Another good suggestion that unfortunately won't be implemented...
The only workaround I'm aware of is to use a whitelist and only invite those who fit your criteria. I also tend to only add people who had at least one public giveaway in the last month, so I definitely empathize with your preference.
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yeah im adding people to wl on daily basis now, for my future ga's but even then im sure theres tons of people who arent forum regs, that im probably going to overlook. and not to mention im not always checking forums either so i probably added only 10% of awesome active people (:
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The problem with this is how you define the ratio? SGtools one? One non-bundled AAA game as a non-public can outweigh a hundred public bundle GAs. (This is why I had to do some 40-dollar game GAs to be level 0 public to finally push my public CV back over 50%.)
Not to mention that group and group are not the same. You can make a group GA to a 20-person group and a 2,000,000 one. Heck, the entry numbers on my public and group GAs are almost the same because there is just one 10k+ group in there that is known to have a decent presence on SG (the difference is like 10% on average entries IIRC).
I understand why you want this and gods know, I wish the gift-our-small-band censored group members could be stopped entering public GAs too, but actually implementing a system that is not very unjust could be so complex to warrant an entire doctorate thesis.
Edit: sorry for ranting length sentences. I usually try to phrase things in a more understandable manner. (After all, that is my job. :P)
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no i think you got it wrong, im talking about extreme examples here and sadly theres more of those than i expected them to be. Everyone makes group GAs, me included and thats totally cool.
Heck i wouldnt mind it even if 80% of someones GAs were group ones, as long as its a normal group.
But when i see someone with 38/40 GAs being group only, and its usually a GA that has like 20 entries tops... yeah i want to exclude those people, not random person giving games away to his fav groups :P
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yeah thats the thing, i absolutely HATE having to resort to blacklist and until a few days ago it was completely empty... but i really have no other choice now, and even if i add some of them theres still tons more that will be able to freely enter my giveaways and no im not really ok with it (:
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Yeah, it gets very complicated fast. At least now there's a minimum 5 entries requirement for private or group GAs to get CV. Some giveaways to groups that have public entry (S. Gifts appears to be one of the biggest such groups and it gets a lot of giveaways!) are in effect public giveaways even though they're not categorized that way. In the end, clever use of your BL/WL looks like the best way to go, at least for the time being.
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yeah as i already said in my answer to talgaby, i dont really mind if someone has even 100% group GA's as long as its not a group that consists of like 25 people and has 15 entries per GA.
Once again, i dont really care if person in question gives away all his games to that group of people, but i just dont want those people in my public givaways, thats all. They have ability to exclude everyone else, we should be able to do the same thing, without having to use whitelist because with that one, its pretty much impossible to include everyone i want :/
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haha yeah thats actually awesome idea, but it wouldnt be that easy to find a group though... still, much much easier than finding a single person at a time because once you find one you have found them all :D
edit: on 2nd thought, not all peoeple belonging to single group are acting the same though and im sure even if some of those 20 people group, you would be able a few that i would never want to exclude from my GA, so yeah theres that too :P
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Oh, my.
I just realized, from your comment..
Use the appropriate avenues for support. If you have an issue with another user, submit a ticket with a user report, rather than calling them out within the community or on the forum.
There's really nothing preventing us from creating a thread detailing all the groups to watch out for.
(Then again, it wouldn't remotely be the first time a rule existed that isn't in the FAQ/Guidelines.)
Anyway, to your actual point:
It gets awkward trying to do anything from a site management sense- especially given that staff seems to have perpetual trouble keeping up with things as is, and that staff perspectives have clashed dramatically with users in the past.
So the best way is definitely something user-end, and a group-exclusion list seems reasonable enough.
Wouldn't mind that..
Though given that you can't check groups in giveaways you yourself can't enter, there's no way to hunt down certain groups just by a user's wins/sent, so that's a limitation.
(And you can't check their steam profile, since those users are the ones with hundreds of groups just to get more chances at games.)
