What do you think?
interesting...
On a side note: No, please don't share this. I am tired of toxic threads.
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Some men just want to watch the world burn.. RELEASE IT !
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Damn it, Archi's playing god again! Gratz though :3
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I even prepared a thread with the release already. The reason is in.
Background:
Long time has passed since launching of SGv2, lots of things have changed and while most of them are positive, I also found some negative ones. Since the implementing of blacklist I've been constantly seeing how the whole community becomes worse, blacklisting everybody for any reason, for no reason, for commenting on the giveaway, for not commenting on the giveaway, for nickname, avatar, ratio, level, and probably many other reasons I can't understand. Yes, I do agree that blacklist feature is needed in order to keep "bad" guys out of the giveaways if one considers doing so. However, by "bad" I understand people that are breaking SG rules, are ungrateful, unrespectful, harassful or because of any other REAL reason they should fall there. Today, blacklist feature is overused, it causes unnecessary drama, and I'm sure that this thread will bring up controversies as well, but maybe this is the only way to somehow point out the problem, push a good idea forward. In my opinion, blacklist should work bidirectional, if guy A blacklists guy B, A shouldn't be able to join B giveaways, and B shouldn't be able to join A giveaways. Only this way, blacklist feature will work the intended way and will actually cause consequences for both parties, and not only for one involved in it. My intention is to raise awareness of misusing of blacklist feature, and encourage users to "bury the hatchet", or if that's not possible, make blacklist bidirectional by allowing user to (optionally) blacklist a guy back.
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Remove that 'it might be wise to contact them' bit at the end, as shown in your attached image in the OP.
Contacting someone who has blacklisted you might count as harassment, and might get you in trouble [with SG staff or Valve support]. At the very least, it'd probably be stressful for the blacklister.
Nevermind how annoying and/or distracting 'Hey, I'm blacklisted' comments can be in threads (enough people note having issues with it), when they're actually relevant to the topic at hand.
Finally:
This is a fantastically horrible idea. Everyone I've blacklisted is a scammer, bigot, or bully- not someone I've just been mildly piqued by.
Your design here, while well-intentioned and good in the hands of positive-minded people, is bound to cause more grief than good.
The main reason is, most people with good intentions won't waste their time using the tool;
While those who are looking to cause problems, will.
Just remember whatever negative effects this causes, are on your head- and then ask yourself, is allowing a small handful of positive-minded users more information worth causing other positive users grief?
Not that your justifications or belief that blacklisting should be two-way are in any way flawed, just, I don't think this is the way to 'fix' the issues at hand.
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I can still provide access to the tool on-demand, only to selected number of people. Even if I'm going to release it, it's not going to be open-sourced script, so I can stop the crisis if needed.
Although, as you probably guessed already, I'm not stupid to do something without considering the consequences. I still do consider them, although I'm not yet sure what I'll do.
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I apologize, I interpreted the comment I replied to, as you indicating you'd already released it.
Still, a bad idea :X
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Damn it, Archi's playing MLK again! I made a SCRIPT TODAY!
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So you've prepared a nuclear drama bomb to bully cg into making a change, or what? Sounds classy. "I know it hurts now, but you'll all thank me later when you're dying of radiation sickness, trust me."
"The intended way". Spoiler: the blacklist works as intended. That you don't like how people use it is an entirely different matter. Is there any reason you couldn't do this feature request without any reference to a drama generator?
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I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic or not, but look at suggestions category on the left and then compare how many of them were actually considered.
Also, I put it wrong (and corrected already), I can't force anyone into doing anything. Rather encourage or push somebody to do something. That sounds better.
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You're the worst kind of entitled user: the kind that's willing to actively cause trouble for others to get their way. That there isn't enough time (or inclination) to implement all suggestions just means that you can't always get what you want. Excuse me for getting prickly about it, but I program for a living, and I'm now imagining that I had a site and a user base composed entirely of people like you. It would be a living hell, and there would be zero reason to even continue trying to please everyone all the time -- or rather, please the people most willing and able to make things difficult for me.
