How many WL and BL does one gain/lose for revealing their opinions? [Summary of experiment posted]

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Ever wondered how being vocal about yourself or your opinions affects your whitelist and blacklist count? I know I did, and although I voiced my opinions in some controversial threads (e.g. the ones about US elections), I never set out check this properly. Until today.

In each of the next 5 days I'll post a revealing thing about myself. In the following day I will let you know how many WL and BL I lost/gained, but to minimize bias I won't say in which direction until the experiment ends. To prevent having GAs skew the results, yet to still keep things in good giving order, I'll only post the GAs now, a day before I start posting the "reveals". The numbers in each list before the first reveal will be the baseline, but I'll keep them to myself and only report the increase/decrease. Suffice to say, I have three digit numbers in each list so plenty of room for reduction :-)

Oct 1

GA posting day (all Level 0, no filters) [All Finished]

Oct 2

I am Israeli and Jewish. I also served in the military, as a photographer. I'll dedicate a couple of reveals in coming days to my social and political views and to those I have on religion, but will add a few words here about my views of Israel military. I think a strong army is an unfortunate necessity for my country, and that there are few areas where Israeli military activities could have been significantly different yet still achieve the goal of defending the country. A few points where I object to how things are/were done: Use of administrative detention; use of one-ton bomb or similar for some not-so-targeted targeted killings; reprisal operations during the 50's and 60's. A few points where I think the army has much to pride itself on: Purity of arms ethical code, and specifically the extreme efforts that go into avoiding civilian causalities, with Roof-knocking procedure being a prime example. Another example is the huge investment Israel makes in developing defensive anti-missile missiles of different ranges - Iron Dome, David's Sling, Arrow - all of which, by definition, reduce civilian causalities (on both sides) compared to the alternatives.
Update: Gained 9 WL, Gained 1 BL.

Oct 3

I am agnostic-atheist. I've yet to encounter anything that would make me believe in God, so I don't. I believe it's impossible to prove that God exists, so I don't frequently spend time thinking or talking about this subject. I'm also not troubled by questions like "Where did the matter and energy in the universe come from?" ...I don't know the answer, and I doubt I'll ever hear a convincing explanation. As far as I'm concerned, God isn't a convincing explanation to such questions. I can at least find answers to some related questions in the theory of evolution, which I find very convincing.
In addition, I'm secular. I do celebrate most Jewish holidays every year, but I don't do it because of what they mean to religious people. I do it because I enjoy many of the traditions, I enjoy being with my extended family, and the holidays give a great framework for this. Similarly when I'm invited by people of other religions or cultures to celebrate their holidays, I seize the opportunity and gladly participate.
Update: Gained 5 WL, Gained 1 BL.

Oct 4

My political ideology is mostly left wing and social-liberal. I believe the state should ensure that the basic needs of everyone are met, yet still reward people for hard work, enterprise and innovation. With the increase of automation (autonomous trucks anyone?), I believe more and more people won't be able to find a job. The only way I see to go about it would be for the state to ensure basic income to all. As a (currently) working person, I accept this and am willing to pay for it. I already pay about 40% taxes, and although I don't agree with everything my country does with the money, I do think that the amount of taxation is roughly where it needs to be if the country aims to fund (or at least subsidize) important things like universal healthcare, college education and paid parental leave. This is why I don't advocate for reduction of taxes, but do want to see the budget used better.
I always voted for left wing parties. This unfortunately means that my votes have been somewhat wasted most of the years, given the political system in Israel (where opposition/minority parties can work on legislation, but have very limited impact otherwise). I think the current prime minister of Israel (Netanyahu) and the party he belongs to are both bad for the country and that their supporters are blind not to see it. I think Donald Trump is wildly incompetent and is on track to become one of the worst presidents in US history, and that Hillary Clinton would have been perfect for the job.
A few quick points - I believe the state and religion should be separated; abortion should be legal; guns should in most cases only be accessible to the armed forces, not regular citizens; I'm against the death penalty; I'm for immigration, based mostly on merit, not religion or nationality (though I understand and agree to why it had to be different when Israel was founded, a few years after the holocaust). I'm strongly in favor of equal rights and responsibilities to all, but accept that there are some areas where it's not easy to implement (e.g. drafting and arming a citizen who openly opposes the existence of the state is not a good idea). Climate change is real and largely caused by humans.
Update: Gained 5 WL, No change to BL.

