Did the thanks script messages should be handled as SPAM ?
5 weeks later and exactly NONE of the staff reacted on this discussion.
I partly replied on messages of them with the link to this discussion, so it can't be the reason that it wasn't be seen.
And to be honest, that confuse me massively.
Mean that:
- we don't care/not our problem?
- it don't give a problem?
- we can't do something?
- we don't have a solution?
- we discuss in the staff area about it but it will take time?
Or 7232 other possibilities.
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Genuinely curious: What were your expectations of the (unpaid volunteer) staff in this case?
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https://www.steamgifts.com/discussion/nrsW7/need-feedback-from-the-moderators-about-spam-comments/search?page=2#Hb8YuJY
"mean that ......."
Need feedback from the MODERATORS about SPAM comments
It give in the rules a punishment option for SPAM and i want that the moderation team discuss if they want to use that punishment possibility for the thanks script accounts.
Did the thanks script messages should be handled as SPAM ? Yes/No
The result of the voting are the big majority see them as spam and would like when they would be handled as that.
I don't think it is unclear what we (the voters and i) expected after we made us the work to think and vote about it and in my case write this thread (+ sending one mod a link to this thread) on top.
A reaction from the staff that know the rules, interpret the rules and can do something against things directly or indirectly with forwarding it to cg.
If they get paid or not have absolute nothing to do with that the mods ignore this thread and the vote of 300 users, actively.
And it is dumb because the voters that aren't be happy about the situation are all users that make giveaways (someone that don't make GA's get no spam thanks messages from bots/script users, easy as that). And making giveaways is the core of this site.
All that reduce that users make GA's harm the site and CG's income in the end.
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It seems that there are various things that are horrible under the water surface recently.
And SG is the 10th anniversary .
Most is a heartwarming gift with conscience.
However, there will be people who will get a strange question when you look at the provider.
It is mainly biased to 50p point prize creators.
Comments are 0 and no entry is 0 and past gift creation is 0.
Questioning the provider is obviously not done, as it may be insulting.
However, the point will come back when the prize is canceled.
This is a trivial issue in the corner of the iceberg, and it may be in the middle of the corresponding problem in preparation for a more horrible issue.
Due to unavoidable circumstances, all things will be delayed.
It's frustrating for me and for you.⏰⏳⌚
Looks like it's time to digest the Steam game at hand.
Fix
Add Memo
📝
Browser Private Window open.(InPrivate?)
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Thanks for responding. :)
Figure I owe it to you to at leat respond to the points you've made.
- Could they have reacted to this? Sure. Personally if I'd been part of the staff I would have responded already, even if just to let you know that you are heard and that this topic is being looked at and discussed. I think that would have already been a good thing, regardless of what decision the staff makes.
- Does not getting paid have nothing to do with it? Sorry, but that doesn't make sense. If you're donating your unpaid time to help this site, you're not going to spend 24/7 on it. I can imagine there's staff that's busy working on the 3050 open tickets. If they were to respond to every idea about improvements on the site I can imagine time gets too short. Probably also less fun for the staff to get into debates constantly. More staff response on ideas = more threads with ideas = less time to fix open tickets & more staff burnout.
- So far no-one knows what they're doing about this. Perhaps it is being discussed, maybe being worked on. or maybe they disagree and decided against your proposal. What if they disagree, and post saying that. Would that be acceptable? I doubt it. In any case:Without knowing there is not much point in speculating.
- You mention 300 voters, which is a lot sure. But to be realistic: only 200 votes agreed that it should be considered spam. 100 people disagreed (and therefore don't want things to change.) A majority, definitely. A big majority on the site...not really I guess.
Also: Those 200 votes in favor unfortunately are less than the amount of votes on some other threads, and definitely smaller than the amount of users waiting on tickets. Should all of those wait longer to give your thread priority? I don't know but just asking the question. Personally I get annoyed by spam responses too so I'd like to see this changed too. Doesn't mean it gets the highest priority sadly enough. I understand your frustration.
Now before I get a load of flame responses:
I agree with you that the replies from automated scripts are annoying since the message system is very basic. So I agree with your point and there is a good reason to improve the current situation.
I just don't agree with the negativity towards the staff or the demanding tone used. Because let's face it: one can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. That being said: I didn't want to judge you before hearing you out so that's why I asked what your expectations are.
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Could they have reacted to this? Sure. Personally if I'd been part of the staff I would have responded already, even if just to let you know that you are heard and that this topic is being looked at and discussed. I think that would have already been a good thing, regardless of what decision the staff makes.
Exactly that. Each reaction is better as none in such a case.
If you're donating your unpaid time to help this site, you're not going to spend 24/7 on it.
That's correct but after 7 weeks should it be possible that a staff member react. For that none need to be 24/7 around^^.
Special because one Ultra Mod got the link to this thread from me in a comment and she were multiple times online (and wrote in other threads).
I have no problem with it that Junior Mods will not react because it is a special case that need for sure more experience as a easy thing.
So far no-one knows what they're doing about this. Perhaps it is being discussed, maybe being worked on. or maybe they disagree and decided against your proposal. What if they disagree, and post saying that. Would that be acceptable? I doubt it. In any case:Without knowing there is not much point in speculating.
Exactly none know anything after 7 weeks and that is the part that frustrate.
If they disagree that it give a problem, i would clearly see it as wrong decission. As, at least, 200 other users too.
Would it be acceptable ? What else should we do then as to accept it ? We can't make our own rules and we don't have the power to change something by our own.
You mention 300 voters, which is a lot sure. But to be realistic: only 200 votes agreed that it should be considered spam. 100 people disagreed (and therefore don't want things to change.) A majority, definitely. A big majority on the site...not really I guess.
How many vote for it or against it is primarily unimportant. For me count more that 300 people seen it as important enough to vote and spend time. Partly with writing in this thread.
Of course are 300 users not the majority on this site and not the majority of the active users in the sg discussions but 67% see it as spam and 33% not is a clear direction.
If they need & want clearer numbers, i would be happy about a official voting ;o)
and definitely smaller than the amount of users waiting on tickets. Should all of those wait longer to give your thread priority?
If the staff can be active and answer in other threads i don't see why this one should wait till all tickets are handled.
Besides the fact that it will never happen that each ticket are solved.
Trust me i know it because from me are for sure 300 tickets+ still open
And did i see this topic as more important as different (not all) tickets ? Yes
Because it is something that is for different users annoying and reduce the made Giveaways.
Not because the people don't want to give something, only because they are annoyed from the spam messages that they recieve in each, public or public group, GA.
And the, obvious, reaction is to make no GA's or make the GA's not more public and instead for a smaller ammount of people.
On the long run nothing that helps the site (and we are since a longer time on that run... so not more only at the begin of it -and i would assume it is to see in the site stats-).
I just don't agree with the negativity towards the staff or the demanding tone used. (Your sentence)
It give in the rules a punishment option for SPAM and i want that the moderation team discuss if they want to use that punishment possibility for the thanks script accounts. (My sentence)
I must say, maybe this sentence sounded demanding but there is "if they want to use.." and of course i wrote that thread when i were frustrated.
So ok, that critic point is partly something that i must accept.
But the negativity towards the staff is something that i see different as you.
I like a part of the staff and have them on my steam friend list, on my sg WL and in my group. Others from the staff did i like, without to have them in my group and only a very small part aren't liked from me. I appreciate all the work they do.
It tickle in my fingers to write the ones that i have in my group and question why they don't write here but i don't do that to not build a pressure up, annoy them in their free time, don't bring them in a problematic situation and so on.
