I'm Sorry

I was in the hospital for most of last week. The reason isn't a secret, but this is probably not the best venue for discussing it at this time. Instead, I'm making this post to try to make a public apology for those I might have offended or wronged in the past week while I was away. I made a pretty big mistake before I was unexpectedly admitted to the hospital as an inpatient, and I did not have access to my computer for almost a week, and so I was unable to address the issue before it got terribly out of hand. Now I find myself blocked on Steam by people with whom I had previously had an amicable relationship, I was removed from several whitelists, added to some blacklists, and dropped from some SteamGifts-themed Steam groups to which I was rather fond of belonging. Since I don't know how else to reach out to the people that feel I have wronged them, I am going to try to make a public apology, and hope that they might see it here.

I suppose I should first acknowledge and own up to my mistake. My whitelist was becoming a bit unwieldy, and whenever someone commented on a whitelist giveaway I had made with something like, "I don't know why I'm on your whitelist," or, "I don't know what I did to get here," I like to reply with a link to the specific comment that put them on my whitelist. In the first few months of making giveaways, this was easy enough to do, since I could usually remember why I had whitelisted someone when the list was short, but as time went on, it became impossible to know exactly what insightful comment or considerate exchange caused me to decide to whitelist someone. I was looking for a way to tag users on their profile page with a link to the exact comment that put them on my whitelist, and when I said something of the sort here on SteamGifts, someone mentioned that there were browser extensions made for SteamGifts that would allow me to do just that.

I searched Google Chrome's extension library for an add-on that would allow me to tag users on SteamGift, and installed one that indicated that it would let me do so. I was pleased to have the ability to tag users' profile pages with comments and URLs, and there were some other features that I found useful, like infinite scrolling. Unfortunately, I did not carefully look at all of the features that came with the browser extension, and there was a feature that might have been useful in certain circumstances, but ended up causing me more trouble than I had expected possible. If my available points on SteamGifts hit 300, the browser extension would automatically enter me into the next available wishlist giveaway. I can understand why the author of the extension would add this feature, since it helps avoid "wasting" points that would otherwise go unused, but I personally found this feature to be quite undesirable.

First of all, I prefer entering giveaways manually, and I don't mind "wasting" points if I hit 300P and don't have any giveaways I want to enter or think I might not have time to enjoy. Furthermore, I greatly dislike the idea of people using scripts, bots, or macros to automatically enter giveaways, since I think that reading a giveaway's description and manually entering any giveaways you hope to win is the only fair way of using the site, and using a tool to automatically enter giveaways give that user an unfair advantage over people who are using the site as intended. So I unintentionally made myself into a hypocrite by not looking into all of the features of the browser extension before installing it.

Secondly, I was a guest in a Steam group (one of the aforementioned groups to which I was fond of [partially] belonging), and I was making giveaways for the group with the understanding that I would not be entering any of their giveaways before I met their group requirements. Unfortunately, some of the giveaways that were created for the group were in my wishlist, and the browser extension feature I mentioned above obviously did not know about the agreement I had made with the group's leaders. Because I left my computer running before leaving the house and unexpectedly finding myself admitted to the hospital, my points on SteamGifts maxed out at 300P quite regularly over the next few days, and I was automatically entered into a few giveaways that I should not have joined. And for that, I publicly and profusely apologize. I had no intention of joining giveaways for the group before I was eligible to do so, and I sincerely apologize for having allowed it to happen. It was not intentional, but it was my fault for not being more careful in researching all of the features of the browser extension that I had installed. I've uninstalled the browser extension from my computer now, but the damage has been done, and I can only hope that this apology might help mitigate that damage in some small way.

I hope this apology is seen by its intended recipients, and I apologize for wasting your time if you are not its intended recipient. As a small consolation for wasting your time, please accept this giveaway of a game with a 94% positive rating on Metacritic. I had intended to use it as a prize in a puzzle I wanted to make, but I don't know if or when I will have the time to make that puzzle, and I don't want the game to be wasted in my inventory when it could be played and enjoyed by some generous giver who takes the time to read the forum posts here. Thank you very much for your time and patience and consideration, and any small bump to the thread you might be able to offer would be greatly appreciated.