Opinion pieces rarely lead to discussion, especially hard takes on the site'a functions and people.
Even hobbies and some interests can be divisive, but likely at a much smaller scale.

As an addendum I understand that 90% or more people are non participatory and just here to grab free games without saying or sharing anything in return but that should still leave thousands of people so why the lack of communication? Just seems odd. Especially as I keep harping on since this is a sharing site. Again just thoughts.

Everyone should feel free to ask whatever question or share whatever opinion they have without fear of all the hipsters running straight to the nearest dislike feature they can find.

You mean, opinions like "Hitler did nothing wrong"? Well, I doubt you'll find a community you'd like...

Also, from my point of view - steamgifts community is pretty active and friendly. Obviously, as in any other community, there are exceptions, but it can't be helped.

I can't speak for anyone other than myself, but I don't talk much, because I don't usually have anything interesting to say (and yet, I'm somehow close to having left 500 comments all around the site). I can't pretend like I have opinions on controversial stuff, and if I do, I don't voice them because I don't have it in me to argue with strangers online. I've had a few longer conversations that made me look forward to seeing what the other person says next, but in general, if someone likes what I think about a certain thing, they're free to message me on Steam and tell me so - I don't bite (unless you bite first).

Another assertion. Perhaps there are language barriers? With the assumption that fewer than 1/3 users have English as primary language this would reduce again predicted amount of posting but then I am unaware of anything saying people need to post in English. Maybe it is just an assumption that posts should be made in English. Again I am just sharing thoughts, working on a puzzle as it were.

I was scrolling through the posts and I found an old one about a humble bundle that had only rockstar games in it.
I got kinda sad that I missed it even though at the time I used to pirate games, I simply commented getting these games for 1$ is crazy. (Manhunt, Max Payne, GTA 3 and Vice City), how dare my 6-years-ago-old me miss this.

I later woke up to a blacklist bomb for some reason, That was the day I found out what "necro" means.

I immediatly deleted my comment and ever since I didn't comment on discussions as much, I can see why people would be angry at something like that but still, I'm only human after all.

Its not necessary that you got your BL's for your thoughts. It easily could be your profile picture, username, ratio, some special games you dared to give away. Or maybe the country you are from, or games you own, lack of comments on your profile, your favorite movie or colour.
Just care less about minor things that happen everyday on SG

Nah, it is just that we party hard every night, and we are all having hangovers.

Cheers!

View attached image.

I care about blacklists only if I'm afraid, that I may have unintentionally offended someone. Otherwise, what's the problem? There are still enough GAs to go around and if someone doesn't want for either of us to have a chance to get gifts from each other, I wouldn't want to get games from them anyway. Cheers :)

I agree.

FWIW I checked and see I have you on my WL from some time ago - I cannot recall when or what for.
So as there are people who BL you for no reason or a bogus one, there are other people who WL for a good reason!

While this community has periods of time when there's near constant activity and people here become really chatty there's also an abundance of slow days when for a couple of hours not a single new comment is made and to an observer it might look like everyone just suddenly dropped dead on their desk, but fear not, this is the normal ebb and flow of communication around these parts.

On a more personal note, the reason why I sometimes restrain myself of just posting comments as they come to my mind it's that I know myself too well and I have a tendency towards pessimism and seeking arguments for the sake of arguing, I don't really like myself when I turn into this negative bitch looking to bleed some conflict to momentarily satisfy my depressive tendencies. And also I definitely do not enjoy getting blacklisted just because I shared some innocuous opinion that somehow offended a passing rando, it doesn't feel nice when the red line goes up and it can create this negative feedback loop that discourages me from participating.

And finally I'd like to touch on the language barrier thing. Yes, but my guesstimates somewhere between a third and half of active commenters here speak English as a second or even third language, myself included. That can cause a number of miscommunications that sometimes drag on and escalate, but it isn't such a common occurrence as far as I'm aware. The reason why we tend to keep it in English regardless is to keep some semblance of order, while we can assume that most people that find their way to this forum at least have a basic grasp of the English language if we all started writing on our native languages this would quickly turn into a fragmented mess, specially since many of us are just bilingual and not able to follow a conversation in whatever random language someone might start speaking. English is our common ground.

Well im not a chatty guy and i don't prefer to opine on stuff online. But yea..
Some users desperately need a downvote button for sure, but then we already have stuff like reddit for that!
People BL for various reasons, I for one BL when encountering users with sad and depressing stats.