Besides, your idealism is a crock. Suppose the blacklist was made bidirectional, or you got free skittles, or whatever demands you want to attach to the drama generator -- would that somehow cause the tool to produce less drama? It seems completely unrelated. I can't imagine anyone going "thanks to our lord and savior Archi the blacklist is now fair, so I will no longer raise a stink over particular blacklists". You'd simply have more drama with no added benefits other than "your" feature getting implemented.
A version that mentions no names (as suggested elsethread) would be one thing, if it produced little server load -- you would still get people whining about why they're blacklisted, but at least they couldn't easily make it personal. But a version that spits out "here's the folks that have blacklisted you, oh I wonder whatever you are going to do with this information" is just punishing cg for not making everyone's blacklist public. That would be fairly trivial to implement, so it's worth considering that maybe that's not what he wanted to implement... for a good reason.
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I agree with your point that names would cause drama, and that's one of the reasons why this thread exists, instead of the tool. However I don't agree with your second statement that it won't make anything good. I think that current blacklist system is not fair, and therefore should be changed. Nobody has to agree with me, and please, nobody has to do anything with it. It's my opinion, and it's just that. Now I may decide to make something like that, to partially achieve what I initially wanted, which is still fully legal and acceptable in terms of site ToS, as everything what is coded is based on publicly available functions and data, that can be automated in order to produce results.
I could as well program a thing that would tell me how many bad rats people win on average, or how many people get suspension because of giving away fake games. Would that be okay with you? Of course it would, because you don't have anything against that. And this is the same case, just with a small exception that you don't agree this time.
You don't have to agree, hence, you don't even have to use my tool. I wish you won't, because why would you do that if you don't agree with my point? However, yes, other people DO appreciate such "controversial" result, just to make blacklist more fair by partiallty implement mentioned bi-directionality. The tool is for those people, and for those who are just curious. I do believe that people SHOULD know who blacklisted them. So they can blacklist them back, if they consider doing so.
Of course, again, that's my opinion and you don't have to agree with me. I'm a developer myself, as you probably guessed, so I know how these things work as well. We have different opinions, hell, it would be strange if we had the same ones. Just leave it as it is, no need to start another sub-drama and bringing arguments.
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I see. Your reply to my arguments (which are those things that we're supposed to bring to a discussion, which is the thing you started) is "well that's just like, your opinion, man".
I agree that we're done in that case.
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Discussion ends when somebody is out of arguments, in this case, people try to bring up the most absurdal shit they can think of, and from that point the discussion is changed into a pure drama of people shouting at each other.
I'm still learning when is the right moment to stop a discussion with somebody, to avoid situation pointed above. That's why I sometimes avoid a reply because I know that it would cause more harm than good and no new arguments would be brought.
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Or 100% Orange Juice
Also, HAH mandrill, whatchu gonna do about that? Now the reply you're writing about is above MINE! :3
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That won, hahaha :3. I'd whitelist you the second time :3
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That's fine, but what you should not do is first reply to someone's arguments in a way that could itself be replied to, and then add "but let's leave it as it is now". This comes off as a petty way to have the last word. If you want to end a discussion, do it with a single message that just says something to the effect of "I'm going to leave it here, we're just not going to see eye to eye", so both sides can bow out gracefully -- if they still continue then, it's their problem.
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That reply above mine somewhere up there is hilarious.
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Are you saying I'm funny? Funny, like I'm a clown? I amuse you?
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... Yeah I had to edit this was getting out of hand :P
But thanks to you for trying to have a sensible discussion. I've reached the point where I can't stand this anymore, if I don't leave now I think I'll have to silently press some buttons without consequences.
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Please don't! You should only ever push buttons that have consequences!
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See? Now you think of it, if we were in some other thread you could blindly do that without even thinking for one second.
