The threads are sorted by most recently created with EGST installed on the web browser, but without EGST the threads are unorganized by date. I think one reason for less discussion is SG users cannot find newer threads to comment on while only able to view old threads they might have commented on already.
Edit: I forgot to mention the threatening power of the blacklist. To comment from your mind to then not only receive no responses from other users, but that other SG members might blacklist you for your comment can be disheartening. Honestly, the blacklist stat sometimes impact my enthusiasm for commenting on threads and I rather would lurk instead. I'm still going to give a "Happy cakeday!" to users with the cake symbols, but that's all at times.
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Best thing is that ESGST can hide your blacklist stat with a setting, making it very easy to not care about it :D
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I've said some risky things with no harm, so I'm not sure the issue is that bad.
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I don't think it's that important, but it has an undeniable discouraging effect.
If you do happen to check your stats and notice that people are blacklisting you just for trying to be active and contribute to the community, it makes you question whether you're doing something wrong, and whether you should even bother being active when it's apparently making some people upset.
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I agree with Timobkg.
Back when i started being active i slowed down to almost stopping once i saw i was getting blacklisted; Btw i rarely joke, im generally helpful- perhaps it was just the content of my opnions or some of my huge posts(walls of text).
Later i stopped minding it (besides being active had double or triple the effect on the number of whitelisting i got).
The reason i barely post nowadays is time and patience (everywhere, not only in regards to sg). Im even entering way less GAs- but when i started comenting felt like a unneded risk. There were people blacklisting people who thanked, people who didn't thank, people who didn't comment on threads(with gas), people who commented without adding anything... it was (perhaps still is) like 'breathe here and be blacklisted'; Easier not to go into that.
Im not sure how much changed- since i stopped caring about BLs (and posting less) i don't have a measure of number of blacklists per week being active like i had.
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I agree, I haven't made that many comments but I'm very wary to post my opinion/thoughts because of how people are with their blacklists. I've looked at my blacklist history and can tell 2 major rises in it were from 2 comments - no clue what though, nothing offensive or out there just clearly something a few people didn't like
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You forgot the auto join bot users that never make a single post.
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- If you comment your opinion you are BL by someone not agreeing with you
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I would have commented here, but the fear of BL stopped me right before I hit Submit
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I fully agree. I have never been an extremely active member of this forum, but the risk of being "rewarded" with a BL if I post a controversial opinion has made very reluctant recently.
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I have a theory. It started to decline right after the changes in the points system. I myself used to visit the site a lot of times before the point system was changed. While entering giveaways I also always go to the discussion page right after. But after the changes I just visit the site twice a day and I've seen the decline in the discussion because of it. Don't get me wrong the points system changes for me are positive, but there's always a sacrifice that comes along with changes. This time it's the number of discussion in the site.
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Yup that's the one, I'm only using the site for 1 year so I have no clue on when the decline started. But in my 1 year that change declined the number of discussion noticeably. So that's my theory.
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I was happening way before that. I remember commenting on the fact at least a year or so ago. Even in the case it affected them, the impact would be minimal.
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but why has it decreased so much since?
cause many ppl stopped commenting here and now use another forums (without spammers, trolls and all these boring things like cv and ratio).
No, ppl still enter giveaways and read sg-forum, they just not interested in commenting anymore
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Also the number of new users in March,April and May are lowest since sg opened. https://www.steamgifts.com/stats/community/users
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I wish it was just here but it seems to be a general trend all around the web. Being less about community and more about getting free shit. With some notable exceptions like Reddit, it seems the web is mostly about one-click copy/paste of clever/viral/political comment or reposting gifs, memes, videos. Why use words and express ideas when you can just click a button or thumb up icon?
We are devolving back to cave painting, I tell you
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Not to mention that just bumping and clicking with gifs or copy-paste is "safer" here than taking the time to express yourself. If you try to articulate some meaningful thought, you're just inviting Blacklists.
Who knows if that's a good thing or not - it does serve as a form of community moderation for all but the most stubbornly vocal - but it's my belief that most meaningful discussions are ones that will inevitably invoke emotion and lead to clashing.
True, a bunch of blacklists probably won't affect the mechanics of the site for you, but it's probably more about the disheartening feeling of having blacklists piled upon you without a word or comment.
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Too much shit-posting and spamming, and not enough substance.
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Well, one thing that noone mentioned is lack of proper mobile website/app to browse the forum. Currently it's quite a pain in the back to do it on a smartphone :(
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There are fan made steamgifts apps on Google Play. I tried one personally.
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Probably a third of the time I spend here I do so from my smartphone (I'm writing this from my phone actually), how is opening it from a browser instead of a dedicated app a pain?
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it is when you're used to dedicated reddit apps like me
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I'm the opposite, I'm so used to doing things from a browser on the PC that I prefer a similar experience when I'm on my phone. The youtube app is the exception cos it actually works very well and it's optimized for a touch screen but I still miss having the ability to open multiple tabs.
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The issue isn't just that there isn't a dedicated app, the issue is that there isn't a dedicate app or a proper mobile website such that checking it from your phone isn't a pain.
