I think your idea is very useful and will help support in the long run. Thanks for the giveaways.
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IMHO it's a good idea even if this misses some cases like deleting won games on steam or stuff not reported by steamapi now getting reported correctly. ESGST tried to implement something like you suggested with User Suspension Checker/Tracker but that was never really useful.
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A poster below mentioned that having a check date would be "calling out". I cannot think of an easy solution to that ...
If the check date is kept hidden, seen by only support, then this does not stop a gifter sending in a support ticket, which is what I was hoping to achieve. If everyone had a check date, well, that would involve a massive support effort and probably years of work. Not workable.
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Yep, that's a good idea but IMO no need to show it on profile, it's like calling out.
Instead, I think the check date shall be hidden : when registering a ticket about a user, we shall be provided a way to tell the date of the infraction being reported (the unactivated win or the multiple win), and the the site shall be able to immediately tell if that date is before or after the last check made by support.
That way, there's no calling out. Of course there's still a way to know that date (by filling multiple tickets until the date is found), but it's awkward enough I'm confident no one would want to do it :)
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I'm not sure about seeing this as calling out because having a checked date doesn't mean you had a non-activated / multiple win. All it says is that support checked you at that date. E.g. I'll always ask support to check my winners if they have a private profile.
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It surely means you have something on record that is not clear enough and worth a check.
That's still being less pristine than someone that has nothing on record.
And not every people here are understanding that unclear facts may be false positives created by the steam API.
Like for example the difference between a steam profile with no VAC ban at all, and a steam profile with a years old VAC ban.
There's a VAC ban record on the second profile, and not on the first.
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Yes, have also had the private profile winners. Have to say that most will make their profile public for me briefly to check if the game or dlc is already owned. But there have been a couple who objected, so support stepped in. I actually envisaged that if such a system could be created, then everyone would have a check date. Perhaps just an annual update for most. Now that it is morning and I am no longer stressed and tired, I can see that this would probably be a massive undertaking and likely not worth it.
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Both worthy groups.
I was more interested in seeing if there was some way of reducing the tickets sent in. I have no issue in sending games to winners who have old infractions if those issues have been attended to. The biggest hurdle seems to be the issue of calling out (leading to finger pointing and arguments) and an increase in work for an already stretched support to implement some sort of check system.
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I just wanted to bump thanking you for your giveaways of which two are for games I'm following.
Regarding the suggestion:
Simply a "check" date wouldn't do the trick I think as - from what I assume - mods use sgtools (possibly besides other tools) just like we do. And I would assume that not every time someone is checked by a GA creator they will actually request a re-roll. As a result that check date could be misleading.
Better would be a list of unactivated/multiple wins followed by either a check mark or a cross, directly giving the information if they are still unresolved issues or not. Possibly directly integrated from SGs database to sgtools.
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Good luck with the giveaways :)
As for my suggestion, well, two main issues seem to be the "calling out", (which I honestly never considered), and massively increased workload for support if they were ever to implement some sort of check system.
SGtools is what I use to check winners. It would be magic if it only spit out the rare "new" infraction instead of the complete past.
I think I give up :)
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Thanks 🙂
Well... I wouldn't see that as calling out: If someone is currently suspended or even banned it says so on their profile. And if we request for a re-roll where the punishment has already been served and no re-roll happens as a result, support typically replies with "already served" (something along the lines). So not only the check on sgtools itself tells us that a winner did something wrong (i.e. win the same game multiple times/hasn't activated a win) but their profile or support tells us about punishments as well. And I'm sure nobody would call all of these "calling someone out". And including that information in the sgtools results would be no different from that in my point of view.
I personally think that the calling out makes a lot of sense to avoid made up/unproven/unjustified allegations. But for cases were someone broke the site's rules and got officially punished for it you could argue that it's the opposite of calling them out if they are still allowed on the page i.e. they bettered themselves... or to just show that the rule breaking has been acknowledged and dealt with.
I'm possibly wrong but I think the only person this would cause additional work with to set it up in the quasi API is CG - I don't think any of the Mods in involved in stuff like this. And since he gave us that API (I know it's called differently, I just cannot remember the term for the feature on SG) there a - though very slight - chance that he'll give us and the mods that as well. Who knows... 🤞
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I don't know if you're right or wrong, but I don't agree with that:
(...) but their profile or support tells us about punishments as well. And I'm sure nobody would call all of these "calling someone out".