The "raise awareness" tactic is working :3. Even if I decide to do nothing and close the thread, I achieved something today!
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You've set the bar pretty low there. Try to achieve at least ⑨ awesome things every day.
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No. You really misunderstand. I do think before using that button, I always did. Because there are consequences -- yeah, I even consider them consequences when only affect others. Strange, hu?
But to me, a blacklist feature where the blacklisted will not be notified is infinitely more useful. You would like to talk it out and make peace with everyone instead of just not liking them? Fine, but that's not my way. When someone behaves like a hopeless unreasonable ass in a discussion (may not even with me!), then I don't need that discussion. I can just "not like" that person. And I sure as hell don't want to explain why I don't like him.
You want symmetry? Fine. The symmetry to my blacklist is my whitelist. Because another button "without consequences" leads there, and I (mostly) use it in the same silent way.
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I don't want to be offensive but talking about your whitelist symetry while not making any whitelist giveaway since 2 years of joining sounds really silly to me. That's the point I was talking about, running out of arguments and bringing everything possible. I'm going to leave it here.
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That earns you another "wow". You really believe that, do you? ... So you made it after all.
Edit: Oh you ninja-edited the 2 years in ... fine. So here's to help your reading comprehension ... an argument can be a general view and not be specifically about me even if I say "my". (And if you are already stalking, do it right. There's been a long phase where I haven't given away anything at all, and I've only really been active for the last few months.)
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That was really fun, for a second it seemed it will end on a shooting hell.
Didn't watch the film
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The best thing is that this part was actually improvised. Only the two guys talking to each other knew what the scene was about, the reactions of the rest of the actors is unscripted.
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That's awesome! Indeed faces of the crew seem really surprised.
But probably they really knew if the scene was about a discussion > argument, or a gunfire with characters dying. At least a hint.
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And going ape shit would actually make people rethink the consequences of blacklisting somebody instead of blindly clicking the button.
Yes, I want this, this is my objective. We want to go ape shit.
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And that leads to my objective of having bi-directional blacklist for those who want it.
I can't see why somebody would blacklist X if he found out that he blacklisted user Y. 99% of cases will be blacklisting just because that guy blacklisted you. Would you blacklist any of mentioned guys in the OP just because they blacklisted me?
Although I may be wrong.
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Exactly. I think it's fair that I can't join their giveaways, and they can't join mine. That's the main objective, knowing "the names" is only a requirement for achieving that today. A requirement that cg may change just by implementing that thing natively.
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I have mixed feelings as well, that's why I decided to create the thread firstly so somebody from the staff may actually give me a hint what they think prior to opening the pandora's box. Although on the other hand this could actually force them to change blacklist feature the way I want it, so in long-term this would have positive effect.
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Wow ... just wow.
[...] force them to change [...] the way I want [...], so [...] this would have positive effect
I'm not sure you wanted to say that.
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I did want. Other users suggested that feature as well in the past, I would just push somebody to actually do something. Making suggestion thread number #2830 wouldn't help.
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Yeah but you do realize there's a difference in
- asking or influencing someone to do something that many people want
- and forcing someone to do something that you want?
... I don't want to split hairs over this, I just thought your choice of words was a little unfortunate.
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Well, indeed, "force" is a bad word. More like "encouraging" somebody to do something in order to not need a third-party tools like this one. You got the point.
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Yep, and people raise riots to change things. In riot 99.9% of people hurted by it are not even in 1% responsible for goverment decisions, yet stupid people do that to raise awareness. It works, sometimes.
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I'm pretty sure neither of us are arguing your sentiments, just your phrasing :P
It comes across rather arrogant and destructive in tone.
Mind you, writing things clearly is really hard for me, as well, so I'm not picking at you for it.
Just trying to point out how it could be interpreted.
Also, riots historically only occur after extreme social events [such as a brutal crime, a war, etc], or a long history of failed attempts at change.
