I love you, you know that, right? :D
I agree with 99% of what's been said. What little I don't agree with is due to the need for "polishing" some parts.
For example, "Mark users that have been suspended once" I'd only like that for more serious offenses, like intentional re-gifting and such, since small mistakes (like clearly joking about begging- no one takes that rule seriously at first) might end up with suspension and there's need to be a difference when marking someone "for life".
If there's ever a need to translate anything for this site into Croatian I'd be more than happy to do it.
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it was already to Croatian (or maybe it was Serbian, cannot remember) in beta, but cg dropped the idea of having translated FAQ before SGv2 release :(
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Oh that's too bad, I really think we could use translations as a lot of people don't understand so many things that would make life a lot more enjoyable here.
Not to mention all those "Why can't I join" posts on SG's Steam group...
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As for public shaming - I'll have to disagree with you here thou. We, as the western civilization, are long past public shaming "for life" as a punishment. We no longer cut out hands from a thief, we no longer burn the mark of shame on their face etc. What SG needs is more severe punishment and better enforcement of rules, not public "system-verified" calling out that will lead to excessive negativity in the community, witchhunts and so on. Betetr than having someone mark make punishment for regifting hurt - so it's no longer profitable. for example - if you regifted your wins can be rerolled anytime - not only for 1 month. You wan't it to be gone? Buy and activate the game you regifted using your own money. If the punishment hit regifter in his wallet, or with a chance of his wins being reroled - regifting/trading gifts will no longer be profitable for him and thus he will learn his lesson. If punishment is 5 day suspension and 95% of the time you get away without it anyway - it's nothing. Especially as during these 5 days you wouldn't win anything most of the time anyway, unless you're a big contributor and big winner yourself - and such people are usually the ones who are most die-hard rule-followers ;p
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You make it sound so harsh but we're not talking about hurting someone physically, we're talking about making them live with their mistakes as anyone would in real life if they did something bad and got caught. Here, nothing really happens.
I'd even add an option to exclude the people with "the mark" from entering your giveaways. Like you can choose that only members of some group can enter, now you'd be able to exclude members with "the mark".
But remember, I'm talking about serious offenses.
Your idea about the regifting is also cool and it would be totally cool with me if you'd be able to erase "the mark" for that by doing what you've suggested.
As for the stricter punishments (on top of that or on their own), yup, I think we need them.
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The only differnce is physical pain. And worst in this punishment was not physical pain - this last for a while and then it's gone. Yet the shame of living with a mark lasts lifelong. If it was all about physicall pain they would just mark them somewhere where it would be the most painful, not somewhere where it would be the most visible ;) Also it didn't always have to be physically painful - instead of painful burning Slave Owners in US, Nazis in Europe or some Middle Eastern countries were just using visible tattoos. Yet I still believe, that while much less painful if anything at all, it's uncivilized ;p
Like I said - current punishment are not hard enough and encourage bad behaviour, because even if you get caught it's still profitable. But it doesn't mean we gotta go to public shaming - just change punishments to more hurtful without it. Make regifting not profitable and it will stop. Doesn't matter it will be not profitable with or without public shaming ;)
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Oh fine, you're a gentle soul my friend and I'll allow myself to be convinced by you as I need the good karma xD
though I'd still Scarlet Letter (no, we're not gonna get into a discussion about the book, the meaning of the letter or the hypocrisy behind it right now xD ) those who'd be really bad
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Haha, yes you said that several times. Right back at ya!
On my way working through all the comments I mentioned a lot of times that I see the point of not marking everyone. I wrote those suggestions a while back and didn't work on them ever since. So a lot of details are missing to make these some reasonable concepts, although I think that once this discussion cooled down it will just vanish into oblivion. There's nothing much to do about the bad aspects of this website and for now we won't see a change.
Got carried away a little, back to your point: Only mark users that regifted et cetera. You name it, girl!
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I know that people will say that we can always make private giveaways or group ones and that the rules don't have to change or be more strictly enforced but, in my opinion, that isn't the point of this place.
