupendous amount of work to the gifters.

To me some continuing threads already felt like a kind of community train to me, but with less overhead (less overall work required per giveaway). Particularly the one with the 'come up with a theme for the next giveaway' one, but even things like the flash quick giveaways. Perhaps there's something else like the 'come up with the next theme' thread that could be made, that might be a fun add to our various thread-trains.

Make this train different so that other people aren't so triggered about it and so you could give it a fair chance as an alternative type of train event.

Like 1 giveaway per day ONLY from anyone making a GA. This is in total, if 10 people want to make a cart, they have to make 10 GAs for 10 different days, basically the train would have as many GAs as days in a year. Add a minimum point restriction, otherwise people could spam cheap stuff and free stuff should be automatically excluded from the train. Add additional rules like "limited to contributing 1 GA per 15 days or a month", so we don't get people making 50 carts in a row for 50 days, not giving other people the chance to contribute and be part of the event.
Heck, could even add a fun rule, anyone breaking previous rules will be witch hunted for the rest of the year, adding some sort of punishment to this witch hunt side event, just throwing out random ideas that you can pick up and switch around as you see fit...

Could add additional stuff like private group GAs for all the people that contributed in a specific year towards the train with monthly GAs. Like a little extra for contributing towards the event. Then at the end of the year, another person takes over (you pass the torch) and switches things around a little to spice things up.

For maintaining the train, each person contributing would have to link the previous and next carts.