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haha nice catch :) but im sure it would eventually lead to someone being banned so yeah >.<
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Yeah, I guess I'd put it this way. It's not a perfect system, certainly not ideal, but I've grown used to it and with familiarity comes acceptance. Hope that makes sense!
I do like hearing fresh ideas like yours though even if my initial response didn't reflect that.
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im really out of fresh ideas right now though :) its just something that i noticed when checking a few entries in my recent giveaways and i was hugely surprised how many people make only small group giveaways :/
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Just curious - what percentage of 25-or-less entries GA would one need to be considered persona non grata? I hope my little Middle East group won't make me one, because as much as I keep bumping that thread I had a hard time finding 30 users from the region to join, and even had to resort to my beloved whitelist to help me get a Deponia giveaway to the 5 entry minimum...
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haha yeah that could be it... maybe we are up to something bigger here ! :P yeah, dont think thats the reason though :)
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Well I run right now GA for game with lvl 2 restriction. Yesterday the same game with the same level restriction ended with around 2k entries, when my open for-everyone forum GA has got 150 entries. And it's impossible for me to blacklist 1800 users xD
So people just don't enter forum, they stick to main page of public GAs.
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yep thats also true, and thats why i try to make my public gas relatively short, to keep entrants chances of winning at some decent ratio :P and my forum GA usually ends up with 100 or 150 entries tops, but thats mostly because i rarely name it OMG LOOK HERE ITS A GA TOPIC and i usually use some randomish name, so curious people that check random topics always have a nice % to win something :)
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haha im not really checking percentages here, and i dont even care if someone makes 100's of giveaways for his 10 man group, thats totally ok with me, as long as its not only giveaways they are doing and there are a few regular ones every once in a while. Thats why i said i made this topic because i was surprised to find out theres quite a few people who make exclusively small group giveaways and are higher level, so not even levels are sacred anymore, so to speak :P
if someone has been making group only giveways for a year or two, and his gas have like 5-20 entires each, that doesnt really make him/her a bad person and i applaud them for being generous towards their friends, but i just dont want that person in my public GA's , and i believe how we should also be able to exclude them from our GA's too, thats all :=)
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When I agree with this suggestion I don't think it will be ever implemented. To distinguish between SG group and closed 1:1 ratio groups SG could check if group is public or invite-only on steam. That woudn't force site to calculate some kind of "if group has got 50 members and 15 entries in every GA it is bad group. Otherwise - good group" which would add shitload of additional load to the server. But still site would have to keep some kind of databesa of group status.
Other way of "fighting" would be to have separate group + private / public CV. But it would put people who make GAs for open groups into group CV instead of public CV and so on.
it's somewhat similar problem to "developers" who gets keys from devs (either willingly or by some kind of review blackmail), gets gree levels and then enter into public GAs.
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yeah im well aware how it wouldnt be so easy to implement, and thats why i made this topic so people could come up with their own suggestions how to make current system better, without cg having to buy another 14 servers :=P
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well first of all i have said i dont actually want to make wl only giveaways, hence why i created this topic. I also said i dont want to make wl giveaways because my wl has too few people on it, unlike those groups with 20 people i dont feel like excluding everyone but i do feel i should have an option to exclude those people though, without having to resort to wl/bl, if that makes sense.
as i already mentioned, wl giveaways are nice ... after like a few months of bulding your whitelist but even then im sure it would be easy to overlook so many great people and yeah, i dont want to do that (:
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Yes there will be always missing people. But once you start building your WL, it is nice feeling. You wouldnt know much people by doing public GA's, but WL let you make some friends. And people are in my WL are awesome. I like the SG community
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don't like it.
it's fine if you BL. i try to make both private, group and public.
but hey, if they want to give for only a small group...
the thing is, once you start to discriminate why not anything? real CV? ratio sent/won.
no, it's fine as it is...
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i also make forum, public and some group giveaways too.