If we did that (restrict our gibs) we'd just be excluding everyone who's not our friend or a member of our group from being able to win.
I don't want to ruin the chances of all the well-intentioned people whom I just haven't met yet because of those (the minority, I hope) who intentionally exploit the good will and generosity of the community.
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I like steamgift, but it seems the developpers don't do shit to stop any kind of bad behavior and live in some kind of parallel world where people cheating the system for many months/years will stop after a couple of days banned from the website. Not much is done to prevent cheating on this website. But as soon as you call out someone or write a borderline post you have a bunch of mod-wanabee to remind you you'll get ban if you don't edit your post, yep they'd rather suspsend you for a wrong post rather than suspending someone who's regifting, making profit from the website. I guess it's easier that way.
Give better tool or higher power to support and we'll probably see less cheater. Make a new ban ladder for the different sanctions (a stricter one obviously) and pretty much what OP proposes, when was the last time you guys did something to prevent all of this?
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I wouldn't say people "reminding" you to edit your post is because they're trying to be mod-wannabes, but sometimes the person just doesn't want to see their fellow SGer get banned for something so silly that can be avoided.
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Yes that's true. The sad thing is that we only heard about some major dickheads when someone accidentally called someone out! Think of all the people that are still out there. It's demoralizing in a way.
I say Order 66 the shit out of regifters and the ones alike.
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Like Corcross said people commenting on you don't neccessary are mod-wannabe's, have ill intentions towards you or want to see you suspended. They just see that while you have a good intentions you are breaking the rules and don't want to see you getting punished for your good intentions.
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Well, let's forget the part about this. Anyway the other points were the most important ;)
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All right, here's my take on these suggestions:
Make a tutorial for new members
This would definitely be a good idea. Just a basic how-to and a small reminder on how math/statistics work just so people don't start off with the expectation that they can win a game for every other entry they put in.
Translate the FAQ and the tutorials
This was done during the SGv2 Beta and I'm not sure why it got scrapped. (Although I've seen some theories in this thread) I still think that at the very least, the FAQ ad guidelines should be available in multiple languages so that a maximum number of users can have a good understanding of how the site works. Maybe they could be hosted off-site and just linked to so it doesn't give people the impression that it's ok to post in the forum in various languages.
Mark users that have been suspended once
I think we need to be careful with that one. It could be useful for people not activating their wins or re-gifting because it would prevent reports being made over and over for the same infractions. Basically, if something cam still be reported today, then some way to know that it's been dealt with already would be useful. For other infractions, I don't think we need users to have the stigma of past mistakes haunt them forever on the site. I've been suspended once for being an idiot, and adding my Playblink referral to a Steamtrades thread where others were doing the same. I foolishly thought that the rule only applied to the Steamgifts side of things. (Back when they were 2 separate sites) Others have had small misshaps as well and we have learned from those, many being model users from that point on.
Force sync, guys. FORCE SYNC!
There is already a force sync once a week. This is the reason some people get screwed over on the free weekends because their sync just happened to be while the game temporarily appeared in their library. (Or they did it manually at a bad time.) I seem to remember that in the beta phase, sync was done on a daily basis but it might make too many requests to the Steam API to be a viable solution. If not, then maybe an automated daily sync from Tuesday to Thursday would be a good compromise.
Stop suspending people that have obvious bad intentions joining this website!
I'm also not 100% on-board with that one. I've seen people joining and thinking the site is a joke or scam (who in their right mind would spend money on games and give them to complete strangers) and they act accordingly, until they find out that it's a legitimate site with a thriving community. What I would like to see is more severe suspensions for repeat offenders. If the one-week suspension wasn't enough to make you stop the first time around, then go with a one-month suspension the second time around. Third strike? Let's make it permanent then since you obviously have no intention to follow the rules.
