Over 200 on whitelist ... and yes I do regular whitelist giveaways. About a dozen more on blacklist. The reasons for both are always the same: the ones on whitelist can read descriptions, the ones on blacklist can't.
More detailed explanation: from time to time I do public giveaways asking people to refrain from adding "thank you" comments and do something else instead, like help with a chain story, share their favorite music, share a recipe, or whatever fun stuff I might think of. Taking action on what task is presented in the description usually comes with a fair chance to get whitelisted, while completely ignoring it and posting a generic mindless "thank you" tells me there's a high chance said person is actually using a bot/script, which leads to blacklist. Not without warning.
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Kinda off topic, but I'm wondering - What's the problem with using a bot/script to enter public giveaways? It's not like they enter more than anyone else thanks to it, since there's a point limit. I guess it's useful for people who don't have much time or go away to place with no internet connection for a few days and still want to use their points.
I've personally never used one but I see no problem with doing it. I probably wouldn't use an automatic generic "thank you" but some people think that's more polite, I guess.
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A bot can "watch" giveaways 24/7.
A bot doesn't (always) discriminate in what it wins, and some people like their games to go to people who might play them.
And then there's the bot spam - 40 "Thanks yous!" in under a minute ... when you make a slew of giveaways at once, it's annoying.
If someone is giving users a chance at a free game, the very least a user can do is open the giveaway and press the enter button.
That's the most base level of respect a user can pay a giveaway creator.
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Now, I took the time to answer that question and after I basically wrote a whole essay, there's your answer that just sums it up perfectly. I should have waited and just have written +1, hehe.
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Yours was a lot more informative and precise than my explanation. ;)
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I do agree being spammed with thank yous is annoying. Wouldn't blacklist people over it though.
Bots can be set to only enter wishlisted games, so then you can be pretty sure that even though it's a bot the game will be played.
I'm just saying - using a bot is not necessarily such a horrible thing. At least not the way I see it
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using a bot is not necessarily such a horrible thing.
It is to me, and I blacklist anyone I see using one. In fact, I regularly go through the members of the autojoin Steam group and check. You'd be surprised the names I've found there.
The rudest thing you can do on this site, in my opinion, is disrespect the that someone earned the money and then decided to make a giveaway with it. If you can't even take the time to press the enter button, you don't deserve to win, imho.
Oh, and bots are against the SG rules. It's just hard to prove to support, so it's rarely enforced.
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Okay, let me just +1 this one. :-)
Also, where's that autojoin Steam group? I didn't know such a thing existed. Considering that autojoiners are agianst the rules, why would they even dare to create a group so openly?
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For one thing, depending on how intelligent the script/bot is, it may as well be aiming to "optimize" winnings, e.g. automatically shuffle entries towards high chances, storing points in high value long term giveaways to redistribute the points to high winning chances later on, thus effectively creating higher chances compared to entering manually. A bot never needs to sleep, so it does get more points overall, simply because it can use them up without ever reaching the 300P limit.
More important though, this site is not a free games grab, or at least shouldn't be. Of course we all like to win from time to time, but for some of us this site is more about community: having a funny/interesting conversation, learning about a new game, or maybe even giving away something that somebody actually loves and plays. A bot can't do all those things. There's a reason why you have to enter each giveaway instead of just synchronizing your wishlist and getting your wishlisted games automatically drawn by the site.
Personally I also find it very rude, when giving away something with no strings attached, that someone bots it away without even taking the time to look at my giveaway properly. I simply think, it's not too much to ask that people take at least that much time to read the description and decide to enter my giveaway. Time is not an excuse, because if they don't have the time to show that much courtesy, then they probably don't have time to play the game either.
As for automatic comments, my guess is they don't think much at all. They just use a pre-made script that just so happens to have that feature. Also don't underestimate the power of that old SG myth that commenting improves your chances of winning. :-)
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I rarely, if ever, reach the 300P limit, and I aim to optimize my winnings - All that with no bot. So that argument doesn't do it for me.