Now, clearly it doesn't bother you, but it does bother me. I personally do 90% of my web browsing from my phone, and avoid visiting SG from my phone because navigating the desktop site on my phone is too much of a pain to bother with.
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Somehow it just feels boring. Peple having the same problems (often because not reading FAQ) as years ago
Sometimes I bump a train / wish things on cakeday topic but bumping for the sake of bumping is pointless if previous comment was minutes ago, and cakeday topics require only one comment
Maybe I'm just getting sour and old, but I just feel that the topics of blacklist drama (over nothing) and constant bickering and negativity about close to every single bundle is really, really disheartening. Like if there is one game in a 10-game bundle that's being given away free, someone just leaves a comment to point out how much of a fail the whole bundle is for giving a free game out of 10. For like 2-3$. Because 9+1 (good) game for that price is just too much.
I really like how the bundle topics are done, but I have a feeling that the improved poll options just made people more willing to share their feelings, and as we know, people have problem with objectivity and subjectivity. So instead of the pretty often true " rebundle, but good games for good price" 80% of those topics are people bitching about bundle being bad, shit, the site going down, anything. No blaming or anything, but from my personal point while these comments ... add a comment to the site, they really make the site feel worse for me.
In some other way I can buy most of the bundles I want, I don't really care about tier 3s, there is no option to store Steam gifts - varity of giveaways is down because of Steam's system, and having access to most to begin with makes the giveaways, and especially the puzzles or trains less interesting (also way fewer good puzzles that aren't just jigidi) , sadly. I guess this also contributes why some people (like me) can feel that the site lost some of its charm.
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Good post I can identify with.
Honestly I like steamgifts for the giveaway purpose, but the whole community thing is not very interesting for me. I've met some nice people here and had some good discussions but overall the posts about people either complaining about bundles or people making drama out of nothing overweight by far.
Most bundles are more or less good and cheap like nothing imo but the big number of people bitching without a gleam of any respect about good quality bundles and great games I like just makes me sad. Too much negativity, black and white thinking and greediness here for my tastes.
Also as I have more and more games in my library and backlog I'm entering less giveaways as well, feeling guilty for not playing my wins immediately. And then there is the drama about blacklists, whitelists, ratio, playtime stalking, whatever. Which is just not necessary at all. Is not it all about feeling generous and making a gift to others, should not that be enough? I don't know.
Additionally the available filter options don't help that much and make it hard to find/follow real discussions among all the other things.
In the end I use steamgifts for giveaways but being active in the steamcommunity with my friends is sufficient and much more satisfying for me.
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I didn't know yirg stopped. Damn. Also, ambidot is now more on lurking than posting.
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Half of my interest died when Rachellove quit, other half died when yirg stopped.
This, with some additions on the second part (all related with rachel).
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I didn't completely stop, I'm just focused on other things at the moment. I actually have quite a few ideas for new threads :-)
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Never thought the statistics page was a great idea tbh.
I used to agree (quite vehemently, in fact) with that statement, but now I believe fear of peer repercussion is a successful method for the community to "police itself" and take some of the workload off the moderators. If it makes people think twice before posting, I'm all for it.
On the downside, it's also led to quite a bit of white-list farming (which was at its worst right after the stats page was introduced). But it's a trade-off I'm willing to make if it keeps some people in check.
(And sorry for replying to your comment so late - I read it this afternoon and wanted to reply, but had to rush out to work.)
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I think one of the reasoning lies in the way of how interesting most thread actually are. Looking at the first page we can see how most threads are about bundles, puzzles or trains, where there isn't much to discuss to begin with aside from bumping and standard questions. Also pointless polls with the same old potato joke are not helping either.
Another reason is that posting literally ANYTHING in the forum is enough for some people to get into their blacklists, which discourage many users into participating.
A thing that personally bugs me is that there are some threads that, even if they died, get bumped constantly, which "steal" (for lack of a better term) space for other topics. Don't get me wrong, i think that the awarness threads are really nice and useful, but if nobody has anything to say anymore it's just best to let them go away.
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There seems to be a noticeable jump in the number of discussions/comments created in February 2015, but why has it decreased so much since?
There was quite a bit of discussion at the time SGv2 was introduced (right before and after), and that caused a big bump around that time.
It's hard to tell the percentage of useful comments out of all comments. There are a lot of meaningless comments on the forum and giveaways. Used to be 'thanks', then changed to 'bump'. It's possible that the bump parade is getting tired.
I think that the drop might have been the result of SG discussion becoming too codified. Blacklisting was mentioned, but also the implied requirement to have a giveaway in posts, the polls, ... When people just post something, there's usually someone quick to comment that they should have done this or that (why not a poll, why does the poll not include 'potato', where's the giveaway, it's a duplicate, ...). Even if it's not specifically said, there's a general feeling that posts are judged, and posting just anything is out of the question. The most annoying to me is when someone posts something personal that's very important to them and people start telling them it's not on topic and SG isn't the place for that.
Edit: In short, and others said it too, there's too much negativity. It's been the case for a long time, but it possible grew worse over time. SG is geared toward that. It started with CV, and white/blacklisting pushed it to the next level. This things just draw out the bad apples.