There's also the fact that for the shorter suspensions, a user who only logs in occasionally might not even notice that he's been suspended. If I log in one a week and I get a 3-days suspension, this may very well not affect me at all and I could even be completely unaware that I've been suspended in the first place. The suspension's timer should start the next time I try to log in into the site.
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As for one week -> one month -> permament - that's basically how it works now and it's simply not good enough. Mainly because as all reports must be user-found it more often than not takes a long time before offender is caught again and before he finally gets permabanned, if he keeps ow profile - he will be able to profit enough to even make his permaban worthwhile. Let me just copypaste an example I gave in different place in this topic:
2 weeks ago I got my first regifter permabanned, but it was excessive example and I believe such harsh punishment should be dealt much earlier. Basically he was caught regifting / not activating twice before, after each suspension he just continued doing so. He never commented (4 comments in over 2 years), so was invisible in GAs and forums and noone was checking him because of that. In the end he managed to regift / not activate 17 games, farm a level 5 for almost free and win 61 games before he was permabanned. So like I said before - he was doing it because it was profitable for him. And I bet there are a shitload of others like him as well.Comment has been collapsed.
As I've said numerous times in the past, there's a need for some automation after the winning of giveaways.
- Once you've marked a giveaway as received, you should get the "Exists in your account" message when you try to join, whether the game shows up in your library or not.
- The "received" mark should become permanent after it's been set for a number of days. (I'd say, if you clicked received, a week later you shouldn't be able to change it.) I think it would be less work for support to revert the rare cases of games being revoked than dealing with the users marking unreceived to avoid a suspension once they realize they had to have the game on their account.
- When a user's account is synced and one of their win isn't present in their library, they should show up on a page accessible to support so they can quickly take action, and mark the issue as resolved once they validated that it's ok or they suspended the user. (So that it doesn't show up anymore for that particular giveaway.) A database of games that don't show up in people's library could be added in order to avoid false positives. There are unfortunately too many hiccups in the Steam API to have this fully automated, but having some human intervention would be the best of both worlds.
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Excellent suggestions, good sir. Have a cookie.
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I haven't read the entire thread, but I'm pretty much on board. I'd maybe go 85-90% as far as you want, FWIW.
The "Guidelines" need to be revised to replace "should" with "must." And rename them Rules, not Guidelines, FFS.
Whenever I do public GAs, I end up having to report and reroll nearly half of the winners. It wastes my time, and makes me not want to do GAs.
On the other hand, I see people who only do small group giveaways, but win tons of public games. That's not fair either.
The fact is, most rule-breakers don't care about getting suspended for a few days. They'll just come back and farm CV, re-gift, etc. in a few days, and win a few more games in the meantime.
I guess I'm just getting pretty disillusioned. It's not support's fault. It's not any particular person's fault. But I think some changes are called for, and your post is a good start...so thanks.
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Force resyncs. It mucks with free weekend games? Who cares? That's a very small price to pay.
And I still think the system should be able to automatically detect regifts during the GA creation process. Did they win the game already? If so, is it in their account? If so, then is it marked received = regift. If not, then warn, as it could be that they just didn't mark received yet (possibly deliberately). Then, no excuses about "I didn't know."
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About the re-gifting, I think that if someone has recently won the game, there should at the very least be a warning on the giveaway creation page when selection that game. Something along the line of "You recently won a giveaway for xxxx, please remember that you have to activate the game you won on your Steam account. Re-gifting the game you received will lead to a suspension." If the person genuinely didn't know. that should be enough. If the person does it anyway, then the "I didn't know" excuse really can't be used.
Also, if the received giveaway is a key that's been given through Steamgifts, you shouldn't be able to create another giveaway using that same key.
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Perfect. Yes, it has the keys in the DB...so check...and forbid using that key.
And a warning (in red) prevents the "I didn't know."
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Oh my god, yes! This is so simple yet SO good! No more "Ugh, I didn't know" bullshit. Ban right away.
Edited this idea into the original post.
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Ah, I'm glad we're almost on the same page here, guys. At least we know that some change it needed.