Oct 5

As requested (by one user), below are some opinions I have about SteamGifts. Most are not that revelatory, and only one or two are likely to be really controversial.

Suspension does not absolve users from unactivated wins. Users should be required to take care of their unactivated wins before being allowed to enter more giveaways.
GA creators should be allowed to not deliver a game once every 100 successfully-delivered giveaways of non-free games, for whatever reason, without having to justify it and without it being considered as a fake giveaway.
There's nothing immoral, unjust or bad about restricting one's giveaways and excluding users (aka "my giveaway, my rules").
Level 0 invite-only is, by far, my favorite type of GA to create. I do sometimes add SGTools filters that reward contributors in ways that are impossible to achieve with levels (e.g. favor other users who create invite-only GAs, or restrict access to those who create only group GAs). When I use such filters, I almost always make the GA accessible to Level 0 users who haven't won anything yet.
SGTools is an awesome complementary site to SG. I wish its functionality was integrated into SG.
CV and levels are highly overrated.
GA creators who use SGTools should not include multiple-win check in their filters, but should check their winners for them manually.
There is hardly anything I consider as "drama" on SG, I don't know why people keep using this term.
People are too sensitive. Nothing on SG ever came close to making me want to leave the site.
The forums are the best part of SG, not the giveaways.
I hate the term "leech" and never use it, except when I'm actually discussing the zoological phylum annelids (which I've had an unforgettable encounter with in the Sri Lankan rain-forest Sinharaja).
Level 0 users, and especially those who don't use auto-join scripts, are unjustifiably demonized by too many users.
The site should start presenting captchas to users whose usage pattern strongly hints that they are using auto-join scripts (instead of suspending them).
Bonus opinion about games: Game genres/attributes that almost automatically get games into my Not Interested list on Steam: Anime, RPGMaker, Strategy, RTS, Crafting, Bullet Hell, Shoot'Em Up, Clicker, Dating Sim, Hex Grid, Isometric, MOBA, Massively Multiplayer
Update: Gained 7 WL, No change to BL (though there was some fluctuation during the day).

Oct 6

I'm a feminist. There’s great inequality to this day between men and women, with men being very frequently oppressive of women. It boggles the mind that so many women say they are “not a feminist”, while experiencing inequality, oppression and the negative sides of male dominance of society. Feminism really needs better marketing, because most arguments of those non-feminist women are quite detached from what feminism actually is (hint: it’s not about hating men).
A few notes about myself. I had women bosses and had zero issue with it. One of them was probably the best boss I had. I find working with women just as easy, if not more, than working with men. People who claim women bring “drama” to the workplace don’t know what they’re talking about, because it’s completely detached from reality. If anything, they're probably projecting their own views on reality.
In general, there's hardly anything that's important to modern living where men have an inherent born advantage over women, or the other way around. The vast majority of non-physical differences are due to how boys and girls are raised. I'm raising my 3-year old daughter to have as much knowledge and as many skills as possible, including skills traditionally associated with boys and men. There's no chance in hell that, when she's older, she won't know how to replace a wheel of a car or drill a hole in the wall. Hopefully I’m not alone in this.
Update: Gained 10 WL, No change to BL.

Summary: Gained 36 WL and 2 BL. I'm pretty sure that I would have been added to more blacklists before the advent of Two-Way Blacklists, or if I didn't include giveaways at the top of this post. The way to tell for sure would be to create a similar thread without giveaways, but it's too late for this now. Maybe in a few months, but I'm running out of opinions that I think are potentially blacklist-worthy. Also, my pretty good ratio may have something to do with the results. If my numbers of wins and created giveaways were reversed, I probably would have been added to more blacklists, and less whitelists. All in all though it seems less "risky" to voice one's opinions than many people think. I hope this experiment encourages more people to not hold back and be more open, and I also hope it doesn't backfire if they do ;-)

Note: I'm not going to participate in an endless debate about each reveal. The information in each should be sufficient for people to decide if they see enough to put me on one of their lists, or if (and I hope that's the typical case) they just see these as opinions that one should be able to make, even if they disagree.

7 years ago*

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282 Comments

Ctouw

Each day I want to whitelist you more, but you were already in my list from the start. :')
Your daughter has a great dad, I'm happy for her :D My parents also raised me the exacy same way they raised my brothers and I'm very grateful to them for this. They never tried to limit me in anyway because of my sex, and just let me be myself although I was mostly interested in "boyish" things.

The world needs more people like you :)

7 years ago