Sorry but I do. What I want to know as a gifter when I check the profile of someone is "can I send they the gift without breaking site rules ?" That is, as a gifter I'm trying to guess if I will not break the rules myself. Knowing if the giftee did break or not the rules in the past is a pointless question IMO. I'm usually checking a few days after sending a gift if it has been activated on the account, and I saw no offender so far... Why would I want or need to see a check date on their profiles ?
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I'm not sure how what you have cited relates to what you've replied but let me ignore that and give you a reason for why the following is the opposite of being pointless:
Knowing if the giftee did break or not the rules in the past is a pointless question IMO.
Going by that I'm not sure if you have understood the process of how re-roll request are being granted or denied:
If the winner of your giveaway did break the rules in the past or not becomes very important in regards of getting a re-roll request granted. It actually is the only deciding factor (except from not redeeming a win within a week and therefore asking for a re-roll). Because if they have broken the rules in the past but already been punished for it, then you will not get a re-roll.
Hence, if you knew about a specific rule infringement already been punished in advance then you wouldn't have to bother support with a re-roll ticket. Which also is the point Delisper is making with his original post.
I think your misunderstanding might originate from the fact that you've only done a few giveaways yourself and therefore might not have run into a case where you checking a winner shows an infringement that has occurred in the past. Also, since you say you check winners some days after sending them a key to not break rules yourself you need to understand that it's not about the win from you but the entirety of someone's wins. I.e. if a winner of a giveaway of yours won a game from someone else three weeks ago but hasn't activated it, then this user should not have received the game from your giveaway. That's what checking users is all about actually. So really you should check a winner before sending a key, not after. (Either way, there's really no rule breaking from your side for sending a key to a winner - rule breaker or not.)
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Okay, I was going to post you some rude answer, but I deserve better than that.
Please read my previous post there, just above to see what I'm already knowing or not, understanding or not.
I'll quote again myself :
Knowing if the giftee did break or not the rules in the past is a pointless question IMO.
And I'll quote your last line :
(Either way, there's really no rule breaking from your side for sending a key to a winner - rule breaker or not.)
(this assumption may need further investigation, but it's out of topic)
And I'll quote again myself (the sentence right before your quote) :
That is, as a gifter I'm trying to guess if I will not break the rules myself.
Thus I really do think pointless was one of the right words to express my idea. Please note that the two sentences are to be read one after the other ; and not to be cut at your will like you did.
.)
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First of all, I'm not going through the threat to see if or what someone possibly has written when I'm replying to something someone has left on a comment I made. So be as rude as you want if you think I'm the one to blame for going the save route by assuming the worst possible starting situation, which is you knowing nothing or only very little about how re-rolls work. That's just what I have to go with when you are citing something that I have said which you disagree with (the "calling someone out" part) but instead of explaining why that is you're then going on to make an unrelated argument about why you think that information about fulfilled punishment for infringements is pointless.
That, to me, is just incoherent and doesn't make much sense - hence me skipping that first part with just your opinion (or "cut" it as you put it) and answering to your argument only. And I won't start going to other posts now to see what you've possibly said elsewhere. I replied to your assumption (not your opposing opinion) and I still stand by what I've said before when trying to explain to you why it makes sense to know if someone already has been punished for previous rule infringements and the question if putting in a ticket about it or not makes sense.
In short: "the two sentences" are exactly what I have already addressed in my last reply and I won't put any more energy into going on about it. I commented on Delisper's post - not yours. Now I'm sure you'll also dislike what I have to say next: Don't expect me to feel obligated to discuss anything or everything with you just because you decided to comment on what I've said... reactions like yours now are exactly the reason why I hardly ever can be bothered getting involved in discussions like these in the first place. And I only replied to you the first time because I - without any ulterior motive - wanted to give you some clarification for your apparent misunderstanding of how re-rolls work and why checking days after sending a key is much less helpful to the issue than checking in advance (which - again - is why giving information as suggested in the original post would be helpful) - and you got offended about that.
Look, with all your admitted "I don't know if you're right or wrong" and "this assumption may need further investigation" here's a well-intended suggestion - and I don't hold a grudge on you whatsoever: Why don't you do that further investigation and read the FAQ and the rules to possibly understand why what I've tried to explain to you in my first reply makes sense and why the Delisper's suggestion is not "pointless" at all.