While SG staff appears to be pretty darn lousy at updating their site with even minor things, I'm not sure it's at a 'riot' stage yet :P
Somehow, it doesn't seem extreme enough an issue for that, besides :X
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Well, I'm not native english speaker, so I have no doubt that some people, especially those who speak english for whole day, may get my words in wrong way. Especially when you add different cultures and opinions to that.
That's why I considered to change my phrasing a bit, as it was not my intention to destroy SG or do anything forcibly. Rather raising awareness and pointing out the problem.
And I'm glad we didn't need to start the drama about that :3.
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Oh, no, sorry if drama was implied.
Seemed like it wasn't intentional, just kinda sounded a bit extreme.
You know, in a "I'm doing this because I'm an anarchist and like to create chaos" kind of way. I've known a lot of actual self-ascribed anarchists that spoke in similar tones.
Just thought it worth pointing out, I definitely appreciate when people point out my misphrasings before they get interpreted wrong for too long =O
In any case, definitely on your side in that the blacklist system seems a bit roughly developed at the moment.
I'm just already exhausted a lot by the trolls on SG, the idea of them harassing me over their being blacklisted, kinda worries me :X
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You really don't 'hear' how unfortunate your phrasing is? :/
I'm beginning to think you're releasing this intentionally to cause problems, just based on your phrasing used.
Edit: Written when I thought you'd already released it. :X
Still, bad phrasing :)
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"It may be wise to contact them..."
I think we have different definitions of the word wise.
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Yep, because I'm one of those idealist that want to unblacklist all the people and rejoice in peace, even though I'm sure this won't happen.
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I hope that everybody will get the same message. Yes. I dont trust just any AI. Yes.
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You don't have to trust me. If I didn't have mixed feelings I'd release it already. When I say it's not a joke, it's not ;_;
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You've showed me numbers and stuff. Nice move. Yes. Now I'm a believer.
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WTF archi, how come 11 people blacklisted you? Are they some trollers?
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p.s. my friends always trolling me with their giveaways and blacklists, i'd like to have such a script if youll be sharing it
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You know, people on SG who know me are divided into two categories. Those that admire what I'm doing and support me, and those who hate me "just because I know stuff or have other opinion than them".
Personally I don't care, I'm trying to minimize the second group to the bare minimum, but my tool only confirmed my theory that there are silent blacklisting guys who I never seen or never discussed with, pushing the button because they can do it without consequences.
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Well, that's sad. One of my friends said there are some people, blacklisting other people who won in the giveaways they wanted to win, even when its 1000 people publics
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I had no problem with being in that image until I read this comment.
It's not because you know stuff or have a different opinion than me. You are giving yourself way too much credit. I'd tell you when I had a personal problem with you.
Lol... Because you know stuff. C'mon.
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There's drama either way, so don't care much about that aspect. However it's the load on the site that wouldn't like so much. If only cg provided an API for SG, instead of all these tools having to scrape the site again and again...
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Yep, I know something about that. That's why my tool is not an user-script in javascript, but a service provided by my bot, to make sure that users won't DoS the site, I want to have it under control.
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I really don't think that's a good idea.. Sure, people may be curious and such, but just because you can, doesn't mean you should.
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Release it. I think people have the right to know who blacklisted them so they can return the favor if they want.
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To be honest, the best would be simply to be A-B B-A blacklisting, to and fro. :\ I think I'm not alone with blacklisting people who are surely using scripts to enter, or breaking rules - and while I'm 100% okay with getting on their blacklist, I kinda don't want to get bombarded by kids who think it's perfectly fine to gift away their wins because they won it, it's THEIRS, and in the meanwhile they feel like they are losing rights if they can't enter for my giveaways -.-'
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The thing is not to kill blacklist all over, because that would be a step back to SGv1 times. The thing is to not overuse it and be aware of consequences. Blacklisting a regifter would have little to no effect regarding you in comparison with current system, as you will probably never ever join his gib anyway. However, blacklisting somebody more generous would have a potential negative effect of being unable to join his giveaways, which would make you reconsider blacklisting that user for some silly reason.