On the other hand is the low ammount of staff members since a very long time a problem, at least 2 years, and my sympathy/understanding for this situation is after such a long time near zero because different ones offered help and never got a response and nothing changed on the situation. Because of that did it look as the highest ones don't want to change something at it (I don't say this is the case but that feeling have a good bunch of people and not only i). And of course is that, very, frustrating.
If they can't handle the staff stuff, take the offered help or search active for other help. Or stop with the staff complete and say "from today on anarchy".
Both would be better as years of dying "slowly".
I hope you have enough time to read all because the text got bigger as i wanted at the begin :-D
Happy evening.
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Thanks, that was a good read. Made me understand your points and frustration better.
To save you time I'll keep my response as smal as I can, since we do agree on a number of points, and thanks for accepting the critic point about the tone.
I do wish that they would make the amount of staff bigger, I remember quite a few people who wouldn't have minded joining. (Hell, I've considered it, despite being an unknown outside on this site). I truly believe that a lot of frustration on the site could already be changed if they staff was bigger and moderation of user feedback/wishes was a bit more active.
Even if they can't make all the changes people want, it would already be better to know their position. Even if they discard an idea, the transparency would be nice. Or to know what their priority list of topics is. (Then we'd know where we stand with the issue of spam in this much too basic messaging system.)
I wish you a happy evening as well.
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Alright, I will give you an explanation, at least for why I didn't react to this thread. Can't speak for the others, of course.
First, I just don't have a strong opinion on this topic. I never felt annoyed by a few generic looking thanks messages. So I don't feel that scripted thanks messages are a big problem. Scripts that let people enter giveaways automatically are much more of a problem, and in many cases those two are probably related. But since you are very much focussing on specifically scripted thanks messages, I will do the same here.
Second reason is that lately I feel my time is better spent on tickets. We have lots of them lately, thanks to both the steam sale and our anniversary. And if I have a few minutes to either do tickets or react to threads like this one, I feel people will be more satisfied with me processing their reroll requests and such.
Third reason is, that when I first saw this thread, I looked at your giveaways. And to be honest, most of those have very few comments. I looked through your giveaways of the last few months, and most of them have 0-3 comments. Correct me if I'm somehow wrong, but it really doesn't seem like you are suffering from lots of "thanks spam" at all. So I really don't see where your giveaways get cluttered so much, that you have trouble finding the "real" comments.
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i dont see what the problem is. people want to be polite so badly that they set up a script so that they dont forget.
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There is something called "gratitude", maybe no one taught you about it.
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If people who use scripts/bots to spam just to give a "thanks"!
That says a lot about her personality!
;)
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I'm fascinated by people in this thread not understanding the difference between a person saying thanks and some annoying c-word using a script to spam 10 000 generic "thank you" comments. The person who uses the script most likely doesn't read a single one of the comments he/she has spammed, nor it is anything that shows gratitude...... Do you feel personally approached when you get spam flyer in your mail from politician saying "thanks for whatever the fuck" after election when you know several thousand people got the same? And in the end they get burned or thrown away anyway.
I agree that these automatic thank you massages are useless and annoying. Personally would love to see a thank you button as others already have mentioned. I mean I personally like to thank when I win, but if there would be a button I would love to press it when some wishlisted game comes up in giveaways even if I don't win.
As far as people using scripts - I really don't have any ideas how that would be fixable... but just wanted to give my two cents about all this as I have noticed bunch of these profiles that have the same comment count as entered giveaways.... and that is not gratitude, that is full blown spamming.
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Thanks :o)
And yes it is a bit frustrating/sad, that people comment without reading the full text of this thread.
Of course with stuff that don't fit to the (full) text.
Maybe i demand too much, from a bunch, with a text that is longer as 200 characters.
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how you know if someone using script to say thanks of someone just copy this sentence and paste it on every ga?
i think it doesnt matter, if u care-dont make any giveaway
but i dont understand why u mad at someone saying thanks-.-
@EDIT
Saying about 'times' i could easily enter 2 giveaways at once via ESGST and also have 2 pages opened, already copied messages on bothj text windows, press 'Submit comment' quick tab to next window without moving mouse and press 'Submit comment' second time
@EDIT2
Also blacklisting me cause i put my comments in opposite is just childish :) but i dont care
But youj know we can actually see whos that person who said thanks in your giveaway via your image and its called 'calling out'?
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To your EDIT2, you were blacklisted before you commented in this thread.
I don't blacklist for different opinions as mine.
And to the calling out ... you don't see a name or a avatar in the picture that i share in this thread, so it isn't a calling out.
If you believe something else and have too much time, report me. Good luck that the report will be seen as calling out and handled in under 1 year.
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no calling out you said...but we can go to your giveaways and check who is this easily via comment page and screen compare :)
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because we can't block messages, if we blacklist someone or not have no impact and we, anyway, don't have enough blacklist space for that.
1) You can. Blacklisted user can't view your giveaway, so they are unable to write message too.
2) You just said it's 30~50 accounts, how come you don't have enough blacklist space for those?
2 different GA's, opened and entered in the same second = impossible
That's quite possible even without scrips (first I open multiple tabs with interesting giveaways, then enter them - it's pretty fast). It's even more possible with allowed scripts like esgst. Of course, spamming messages this fast it almost impossible without scripting.
Despite of the above - I won't mind if such rule will be made. Even when I used to say thanks for every GA I enter (it was common during sg1 times) I tried to only say thanks once if user had more one giveaway simultaneously that I enter.
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The important is the impossible with entering AND writing in the same second.
That i seen it was a pure coincidence, i don't use esgst that show the timestamps.
In the past only a few done that so it doesn't had a big impact on the GA's but right now i would be able to make a list of 30 - 50 accounts that do it.
I don't said there are only 30-50 accounts, i said that i could make a list of that ones because i seen them all around.
There are for sure more because i don't see a lot of GA's (i own a lot of games, i hide a lot of GA's, a lot are on my BL and i be on a good bunch of BL too). Normaly under 150 GA's all in all.
I know till now over 10 users that don't make public GA's anymore because of the scripted thanks spam and that hit each user on sg.
Did all of them should be forced to blacklist 50 to take a sure number users that they are able to make public GA's without to get, as "thanks", spam back ?
I don't think thats the way to make sg attractive for gifters.
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Hey, I already agreed that message at the same time as enter is probably scripted. You don't need to persuade me.
And I already agreed that such a rule won't hurt to have.
Nevertheless, I can't agree that blacklisting have no impact on it or that 50 accounts is too much. Blacklist is up to 1000, and if you can't fit 50 accounts there - you probably has some major issues with this site and should solve it somehow else, like private group, or something. Not liking 1000 site users (ok, let's say 951) and still making public giveaways sounds just wrong.
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I must say, yes, you are correct i could BL this users to end the spam, from that accounts, in the GA's but they would be still able to post in threads and over time other ones would appear that make the same problem.
The ammount of spam users raised much in the last months, so i assume that "trend" will go in the same direction for the future.
You concentrate with the 50 people on me but i am not the only user on sg and, look at the poll, not the only one that would need to BL this spam users (if they are 50, 75, 100 or 150 is secondary).
I have a own group, one of the reasons are the users in the public GA's and the 1k limitation ;o)
But when i make advertising GA for a dev/publisher, i can't avoid public/invite only GA's and avoiding public GA's in general don't mean you want to avoid them, sometimes it mean that you are forced to the avoiding because of spam comments, too much winners that have infractions that are listed on sgtools, 8 rerolls for DLC's because people don't check if they own the DLC and so on (it give a lot of reasons -and i think i had my fair share of them :-D -).
BL users isn't the same as not liking that users.