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It seems like a fare amount of activity has been moved to different sub-communities, like the SG discord, backlog assassins and so on. The amount of drama that's been here over the last year or two can't have helped either.
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There's barely anything worth commenting on now, in-between the drama and pointless bumps. Most of the active users are now grouped up in other communities (Steam group chats, discord and so on), so no real reason to keep investing time on SG discussions.
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Maybe not safe from drama and such, but still a vastly lower amount of it in any case. Mostly because you have to "actively" join these communities - they're not as out in the open as, well, a public forum where you can shitpost all you want.
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Not as radical, but similar. Thing is I just don't feel that any of my comments count, as it bumping in some form, correcting people, or trying to contribute in a positive way that feels getting pointless.
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Pretty much. Cakedays, birthdays, cv discussions, the usual topics ever-present on every forum (current song/game/movie/book/whatever etc) clog the forum. You have only so many ways to wish a happy birthday or get creative with a bump. Hell, even puzzles seem to be much more rarer than before (Not sure about this one as I haven't really bothered with them in a long while, though)
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Judging by all these pics, I'm chatterbox suffering from a heart attack.
For ref: I joined support on Feb 2017
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Damn, I knew you'd have a lot of comments because of moderating, but you've hit over a thousand before that too o:
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I think there are many users who left SG because of changes here which they didn't like, people leaving or just cause they are not interested anymore in giveaways.
Other people are just active in specific groups (Backlog Assassins, Tohou, etc.), don't have the time anymore or don't find the discussions interesting.
It's just how those site works. Maybe the amount of discussions/comments will stop declining and rise again later.
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It's because I'm not active here anymore, with my spamming and such. :P And, to be honest, you will rarely find anything interesting in the discussions nowadays.
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Well, the big SG civil war started at around that time when the site split into two factions maybe even a third one for those who didn't care enough and the fighting got so heated that the site never recovered..
They used blacklists, user reoprts, forum blacklist a script to hide discussions and other means of war...
Nowadays, there's not much of a big "community" to fight on as much as before so the fighting naturally died down...
FuckingHumans #NonSexual #SFW
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Well, that wasn't exactly what I was talking about...
but sure, why not, this site needs some new energy!
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I may have been a bit too dramatic about it, but yeah it was a dark period of time when drama discussions loomed over SG's forum for months..
DON'T AWAKEN THE BEAST!
I will stop writing dramatically, starting now
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I barely know people who post regularly so I don't have a good motive to participate, other than say hello, bump or short messages. Last time I participate with some level of good quality was in a thread about movies. I even 'resurrected' to ask about opinions (Since the creator already watched some of the films) it but quickly died.
My personal thoughts:
- I barely use it nowadays because I don't know many people in here
- I barely use it nowadays because I barely enter giveaways. Only one or two whishlisted and checking 'playing appreciated' group (or similar groups)
- I've been playing my last win!!! and some other games with friends, so I haven't been checking other forums too!
- It's true (I think) that the quality is worst, so I don't want to participate. Most of the times is trains, bumps and "hey hey, look at my shitpost!" and those posts are treatly very different depending on how famous/loved you are in the SG community.
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Oh - and I'm going to make some clickbait discussions to make you happy :3
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And I will say thanks for each of your bumps! Number of posts will skyrocket!
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Pro-tip: Dr. Pepper in the nose hurts more than other sodas.
So glad I wasn't drinking coffee when I read your comment.
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Take care of your health man, we need your daily share of comments. One can't choke on Dr. pepper in such grave time!
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I need time to prepare! I didn't say that I will do it immediately :)
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Clickbait =/= shitpost
That being said, SG's shitposts were most of the time 100 times better than other site's shitposts and people still shat the bed when they saw them
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Clickbait =/= shitpost
That's true. Although discussions with clickbait title tend to lure more shitposters.
SG's shitposts were most of the time 100 times better than other site's shitposts
Quality over quantity. That's why there are less discussions lately.
and people still shat the bed when they saw them
And that's another reason for decreasing amount of such topics.
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People comment when they feel welcome, when they aren't they look for someplace else - where they are welcome in.
so i think the reasons people stooped commenting and using the forum in my opinion are of posts/subjects like these:
- blacklisting
- post about users are - BOTS!!!
- patronizing posts
- restrictive attitude of some user to lower lvls
- post about lechers
etc
fix that - and you will see the forum thrives again :)
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Being blacklisted is useful to me so I can know when my actions bother other users. I'm not yet very familiar with the etiquette around here, and some people don't want to publicly criticize users so they silently blacklist them. Feedback would be useful, but usually I know what I did wrong in hindsight.
Attitude towards low level users almost definitely impacts their attitude. In relation to what I said before, every comment is a chance for somebody to notice your giving tendencies (or lack thereof) and potentially blacklist you regardless of what you said. Users are free to blacklist via any criteria they deem worthy, and defend themselves from blacklists to any extent they wish. Unfortunately this does likely end up deterring many from speaking their mind or using the forums at all
Bot haters should use puzzles. Leecher haters should use SGTools. Easy!
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