Looking to expand my whitelist

Huh, weird. I usually ask before I enter any GAs for DLC, and I'm generally good about reading descriptions. I must've messed up on that one. <shrug>

No worries, I understand.

Np, could understand, and also i still know that my CV will not be much higher than 1.1:1 in the future.
Bye :)

Hi, i try my luck again, my real CV have go up, and planned to reach Lvl 5 (250 $ Real CV) at the early begginning of January 2023.
Also running daily GA until 26th December.

You are so very welcome! Best of luck with your thread.

You're absolutely right. It doesn't do much, when someone uses multiple accounts. One cannot go hunting for all the sockpuppets, because there's not enough time in the day. There are far too many people making far too many of them. That's why I've started focusing on rewarding quality, instead of trying to punish the bad ones. This is why I'm trying to build my whitelist.

I've given up going out of my way to BL, instead doing special giveaways for those I see as contributing to the community, be it in games or in quality forum interactions. Though I'll still blacklist if someone's being bigoted or is a serious blight to SG.😒

It really depends on the context.

For public GAs, it's almost futile, because there's an endless supply of sockpuppet accounts and bots. For every user you BL there are 10 more you weren't even aware of. Your best bet is to set the level high enough to hopefully lock out most of the autojoiner and secondary accounts. BL should be reserved for higher level accounts and only for extreme cases. Someone with a 500/10 won/sent ratio whose last GA was 5 years ago and who has unacctivated wins on SGTools would be a perfect candidate for a BL imo. You'll always have undesired entrants, but hopefully their profiles won't be as terrible as those you've BL'ed.

For group GAs it's a bit different. Users have to be vetted to join a group, so they're much less likely to have SGtool violations or to flake out/take forever to activate wins. The main problem here is that some users are clearly abusing group rules to extract the maximum benefit for minimal effort. They'll find loopholes or edge cases in the rules to contribute the least amount possible, or make a large amount of low quality GAs to boost their stats while joining every GA they can. Sometimes this exploitation is extremely obvious, but the group owner doesn't care or is not paying attention. If you're uncomfortable with the idea of such users joining and winning many of your GAs, as they inevitably will, BL can help, as long as the group allows it.

For invite-only GAs, BL gets tricky. These GAs are supposed to be inclusive, fun and designed to reward users who frequent and contribute to the discussions. But, there are lurkers out there, who don't add any value to the discussions but are simply monitoring the boards for trains, cakeday GAs, puzzles. They'll join GAs indiscriminately, sometimes using leaked URLs. If you BL them, they'll notice and might even complain publicly and accuse you of being unfriendly. You have to be very selective about who you BL, use SGTools to filter out extreme cases, or just accept that parasitic users exist and take solace in knowing that they're a small fraction of the overall population.

In the end, I think BL is mostly a mechanism for you to feel good about who's winning games from you and to have fewer regrets. The risk is that you might exclude decent users by judging them too harshly based on imperfect information. It's a tough balance to strike and I struggle with it.

PS: I rarely if ever, BL someone for their opinions, political views, background or anything personal. I try to be as objective and stats-based as possible.

PPS: I don't want this to turn into yet another pointless BL discussion, especially on Amano's WL thread, so if anyone has any opinions, let's take it elsewhere.

I blacklist bigots, people that can't muster the energy to write thanks if they win and extreme exploiters with high level. Much better to whitelist people who keep the boat afloat.

It's totally fine and it's your decision, but may I ask why? Just curious to know, and maybe I can change your mind in the future.

Reasonable enough. Thank you for your response and acceptance.

I'm a strong believer in providing a lot for my uhhm...guests, using whitelist giveaways as a rewards program for good behavior.

While it's true I started to region-lock a majority of my giveaways recently, it's mostly because I purchase most of my keys from Fanatical.com, which stopped serving Russian and Belarusian customers since the start of the war. Few of my other giveaways involved keys with additional region-lock restriction, like the ones used for two milestone giveaways.

The "I am worthy?" It was more of a joke because I didn't know what to put.

The region thing is because most of the dupes i use are from HB and I started to restrict them because several times they have called my attention that x game was restricted to only x countries, I'm lazy I admit it and there is a section on regions for HB so either out of habit or tradition when in doubt I put it simply

Thanks for answering :) Yeah I totally get that no problem. I admit I have been away much because of health problems, but the last 3 months I have been around the whole time and will continue to do so now, since there is help for my health now :)

So perhaps you will consider me again in a few months when you see I am still around :D

You know, if I were gone again, I wouldn't be entering your whitelist giveaways, even if I were still on the list. So it wouldn't affect anyone's odds.

I guess if you decide on an arbitrary member cap then your numbers would be off by one unless you purge the list periodically....

Last two or three giveaways were on a small group. Yes.

Is this an issue? Want me to bump up my ratio?

You mean your trying to take my post? Meh! If you really desire it then so be it. They are only words that I have created. I can create more should the need arise. I am an endless river of words, damned up and ready to be released to power my motives and ideas. So, drink your fill from my river. Just be careful, less you drown in it.

Thank you! Keep me there as long as you feel I am deserving!

Neat, I remember that. :D Hope you getting good use from it. :D

Apologies for forgetting about entering here, but when you did send, the key would not activate.

Ok, thank you. I will try later

No problem, if you decide negativ. Funny thing... I have 22 friends at steam
and 2 of them are yours too. Next is, I own already for this years, since I am
on steam enough. so chance that there I will win something, what not have, is less.
Anyways have a good day :-)
Edit: egal wie deine Entscheidung ist, kannst mich gerne auf Steam adden...

It is serious, yes. But I think I will not provide further details here at SG. At least this is my stance now, it might change in the future, who knows. I am willing to give more details in private chats via Steam with persons I feel comfortable sharing with, tho. For example, PeteOzzy knows whats up. If he remembers ^^

Thank you, Eve!

Thank you very much and fröhliche Weihnachten :)

Thank you for your kind words.
I'm not too sure if I will ever again be able to game like I did in the past, tho. But this is another issue and not related to the thing I vaguely hinted at in the posting you replied to.
Anyways, merry christmas to you :)