Is it cool to threaten to blacklist people if they don't comply with giveaway requirements?
Since GA hosts are the ones doing the footwork and discovering regifters and other rule violators, and they are paying for all the gifts on the site, why aren't they allowed to re-roll winners however they please? How are the rules so bent in the cheaters favor right now? If blacklisting automatically rerolled a GA winner, there would be even less work for moderators, and the site would have a lot less bots stealing all the charity GAs. (The rules for advertising are already set, so if anyone was threatening blacklist to get YT subscriptions, they would be reported.)
I'm just sad blacklists are capped at 1000, with these kind of rule violations going nigh unpunished. Withholding a prize from some scumbag thief actually punishes the would-be-gifter who discovers the unrepentant violator. Only a much larger blacklist could replace the permanent bans which should have been delivered. If the rules don't change to be less forgiving on regifters and frequent rule-breakers, then the only solution for a giver is sharing huge rolling blacklists generated from the most recent scammers. What's the cap on the whitelist?
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if blacklists = reroll, some users would exploit it to farm cv or other reasons.
and we can't have that many rerolls, support can't even handle all user reports in time, there's just too many giveaways per month.
whitelist cap is 1000 i think.
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GAs being automatically rerolled by the host would make less work for the moderators. The roll would be randomly chosen again from the list of entries in an instant.
If anyone was abusing this system for CV somehow... let me know how, and I'll report those clever few.
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Where there is smoke there is usually is fire, I think (and I'm by far the only one on SG) that there is CV boosting being done on SG by obscure shadow groups like there is bound to be some bots trying to win and sell or regift games. How far this is spread nobody knows but it's bound to be there as these are things that happen without being open, clear or controllable by regular rule abiding and honest SG users.
TL DR: In any fruit basket there is a chance that there is some rotten fruit that has the possibility to taint the surrounding fruit...
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We are spending money to give away free things. Why can't we have someone take an extra few seconds to read the description or write something other than an auto-botted "thank you"? We feel respected when people do the things we request because it means they are willing to genuinely express their gratitude. Also, it is my give away. So why can't I make my own rules?
Just saying, I'm already giving to you something that you want and it costs money. If I can do that then you can definitely give a small expression of gratitude. Free of charge.
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Blacklist should not extist at all, in my opinion. We have whitelists, we have group-only GAs and we have the silly CV system.
But well, if someone really wants you blacklisted they will go out of their way to make sure you will end up on their blacklists...
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Blacklist should not extist at all, in my opinion. We have whitelists, we have group-only GAs and we have the silly CV system.
I like dropping keys to anyone, old or new, whether I've ever seen them before, or not. I have no intention of joining an exclusive club to exchange gifts. I have no intention of locking out the people who need charity most, and I have no intention of blocking people who are new and are waiting to get lucky before they contribute and gain levels.
Now let's talk about the level 4s and 5s who are selling and regifting the gifts they get though. How would we stop them when the moderators have already forgiven them? I'm not giving my games to cheating regifting botters. That's why we need blacklists, not because of some contrived straw-man argument. We need constraints which extend the GA rules because the rules are being broken constantly and steamgifts moderators forgive them for it. Well I don't.
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I don't think I have seen a giveaway with a threat to blacklist you if you don't do something.
Usually there's threat to get blacklisted if you do something, e.g. spamming the same identical comment in all GAs.
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As a GA creator, one thing I hate is bots. "Thanks" by bots ARE NOT SINCERE, since the user is not there thanking me. It is the bot that is doing the thanking to me. If someone took few seconds to write "thanks" it is far better than a thanks written by a bot. Then, we can't differentiate which thanks is from the bots, and which thanks is from a normal human. Bots and humans could thank us, and we could not know which one is bot which one is human.
Thus, came the rules of "not thanking". I don't like to be spammed. If a user thanks on a "no-thanking" GA, that means that :
- The user is not human, thus can't read the description to not thank you.
- The user is human, but don't bother to read your descriptions for a few seconds.
Creating a GA takes money and time. You can join a GA in two clicks. To create a GA, you need to completely fill the forms, copy-pasted the key, set the date, set the restrictions, put the descriptions, and so on. Not to mention that some are gifts which must be given out. Or that some winners need to be reminded that they have won something. So, I think that few seconds of reading description should be easy enough. Most of the time, the request is "don't thank me" or something similar. Few will ask unconditionally for something funny, but no one will blacklist you if you don't do something. If you are blacklisted, it is maybe of what you did, not what you didn't do.