Sorry, I've now spent way more time on this than I am comfortable having spent so I won't reply to any more comments. Have a good one.
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Thank you for your input. I am against any publicly visible information regarding a check date or something as it would just lead to more fighting.
I introduced a similar idea regarding tickets a couple of years ago but nothing came of it. I guess also because of fear of more fighting and more wrong calling outs.
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Yes, the calling out is an issue that never occurred to me at all. None of us need the angst that would possibly occur.
Thanks for the link, too. I liked your database idea. Anything that cuts down on support tickets when they are not necessary has to be a good thing. The time and effort to create some sort of check system would probably be impractical now, given we have millions of steamgift users.
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The idea is good, i brought it a year or more ago too [and i see, 3 posts above above, AmanoTc too].
The answer were something like "we will not implement something like that", so don't have high hopes that the work for the staff or the reporting users get lowered.
Cg don't care for it to say it very direct. It isn't his invested work and time...
One of the reasons why i stopped with tickets complete and not give more as 10% to the public GA's.
All the rerolls and black sheeps, at public GA's, piss me off to say it very direct (= a lot of unneeded and unwanted work). Between 20% and 40% rerolls there, a good/fun experience is different as that at least for me.
And the level restriction is a mediocre way for filtering and hit too the low level users that are ok and don't abuse/exploit the site and/or the cv system. I am forced to set a public GA at level 5+ to close out all the black sheeps that don't have enough space in the Blacklist because it is limited to """only""" 1k Alone that 1k aren't enough should show that something is very wrong with a good bunch of sg (ab)users.
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The main issue with my suggestion is the calling out, which I concede would cause problems - not something I had thought of :(
The other issue seems to be that any check system created now would cause support massive work to implement, so is just not practical.
I am hoping I just hit a road bump with all my rerolls. Those, and a late night post with a silly suggestion leads me here, lol.
If I look at all the winners I have sent gifts to (over 2 thousand), the number of support tickets I have sent in is tiny. I just need a little perspective - most gifters appreciate their wins.
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I don't see the calling out risk.
If someone get checked with sgtools you see old (or new) infractions. So nothing "new/not accessible with sgtools" will revealed. Oh and i seen a comment from veebles that it give a suspension tracker with ESGST that a lot of people use (i don't) https://www.steamgifts.com/discussion/HdC1Y/create-a-check-date-for-previous-infractions-ga-included#pPHy9YO
So where is the calling out if you get the info anyway with different options ?
A timestamp when user X passed the last check (with or without a punishment) from the support would be enough to prevent a lot of tickets and work for the support and the users.
And such a system would not be "a lot of work to implement" and can be set automatic each time when the support checked multiple wins and unactivated wins of user X.
If/that you had luck with your winners make me a bit happy and jealous :-D.
I clearly hadn't in the ammount luck that i would say it is a pleasure to give something with public giveaways. Don't get me wrong, of course you find there nice people too that appreciate a win but much more that don't know a thanks, have infractions, must be runned behind that they please please please take the win and so on
And it is frustrating when i find 20%-40% users in public giveaways with unactivated wins (others like the known green alien have around 40% of rule breakers), report them, which make each time extra work (on top to the Ga creation and win sending + writing/contacting the winner if something isn't ok + running behind a good bunch because they check their autojoiners only 1x/week [or lesser]) and then you see in 75% of the cases it was wasted work for the support and you because the infractions got handled in the past.
And you have no chance to know which 25% aren't handled, so you are unable to lower the work for the staff or yourself. Of course besides the possibility to say "shit on the work" and do nothing against rulebreakers.
For me are both solutions nothing that make me happy.
Because of that i have my own group were i can sort the black sheeps out at the door and if someone slips in that isn't so ok as we assumed then we are able to bring him, very, fast to the door ;o)
But trust me, hiding in a group, to prevent all the abusing, exploiting, multiaccounting and such stuff isn't a great solution too. That's not how i expect that a site should be, that want in the end that people spend money to make others a pleasure.
Oh and of course would all this work unneeded if cg would implement a system that check 1 week after winning the GA if you have activated your win. If not, a flag for the support and they handle it. With a short look if the win is a preorder one that isn't available, if the gifter and winner wrote something in the GA (Problems), Regifting or the "not activated win (to sell/trade it)".