And that is exactly what I want.
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You have no rights except what cg chooses to give you.
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Can you check anyone's profile? maybe you could release a "lite" version which shows us how many people have blacklisted us (without showing the names of the blacklisters).
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I can check blacklisted status for anyone, as long as he authorizes me to do the "thing".
Your idea is actually interesting, I may consider it.
And put a premium $$$ for names, hehe, joke :3
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I guess that the script checks a group or public person's giveaway to determine either you are or you are not on his / her blacklist. Since you can add and remove people from blacklists whenever you want, populating a list with persons who blacklisted you is not a good idea, so the checks has to be made every time you visit a new page. I don't think that it's "immoral" to have such a script, but I think that it will affect the website performance if used by a lot of users. How about checking everyone's profile... there are quite a few registered users on SG. :P
PS: Again - tons of replies appear when I type 3 words per minute while drnking my milk and eating my sandwich.
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I'm not interested in knowing if someone blacklisted me or who or why. Surely someone thought I shouldn't have said thank you or maybe I forgot and I should have... I just don't care. It's their problem. I'm certainly not gonna use this kind of script and I wouldn't contact someone to ask why they did it.
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I don't think you should share this. For various reasons.
- I don't think it would solve blacklist drama. If anything, it would make it worse. I'm not as firm a believer in the good in everyone as you apparently are.
- In my personal opinion, "symmetrical blacklists" are not even needed. I don't think I'm alone with that opinion -- but how should I know, there's obviously no feature requests for that ...
- I don't know whether any info from this tool would really be "representative". 440 users checked in 1 minute, blacklisted by 11? ... I don't know how that 440 are picked, but that's hardly exhaustive, isn't it?
- This could introduce a massive unnecessary load on the servers. And I don't think it would take long for some smartass to change the script to fire 100 requests per second, yeah and let's use the complete user list, let's just bruteforce alphabetically!
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3 Users are picked from most active on SG forums, so the chance of getting blacklist hit decreases with every additional user checked, 10/11 blacklist were found during first 200.
4 Already pointed above, not going to happen.
Yep, I know something about that. That's why my tool is not an user-script in javascript, but a service provided by my bot, to make sure that users won't DoS the site, I want to have it under control.
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Curiosity killed a cat they say, I was wondering as well, that's why I did that, and now I'm not sure what to do next ;_;
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forget about it :) blacklisting just means they don't want you to win their giveaways. doesn't mean they hate you or anything. you can still interact with them n even be friends with some of them..
and as the saying goes Curiosity killed a cat but satisfaction brought it back. ;)
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+1 Pls. Also for science and self-improvement. Although I do agree that you shouldn't release it to the public as it might wreak havoc and such. It won't hurt my tiny little heart though. Just curious for my own sake. D:
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Well, I don't care who blacklisted me. It is everyones decision themself for whatever reason they like but I second the idea of Sewaz. I AM curious if i am blacklisted at all. An user could "use" it a as self-reflection tool: "You are blacklisted by 1000 users" is like: "Yes, you are a dick." While lower number entries is like: "People have issues. Serious issues."
But the programm should not give you any names. It only leads to unnecessary stress. Group dynamic works in awful ways. Actually I think you should also remove the names in the OP picture. But it is your decision.
Is this possible for whitelists too? It would be more reasonable so that you may return the favor because bidirectional whitelists don't make sense.
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Implementing a whitelist would work in very similar way, it's possible if I consider implementing it.
I don't want to remove names from OP as I still believe those users can just come here, say "I didn't know why you're there, I removed you" (yes, happened already, multiple times), and this alone will be enough for me to be happy from making such thread. And I'm not calling out anybody for anything, I just publicly say who blacklisted me. That's a fact, not an assumption.