If you see yourself BL-ed for opinions/comments that are civil and inoffensive. Id say ignore those BLs. Those are mostly from lurkers who don't contribute much anyways. You will barely (if ever) encounter the giveaways of such users. And looking at their GAs, you would probably go ..Oh well, nothing of value was lost :P

Most people who contribute here or those who give generously, aren't as petty. Atleast that is what ive seen in my 1 year here. Try not to care as much about BLs. And also remember that BL works both ways!

In general, people can't handle other opinions anymore.
More and more idiots that aren't able to think by their own.
But yes, sg is extreme in this thing and a lot are extreme sensitive and if something can be taken in 2, or more, different ways the most pick the worst of the meaning which isn't the smartest approach when a lot of people aren't english native speakers and often don't have bad intentions with what they write.

I know a lot, special from the ones that hunt the cheaters on this site, that don't write something on sg because they don't want to be blacklisted.

I on the other side, don't like to be blacklisted but in the end what would i have from someone if he can't accept a other opinion ?
I don't need people of that type around me because i am very well known for saying my opinion in many cases, blacklists don't stop me, and accepting other ones opinions.
Same with discussions, the most is ok as long as you can accept where the other one comes from (from the mindset) if the discussion is not based on "because (and no other explanation)" and the respect for the other involved person(s). But a lot feel directly attacked if you don't have the same opinion or discuss.
I seen discussing always as a enrichment, if i have in the end the same point of view as the other one or not.

I prefer honest people, if they like or dislike me, if they share my opinion(s) or not.
I appreciate honesty.

From my experiences i would say the people get dumber. Partly because too much influence from murica...
Don't get me wrong, i know a good bunch of people from there that are absolutely ok but they have a lot of people there that have the connection to the reality lost and create shitstorms for/against everything. They create a lot of problems instead of solving them and see themself (special the politicans) as the rescuer of the world, but without them the problems on this planet would be much lower.

Special to sg... i made in the past the food porn discussion about cooking Yes, i picked that name to directly jump in the eyes of each one and i questioned, before i picked it, the mods if this name is ok or not, Cakeday threads, jigidi puzzle threads and many many more.
In the end were always some negative feedback the result why i stopped with it.
For me it is demotivating to do Cakeday GAs when from 20 winners, 5 are cheaters, 3 others don't know a thanks, 1 that mark a game as not recieved without to try to contact me as gifter in some way, don't reacted on contact tries to get the GA deleted -and wanted to give the winner a other small game instead of the won one, to make him happy-, users that commented there something (mostly demanding something like a WL, that the level for GAs get deeper set as level 2 and so on) but not had the basic manners to say "Happy Cakeday" or thanks.
Jigidi Puzzles that i made were cheated, so i stopped with that too. And you see it till today that the jigidi puzzles get still cheated. So a part of the users ruin it for the rest.
I had always something that made me a bad mood after all the invested time and energy (because of my chronic illness i don't have sooo much energy and my life will be shorter as from, many?, other people, so i value my lifetime, most likely, higher as other people do) and i try to invest my energy and time only in things that raise my mood in the end :o)

In the end the site isn't anymore worth to spend the time to create something that is "open for all" because the nice people of this community are only a few hundred people, that i really appreciate, and only a fraction of them invest something themself. I mean time, energy, discussions, pictures, recommendations etc., i don't speak from GAs.
And because cg don't do something against all the "bad boys" more and more of the real community, that care(d) for more as only the GAs, left the site or gone into "silent mode".
I don't see a possible way to do something against this as normal member.

Nowadays is too much black OR white. It don't give something between anymore.
You are for something or against, you can't be someone that have a own opinion that isn't the one from the masses. And the masses are nearly everytime the media brainwashed ones that don't use their brain for own thinking.

Ps.: I don't BL for other opinions, if it wasn't obvious from above :o)

I've gotten black and whitelised for the same comment. Sometimes it takes me a while to work out who whitelised me, but I did manage to get at least one game (Trivia Vault that everyone seems to hate) from someone that whitelisted me from a comment that also got me a blacklist addition. So it works both ways.

So far I have not managed to work out who blacklisted me, mostly at the start when I was giving away games with no CV, including the hated Trivia Vault. I've checked while not logged in, so they're not doing public GAs, and so far no one that does invite GAs that posts here either.

