I do agree ö.ö
But I also have to admit, that I don't contribute much to the community u.u
Yes, I do make giveaways although I feel like a leecher since I can't offer something really nice and shiny to the wonderful people here but when it comes to the discussions, I'm more of a silent reader than someone that posts their opinion.
But in this case, I just have to write something.
Stricter rules might not solve anything, but the sheer amount of rulebreakers, people with not activated wins, regifts... tells me, that something should change.
And in my humble opinion, would banning users with unactivated wins not lighten the workload of the support? There were instances where I asked for a reroll because of unactivated wins, because I, as a giveaway creator, can't tell wether someone has been punished or not. All I see is a broken rule. And I also doubt that many people really learn from a suspension ._.
Today, I reported a user: he registered a month ago and had already broken the rules 10 times. Obviously, he's not afraid of any consequences, so maybe there really should be some more drastic consequences...
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i agree with you in may aspects archi but at the same time i think you are overblowing it, i spend a lot of time in the site and i know this things are happening but it doesnt affect my enjoyment of the stie at all, the community is over all (as far as the forum goes) really good, and thats what i care about
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also because of the sheer size of the site i think this kinda problems are an inevitability... maybe more power to the mods will lessen it but it wont stop existing
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I'm afraid I agree with you quite a lot in this case.
And there are plenty of methods to improve both the quality of life here. (aka weeding out the bad and getting a healthier forum).
And generally it comes down to better forumtools and more moderators.
(Better forumsoftware is readily available which would make moderating a lot easier. And as for moderators: picking them with a popularity contest would be bad, trust me. I've seen it on plenty of forums and been both in the elitist-clique and outside of it in those places. It's better to have a mod hierarchy implemented by CG with clear rules, not just about who likes who more.)
Ultimately it is at the sole discretion of cg. It is his site and I'm glad hes created and maintained it and therefore his choice if he wants to do anything about this and if so what. All we can do is make suggestions and hope he picks up on some. :)
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Slightly off topic to the thread, and I presume it has been suggested at some point: An interactive tutorial that new users would need to go through before accessing the forum or giveaways which explained the rules of the site, and how both GA work and guidelines to discussions, could elleviate some of the issues resolving around new users not knowing the rules. I know their are forum post, and Terms of Service, but new users don't seem to check these before they testing boundaries. Letting them know the rules and consequences clearly before they start breaking them. Of course it may be quite some effort to make an effective tutorial, it could make a difference in the long term as far as users knowing the rules.
I agree something needs to change in regards to support/moderating or SG may continue to degrade.
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Sad thing is, I don't know where people like myself stand in the eyes of the "elitists".
Sure, we have given away some games, most of them bundled. We have also won some games, again most of them bundled. At what point are we detrimental to your standards of society? Or for that matter at what point are we a contribution? Yeah, I am sick of some of the things you have stated as well but being on the bottom screaming to the top of the tower people like me often go unheard. Eh, no point in rambling on... Just another post of someone complaining.
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I apologize for my delay in creating this, I've had RL things to take care of.
Let me summarize my thoughts here:
The majority of your bullet points, Archii, are examples of users breaking the rules. Those users get suspended. It's that simple. As much as you would like to believe the discussions right now is a total public swamp with no rules, no moderation, crapload of shitposts, it's nowhere near as dire as you're claiming it is. I've suspended users for spamming, calling out, unactivated wins, you name it. Probably most of everything your post is complaining about us support not doing, I've done it. Is there room for improvement? Absolutely. Seeing as we are only volunteers, happy as we are to do it, we can only work with what we are given.
The fact anyone can accuse any member of support for protecting any one said user, making them above the rules, is a joke. Like, I literally laughed at this. Spit coffee on my keyboard, in fact. If you, or any member in your group, is thinking this is happening, you're delusional.
The real problem here, whether users want to admit it or not, is the lack of empathy you all have with one another. People would rather complain in posts like these and in passive aggressive threads, then actually take steps in solving the problem. Instead of posting a salty thread and inciting a riot, maybe the community can come together and heal. Here’s an idea: How about reach outside of your comfort zone and extend an olive branch to someone you have a problem with for whatever reasons and try to make amends? How about going out of your way to be polite and show genuine care towards another user that's not in your precious group or immediate social circle. That doesn't work? How about ignoring a salty post altogether and growing some thicker skin, you know, cause this is the internet we're talking about. We're not going to ban users for sarcastic comments, so get over yourselves.