I dont think im discriminating anyone simply because i dont want people that have made 95% of their giveaways for their 20 man groups join my public GAs. Heck i wasnt even sure they exist until they showed up in my giveaway, and the thing is, nobody else except those 20 people is able to join their giveaways, i just feel we should have same options they do - to be able to exclude some people, but not all like they do.
Yeah blacklist is an option too i suppose, or so i thought until i realized theres more than few of those who make small group giveaways only, and theres really no way to catch them all im afraid :P And even when you do spot them, they are already in so cant do much about it before your next ga :=P
if that makes me a bad person, so be it :)
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Wow, easy. no one said you are a bad person. hell, you are GA games ;)
blacklist is capped at 100 users, if you go around BL everyone than you won't have room for everyone else.
i prefer to do several groups and whitelist ;)
but i really want an option to expand the groups options. check out my suggestion ;)
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yeah group bl could work but as i already said, i dont believe how every person in a group (even those small ones) is the same and im sure there are many that continue contributing outside their own tiny group too ! so i dont feel it would be fair towards those users though :/
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This won't be implemented, due to lot of work and server strain. And even if it would, it would be lacking.
What could be done is adding 2-3 more whitelists and blacklists (and selection which blacklists apply for given GA). This way you could BL someone only for public giveaways and not for puzzle.
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no im not complaing about too many group giveaways as you put it. Im not even complaining about people with 90% of their GAs being small group giveaways only, and for all i care, they might continue doing so for years to come. But at the same time i just want to be able to prevent those people from entering my public giveaways. Without having to resort to blacklist, whitelist because even if those might work its far from perfect solution (:
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well to be honest, and if are into whats considering fair, being able to make exclusively small group giveaways, does benefit one group over others, dont you agree?
also, if you read this topic you will see i dont even want to exclude people who make lots giveaways for their group as long as they do make a few forum, puzzle, bigger group, you name it giveaways once in a blue moon.
But there are people who make exclusively small group giveaways, and have been making them for years, and i feel i should be able to exclude those people, without having to exclude everyone else (and whitelist / group / forum giveaways all work but they all have their own shortcomings though). not everyone is active on forums, and you cant possibly add all the awesome people on this site on your wl either :P
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eh im not saying i feel they are being unfair towards me, you or some 3rd person that cant enter their ga. Heck, theres 1000's of group only gas that i cant enter, and im totally cool with it. What im not ok with is someone making all his GA small group only, but at the same time entering all and every GA that shows up elsewhere. Yeah, it might be unfair towards those people but i dont really think thats the right word to chose here :)
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well quite frankly, all people here were lvl 1 once. And i feel like those people need games i give away more than some lvl 9 that already has pretty much everything he desires. Now if i had 10 AAA games to give away, id obviously chose higher levels for those but i really dont feel like levels 7-10 need either chivalry, witcher, mass effect or some of my bundled games though and i felt how it would be of much better use to some lvl 1 with 10 games on his account.
i might be wrong, but thats how i see things so yeah even if it might not sound logical to you, thats my view. I did have some doubts about it though, but then i did a quick check on some of lvls 1 entering my giveaways and iot looks like most of them arent lvl 1 by choice - its simply people with just a few games and not so high lvl accounts either, and i really thought they might find much better use of my bundled game, than some level 8 or so :=/
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i do. how is that different to what prus said? In my giveaways, i want people who give away to others unlike those 20 man groups that are basically exchanging games between themselves.
there is really no yes or no, nor black or white. I totally want to make them unable to join my giveaways. Im not even trying to hide or mask it, whatever. I want to be able to block them from entering my public GA's, plain and simple. And right now i cant do that.
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Good idea.
With 10 another GA create options - it would be perfect!
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what 10 create ga you had on mind? like create 10 gas at a time or something along those lines? not sure im following you :D
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I totally understand how you feel but, as many others have said, it would be really difficult to make this one happen as the criteria is so hard to determine.