I watched a video about college and racial healing, and they interviewed a diverse cast of college students about various topics. The one thing they had in common though, was that they were all afraid that anything they said or posted on social media could be used against them to destroy their lives.

<3

edit: tip for you. actually try to ask to communicate. i once asked for some spam comments in a giveaway description, and had ton of fun! i doesn't always work, but if it does... you'll gonna create more gibs very soon! :D

Few times I have spoken I have got blacklisted, it's better to keep our own opinions to our self unfortunately
People using blacklisting as downvoting has to be the most rotten mentality ever, but can't be helped ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Same here, but in todays echo chamber, cancel culture world, it tends to get me banned and silenced for asking spicy questions or professing unpopular opinions.

someone once asked for a recommendation for a game with LGBTQ characters/themes/representations,
i suggested a game that gives you the option to play as either a straight or gay couples,
then got blacklisted by 6 different people within a couple of hours,
by the end of the day or the next one i was blacklisted 11 time,
the last 5 were probably a mix between the same topic and a topic about the whole russia/palestine threads where i said the rules were ambiguous and could lead to the ban of topics such as black history or pride month if someone wants to troll in them to get them banned.

i also remember one time when wigglenose said something that wasn't really the best, and another commenter was like "i'm gonna blacklist you" before realizing that was kinda pointless since wigglenose never joins giveaways anyway.

i think people just get really angry really fast here because money is involved, be it a 10 cents game or a 60$ game, it's still money, and when money get involved people feel entitled,
i'm spending money here so you better respect me and believe in what i believe or else,
and nobody really knows anybody, to them you're just a weirdly named username attached to an opinion that they don't agree with,
and there's no dislike button to show their disapproval of you, so they do the only thing they can do without getting into an argument, blacklist you,

i honestly believe if they add a dislike button the blacklist rates would drop to oblivion, you'll just see the comment you dont like with a shiny RED -8 on it and feel better about yourself and think "now they know they're wrong and in the minority" and continue with your day.

i personally believe that maybe i deserve 5 out of the 27 blacklists i have and i am sorry for the two reasons i can think of that may have caused those blacklist,
but to the remaining 23 who did it for their bigoted beliefs, honestly go fudge yourself, i regret nothing, statistically speaking you each need to host 2000 giveaways of games that i like for me to join, so that's 46000 giveaways, and from what i have seen on average it would be 1 in a 100 games per user that i like, so you need to host almost 5 million giveaways, 200k each for any blacklist to have an actual impact on for the chance to prevent me from winning 1 singular game,
and if we factor in that 70% of my wins were from either friends or private giveaways, the number gets ridiculously large.

in conclusion,
TL;DR add a dislike button, maybe make more private games to your friends, find new gaming communities to host GA for here so you have less to be stressed about, keep your more valuable games to those parties,
and honestly just chill, unless someone is being an ass directly to advocating for the harm of others just ignore them.

for me i only blacklisted 3 people for their "speech", 1 dude who was very condescending towards poor people and people from developing countries, then pretending he knows what it feels like since he is in the same situation even though he's german and in a day at minimum wage he makes what many of them make in a month, he literally had a long copy pasta that he would post on every slightly expensive public game he wanted to win, and 2 other's who were supporting/advocating the killing of a particular group of people,
and 3 of my ga winners lol, because they joined hundreds of giveaways and were playing games actively on steam including my last winner but didnt even view the key or mark it as received, if you're botting at least check the website more than once a week, so maybe i need to chill on that since i decided to ga every game i've ever won when i get my new job and i know it will happen a lot lol.

I think the quiet of this week is simply the post-holiday lull.
And I don't have the energy to write more than that.

Let me whitelist you for balance :)

can confirm, I am not a fan of BL culture, I had made some posts in the past, but the amount of BLs has made me stop.

There's a clique of bellends here. Or at least there was when I stopped posting a couple years ago. Some awful gobshites too. I don't think blacklists are a real reason. If you're afraid to post your opinion because of blacklists, then you're right it's indicative of a garbage community, but you should never be afraid to voice your opinions and beliefs.

here is a 💙💙💙 for having a profile pic of a dog :-)

I have 2 cattle dogs myself :-) cat lovers feel free to blacklist me! lol... jkjk... but yeah something as little as your profile pic can get you bl or being a dog lover on this site. not even STEAM/gaming related.

Less people com here in non-holiday times simple but I don't think most people on this site post in the thread section anyway