You don't like the FAQ and Guidelines we have now? How about coming up with something coherent instead of some far off abstract idea. Like, real suggestions. Submitted coherently in the "Bugs/Suggestions" categories. Not whiny threads like this one. Something useful we can present to CG so we can work together on solutions. You complaining about everything in a rant thread and then making an edit as an afterthought with "improvements" and "constructive" ideas is garbage and I'm not buying it. This is just as bad as any other attention seeking/salty/passive aggressive thread and you denying it changes nothing.
One last thought, it astounds me that there are so many "inactive" users who just "don't visit the forums" anymore due to all the reasons you listed above, but magically appear out of nowhere when salty threads like this get posted. If we changed the mindset, as a community, TOGETHER, of "I'm leaving because this isn't how I want it to be," to "What can I do to actively participate in these forums and what can I do to provide constructive discussions AND MAKE THIS A BETTER PLACE.", our problems would change overnight.
Fyantastic out.
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You realize that your threads are no different right? It's on you just as much as it is anyone else that participates in this forum to change things. Let me post this again:
How about reach outside of your comfort zone and extend an olive branch to someone you have a problem with for whatever reasons and try to make amends? How about going out of your way to be polite and show genuine care towards another user that's not in your precious group or immediate social circle.
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well you got me there, i'll be honest and say i barely have time for myself and my friends so i won't waste time trying to be nice to people i don't even wanna see or talk to again. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
maybe if i was mother teresa i would make some giveaways for my blacklist and see which ones are worthy of my time, but i'm just an average, stubborn and vengeful peasant so i'd rather fight fire with fire. 💖
besides, i don't go to their threads to stir up trouble, they always come to mine. guess who's the troll and bully.
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If you don't want to contribute to the solution, that's fine, but please don't contribute to the problem.
I say this all with love. Cause I wouldn't be here if I didn't genuinely care about you all and that's the honest truth. I hope everyone knows that. :)
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Salt aside, don't you agree with his proposals? Yes, it would be better to post them in separate threads in the suggestions forum, but it doesn't mean they don't have merit.
BTW, I plan to write an alternative FAQ when I'm back from a trip abroad in a few weeks. Not sure how good it'll be, but it's something I wanted to (try to) do for a while.
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I'd love to see it when you get back! Match started brb
In regards to the rewritten guidelines: I'd love to see what everyone would come up with that. I'm sure, if we put enough thought into it, we could come up with something that would be beneficial. In my opinion, it definitely wouldn't hurt to clarify some things in the FAQ.
As far as unactivated wins, there can sometimes be some confusion in this regard for non-english speaking SG users. So, I believe an insta-permaban on the first infraction would be a bit harsh, if they didn't understand the rules to begin with. It's really tough. On one hand you want to have a hard-lined stance, but on the other you want to give users the benefit of the doubt. I'd have to think about it some more to come up with a good solution.
Now this is a glorious idea:
In terms of bots, a simple "I'm not a robot" captcha appearing after each 100P being spent when trying to join a giveaway would solve the issue entirely. Limit could be adapted as-needed, 100P is good starting point, but it might be too intense, so we could bump it to 200 or 300. No captcha required for anything else, only for joining too many giveaways.
I'm not sure how hard it would be to implement that or how much stress it would be on the servers. I don't know if it would be possible to bypass too. It would suck to put in the time and effort to develop that for the site, only to have a bot user find a work-a-round within the month. Assuming that's not possible, I love the idea.
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We are only allowed to post one new forum thread per week. No rollover.
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I think there should be a lottery. Each day one user could be randomly selected to make the forum thread.
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You gonna tally up the whitelist vs. blacklist adds you get for this thread? Cause I, for one, would be interested in those numbers.
(And I'm not telling you which +1 I'm giving you)
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I agree in parts, but as Fyantastic said "this is the internet", and just like in real life you have no way to prohibit or make these people stop being sarcastic, stupid or whatever.
If you dont like the forum stop using it or try to change it.