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As for whitelist feature i'm all for that. I have to admit that i've already whitelisted few people on that base and this feature would be really helpful indeed. Yes.
And as i never intend on using blacklist feature on anybody i still find this script kinda cool. It's nice to know how many people think that you're using SG wrongly or something :< Yes?
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I agree with this sentiment. While it would be nice to check our numbers, I don't think that blatantly subverting the SG staff by going around their decision to not provide these numbers is a good idea. If they wanted us to see, we'd be able to. This is their site and they can run it however they wish.
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That's why I created a thread instead of releasing it. If somebody from staff has anything against, he can say that.
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Actually you created a thread to generate more pressure on staff -- to force a decision (that was already made, but not to your liking). If you just wanted staff's opinion, you could have created a ticket. Instead you tried to recruit the community and start a riot -- you even used that word to describe it.
It's ok. But please don't act so innocent about it.
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I used a comparison, if I decide that this would cause more harm than good I can just close the thread and everybody will forget about that in one day. And if I wanted to start a riot, you know that I could do that already. I'm collecting user arguments, and I'm glad I created the thread because some people told me about things I wasn't aware of.
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And if I wanted to start a riot, you know that I could do that already.
I do? I don't. I don't understand what you are saying.
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I could just make a release, show everybody how cool am I and who blacklisted me, without a notice, and people would go with the wind shouting at eachother in notime.
But I didn't do that, I wanted to get user opinions prior to clicking the button.
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Whitelisting is much easier, just go to your "group" category and look for the blue heart :)
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Right :\ if I'll un-hide my owned games on SG, all hells break loose with all the bundle games :D
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Not to mention that it still wouldn't be reliable because user might whitelist you in the past and have no whitelist gibs running at the moment.
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I still could miss people whitelisting me if there giveaways start and end in a time I am not checking on Steamgifts. Also sometimes there are whitelist giveaways connected with group giveaways. If I am in one of the groups I can not be sure for what reason I am allowed to enter. Not sure about the games I already own part because I still see all the games I own in the regular giveaways (I know that I can hide them).
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Technical details:
Because there is no reliable way of telling who blacklisted you, other than checking giveaway of given user, I implemented a greedy algorithm that will check as many most active (on forum) users as possible, in a time limit of 60 seconds per blacklist request. This results in an average of ~420 most active users checked and a reliable result who in particular blacklisted you after request times out. The tool is optimized to do the task while being "gentle" with SG servers, therefore a maximum of 1 active blacklist check can be active in given moment, and one user can issue the check only one time per bot reset. This way I can be sure that tool is not overused, bot is not harming SG servers or my own server, and everything is under control.
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Some nice work with the bot Archi. I believe users should be able to enable reciprocate blacklisting, perhaps add it as an option in their profile so the naysayers can keep it disabled. I bet this bot would get requested by many, assuming they hear about it, but would cause a lot of drama. Nothing is stopping them from browsing people's profiles manually though.
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You'll just have to multiply the result with ~2k - I don't think it's too far off if you were to guess that Archi is on some 20k blacklists ;)
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I'm actually on less blacklists that some other recognized user which asked me privately for the test. And I didn't expect such result. There is a hope. I would never believe so many people blacklisted him if somebody told me that.
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Talking about your script, i think scanning your previous wins in addition to scan all the newly created giveaways would be good, because some people creating giveaways like once a month, and some people blacklist you once you are won.
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Some time ago one of the users created a troll topic claiming of sharing a script that will tell you who blacklisted you. Of course it was just an excuse to make a giveaway.
Did I tell you already that I like challenges? I made it reality.
I'm still wondering if I should open my pandora's box to the public to cause global crisis or whether to keep this little thing private.
No, it's not a joke. It really works ;_;. Although I'm not quite sure if cg and the rest of the staff would be fine with that.
What do you think?
<There was an image here, but it got outdated by now>
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