As for the 2nd argument - Theoretically, you can have a bot automatically enter all public giveaways you want, while still socializing and having fun in the forums, and entering trains and private giveaways yourself.
About it being rude - maybe, but as long as they thank you after they've won, it's fine by me.
Them not having time to properly read every giveaway does not mean they won't have time to play the games - And I present myself as an example. I'm a computer science student and my semesters are pretty damn busy. I find the time to enter all giveaways I want because I do it quickly and enter from the main page with a script that adds an "enter" button (though genetic "thank you"s are disabled), and I rarely read the description of public giveaways unless I won them. I browse the forums when I have time, and I do pay more attention to private giveaways.
But come a holiday, summer break or any other break, I will play as many games as I can in that time.
My point is, I don't think people who didn't bother to read your giveaway description are necessarily people who don't deserve what you're giving. They may just be busy people, trying to get the most out of what the site offers, and they could be active, social members when they do find the time.
Every case should be individually judged
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I rarely, if ever, reach the 300P limit, and I aim to optimize my winnings - All that with no bot. So that argument doesn't do it for me.
First off, I don't like that attitude, optimizing winnings, again: this website is not a free games grab. But fine, each to their own, as long as you do it manually. With a bot, that "optimizing" gets to a whole new level, because the bot never sleeps and probably can dynamically shift points towards high odds in a way you never could when doing it manually. In the end, the person with the best bot/script gets the best chances, is that really what you want? Like a hacking challenge, eh?
Theoretically, you can have a bot automatically enter all public giveaways you want, while still socializing and having fun in the forums, and entering trains and private giveaways yourself.
But you still wouldn't know, why something was given away, in case the creator of said giveaway has something else to share or say.
My point is, I don't think people who didn't bother to read your giveaway description are necessarily people who don't deserve what you're giving. They may just be busy people, trying to get the most out of what the site offers, and they could be active, social members when they do find the time.
Again, I don't like that attitude, "trying to get the most out of what the site offers". And yes, I do think that people who don't even show the decency to read the description don't deserve to win.
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It really depends on you, there is no right answer. I've been blacklisted by 11 people and some of them I've never talked to, I guess it's because of my gave-won ratio (which I can't do too much, since I can't really buy games in Venezuela).
But then again, I've been whitelisted by some guys I've never talked to, and sometimes people whitelists me because I qucikly redeem the code, mark as received and give thanks
I for example just have 1 person on my blacklist because we were arguing about something and he started insulting me, so I just blacklisted him, but I've whitelisted lots of people I've seen that do nice things here and there and hope that when I can make a giveaway, some of them will get the game
So yeah, it's really all about what makes you happy, there is no answer to it... Some poeple may have hundreds of people on their white/black list and other people just dont care at all and have just a few
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I say, always whitelist anyone you win a game from.
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Well, mine just went +1. I've never seen completed stats like yours before 😲
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how did you recruited 1 million kavalry in just 84 hours in Reise of nation while you did get all other achievements as well?
thats 3 cavalry every second and you still got plenty of times to destroy 10k buildings and so on
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I WL for people who play most of their wins. With you I'm up to 50.
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It's your decision - if you think the people you whitelist deserve to be whitelisted - why not. Plus, I guess everyone is happy if they see a Whitelist GA which they can enter. :)
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172 right now. I am pretty quick to whitelist people - I whitelist every person whose giveaway I won, and anyone who made me laugh or smile at least once. Also one guy who had a cool avatar.
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I whitelist people if I win one of their GAs so there's a bigger chance that I can give something back. That, or if I find that person funny to talk to. :P
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I don't think whitelisting someone improves the chances of being able to give them something back unless you also do whitelist giveaways ;)
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I'm currently still trying to figure out a reason for whitelisting people, and so far I'm not able to find one. Although I have the exact same situation with the blacklist feature. Only reason I would want to blacklist someone is if they blacklisted me, but I won't have to do that now considering they can't enter my giveaways anymore anyway.