And just saying, im one of these persons that rarely comment here, do you know why? Because I do not like the way the forum is, so i just ignore it most of the times :)
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You complaining about everything in a rant thread and then making an edit as an afterthought with "improvements" and "constructive" ideas is garbage and I'm not buying it. This is just as bad as any other attention seeking/salty/passive aggressive thread and you denying it changes nothing.
Thanks for making it clear to me that my suggestions are garbage, and not believing in my clear intentions that were entirely different than what you're claiming. I can happily state that it was my last attempt of suggesting anything in order to improve the SG, you're right that it's much easier to ignore people rather than providing garbage suggestions to people that know better. Since the thread contains nothing but attack and garbage ideas, I'll rather close it than spam bugs/suggestions section with useless threads, there are far more important things there that are actual suggestions and not a rant like this one.
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This is not just my observation, the discussions right now is a total public swamp with no rules, no moderation, crapload of shitposts and no constructive discussion whatsoever.
I could simply hide in my SG utopia aka elitist circle-jerk private giveaway group of people that are fed up like me, like I'm doing since last 2 years, but maybe before starting a war and wasting a lot of time on doing something stupid, we can fix what is broken, enforce no freaking double-standards and actually give support power to ban people, because apparently some people didn't learn shit after their 3rd suspension. Maybe if people would be afraid of crossing the line between jumping on insults, shitposts, constantly breaking the rules and not being afraid of anything, something would improve and I wouldn't feel disgusted every day I'm opening discussions, to find out about some interesting thread to look into.
Can we do something before it's too late and members that are actually building this community move elsewhere because it became a total pile of trash? I'm not in the mood of coding another giveaway site for me and ~100 more people who have enough of that, but I'm pretty sure that if I did, together with SG profile sync and people starting at their SG levels, quickly I'd divide the community into two, and this is not my intention.
I expect either several people raising hand (including silently agreeing with me, without wanting to disclose that), or a total drama thread that will quickly change into blacklists, insults and people saying how everything is okay when I'm more likely to create public L0 giveaway given to a bot capable of writing automated thanks rather than to "community" we have right now.
If you need blacklist button you can find it in my profile. I'm simply calling cg to mind before it's too late. I don't ask for dramatic changes - a few rule changes, and telling your newly-recruited support to start enforcing them - before it's too late.
JerkArchi out. Have a giveaway that perfectly relates to my opinion. And if you agree with me, it's a good moment to walk into the light and together show cg that something has to be done here.
Edit:
Because people are claiming that this thread is not constructive enough, I've included extra suggestions:
Issue permanent suspension on every member with unactivated wins, until he activated all of his missing wins in one way or another. Give him access to his keys list, and giveaway he won, so he can comment only there. This should exclude games that are no longer available in the store. Alternatively, just disable making him join any giveaways until he activated all of his wins. SGTools is already capable of checking that, SG can check too.
If given SG user is constantly being found in giveaways he's not eligible for, he's a candidate for perma suspension as well. First incident - short 1 day suspension, then 2 weeks, then perma. User should ensure that he's joining a giveaway that he's eligible for - if he gets link to invite-only giveaway that doesn't come from giveaway creator, he should automatically assume it's leaked link. Not hard to check, should be evaluated by support during reroll request based on giveaway origin and available methods - if the same guy is being reported for the 4th time by 4 different people, likely it's not a coincidence or circle-jerk of people setting traps for him.
In terms of bots, a simple "I'm not a robot" captcha appearing after each 100P being spent when trying to join a giveaway would solve the issue entirely. Limit could be adapted as-needed, 100P is good starting point, but it might be too intense, so we could bump it to 200 or 300. No captcha required for anything else, only for joining too many giveaways.
In terms of discussions - give moderators power to not only close the thread, but also remove posts. If some thread is not going the right way, close it, if people are starting drama, suspend them for a day or two so they can rethink what they're doing, and remove their posts. Repeated offenders will receive longer vacations.
Implementing those 4 things - severe suspensions, anti-leakers, anti-bots and moderation of discussions would heavily help with nearly everything I listed, as automatically we'd also solve majority of calling out problems.
It also wasn't my intention to make a thread that looks like an attack, it's probably just my way of putting up words connected together with inner sadness how things are getting down as the time goes. After all I want to point out problems and suggest how we can deal with them, to improve SG community, not make it worse.
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