Then, on the numbers of Yays and Nays. Firstly, your way of questioning is dubious at best. I support blacklisting and I do blacklisting, but in no way I think it is cool. I think it is a necessity, not a cool factor. Secondly, there are huge numbers of people that never, or rarely give games in this site. Most of the users (I think almost half of them) came from Level 0 or Level 1, thus only give rarely, and may receive a lot. I am not saying that the "large givers" has to treated specially, I am just saying that SG won't work if there are no "large givers" abound. Also, a lot of Level 0/1 use bots, thus they don't want "bot traps" and blacklist threats get them.
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It's a lot more than half. There are 6x as many level 0's on the site as there are all other levels combined ...
http://www.steamgifts.com/discussion/XaCbA/list-of-all-cv-levels-and-their-corresponding-real-cv
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I voted potato... The question leaves a lot of gray area. Whether it's cool is pretty subjective and depends on the context of the "threat".
People who spam "thanks" messages just don't know that they are saying the same darned cute thing to the same person repeatedly.
It's not fun to read:
Thank you!!! =D
Thank you!!! =D
Thank you!!! =D
Thank you!!! =D
Thank you!!! =D
Thank you!!! =D
Thank you!!! =D
Thank you!!! =D
...flooded in your inbox, and then try to find the real messages in your message box. I have never made an issue about this though, it's really more of the steamgifts web developer's fault than the lazy scripters'.
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"Cool" was meant in a broad way, not as in the Fresh Price of Bel Air. This said, I agree that probably a lot of those Yays come from low level members. It's also true that they are part of the community.
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Yes, but the way to presented the question is putting blacklists looks like "a tool for the SG elite" or "a tool for the SG snobs" while in truth, a lot of people here, sees it as a necessity. If the "elites" and "snobs" are totally bad people, why they bother to hand out GA to people they never met, hardly known, for nothing but a simple thanks and some numbers? That's because there is no "elite" or "snobs" on SG. Yeah, some may be, but the majority won't be.
I have to add also, without the GA creators, nobody wanted to join SG, and everyone will lose. That's why both side should be respected as equal, the small masses of the GA creators and the huge masses of the GA winners. GA creators have shown some respect towards the GA winners by creating unselfish gifts, I think it's perfectly fine the GA winners show respect too to the GA creators.
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Be careful, friend, complaining around here is often met with extreme hostility!
I dared to raise a concern once and my life has been a roller coaster ever since, culminating in a salty SG user moving a wasp nest to my gazebo where I liked to chill out and post on the Internet.
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I suspect that the wasps were not intended for you, but for the gazebo itself
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Nope, it is never cool. I would much rather have someone say, "please don't say thanks, I don't want a hundred messages that say nothing of any great interest." And then silently blacklist the ones who respond with, "thx."
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I don't really care what other people do with their GAs. It's their GA. If they want you to do a little something, what's the big deal?
As for myself, I don't really make blacklist threats usually. The only time I have done so is in my recent giveaways of a bundle of games in which I asked entrants to not enter if they owned more than X amount of games in the pack and that if they win and are found to have more than said number they will be rerolled (as per rules) and blacklisted. I don't think that's too unreasonable.
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This is the result of puberty mixed with some feelings of power along with a whole lot of undeserved ego.
Truth be told, everyone has their own agenda and reasons for the giveaways. If they want to waste their time reading trivial comments, then all the power to them! I have personally only created a few giveaways, but the reason was to give the games away so I could care less what you wrote or if you wrote at all.
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some people blacklist for get injuried.
some people blacklist just for fun.
some do thinking that it's justice.
some do for ratio.
some do for thank you.
some do for not thank you.
some do for the world not agree with their thoughts.
no matter what rule is set. people will be people.
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Some blacklist because the sense of power involved with that has risen above their shoulders.
Some blacklist because they just like and love too blacklist.
Some blacklist to return the favor after being blacklisted first.
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i only blacklist people if they blacklist me first, and i have no reason why i'm in someone blacklist , just extremely curious about that !
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People do what they want with their blacklist. Silly reasons or not. I don't agree with people setting a blacklist condition in the description though but hey, their choices...
But if you don't agree with people threathening to blacklist in their giveaway, don't join. Or if it's really a game you want, comply with the demands.
Personally, I don't set rules. Everyone is free to say thanks (even if I hate the spam coming from it), to put images, if you prefer, to comment.
The rare times I'm requesting something is when I give away a bundle/package. When someone is owning more than the half of it, I prefer them to refrain to join to complete their library, so that someone that has less can enjoy a full bundle. But it's very very rare.
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Came for the poll, stayed for the drama.
I've said it before and I'll say it again; we just giving away games not the cure for cancer. Calm the hell down with your petty blacklisting.
Give folks a little bit of power and they become baby tyrants.