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I agree with the general sentiment of your post. Specifically, I'd like to see permabans for repeated non-activation/regifting (meaning the second time you do it, you're out, unless you redeem yourself). Also, marking users who do that with the ability to reroll them indefinitely would be alright, as long as they're given a chance to redeem themselves by activating the game on their account (with the stipulation that they shouldn't be able to enter any more giveaways for the game in question).
As for forced sync, I'm not quite sure what you mean, but if you mean that users would have to sync after they win a giveaway and mark received/not received, I agree (with the stipulation that they can't enter giveaways after the deadline for marking has passed).
This site is a great idea and it would be sad to see contributors leave after being disappointed by exploiters not being punished quickly enough.
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bump because i could read it now (without blank pages)....and also some replies.
I agree mostly with some suggestions.
Maybe it would be a solution, that only a creator could see previous suspensions on his winner....so he might say "ok, he got a suspension....so i don´t ask for reroll". Or if we try to report someone, a note appears that xy got a suspension for xy, so my report would be anyway pointless...-> less useless reports.
Or a compromise...some kind of time-based indicator, if someone got a suspension, he gets for this
a mark for x * his time of suspension. So the one that did make a little mistake is maybe only marked for 3 weeks, the one that traded a bunch of his gifts is marked half a year. ( btw maybe some kind of logarithm math for suspensions would be even better then just stacking them....but this is another point)
On the other side, traders have a +/- rep, why not creators and winners.....uh oh yes heresy, let's start throwing stones on me :-)
only my thoughts, as this is in a suggestions thread and realizing anything of the suggestions is very unlikely, there is no need to discuss my 2 cents, just throw stones :P
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Why not? And I wouldn't throw any stones. I am just glad that some people agree with me or actually a lot in this thread, because usually you hear negative comments from everyone, mostly the leechers that feel the need to defend themselves.
Discussing this seems like the only option available since there is no change in sight any time soon and even when opinions on the suggestions vary, the overall echo is that some things should be changed!
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Amen, man. Amen.
I've mentioned many of the same things myself.
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I was thinking about my suggestions for a while and actually wanted to create some concept screenshots to visualize my ideas, but since I encounter more and more scum on this website, exploiting the good will of many users I didn't want to wait any longer and use this as some usefull/useless content for a thread that is actually meant to rant a bit. Below you'll find the text I prepared a while ago and wanted to work on a bit more. Unedited.
Maybe I'll add pictures later on or someone helps me out if he/she thinks it's a reasonable idea.
'ello fellow low-lifes!
A lot of threads have been posted lately regarding regifters, support and overall rule breakers in the community.
I have posted a lot of rants in the past as well, but I thought about constructive critique and feasiable solutions for some of those problems, at least they are feasiable in my opinion.
Make a tutorial for new members
The second someone signs in with Steam for the first time a little tutorial should give them a general idea about how the basics work.
Little info boxes pointing out the different aspects of the website, encouraging them to try them out.
I downloaded Gimp to create some pictures to show you what I mean.
[Imgur Gallery]()
The only other time this would occur again would be when creating a giveaway. Explaining people the basics of creating a giveaway.
Pointing out that you can't gift games that are in your library, that fake giveaways are a bad start and can lead to suspension et cetera.
[Imgur Gallery]()
Translate the FAQ and the tutorials
We have a huge variety of users from different countries from all over the world. A lot of reliable users that are registered for so long
that you could trust them with translating a few sentences. No more "I no speaks english".
I bet that there will be users willing to do this, myself included, and translate the FAQ and some sentences for the above mentioned tutorials.
Mark users that have been suspended once
The first two suggestions were about prevention, this one is not only to scare off potential rule breakers but also to reduce support tickets.
I often checked profiles after they have won games and have been told that they already were suspended and that I have to give them the game.
Why not say that in his/her profile? This way people will know that their reputation will suffer from breaking the rules and we don't have to reroll everytime for someone that cannot be rerolled.