In the most cases you don't know them, so disliking is in a part of the cases maybe a bit strong word ;o)
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I'm jumping in your topic only to react about that :
The important is the impossible with entering AND writing in the same second.
That's an assumption, and it's probably wrong : any average player with keyboards and mouse is certainly able to click twice on the screen within the same second, and most shall reach 10-15 clicks per second at max speed. You're thinking about it the wrong way : yes it would be hard to first enter, then write a short "thank you" post, then send it. But it's easy to do in the opposite order : first write the message, then do the 1st click to send it, and last do the 2nd click to enter giveaway. The elapsed time between the 2 clicks shall be very short, much less than a second, and then it's only a matter of network speed and latency (which would probably do it on fiber, on correct 4G or xDSL line).
Another way to achieve this result is when experiencing connectivity issues, like a bad WiFi link between the computer and the router, making some network packets to first lag, and then be sent at once when connectivity is back (in this scenario, it's not the desired result).
And voilà ! no need to cry wolf about bots : those are probably good players, that's all 😉
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Of course, all the users that write their thanks spam in multiple GA's at the same time, use ESGST and you have a timestamp with the exact second listed, are users that write first all this messages and then push them all out in the same second(s), each time, each day. Of course they have all good internet, none of them have a bad one, with often countries in their steam accounts listed that aren't top notch with internet speed.
Sorry when i don't believe in that :-D
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Yes I use ESGST, I see the timestamp, but I don't check that (and won't) because comments and entries are on 2 different pages. And anyway the entry timestamp is no longer shown after the GA ended (or I'm missing it ?!?)
(...) all the users that write their thanks spam in multiple GA's at the same time, (...), are users that write first all this messages and then push them all out in the same second(s), each time, each day.
To me it looks feasible, as soon as it becomes a habit ?
What's not feasible for me would be to have entries and comments in the same second but on different GAs, because it would be weird to first write all the comments in different tabs, then send them all at once : I think someone would write then send then enter in a row, then go to the next GA.
Well, looking at that from a bot script author point of view, here are my personal findings : if one is skilled enough to write an auto-joiner script, it's not really difficult to add a random delay between scripted actions (like commenting, entering a GA, etc.), and because of the rate limitations added sometime ago, all script authors had to implement something more difficult to do. Also, it's not difficult to implement a list of slightly varying "thanks" messages to post randomly (and exhausting the list before posting again the same message)... so... you probably won't catch a real well-written bot this way, only a poorly written one which would be easy to patch to avoid being catched a second time !
only my 2 cents 😏
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Maybe only the ones that use "bad written" ones would be catched but that would be better as nothing and would lower the spam significantly... ;o)
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I was never bothered by this myself. Maybe I don't create enough giveaways to be able to separate an actual "Thanks" - from a scripted one. But the Blacklist is there for a reason I guess; it can already be handled on your end, without causing any more drama. If actual thankful users end up getting filtered.. Imagine that blowback.
As for the non response of the Moderators, I have a slight suspicion they have much more pressing matters than this. Even though the complete lack of response is understandably frustrating from your perspective. I don't think they are interested in getting inevitably flamed.. Again.
And if a botter is dumb enough to make himself "visible" by spamming, which is profoundly stupid, then POW! On the Black/Report-List they go right? Instead of filtered out into the void again, where they do the most harm.
Gotta catch'em all 👍
Edit: Now don't take this as a personal attack.. but.. Maybe, just maybe.. If you flood the site with less 1/2p Hentai/Flips, you will also receive less spam 😂 Now that's a Win/Win for everbody.
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I chose No.
I am a SG user who goes to giveaways for games in my wishlist, opens all the WL giveawaysl in new tabs, then enters them and says a generic "thank you" message, then closes the tab. For me, it's become the most efficient way to enter GA's.
So yes, I'm entering my wishlist giveaways one after the oother, and posting a thank-you with copy-paste.
I wasn't aware this made me look like a "bot". :(
Thing is, I DO appreciate the opportunity and I DO want to thank those who create giveaways.
I don't like the idea that I need to stop thanking those who gift games to the community; simply because someone thinks I "thanked too fast". :(
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You made 2000 comments.
The accounts that i mean made 10k, 20k, 40k etc. and i am sure you enter much lower ammounts of GA's as they do.
Besides that, i don't know your Avatar from GA's.
If you want to check which accounts i mean, open a public GA, then a second and a third. And look which users you see there in all of them -normaly in the same position-.
Repeat that on other GA's or a other day and you see, very often/nearly always, the same users (with the exact same message).
It give more details to detect them but i will not share that infos because someone work on something to catch them :o)
We focus on the thanks script + autojoiner users and in the last weeks a bunch of them got perma suspended.
But each of the a bit more as 3000 wins that they got on this site is one too much and a lot of them weren't hard to spot or difficult to catch.
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Thank you for explaining. I understand better what you are saying now, and I can see where it's a problem.
It seems like the actual problem isn't the quickie "thanks" being posted - it's more that users are "auto-joining" a really large number of giveaways (more then they can reasonably be expected to play?). and I honestly don't know enough about SG to know how to stop/limit that.
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This needs a bump
We've had a big banwave some two months ago,. either banning bot abuse is no longer on the radar, or staff is currently still gathering information.
Either way a response might be lovely,. so we know what to expect.
Heck, even a name and shame lists of those accounts with over 40k comments might be nice - maybe they'll change their ways if they're suddenly on a few hundred blacklists?
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That "shame list" will not happen because it is, sadly, seen as calling out.
If that are obvious ones or not make no difference.
If that accounts are perma suspended or not make no difference.
So we can't brag with our hunting trophies :-D
In the last ~6-8 weeks my group catched multiaccounter and autojoiner accounts that won, together, over 3k games.
Blacklists don't influence the autojoiner users because they don't see/notice them.
And yes, more responses from the mods would be great.
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After 32 months we still wait on a response from the, higher, Staff team.......
I would see a "we suspend the autojoiner accounts that spam with the activated thanks script" too as answer. But i don't see that this happened in the last 32 months.
I want to bring that back to the not attention of the staff. Yes, i will not be silent....!
Ps.: In the meantime (since years) it is clear that the SPAM comments are on top, in nearly all cases, made with the thanks script that can be enabled in the autojoiner program.
Pps.: I stopped to hunt the autojoiners and multiaccounters, in nearly all cases, since a bit over 1 year. Too because of the lack of interest from cg to do something against all the cheaters, which means, sadly, 50% of the active accounts, on this site. And yes, i am frustrated.
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Too because of the lack of interest from cg to do something against all the cheaters, which means, sadly, 50% of the active members, on this site.
It reminds me of MP games that are dying because of poor control over cheaters. Wonder how bad must be the situation for CG do anything against the bots.
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It's pretty simple to tell a lot of them because they are online 24/7 and no human can do that but as you say most people don't seem to care or even support it. None of them contribute anything either, some of them may have...7-10 years ago.
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Maybe pitch alternatives to see if anything sticks? For example what if GA creators could tick a box to not allow comments or 'aprove comments before showing' or maybe a 'dont notify on GA comments'
One reason i theorize why staff ignores this kind of debate/suggestion is the underlying problem- bots/scripts- wich from what i understood is something beyond their capabilities. I kinda recall staff talking about the hardships of fighting those, and in retrospect the biggest and richest companies nowadays, in tech, with their huge staffs, algorithms and whatnot struggle to fight these things... its frustrating, irritating and sad but the bottom line is i dont think SG can prevent scripts or bots proper. They may do something at some big cost in manpower, scripts or changes in how the site work to stop current methods, but then 1-2 months max they would all be back with updated methods
So, my guess, the staff stopped caring repeating how they cant do much about those things. Making some sort of detector for repeated behaviour probably is beyond current SG capabilities or cost heavy...