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Nice picture, made me smile. :) Also, it's exactly the abuse of a crumb of power that made me use the words childish and pathetic.
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I agree some are going to be childish, but I doubt it is the majority. For the most part, I'd say most use the blacklist properly. I understand your frustration, but I don't think a thread like this does much to change attitudes. If anything it entrenches people more in their positions.
Personally I don't worry, nor ever worried about being on a blacklist. There are just too many GA creators to worry about it and too many ways around it. Joining a good group goes a long way to avoid dealing with GA creators that want you to dance for your supper.
Everyone, for the most part, leads busy lives. We work, go to school, raise children, participate in sports, in other words, have a life. You have 300 points you want to use to enter a few GAs but don't want to spend an hour doing so. There is more than one browser extension which allows entrants to enter a listed GAs from the list directly. Unfortunately, the description cannot be read when entering in this manner but for many it is a great time saver. Penalizing someone because they said "thanks" or didn't say "thanks" or didn't do the GA creator's bidding is simply petty. It also doesn't take into account that many on SG may not natively speak your language. Penalizing someone for not knowing your language is not just petty, it is ignorant.
In the end, every member has the choice to use their blacklist as they see fit. As much as I have the choice to mock their ridiculous GA demands.
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The definition of using the blacklist properly is very subjective, but apart from that I agree with everything you wrote. And of course, it's an extreme first world problem. On the other hand, I think it's the kind of problem worth discussing here, as opposed to actual real life issues ones, so I created the thread. Also, when I started the thread I didn't know what I described was an approved behavior and not a way to circumvent rules.
All this said, I am going to sleep. Have a good one!
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this blacklist thing is just another thing from snobism here. like "if you win you MUST thank you", your automatic robotic zero meaning words is important for my ego~
:DD
so many lols with this threads
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You know, giveaway creator spend his money to do giveaway. So, I believe, creator has a right to make some rules as far as it is not against site rules. If you don't like creator's rules - you can just not enter) Or enter, and even win, without doing what he wants, just don't have ability to do this again)
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More than once in this thread, I explained my view and my mindset. Initially I thought this behaviour was a circumvention of the rule against requirements in public GAs. Later, I realized such a rule only exists because mods can't enforce it and the behaviour I have described is actually an approved method of enforcing requirements "privately", so to say. At that point, I rested my case.
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I think you can blacklist people for whatever reason you want.
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You sure can, but it doesn't mean the topic can't be debated.
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Yeah I mean, if someone wants to blacklist people who do not respect their giveaway criteria (I recently saw someone asking for not joining if you have more wins than GAs) it's fine by me, I personally try to avoid ending in any blacklist
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The thing is I thought those criteria weren't meant to exist, then I got a full grasp of the situation.
You see, this is taken straight from the guidelines:
"You cannot ask users to perform any special action in order for their entry to be considered valid."
And I believe the "do/don't do the following or end up on my blacklist" attitude is a way to circumvent that rule. Then I understood that the rule is meant to be circumvented that way, so I stopped arguing. My following posts were just meant to explain this.
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I only have three people on my blacklist. One guy who won one of my giveaways and then tried to give the game to someone else and the other two have the worst won/sent ratios i've ever seen. One of them has won about $2,000 of games and not hosted a single giveaway in return. Other than situations like that, I never use the whitelist/blacklist.
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I think blacklist threats are totally fine. People have the right to decide who they want to give their games to. If you're not willing to go out of your way and do whatever thing they're asking you to do in order to enter, and you still feel entitled to enter their giveaway, they have every right to blacklist you for not listening. There's no god-given right to get free games from people. If someone has a game, they don't have to give it away here at all. Every game that does get given away here is an act of generosity. And if someone wants to set conditions on their generosity, that's absolutely fine with me. And it should be fine with everyone else too.
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I stated my position several times in the thread, so here's a novel point of view: when you decide to be an organ donor, you don't get to pick who will get your parts. There's no right to anything and there's no entitlement, but the concept of unconditional giving is not unconceivable. Naturally, it doesn't mean you or I or anyone else have to embrace. I thought that was the spirit of public giveaways, I was wrong, I admitted it. Not much I can add.
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So, it's forbidden to set conditions for public giveaways (do this, post that, visit this page) but it's cool to set conditions in giveaways under the threat of blacklisting? Doesn't make much sense to me. It's basically "you can't enter this giveaway unless you do what I want" vs "you can't enter any of my future giveaways unless you do what I want" - the second seems even worse to me.
Of course, I find the whole concept of mass-blacklisting people because they don't comply with your rule childish and pathetic, so if you disagree with that, please blacklist me.
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