I've been told more than once that suspension would be a reliable tool to teach them a lesson, but when noone knows about it in the first place they basically just get away with it and I have seen enough users that just went on with their business after the suspension was over.
[Concept Image]()
Force sync, guys. FORCE SYNC!
Title says it all.
Remind people to activate their games
Idea by Zomby2D
After winning a giveaway a pop-up should remind people to activate their won games and that regifting leads to suspension/ban.
This is so simple. I don't see any reason not to implement this one.
Now to what I think is the most important. Remember this is something I haven't thought of and just comes from the anger I feel right now towards the majority of this community exploiting it. I've been called a hypocrite in a lot of my recent threads where I had some opinions on possible ethics this site should habe or don't have but I don't care as long as I can say what's on my mind right now.
Stop suspending people that have obvious bad intentions joining this website!
I don't care anymore if it's some sort of disciplinary measure that works for 5 year-olds in the hope of teaching them a lesson. Most people here are grown-ups and know what they are doing and they will go on, no matter if they've been supsended or not.
Those people don't comment on giveaways, they don't join discussions on the forum. They know that this is the only thing that can expose their actions and some are stupid enough to do so resulting in the few users that are actually reported.
Once I had a winner that had racist content on his Steam profile saying "N***er" and other stuff. Which is the against the Steam TOS, right? It applies to Steamgifts, right? No reason for a reroll. I chatted with him and with the help of some friends discovered that he farmed CV with fake giveaways. Well, he was suspended once, no reason for a reroll. So I talked to him and wanted him say that he did it. Said "fuck Steamgifts" and even gave me tips on how to farm CV the right way. No fucking reason for a reroll.
And such things occure every day. Users that see their actions as justified, think that we are the stupid ones for giving games to strangers, letting them do whatever they want with what we have spent our money on.
Remember that guy that wasn't able to contact because he demanded to receive his gift via e-mail? Saying on his profile that noone should add him even if he won a giveaway? Cause "he fucking won and it's his game now"? That marked all of his games as not received after he visited the thread depicting him and realizing that everyone hated him? Got fucking suspended. He's still there.
A new user created a giveaway, not knowing how it works? Alright, give him a little suspension. Someone admits to regifting, not activating games, feeling that nothing that he has done is wrong? Fucking ban that guy!
All of the above mentioned suggestions serve the purpose to teach people how this site works thus they can be banned without warning. Ignorance is no excuse! Never was and never will be.
I don't mean to blame the support for anything of it, I feel that it might happen, you guys just do what you have to do.
I am just asking for change! And of course I will hear that this not right, no we can't do this. Okay, fine. I'll stop gifting then. As I said all I care about right now is to get that out of my system.
Update
Following several comments I would like to make a little update. Again these suggestions were written down a while ago and I posted them unedited, my actual plan was to work on them a bit to make a reasonable approach to some of the things that bother me considering the website's interests as well as the community's.
Users shouldn't be marked for referrals or flaming in the forum, if they have been suspended for any of this. Only severe offenses like regifting, not activating games, multiple accounts (which should be an instaban to be honest) and farming CV should result in public marking. Zelghadis disagrees on the suggestion but made a very good point, which I liked to extend a bit for my original suggestion, that people who regifted or didn't activate a game should be able to correct their wrong doing and buy the game in order to safe themselves from a marking.
Also mentioned by a lot of people punishment should be harder for users. That's the whole point I tried to make while introducing prevention methods for some rules that are ignored a lot. This way you could also justify more severe punishment, because we would do a better job in clarifying the website's rules.
Also a quick reminder for everyone who wants a 3-strike rule to be enforced. Remember that we spend money on the games we give. We are suffering from broken rules and not CG. This website is driven by users. CG is giving us the platform.
I don't think someone should be given 2 strikes before being banned permamently. Just think of the money that is lost in the process.
Give them the chance to buy the game they regifted/didn't activate but when they deny this possibility gtfo.
Most users are caught regifting after several games before being suspended once. Why should they go on another regifting streak a second time? And waste the money of our community?
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