The only thing left that i have not seen being made as a point that could be easy to implement would be to be less anoyed by then- like preventing the influx of spam on the GA creator end, like a choice to not receive notifications or disable comments by choice. Any other ideas, alternative ones, that woundt mean winning against scripts/bots?
Now that im thinking about it 2 more ocurred to me
A) A user workaround- writting in GAs descriptions that anyone posting thanks will be blacklisted or 'if i notice autojoiners will be blacklisted' or something like that. Sure its not anything done by the site, but this sort of thing can be used as a filter... if you say any thanks will be blacklisted i guess the autojoiners will show their faces very quickly and easily. Still a chore to blacklist each one by hand but at least thats something
B) Report/flag button perhaps?
Im wondering if some sort of community/crowd sourced solution could be done. Some sort of 'flag this account as possible bot/autojoiner' or similar. Then in the site rules explaining both that said button shouldnt be abused and that flagging accounts wont mean they will be banned; Instead the staff will wait and in their time check accounts with multiple reports.
Thats one way that would be doable for the staff to humanly do something and for the community to help fight then.
I think B would be the best scenario BUT i wouldnt keep my hopes up- sadly the major offenders will likely find ways to make other accounts and keep at it. B is a bit what valve developed to fight cheaters but works very slowly for then for the same reasons, and my guess they have a bigger staff and better tech stack to handle those things. But could work, maybe at least cut then in half, after all steamgifts has way less users then steam itself... i imagine worst offenders will keep coming back but something like this could cut away a bunch that would get tired of all the trouble of making new alt accounts, bots whatever
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https://www.steamgifts.com/go/comment/Qv2Xw1O
cg have all that he need for the checks.... he used it nearly 6 years ago. But only for a few weeks. And deactivated it after that.
And to suspend the autojoiners that spam the thanks messages would a way to tackle them without a lot of checks.
So very doable for the mods.
That's can't do much on the "checking for autojoining" front because cg don't give them the needed tools and/or power (site access + rights).
A user workaround- writting in GAs descriptions that anyone posting thanks will be blacklisted or 'if i notice autojoiners will be blacklisted' or something like that.
Only 10 - 15% of the ones that enter a GA read the description. Many tests of many users, me included, shown this.
So descriptions make not really a difference in the positive way. The cheaters aren't in the 10 - 15% that care for descriptions.
And i know a good bunch of users that have their 1k BL full, me included. So none that i could add anymore. And i have only level 5 or higher accounts on my BL.
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I've been doing giveaways in groups, but I noticed this situation in some giveaways I participated in. The same participants with the same comments, almost at the same time. Seeing your post, I realized that this isn't new (I'm new to the community, so I didn't have this awareness). Have there been waves of bans in the community at any point?
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Have there been waves of bans in the community at any point?
https://www.steamgifts.com/discussion/h9RxE/autojoin-suspensions ,nearly 6 years ago, was the only time when cg done something against the autojoiners.
And they got 2 times before this, a warning message on their screen, that they needed to click away, when they got caught using a autojoiner.
So the 1,6k caught ones were the ones that still not deactivated the autojoiners after the second warning.
And since that time the autojoiner population grow and grow and grow, each day.
I assume nowadays he would catch 4-5k for using autojoiners.
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I might be wrong, but I assume he means people being banned from making repetitive comments which isn't the best thing to track who is using an autojoiner as there are so many ways to say thanks for something, and if you want to say thanks but are kinda tired of making every comment different you'll probably copy paste it.. If they banned them for that, they probably got a bunch of legit users in there, but again, I doubt that's what they would've used to decide on those users.
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and if you want to say thanks but are kinda tired of making every comment different you'll probably copy paste it..
As example a human beeing will not write all the time thanks in high priced fake games, asset flips etc., will not be "always around", will not be appear in many public low level GAs in the same order of written message, same as the other ones that write there (which means they act nearly all in the same or very similar speed) etc. etc. etc..
It IS visible which ones are humans and which ones a programs. At least when you look longer on some users.
And server sided it is much easier to see such stuff as for a member that use only his eyes to spot things.
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Doubt there have been bans due to this because you couldn't tell who is using a comment script or not or you'd be at random banning legit users under false accusations based on assumptions. When I first joined the site I used to copy paste a thanks message to all the giveaways I entered. I stopped because it bothered a few users and I couldn't tell who it bothered, who wanted those comments and who didn't care. Of course I avoided the ones where people specified not to comment.
You can do it right now if you wanted. Ctrl + C to copy your message. Open 50 giveaways, enter giveaway-> click on message box -> ctrl-v - > enter - > ctrl +w to close tab -> next. You can even optimize it to be 3x faster if you want by entering the giveaways, pasting the messages and then pressing enter as you close the pages if you got a bit of adhd and things have to be done in a certain order.
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because you couldn't tell who is using a comment script or not
You can.
Relative easily.
And, in the extremest worst case, a few (1 ? 3 ? 5 ?) false positives would be better as doing nothing and not catching 4k cheaters.
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So banning innocent users is better than having some cheaters around? We should turn some service completely off to some people because they might or might not be cheating? Imagine if you were being denied entry in a grocery store because you might or might not be a thief or look like one and to stop all thieves they just stop everyone looking remotely like one and how ridiculous that sounds.
This 4k cheaters of yours is based on your numbers which again could be completely incorrect.
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So banning innocent users is better than having some cheaters around?
So MAYBE banning suspending VERY FEW innocent users is better than having some THOUSANDS of cheaters around?
Yes
This 4k cheaters of yours is based on your numbers which again could be completely incorrect.
Yes, maybe i am wrong and there are """"ONLY""" 3k cheaters. That would make that the problem directly disappear :-D
Or maybe there are 6k .... (i wouldn't be very surprised)
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I think rule number 1 of bans is to not ban users if you aren't sure they are cheating. It's a different thing if CG is upset at someone, it's his site so he can do whatever, but to ban users who did nothing wrong with the pretense that in the long term this is helpful is extremely toxic.
Your numbers are only assumptions though, that's the problem. You suspect there being 3x more bots today than before, yet I believe you said it's not as bad as before the ban waves, and there being very few users who copy paste like 1,3,5 users out of 3000 or 4000 or even 6000 butters.
I disagree with those numbers but the math stands to say it wouldn't be very significant even then. Suppose there were 6000 botters, sg has 1178863 users atm, so around 1.2 million registered users. So to that degree, 6000 botters looks like nothing in the long scheme of things. There'd be 196 real users for every cheater. If they entered for giveaways as per their group(1/196) they'd have around a 0.5% chance of winning. If all users entered for a giveaway, the bots chance of winning would be 0.005%. What are the botters going to do with this? In december we had 37604 giveaways, so with a 0.5% chance of winning, 6000 botters could get maybe, 35-37 games, highly unlikely those would ever be AAA games or anything. My math would be a lot better of course if we knew the exact amount of active December users, and also the exact amount of bots we have and were active in December however we can't tell that so regardless, if they win around 40 games out of 37604 games, that still leaves 37564 for the real users. Not saying it doesn't impact it at all, but it's extremely insignificant.
If this was really worth it to the mega botters, then I don't see how it's profitable to do it. What do they do with these accounts, sell them? Probably not because who buys a steam account to play a 30 cent furry game rather than just buy the game for 30 cents, so it must just be users collecting games. If this was for trading cards, again the number would only be reduced since now they enter much less giveaways. For them to make 6000 bots they still had to have added $100 worth of value to those accounts first to even join the site, and some of those 37604 giveaways are higher levels, or blocked by groups/invite/whitelist only, etc. so they'd only get there by gifting, solving puzzles, talking to group owners and getting accepted, getting on people's good side, etc.