I get sad too when I have to send a game to a person who has 90-100% of all private or group giveaways (and I know they aren't active on the forums so it's not a "forum-private" thing) with a tiny amount of entries but what can you do... It's either go all whitelist, private and group yourself and forget about all those people out there who aren't "taking advantage" of the CV system in that way, or take your chances.
I still hold onto my faith and do public as often as I can :)
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yeah i know it wouldnt be all that easy to implement, but thats also why i said how other people are free to make their own suggestions in this topic, so maybe in the end we'll figure out something ? :P
and i also want to be able to make public gas as much as possible, but now that i have realized how being higher level doesnt mean all that much i really couldnt keep myself quiet :D
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I don't really think that anything will come of this, though I would support a variation of the idea, but I'm always happy to listen to different ideas. It's amazing to see how sometimes, while you were thinking about something, you've missed a great option :)
Yeah, higher level doesn't mean much sometimes so I just variate between lvl 3 and 4 for public giveaways, just to be sure the winner will know how the site works and he hasn't just given one game only to make lvl 1.
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heh thats how i do it too, i mostly chose lvl 2-4 for my public ga and sometimes lvl 1 too because levels 1 also need some giveaways for themselves too, and we are have been there once :)
actually now that you mentioned it, id absolutely love to be able to chose lvl when making a GA! Because sometimes i want to make a GA exclusively for levels 1 and levels 1 only, because theres tons of new people that get overlooked quite often because average level has gone up so most people make lvl 2+ giveways now.
something like forum lvl 1 only giveaway and stuff like that would be awesome really.
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Oh I think you're taking this all too seriously, it looks to me like no one here has a problem with it. It's just throwing around ideas.
I like the way the things are now and believe there's always room for improvement, but any other changes might take us further away from the original idea behind the site- giving.
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I've noticed that, even though I haven't been around much myself lately.
I was just making myself pizza and wondering what might have gotten you in such a bad mood. You're not the one to "jump at people's throats" and you did seem really irritated by this. ;)
I understand how this might annoy you but don't let yourself react harshly, people will always have new requests and ideas; some will be great and others horrible but there's nothing wrong with that at least until no one's being nasty to cg and the rest of the staff, in my opinion ;)
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Yeah, I've noticed it too, we're just getting spoiled. I know of no other place where you can openly speak against support and the creator and not get slapped over your mouth. That's another thing I've noticed lately and been thinking about.
If I got as much grief as cg does I'd be crying in my corner and just shut the whole site down xD
Thank you, enjoy your coffee <3
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That's so sad to hear :(
Exactly, the web can be such a sad place, that's why it's up to us not to allow ourselves to become like them.
Oh it's sometimes pretty hard for me too, don't get me wrong. Right now I'm PMSing hard and I took your "has such huge problems with the "create a GA" feature like many people in this thread" comment pretty much as a straightforward attack at me at first even though I never even said I wanted that option so you can guess my mental/hormonal state right now xD
God help me, I don't know how I would have reacted if you were someone I didn't know from before and I didn't calm myself by knowing you're a nice guy who wouldn't suddenly come to hate me over a silly discussion xD
We have such a nice and friendly community here, that's more than enough for me :)
Oh I like my coffee just so too :)
There are only 3 places in my entire town I go to get a cup of coffee so I'm quite a regular there. No one even asks what I'm gonna have xD
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Smart move, if you saw me on my PMS-days, early in the morning, after someone handed me more foam (especially when it's poorly made foam) than coffee in my large white coffee with two sweeteners you'd get to meet a whole new side to me, never ever seen and hopefully never will be on this forum xD
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I get what you're saying, and it sounds like a really cool idea, but that would mean adding even more possibilities to exploit the system in general. For example, you create a group, invite a bunch of people so the group looks good "on paper" and then restrict the ability to enter the gibs even further by assigning a specific level so now you have a group of 50 people and, let's say, 10 for each level. If you're giving 5 copies in the group to get the most CV the odds are only 1:2, though it would appear it's 1:10.
