One of the most annoying thing of running a group over time, becomes understanding the group size.
There is an inherent issue in SteamGifts, in the fact it needs to sync with Steam to understand group membership.
What this causes is that groups over time become graveyards of abandoned/dormant and suspended accounts, which no one can remove from the group.

The optimal solution would be to allow group admins to remove group members from within SteamGifts.
Worst case - the user will be re-added to the group once he/she syncs his/her Steam & SteamGifts accounts.
But I realize this solution requires some development effort.

So I have an even simpler solution:

  1. Automatically remove from all groups accounts that are permanently suspended.
    Obviously these accounts would not be able to enter SteamGifts in the future, therefore there is no need to keep their group membership.
  2. Automatically remove all groups from accounts dormant for over 1 year. (1 year is just a suggestion. Can be 2 years, 3 years, etc.)
    There is no sense in keeping group membership for accounts that have been dormant for such a long time.
    Even if a person comes back to SteamGifts after such a long hiatus - His account will simply re-sync between Steam & SteamGifts.
    And all the groups he's still a member of in Steam will be automatically added back to SteamGifts.
7 hours ago

Comment has been collapsed.

The ideas itself are good because the graveyard members (inactive in sg since years) make it difficult to check member stats, know how many real (= at least a bit active) members are in the group, how the real numbers for wishlisted games in the groups are etc..


Obviously these accounts would not be able to enter SteamGifts in the future

Sadly wrong. Permanent suspended users can come back after 1 year.
Happened multiple times with multiaccounters (that need then to delete the other accounts) and autojoiners (that were "only" perma suspended for unactivated wins 4 or 5x ... and autojoiner tickets to this member were never checked. Of course the user needed to activate all missing games [which was cheaper from trading/buying as 1 year+ before]).
One multiaccounter done as first thing when he were back..... AUTOJOINING (and as far as i know he still do it till now). Was a very funny thing for my group members. Partly because it shows that such $§"!%/$ shady people can come back and aren't controlled/observed in any way.
One of the biggest reasons why i made a 2 years+ break with hunting the cheaters and after this only hunt the ones down that jump into my spotlight (mostly because of applications for my group). You invest more lifetime to get them perma suspended as they are "perma" suspended in the end...

7 hours ago*
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Ahaha I made a topic complaining about this eight years ago, I still agree!
Some of the suggestions on it

Group refresh buttons! The group creator can force synch everyone's SG account in the group, likely limited to once a month so the button doesn't get spammed. This would clean out and remove inactive members who were removed from the group, but never logged back on to refresh.
Give support members the ability to force sync groups via ticket request, or have permabanned SG members to have their "groups" reset/zeroed out upon being banned.

7 hours ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

I don't think there is any need for a manual button.

If a SG account doesn't sync for longer than {duration}, for any reason, then SG treats them as not belonging to any Steam groups until there is a successful sync.

6 hours ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

I don't do groups but I think banned account should certainly be scrubbed from membership lists.

People can be gone for a long time (I certainly was) and so time limits are probably worth discussing, but still well within the rules of membership.

Can't group admin kick?

Topical I'm sure but that should be an option.

6 hours ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

group admins can kick on steam side, but if they don't sync on SG they will still show as a member of the group here.

6 hours ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

49 minutes ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Sign in through Steam to add a comment.