Sorry but I just don't see their impact as being so massive, although that doesn't matter mods shouldn't look out for them as it helps keep the community clean, but I don't think it requires a full on crusade including banning users who did nothing wrong, all on the false assumption that copy pasted comments makes someone a bot 100%.
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You suspect there being 3x more bots today than before
They were 1,6k caught AFTER they got 2 warnings, that they needed to click each time away, which means the autojoiner user must be around and seen the messages, before he were able to enter again into GAs.
Without the warnings there would be much more caught as """only""" 1,6k.
And because of this the difference wouldn't be so big as 3x.
But that are, in the end, nearly unimportant details.
sg has 1178863 users atm, so around 1.2 million registered users. So to that degree, 6000 botters looks like nothing in the long scheme of things.
Sorry but your calculations are wrong because you forget a VERY IMPORTANT DETAIL.
How much registered accounts are on this site are complete uninteresting. The only interesting stat are how many ACTIVE accounts exist. So only the ones that vsited the site in the last 12 months, as example.
That are MUCH LESSER as 1,1 mil.. I assume below 20k.
And because of this, all your calculations would then look much more dramatic as when you calculate them with 1,1 mil. accounts.
6000 botters could get maybe, 35-37 games, highly unlikely those would ever be AAA games or anything.
That the numbers aren't correct is clear from the explanation above but to give you some numbers.
The last suspension ""wave"" that was made because of 300 - 400 accounts that some people from my group, me included, reported for autojoining, shown us that alone this autojoiners won over 3k games. Sorry i can't remember if i calculated the 3k won games with all that we reported or only with the 150 (or whatever -i am too lazy to search for the infos in all my files-) that got suspended in the end.
In the end, minor details. The stats would be much worse as your 6k botters win 35 - 37 games.
they still had to have added $100 worth of value to those accounts first to even join the site
Theoretical correct but in the reality wrong because this is reachable with a few cents (and done from such accounts).
I don't give more details to it.
And you forget/not be aware of a important detail.
The ones that don't activate a thanks script are, very often, in groups with much better winning chances as in the public GAs. And they are, mostly, higher as level 2 users.
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"They were 1,6k caught AFTER they got 2 warnings, that they needed to click each time away, which means the autojoiner user must be around and seen the messages, before he were able to enter again into GAs.
Without the warnings there would be much more caught as """only""" 1,6k.
And because of this the difference wouldn't be so big as 3x.
But that are, in the end, nearly unimportant details."Sure, it's possible some clicked ok without reading, after all they were using an autojoiner for a reason, to save time, hence why they didn't want to be manually spending many minutes looking at it. At the same time, I would assume if they(staff) saw that the wave only caught a small small number of users and most were still using it despite them knowing which got the warnings and turned it off and right back on after they were told to stop, that they'd do another ban wave right up, but my estimations are that they think they got enough that time.
"Sorry but your calculations are wrong because you forget a VERY IMPORTANT DETAIL.
How much registered accounts are on this site are complete uninteresting. The only interesting stat are how many ACTIVE accounts
exist. So only the ones that vsited the site in the last 12 months, as example.
That are MUCH LESSER as 1,1 mil.. I assume below 20k.
And because of this, all your calculations would then look much more dramatic as when you calculate them with 1,1 mil. accounts."Hence why I specified it would be better if we had active users for december and active bots for december, numbers which we don't have.so I have to rely on site data. Don't get me wrong, but you suggest there's 6k autojoiners and a population on sg of less than 20k users, so you're estimating that 1 in 3 people here uses an autojoiner. Basically a giveaway that has 100 users join will also have 33 autojoiners to you. Doesn't this sound a bit like paranoia to you? If this was correct you should be able to open randomly 1000 giveaways that ended right now and find 333 botters. Do you start to realize how your data makes no sense in terms of numbers?
We've had just a bit over 20k users register in 2023 alone. That can't be the whole population since those are just new users and at the same time you can't expect many other users to join since there's already 1 mil accounts so many users already have one, and many users are still using the site despite that although they might not be online every month . I'd estimate the active site pop to be around 60k-90k. Not everyone uses the forums I mean I haven't for years after I joined till I finally commented in the forums. This is why I said you'd have to provide data on how many months the average autojoiner has been active, how many months is the average user active, and the population # for both and then you'd get accurate data.
"That the numbers aren't correct is clear from the explanation above but to give you some numbers.
The last suspension ""wave"" that was made because of 300 - 400 accounts that some people from my group, me included, reported for autojoining, shown us that alone this autojoiners won over 3k games. Sorry i can't remember if i calculated the 3k won games with all that we reported or only with the 150 (or whatever -i am too lazy to search for the infos in all my files-) that got suspended in the end."Are these 3k games while they were using they were using the autojoiners or could these games have been won while they weren't using the autojoiners? Or is there no proof for either way? Also, what was the average account age of each user? Suppose these were all accounts that were less than 1 year old, they would have won 10 games or less each, which again 3000 games is still a lot but if you spread this across a 10 year old sg, that'd be 1 or less than 1 game per year for 300-400 accounts. I mean it's something, but again we still can't say if these users signed up and instantly knew to use an autojoiner, so it's likely some of their 10 wins across whatever age their acc was were legit wins, but it still shows how insignificant that data is. If they won 3k games across 1 year it would be less than 10% but lets just say 10%, that's a lot granted assuming these accounts were all 1 year old. If they were 2 year's old, that drops to 5%, 3 years old, drops to 2.5%, 4 years old, drops to 1.25%, keeps going(and the rates would be lower actually since we've had less giveaways in the recent years).
Also with a report of 1.5k users(right?), only 400 got banned, so 1.1k were proven innocent. Which seems like a few more to me than "1,3,5". Or are you saying out of the 300-400 users you reported, only 150 got banned for it? Case in which my point still stands about there being a 50%+ percent rate of users you targeted wrongly and you were willing to have banned just to satisfy your guys` crusade. If 150 got banned my data on their wins doubles, but again, becomes 1.25% if their account age is 5 years old for instance, but 20% of all sg wins if they're all 1 year old accounts. Sorry your "data" is all over the place and it's hard to track it when you don't know it either and it keeps changing left and right.
"In the end, minor details. The stats would be much worse as your 6k botters win 35 - 37 games."This is only if you could prove these users used an autojoiner for all their wins, which we have no data on or maybe you want to show me? I mean you and the team you work with were off by 62.5% on your reports. 150 out of 400 is 37.5%. You wanted another 62.5% of users to get banned for the sake of getting those 150, despite those other 250 users doing nothing wrong, but just based on data you and your team were sure about hence why your number of reports must've been so small out of 6000 which is what you estimate. Keep in mind you estimated that 62.5% to be "1,3,5" users even in a group of 6000, if you compare that to a data of 400, that'd be 0 or technically partial of a person, but not even 1, and yet you were off by 250 users. Which you were okay with banning for no reason.
"Theoretical correct but in the reality wrong because this is reachable with a few cents (and done from such accounts).
I don't give more details to it."Obviously you can use grey market to buy the $50 trash fake games with 0 cv, but I'm assuming, maybe wrong that the mod team has those games already in the system blocked, however they might not. Otherwise it would be at least a few dollars.
"And you forget/not be aware of a important detail.