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yeah i guess you are right, but i really would love to see this idea develop more, because right now its pretty basic idea which can and should be improved further :)
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You're right, there's always room for improvement but as the lovely Dolores Umbridge said: progress for progress' sake must be discouraged ;D
When there's a good balance of pro's and con's for an idea I'm certain that cg will take it under advisement :)
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well the thing is, i dont really have a criteria, or at least i havent had one until a few days ago :) For my wl i try to add active forum users i find interesting, even if i totally disagree with their opinion, i also add a generous newbie too when i spot him, active users that participate in some of the bigger forum events (like that haunted house, london underground, etc) and so on.
my criteria is pretty low, hence i never had a need to use my blacklist before, until i noticed people with like 100 giveaways, and 95 of those being 15 entries group giveaways, thats it. I just feel we should have a few more options available to us, when creating a GA, thats all. Like if i want to make a lvl 1 or 2 giveaway only, i should be able to do so. Because, as i already mentioned elsewhere, i feel lvls 1/2 are being often overlooked because average lvl has raised quite a bit so i wouldnt mind being able to make giveaways fro lvl 1-2 people only.
but yeah, i realize how adding more options could mean higher sever overload so i doubt anything is going to change for time being :P
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After having to give away some games to really ungrateful people ratio and low-entries-groups wise, I decided to do what I said (but for LVL4+) as the only means to minimize the chance that I gift to them.
I'm close to get to thousand in my blacklist lol
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aw wait i thought bl is capped at 100 entries ? :P thanks for the info :)
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The first problem you have is that it seems that you differentiate between large (open) groups and small (closed) groups. One is fine for you the other not (correct me if I got that wrong). So you would have to penalize the one part of the users aslong as you wouldn't implement a cut-off for users/giveaway for group giveaways. If so then where is this cut-off?
But I think the main problem you are overlooking is the statement which is usually connected to such options. But implementing a "Group giveaways ratio < % " Cg would actually imply that a low group giveaway ratio is better. Similar can be seen for the CV level where you can only exclude lower levels but not higher leves implying that higher levels are better (we are not here discussing if this is true or not, it is only an example for options perception). You could solve it with implementing "Group giveaways ratio > %" aswell but then you are opening the door for all kind of Restriction requests. It would run out of hand. As such the actual solution is probably the best. The "charme" about blacklist and whitelist is that they rely solely on the preferences of ONE user. They are arbitary by nature and only the user is hold responsible for them. And even then there is a lot of discussions what people perceive as acceptable behaviour. There is just a lot of troubling potential to be even worth considering the idea. Also as soon as you implement new restrictions people will look for ways to circumvent them. What does people hinder to make invite only giveaways which they send only to those 20 people of the group (or you post them in the group forum). Then you would have to check the invite only giveaways aswell. How would you judge which invite only giveaways are restrictred in which way? Take my Sent-List for example (ignoring for the moment the CV restrictions): A lot of them have far less than 100 entries. So what is the reason for this? In this case most are forum and/or puzzle giveaways with an additional note that hoarders should please refrain from entering. But it could also be a small group using the invite only option for their giveaways. There is far too much arbitary judgement involved.
If you have a liking for satire you could make a group for group giveaways for people with a group giveaway ratio lower than x percent.
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well if you read my previous responses, i actually want to be able to make giveaways for lvl 1 and 2 people only. so yeah...
another thing, yes i totally want to be able to cut off people that give away most if not all of their games to their 15 man groups. Does that make me a bad person? i wouldnt know really :P Also, i used <% just as an example of how could it work, thats all. So you are right, i do differentiate between small groups that have been doing it for months or years, and have been making GAs only for their group.
and for your less than 100 entries, thats entirely different world mate. Someone making a group of 15 people, giving away 100 games each, they are basically exchaning games between themselves. And i wouldnt really care about it, and they might continue to do so forever, if i were able to block them from entering my public GA's too.
