Minimum contributor level for using Trades & other features of the site

Yes it would be good to avoid some... We all know

I voted "no" mainly because I found the site by looking for a trading forum for some old bundle keys. I made a couple of trades before I even looked at the giveaways. I know I haven't been around for long, but I really enjoy the community (this from someone who left facebook 3 years ago and never looked back).

I see the trading and GAs as separate entities, I guess. And both seem really reliable. I think the ratings system for each let's users know what they are in for, and don't have to correlate. Some people are bad at trading but good at gifting, and vice versa.

A clear no. As far as I know SG's history, Steamgifts and Steamtrades were merged to handle the database more easy. Correct me, if I am wrong about this.
So SG is as much about trading as gifting. If a high profile trader abuses I am talking about breaking the rules here, not having bad ratios. the gifting side, they will be perm. suspended just happend the other day.

If we want to be fair - no.
If you think like I do and don't approve obvious leeching - yeah

While I think that, I don't think they should be prohibited though.

Uh no, some people come here only to trade.
If you don't want them entering your giveaways, set level restrictions.

The Trades and Giveaways sections are separate and should stay that way IMHO.

no

and no again

Why would they need to do anything with the giveaway sections? Many traders still refer to the site as SteamTrades, when it used to be a completely separate web page, even. You can see quite many who literally never ventured outside the trade forums. Not to mention that if it would be mandatory to give away something for free in order to be able to sell your stuff, that would practically be a pyramid scheme of some sorts.

No, obviously. There are no rules on SG that say you need to make giveaways nor are there rules that say you need to enter them. It's a website for making and entering giveaways but it lets its users decide how much they want to do of each.

If you don't like leechers you can create giveaways for higher levels, you can blacklist them, you can use SGT to set ratios to make sure your giveaways won't be entered by leechers.

When it comes to trading part of the SG, that's separate from giveaways. Some people use SG primarily for trading and don't care much about entering or making giveaways. It wouldn't make sense to prevent them from trading simply because they didn't reach certain contributor level.

No, why would someone trading have to give anything. They would just trade elsewhere.

Plenty of people come here just to trade and have no interest in the gifting side of the site and I don't think they should be forced to participate in something they don't want to. I have a low opinion when I come across the occasional big trader who also leeches a lot of games without making giveaways - but that is just another reason for making level restricted giveaways and the like.

I think will be good to get rid of scammers, but we allready have the $100 thing

Would love to have one for making threads ;D

Access to trading should be separate from any aspects of the giveaways part of the site and should always be kept that way, so no as far as trading goes.

I personally think that a certain level-restricted access to all the features of this site would be more correct and more beneficial towards teaching all the users the main purpose of it.

there is, its not a great one, but there is. users have to have more then $100 full value (after bundle discounts) on their account to use the site. the site was split up a little bit more prior to sgv2 and trades side has its own domain http://steamtrades.com.. so to penalize those that come here just to trade would defeat the purpose of that second domain all together. traffic in general is desired, eventually several of those traders may change and decide to give instead of trade in the future, but by no means should they be required too. so no, deff not imo.

this would apply to the majorityminority of the features excluding Gifting, Support and FAQ.

There. Fixed that for you

other than being possible to display trades to only logged in users, i don't see a point in this

Absolutely not. SteamGifts and SteamTrades are two completely different things. One shouldn't influence anything on the other.

But having negative ratios isn't against the rules of the website ...

The point is to gift games you think are good, if your financial status allows it, it's not a rule that you have to gift games - it wouldn't be steamGIFTS then it would be steamEXTORTION.

And besides, SteamTrades and SteamGIfts are two separate communities under one roof, and have little-to-nothing to do with each other.