The ones that don't activate a thanks script are, very often, in groups with much better winning chances as in the public GAs. And they are, mostly, higher as level 2 users."Interesting assumption, then wouldn't it be better to make level 0 public giveaways to get as many normal users to enter your giveaways? Your data seems to indicate you disagree with this view. Also, you haven't made any recent public giveaways(other than some during xmas) so it's hard to know where you get your data from and how you know how accurate it still is. However, you seem to be unsure about the people you've added to your own group, and you question members of private groups where the whole goal is to trade games against each other so it's not like they're affecting normal users anyways, as long as they don't enter public giveaways of course, but I think most people who make group only giveaways also enter public ones to leech.
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When I first joined this site, I used to copy paste a "Thank you for the giveaway!" message to basically any giveaway I entered as to show my appreciation, because I thought that was standard since other users were doing the same thing. It didn't take that long until I realized this bothered some people and I stopped and now I only say my thanks if I win.
I'm wondering how you feel about comments on a $60 game then, and what if someone gives 3 of those away and someone thanks on all of them with the same message. Is that acceptable or are they all bots?
Also you did get a great reply to this from a senior mod, not sure if you expect replies from each mod individually, however his reply made sense and also mentioned the time is better spent on helping users with their tickets.
"Third reason is, that when I first saw this thread, I looked at your giveaways. And to be honest, most of those have very few comments. I looked through your giveaways of the last few months, and most of them have 0-3 comments. Correct me if I'm somehow wrong, but it really doesn't seem like you are suffering from lots of "thanks spam" at all. So I really don't see where your giveaways get cluttered so much, that you have trouble finding the "real" comments."
https://www.steamgifts.com/go/comment/OhUP5hQ
I was new to the site at the time, didn't have a lot of gifted or won games, and was spamming thanks thinking it was the custom around here. Are there some bots that do this, sure, are they all bots, guaranteed not. Since this feature does not guarantee someone is a bot it would be better instead to suggest a solution or option for when you make the giveaway to disable comments other than the winner.
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I'm wondering how you feel about comments on a $60 game then, and what if someone gives 3 of those away and someone thanks on all of them with the same message. Is that acceptable or are they all bots?
High priced games are a different case and a few comments are very different to "you see the same comment of the same user in each public low level GA".
I looked at your giveaways. And to be honest, most of those have very few comments. I looked through your giveaways of the last few months, and most of them have 0-3 comments. Correct me if I'm somehow wrong, but it really doesn't seem like you are suffering from lots of "thanks spam" at all. So I really don't see where your giveaways get cluttered so much, that you have trouble finding the "real" comments."
Take into account that i have 1k accounts on my BL and 500+ have me on their BL (450 of them, nearly, never do GAs but a big bunch of them wanted to hide their bad stuff because i were a very known cheater hunter....), this lower the spam in my GAs.
Besides that i reduced the public GAs to a minimum because over the half of the winners are accounts that i would put on my BL if i stil had spots free, that push my mood down and that let me regret that i spend money for them in the end. So i give more in my group, where no cheaters have access too, which reduce the comments spam on top AND i am, relative, sure that you don't checked the GAs from years ago before/when i wrote this thread, or? I can't fully remember how bad it was, but it was worse, for me, as nowadays.
Are there some bots that do this, sure, are they all bots, guaranteed not.
Some A LOT and only a small part of the autojoiner accounts activate the thanks script option of the autojoiner program.
And, of course, not all that write many thanks messages are autojoiners with activated thanks script but it is very visible which ones are humans that type the messages and which ones aren't. Special when you have access to logs and use automated checks of some things (we done this too, without access to the logs and caught hundreds of accounts...).
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"High priced games are a different case and a few comments are very different to "you see the same comment of the same user in each public low level GA"."This is exactly what I expected you to say so thanks. However, just because you don't value something as much as the next person, doesn't mean it isn't worth more to them than you assume. Some people might really be glad to see a giveaway for a game they think is cool, and they understand their chances of winning a $60 game are basically inexistent.
See, you're desensitized to this because you got a large library. I get you since I'm in a similar position. But I can understand someone's excitement to enter for a $5 game where their chances of winning are higher since many whales(like you or me with 8000 games) already have if they live in a more impoverished country where $5 means a lot more than it does to me or you. I'm not going to automatically assume every single one of them is a bot for that reason.
"Take into account that i have 1k accounts on my BL and 500+ have me on their BL (450 of them, nearly, never do GAs but a big bunch of them wanted to hide their bad stuff because i were a very known cheater hunter....), this lower the spam in my GAs.Besides that i reduced the public GAs to a minimum because over the half of the winners are accounts that i would put on my BL if i stil had spots free, that push my mood down and that let me regret that i spend money for them in the end. So i give more in my group, where no cheaters have access too, which reduce the comments spam on top AND i am, relative, sure that you don't checked the GAs from years ago before/when i wrote this thread, or? I can't fully remember how bad it was, but it was worse, for me, as nowadays."
A lot to pack down in here, lets see.
My guess is over the years with this or other threads and comments you might've made them think this is not necessarily the case and again comments aren't a certain indicative of botting and they might have disagreed with other points of view you made whether they give or not and so ended up on a bunch of blacklists. You do comment quite a bit and no worries I've also gotten a few blacklists over the years so 500 blacklists isn't that many, some at the start of my journey here due to me making those repetitive comments for instance.
I myself BL'd you a while ago (along with many other users I also BL'd that day) because you make no public giveaways(with the exception of these recent xmas ones) but you have no problem entering them. Maybe you did at first, but when I BL'd you I don't remember how many pages I kept going down and down and down without seeing any or maybe just 1 public giveaway.
As for your group, since you select the individuals you want the most in there, and you inspect them before, there should be 0 spam in your comments unless even your filtering doesn't work well enough. If you got this kind spam in your group giveaways then to me that's like a statement in itself.
" i am, relative, sure that you don't checked the GAs from years ago before/when i wrote this thread, or? I can't fully remember how bad it was, but it was worse, for me, as nowadays.""The only reason I commented on this thread now, is because you went ahead to make a comment just above mine saying still hasn't been addressed by the mods. You say it was worse then, as nowadays. So now is the same as then, or you meant to say now is not as bad as it was, case in which, the waves did actually stop them, although you suspect the number of bots that should be banned this time tripled to 4000 something. Wouldn't that mean it would be 3x worse now even after that ban wave? So something doesn't add up.
"Some A LOT and only a small part of the autojoiner accounts activate the thanks script option of the autojoiner program.
And, of course, not all that write many thanks messages are autojoiners with activated thanks script but it is very visible which ones are humans that type the messages and which ones aren't. Special when you have access to logs and use automated checks of some things (we done this too, without access to the logs and caught hundreds of accounts...)."What if you activate this feature on the autojoiner bot, but have the autojoiner disabled as per the rules? So then every time you enter a giveaway, it leaves an automatic comment? It wouldn't be against the rules to have an auto commenter as far as I know.
Also how can you tell which repetitive comments are human and which are not? Like how do you distinguish between that?
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This is exactly what I expected you to say so thanks.
You read in my answer what you want to read that it fits to your view.
But that doesn't mean that i said it the way you want to understand it.
I copy my sentence from your post above (and don't check if it is 100% what i wrote further above)
"High priced games are a different case and a few comments are very different to "you see the same comment of the same user in each public low level GA"."
I combined "a few comments, on top to the AAA games" and compared it with "the same comment, from the same user, in each low level public GA".
So i shown to extreme different positions and very easy to spot differences for each unexperienced user on sg too (so not only for users that be 10 years on sg, not only for users hunt the bad guys, no additional software needed or something else).
And i don't care if someone see game XYZ as great and enter this and someone else enter game ZYH and like this much more. It's unimportant.