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To be fair your comment about the Level 1 and 2 only has been after my comment so it is hard to read it before. If you look hard enough you may even find the thread where I actually suggested more CV restrictions possibilites.
But my main point was that if you add one restriction you would have to add a lot more for it to be still "fair" so people will not compain why you can exluce A but not B. It would only lead to people complaining in threads about it. And if you add 1000 restrictions the result would be the same as creating your own group or whitelist where you can tailor your specifications to your liking. Also as a sitehost Cg has to make sure to not implement too much stuff which can be misinterpreted like: New restriction, you can now exlude users type A implying that type A behaviour is kind of bad.
And the example of my list was that without more information you can not say if I just make obscure puzzle people don't understand or if I am part of 15 people group which uses the invite only function instead of the group giveaways (because of reasons).
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well this is my last commet since i gotta go now so ill try to make it short (not my forte though :P)
yeah i agree how too many restrictions would be a bad thing, but at the same time i dont really feel how we have enough control over our giveaways. Group giveaways only work for people that are active forum users, and so do most of WL GA's too. I hate having to resort to blacklist too which is, imo, far worse than being able to make one or two new option to current GA creating system, but yeah :/
and for your puzzle ga's those are relatively easy to spot too. if someone has tons of private gas but like 4 comments only, you know something is fishy :P and for small group giveaways, i already said i think those are awesome, as long as its not exclusively that one small GA group giveaways someone has been creating for months (:
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Well, if this option would be implemented, we need another option
because, you know, this kind of giveaways not very different from group giveaways, and this definitely not public, so someone may want to restrict people based on how much of this giveaways they made.
Oh, and if this would be implemented too, we need to restrict this also...
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I think slots should be distributed depending on the type of giveaways you make, in this case if you only make whitelist/high level/group giveaways you won't get new slots.
For example: when you first start making giveaways, you'll have to make one giveaway from each type, once you completed the first pack of giveaways, you'll then get new slots (e.g: 1 whitelist, 3 private, 4 public, etc) so users won't be able to make giveaways from the same type continuously.
Surely, this idea needs some polishing, but I think it somewhat has the ability to solve this problem.
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People will only have to make one for each at first and then numbers of slots would be allocated differently just like the example above according to the most commonly used giveaway types on this site, it's like an achievement system.
I think with the right amount of slots allocated for each type, it would be more reasonable and not considered forcing people.
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So, after a few recent giveaways of mine i noticed something that made me not so happy turtle. And so i had to blacklist quite a few people, even if i dont really like doing so but honestly i felt like i had no other choice though.
Some of people that are lvl 3,4,5-6 etc have had most if not all of their giveaways created as a group giveawys, and its almost always a giveaway that has like 5-20 entrants at most. Now dont get me wrong, i believe its totally fine they want to share a game with their steam or rl buddies, but i just dont want them entering my public giveaways.
so would it be possible to add another option to giveaway creation page, right now it is
6.Who Can Enter
Everyone
Invite Only
Whitelist / Steam Groups
so maybe we could add something like
Group giveaways ratio < % // > %
update another idea that was born from this thread
Ability to make giveaways for lower levels too ! Being able to make a giveaway for lets say, just lvls 2 would be awesome !
With average level going up most people dont bother making lvl 1-2 giveaways anymore, and thats a bit sad because we all were lvl 1 once (:
once again i dont really care what you do with your giveways and its entirely personal how you want to give away your games, as its your game afterall. But at the same time i feel i should also be able to to chose who enters my GAs though, thats all ^(O;o)^
yeah i know about whitelist giveaways but i only started building my wl a few weeks ago and its mostly made of active forums users, but im sure its missing so many great people but i guess if nothing changes, wl giveaways are the way to go :/
feel free to offer your own ideas or suggestions, even if you dont agree with me of course :=)
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