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I started winnowing down my whitelist, today. I began with around 300 people on it, and have now worked my way up to the "F" section. Thus far, I've cut about 35% of the names starting with A-E.
I have just seven active users on my blacklist. The rest aren't coming back, so I suppose I could take them off....
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218 whitelisted users and 0 blacklisted, I've been meaning to purge my whitelist to at least half the people for some time but I'm lazy.
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If we weren't we wouldn't be here, we would be doing something productive :P
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That's why I decided to give a tag to everyone when I WL them (there's some scripts which let you do that). Hell, I even color code the tags. It's easy to tell at a glance who's the people that maybe would be pruned some day and who's definitely on WL forever. I'm probably way too organized.
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That would have been a good idea a couple of years ago, now I guess my only real option is to just manually check one day I feel like doing so. I only really intend on dropping the users that are no longer active or have broken some rule after I added them, so it shouldn't be that hard, just really boring.
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With as many scripts are on SG I wonder if there's a script that could automatically check WL for inactive/rule breaking people. I don't think there is. But it's so time wasting and boring to do like you said, and it probably could be automated. If you made a thread asking about that, and people seem interested in having it (sounds useful so I wouldn't be surprised if they did), maybe someone would be willing to make a script for that.
Also ESGST has been adding a lot of things lately. You could try asking there too. Actually I'd really recommend that. I'm curious to see if he'd add that or not, even if I probably wouldn't need to use it myself.
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yes !
Jokes aside , i have 59 Whitelisted people ... half of which are sadly not even active anymore .
My blacklist was full at some point , now i cut it down to 202 , which are people with multiple rule breaks that are still allowed to roam free for some reason >.>
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138 people whitelisted and 1 person blacklisted... I had like 40 people on there before deciding I didn't want to use the feature anymore and clearing my BL entirely. It stayed at 0 for many months but then I saw someone explicitly asking for the right to remove people from the community based on their country of birth and that wasn't really something I could tolerate...
As for whitelists you mainly get on there by being, well, a nice person. Sometimes being interesting/funny will help too, or maybe really good ratios? But I don't generally care about that too much since I understand everyone's situation is different.
Either way I don't think 138 is too much, and to be honest many of them are inactive. I think on average my whitelist GAs get like 20-30 entries? Sometimes as low as 10 and so that's still far better odds than even open forums GAs. I think as long as you stay above that your whitelist is sorta meaningful, at least. (Also whitelist gets all my favorite games. Forums GAs get the highly popular ones and public GAs get the bundle leftovers)
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Yea, whitelists are meaningful as long as you do nice giveaways for them on occasion and the odds are much better then if they were public. And 138 isn't that large of whitelist at all compared to most people here it seems.
My WL giveaways average about 50-60 entries, with 85 being the most entries any has ever got. Its not great odds, but it's still generally much better then public giveaways, even at the higher levels.
(On a side note, based on what you said about the kinds of games your WL get, you must really like Gone Home? :P )
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Ha, yes actually! It's my second favourite game of all time. My number one favorite game of all time which is Life is Strange just happens to be quite a bit harder to acquire :p
And yeah, 50-60 entries is actually stellar compared to most public giveaways, and you seem to do quite a bit of them at least!
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Yah, I'm guessing it's because most of the time public giveaways are just won by people trying to get a +1 as opposed to those who are actually interested in the game and if you have a game you like, you'd rather whoever wins it actually plays it.
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The one thing for sure is that you can do whatever you like with your own WL and BL. ;-)
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I have 210.
There is no such thing as "to many whitelist." Your list is your list and it should be as long or as short as you want it :)
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I didn't use it when I started, but after getting added to some whitelists I decided it was good to give back the same.
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There is no right answer, it's personal preference.
Right now I have over 500 people on my whitelist.
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Off late I Whitelisted everyone I came across who gave a hell lot of games and won much less. And I just added you seeing you fit in. LOL.
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572 on my whitelist: I wl people regardless if I win from them based on their giveaway ratio and the kind of games they are giving away.
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78 whitelisted. Not gonna say my blacklisted number. lol
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