But it give a, clearly visible, difference in the amount of comments from REAL humans in GAs of very hyped, mostly new AAA, games and other GAs. Much more humans comment in the GAs for very hyped, mostly new AAA, games, so it is more difficult to spot there the cheaters that have the thanks scripts activated and it is more common to see there more people writing a thanks (sometimes multiple times the same comment in different GAs of such quality games [Dredge, Dave the Diver, Starfield, Baldurs Gate 3 etc.]).
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"You read in my answer what you want to read that it fits to your view.But that doesn't mean that i said it the way you want to understand it.
I copy my sentence from your post above (and don't check if it is 100% what i wrote further above)"
Maybe, then you'd have to explain what you actually meant since what you said means something else.
"And i don't care if someone see game XYZ as great and enter this and someone else enter game ZYH and like this much more. It's unimportant.But it give a, clearly visible, difference in the amount of comments from REAL humans in GAs of very hyped, mostly new AAA, games and other GAs. Much more humans comment in the GAs for very hyped, mostly new AAA, games, so it is more difficult to spot there the cheaters that have the thanks scripts activated and it is more common to see there more people writing a thanks (sometimes multiple times the same comment in different GAs of such quality games [Dredge, Dave the Diver, Starfield, Baldurs Gate 3 etc.])."
I find it to be relevant information as you can see a ratio. If much less popular giveaways get much less comments, and much popular get many more comments, it should be indicative of what you'd expect. Also, there's not as many popular giveaways as normal giveaways, and so it's likely for one user to enter many more normal giveaways than popular one. Therefore it makes sense they'd be able to say thanks to many normal giveaways, but only 1 or 2 popular giveaways.
If what you count is how many comments a user made, then how can you tell how many of these comments are made now, vs before the ban wave and if the user might have turned off using the autojoiner as asked? Or do you just assume that anyone with a bunch of comments is automatically still using an autojoiner just because they might have in the past and turned it off when they were asked to do so?
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I myself BL'd you a while ago (along with many other users I also BL'd that day) because you make no public giveaways(with the exception of these recent xmas ones) but you have no problem entering them. Maybe you did at first, but when I BL'd you I don't remember how many pages I kept going down and down and down without seeing any or maybe just 1 public giveaway.
You can do with your BL whatever you want.
I made around 150 public GAs and a lot of invite GAs that were accessible for, nearly, everyone with level 2 (later 3) because in Cakeday Threads and such stuff.
But in the end is this not important because i am with that number under the highest few % on this site.
So good luck blacklisting everyone that made lesser amounts of public GAs (which means 90 or 95%+ of the users [i am too lazy to look closer into it, to have the exact percentage]) ;-D
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"You can do with your BL whatever you want.
I made around 150 public GAs and a lot of invite GAs that were accessible for, nearly, everyone with level 2 (later 3) because in Cakeday Threads and such stuff.
But in the end is this not important because i am with that number under the highest few % on this site.
So good luck blacklisting everyone that made lesser amounts of public GAs (which means 90 or 95%+ of the users [i am too lazy to look closer into it, to have the exact percentage]) ;-D"Of course I can use it as I wish, I was saying it's questionable data to say that many users BL'd you because they were afraid of your witch hunt. As for BL'd everyone I honestly don't spend that much time on it, but it wouldn't hurt me either way as I don't find those people as benefiting the platform. Too many of these users are in groups trading games between 5-10 users, with requests they basically trade games they don't already own to each other to keep membership in said groups. I consider that trading not gifting. However I'm in a few groups myself and I do want to appreciate certain users who stand out, but I don't make that my 100% or 99.999% main source of giveaways because then I'd limit literally everyone new and at some point I was also new and if that was my experience joining the site, then I probably wouldn't be here today because I wouldn't have qualified for anything. So I'm thankful for those that do still make public giveaways.
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Wouldn't that mean it would be 3x worse now even after that ban wave? So something doesn't add up.
Only a tiny fraction of the autojoiners are so stupid to activate the thanks script in the autojoiner program.
So you see only a tiny minority of them in the GA comments.
There are a lot more using autojoiners as you see on the first spot.
Others and i collected over a half year, daily, evidences, for hours. So i assume we know from which we talk. Based on 1 year ago... and it don't got better since a lot of us stopped to hunt the cheaters.
It wouldn't be against the rules to have an auto commenter as far as I know.
It is SPAM, and it is clearly in the suspension possibilities listed with X days.
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"Only a tiny fraction of the autojoiners are so stupid to activate the thanks script in the autojoiner program.
So you see only a tiny minority of them in the GA comments.
There are a lot more using autojoiners as you see on the first spot.
Others and i collected over a half year, daily, evidences, for hours. So i assume we know from which we talk. Based on 1 year ago... and it don't got better since a lot of us stopped to hunt the cheaters."Sure, but you did indicate you estimate maybe 6000 autojoiners, that being a lot even to you, as you originally claimed 4k, then dropped to 3k, and then suggested maybe there's 6k. Not sure what this inconsistent data that's anywhere up to 2x it's value in the thousands comes from, but even you can probably see it looks like a load of bs. I could say for instance "with 99.9999% certainty that your data is off" however my 99.999% is pulled straight out of my ass, like your 6k data. Neither one of us knows how many bots really are there, so the best solution would be to look at your giveaway winners and see how many of them are bots if you ask me. Comments are still not a guaranteed indication of someone being a bot, and you already have multiple users who told you they used to or still spam copy pasted "thanks" messages to giveaways they enter. So it's like this data is ignored because these users exist and it doesn't push your agenda.
As for your evidences it would be better if you posted it here so people can look at it and judge it. It's highly likely if this is how you collect your data that many of them are not using an autojoiner as I said before and yet you've went out of your way to persecute them. You assume your data is correct but unless we all have access to it so we can judge it for what it is, then how can we say it's not just a bunch of nonsense from some users going on a blindfolded witch hunt?
"It is SPAM, and it is clearly in the suspension possibilities listed with X days."It's questionable as spam. Each giveaway has it's own page and therefore leaving one comment on a giveaway page doesn't constitute spam actually, however I can imagine abuse of the feature could qualify for a suspension depending on the situation. However I can see how it can get annoying to some. But no, it is not spam.
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I used to thank GA creators until I learned it was considered bot behavior, lol
Of course I'd love to see autojoiners completely gone, but it's already against the rule but despite that the problem hasn't been solved, so I guess there must be some issue that prevents moderation to enforce that rule.
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If they banned for this then it's mostly innocent users who would get caught into it. From OP's and his team's special report of 400 people, only 150 were banned for it. Therefore 250 were innocent. These are users op was sure were autojoiners. Yet, he was off by 62.5% and he was only right 37.5%. About 2/3 of the users would've gotten banned for no reason, and op tells me this is ok for him in the pursuit to ban botters.
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This is why I say there must be a reason or some issue that explains why autojoiners can't be consistently banned. Looks like it's not that easy to differentiate between users and bots.
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It is easy in many cases and the answer why nothing happens is very easy too.
CG don't care.
And the mods don't have the needed tools and powers to do much more as normal users. They need to spot all like each normal user do it.
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The reason is simple, you can't really tell unless someone goes full rage mode I'm guessing, or if they used this method to ban people they'd ban more innocent users than bots.
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of 400 people, only 150 were banned for it
I am not investing time to check the stats, with searching in a lot of messages of around 1,5 year ago, and over the timeframe of 3 months+, to count them in the end one by one to come to the final number in the end, so the numbers of the suspended can be higher and the reported a bit lower.
But it is clear that you not want that others know that the number is only a "round about" assume from me.
And as a side info..... Suspended isn't banned.
Therefore 250 were innocent. Yet, he was off by 62.5% and he was only right 37.5%. About 2/3 of the users would've gotten banned for no reason, and op tells me this is ok for him in the pursuit to ban botters.
Again a lot of Bullshit.
Only because someone isn't suspended, that doesn't mean that he is innocent.
It could mean too
- that the mod hadn't, enough, experience
- don't seen the evidences as strong enough, if there were 4 joined GAs in the same second or if there were 300k entered GAs in 8 years or other obvious stuff... or not.
And very much other reasons and i don't go more into details because it is anyway wasted time with you (and we both know why).
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Only because someone isn't suspended, that doesn't mean that he is innocent.
At this point you're just immune to any discussion lol.
Let's just ban everyone, let god sort them out
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"I am not investing time to check the stats, with searching in a lot of messages of around 1,5 year ago, and over the timeframe of 3
months+, to count them in the end one by one to come to the final number in the end, so the numbers of the suspended can be higher
and the reported a bit lower.
But it is clear that you not want that others know that the number is only a "round about" assume from me."I mean this is your data that you told me. If it was 400 reports and 150 banned, that's again 250 that weren't banned that you were confident were using an autojoiner, and then you claim upwards of 6000 that you missed or something. I go by the data that you claim. If your data is wrong, then your claims can't be accurate or relied on.
"And as a side info..... Suspended isn't banned."Sure but it gives the user the opportunity to fix the problem. I assume repeat offenses lead to a perma ban, but I wouldn't be able to confirm.
"Only because someone isn't suspended, that doesn't mean that he is innocent.
It could mean too
that the mod hadn't, enough, experience
don't seen the evidences as strong enough, if there were 4 joined GAs in the same second or if there were 300k entered GAs in 8 years
or other obvious stuff... or not.
And very much other reasons and i don't go more into details because it is anyway wasted time with you (and we both know why)."Sure, it also means that they could be innocent, and so you can't just ban left and right on assumptions alone.
Also why is it wasted time with me? Because your argument is weak in the end and your data is even weaker and I've proved it to you using your numbers, site data and basic math? No one says not to look at this and maybe have suspicions, but in no way is this a guarantee of someone using a thanks script, again you got multiple people in this thread explaining they also send/sent repetitive thanks messages. Also, the mods who issue bans probably follow a certain criteria to check things off a list, not sure if they all go by experience individually and just wing it.
You're the one that said it would only be "1,3,5" innocent users that would get incorrectly banned and that is okay to get many botters but then told me out of your 400 certain reports 150 punished only and 250 weren't proven as botters. It's my fault you're off by 62.5%? Like if your data was 99.99% accurate I might've said it's good but still sucks for that one user that did nothing wrong.
Imagine I said you got 18k comments and that looks like bot behavior. Should you be banned on my assumption alone?
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The obvious member solution is to gate giveaways behind whitelists and private groups with reasonably strict membership criteria. Which is sad, but it is what it is.
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In my discussion with OP he suggests this doesn't actually work as most autojoiners don't use the auto comment feature and they are higher level than 2 and that they hide themselves in private groups and whishlists where they have more chances. I disagree with that for a lot of reasons including level 3 and plus populations, that in order to get on someone's WL you kinda have to be on their good side, and to get into a group there's generally some requirements to enter a private small group. He seems to go back and forth on these ideas, suggestions and data he has, but from this indication, it would be better to make public level 0 giveaways, as most autojoiners are busy in private groups and wishlists at higher levels. Obviously I disagree with this too.
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it would be better to make public level 0 giveaways, as most autojoiners are busy in private groups and wishlists at higher levels.
BULLSHIT
Don't come along and lay me words in the mouth that i never said only because you aren't willing to understand my words (and the people in my group knows very well why you don't want....)
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https://www.steamgifts.com/go/comment/n5OrWNd
""And you forget/not be aware of a important detail.
The ones that don't activate a thanks script are, very often, in groups with much better winning chances as in the public GAs. And they are, mostly, higher as level 2 users.""Did you not mean to say this? You've said right there that those that don't use the script are in groups with higher chances of winning and mostly higher as level 2's at least.
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Yes, but it not really solve the problem with the autojoiners and multiacccounters because there will be always "enough" users do accessible GAs for such accounts, because they don't know something about the problem, because they don't care or other reasons. And because of this it will be still lucrative for the cheaters to still cheat and not to change their behavior.
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The lack of official answer is probably to be seen as an answer in itself :/
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Correct, it says a lot.....
I would be happy without a written response if in exchange then the dumbest autojoiners, that activate the thanks scripts, get suspended for spam..... but it don't happened in all the month that we wait on a answer.
But, at least, one of the hunters got suspended for spam, after he wrote advice messages about using a min. level and sgtools and later changed this to only send a link to a thread that had this infos.
He sended maybe 3% of the messages of each of the autojoiners we talk about.....
Make yourself thoughts about the reason(s) behind acting against the ones that tra to help(ed) the site and not against the cheaters....
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This is why I almost never create giveaways below level 2. That, at least, seems to filter out the vast majority of them.
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Nowadays i recommend at least level 4 for public GAs.
The most games aren't set correct to bundled or free, so accounts that only gave freebies away are, without a problem, level 2 - 4 (i see this daily).
And accounts that exploit the one or other loophole are there for a few cents after a few days. Nearly always clearly side accounts and not main accounts, if you take a look into their steam accounts that show then as example level 7 with 30 games, only a idler group and 5 friends -4 the same level and one very high (in nearly all cases the main account)-.
So they cheat absolute dumb or let's say totally public visible.... because they know nothing happens.
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Thanks (x3) hope to win it wthog ^_^
The reason I have such a huge blacklist lol. You can say "pls no thanks unless you win" and it barely makes a difference.
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You can say "pls no thanks unless you win" and it barely makes a difference.
The reason is that only 10 - 15%, of the ones that enter the GA, read descriptions.
A lot of tests from a lot of people, me included, shown this percentage, over years, again and again and again.
wthog
I like this one because i always think with a smiling on the little wild boar (and not on god and his help) :-D
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For me it is always warthog because i believe in the power of nature but not god or the, questionable, idea that he would help to win more on a giveaway site :-D
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Hi,
i see more and more accounts use thanks scripts/bots.
In the past only a few done that so it doesn't had a big impact on the GA's but right now i would be able to make a list of 30 - 50 accounts that do it.
It have a very strong impact on public and open groups GA's and can be seen as punishment for the gifters. I feel exactly that way when i give something and get then 20 spam messages as "thanks".
It is annoying to get spammed with that, generic, messages.
This messages clutter a thread and hide real comments.
In the end they make a lot of work and don't bring a advantage.
Public GA's and open group GA's are worse, as they were in the past, because of that.
The accounts that i mean do it in each GA and to proof it, i can back it up with a easy example from my own made GA's.
2 different GA's, opened and entered in the same second = impossible
To write on top in both the same, very short, message = impossible²
And i am sure that, nearly, each one of the thanks script accounts have the same entry and writing speed as my picked one for the example.
So in the end easy catches
To be clear, i don't speak from the normal users that use from time to time the same sentence in a GA. They don't spam that messages, need more time to write or copy the sentences and aren't everywhere. It's very easy to spot the difference in GA comments and i am sure the support can see timestamps for the comments that would show the ones that act in, for a human not possible, lightspeed.
It give in the rules a punishment option for SPAM and i want that the moderation team discuss if they want to use that punishment possibility for the thanks script accounts.
Or if they can perma suspend all that accounts... but i don't bet at this option... so i try it with the SPAM rule ;o)
Thanks and have a good day.
PS.: I got Blacklists for this discussion. I shouldn't be surprised but i am still so innocent that i don't expect them for saying a opinion :-D
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