If cg wanted to find a solution he had done something years ago. Because it don't happened it say me he isn't interested at a solution that lower the abuse, the work for the staff and the users. And that is sad
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I suppose it should be relatively easy to implement, and it would be very useful... for witch hunts, that is.
And that's why similar suggestions have always been turned down, we don't need even more drama.
Besides, it wouldn't really speed up the support queue, as they already have access to data related to suspensions and old tickets, so at best it'd just save them the few seconds it takes to notice your ticket is redundant, type something, then close it.
Well, I suppose it'd save us the hassle of waiting for a reply, but come on, it's not like giveaways are a matter of life or death... just steer clear of public (and public groups) when dealing with Steam sales, those are already more trouble than they're worth, and doing them public only adds an extra layer of uncertainty.
You'll just have to live with it, or move away from public giveaways, as the worst offenders are mostly found there.
Or mix and match, giving the most valuable keys in more controlled environments like forum giveaways, closed groups, etc.
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I think I have to +1 as well. I had not considered calling out as an issue that would arise. When I was thinking of this suggestion, I sort of thought that all users would perhaps get some sort of check date - perhaps like a yearly update. Hence no calling out issue.
It seems impractical though, would be a massive support effort with not much gain for this website
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But if you try sometime you find
You get what you need
Great song, btw.
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I've used this in the past but it hasn't worked for me for about a month. Have tried playing with settings and permissions, but no luck so far.
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I opened a ticket in the 'bugs/suggestions' bit of github, but that's a good idea - I can see if it still works for other people, If it does I should play around with my settings a bit more or something.
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Is it useful today? In 2019 marlop and I tried to help rafael to update it link to comment. Rafael started some work to automate the ticket processing but I as far as I know he never finished it and it's still pretty outdated and useless. Please correct me if it is in a better state now. I didn't use it for quite some time now.
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I like the idea of showing last-checked, maybe not on the profile, but on the win-page, so only gifters can see that info (it's only relevant to the gifter of said winner anyway).
That said, right now the average ticket generated is 85/day. Let's say 50 of them are this kind of ticket, and a support staff spends 20 seconds to check and reply, this amounts to 17 minutes per day on this kind of tickets, spread across I dunno how many support staff, it's not too bad. (Probably not bad enough for cg to find it worthwhile to implement this at least).
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always add a poll, 69% approvals help :)
but a public flag may be hurtful.
maybe add a Mods only flag and remove infraction?!
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I love the polls people add to their discussions, but find I am not very inventive with poll answers so avoid creating them.
I agree with the public check date. I honestly never considered the calling out part that would result. In my head I imagined that we would all have a check date, the date maybe updating annually (possibly by pixies, not sure how that would work :)
The poster above you suggested something that would be shown on the winner's page, so not publicly available. Ideally if the infraction has been served, it would be wonderful if SGtools no longer picked this up to show the gifter - again, no idea if that would be workable. This leads to the other big issue (apart from calling out) which is the work involved in creating such a system. Possibly all that work may not be worth it.
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I also asked for similar feature a while back. Most of the concern was focused on the "calling out" thing, which to this date I can't understand why they think it is "calling out". GA creators are getting the info already, but one step later in the process. We are just suggesting it to be provided one step earlier.
Information that would be seen when GA creator clicks on "Request new winner" link could be like: Last checked on: 2018-03-18
Nothing more just that piece of information and GA creator can decide whether to create a re-roll ticket or not.
In the current scenario GA creator is getting the similar information one step later than required, which is resulting in creation of unwanted tickets which could have been avoided. That process is wasting both support and GA creators time. I can provide you my own stat on how wasteful this current procedure is:
Looking at that stat, I wouldn't have needed to create those 11 tickets (52.38% of total re-roll tickets) if we had extra information 1 step earlier.
tldr: I think this feature is necessary.
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Sadly, I understand the calling out (although it was not something I had even considered would happen before reading the posters on this discussion). A few individuals may go looking for a public check date on someone's profile and somehow use that to point to user's past mistakes. Most of us don't care about this, but a few will cause issues and fighting. I understand that this should be avoided.
I do like your suggestion that a check date can be shown to the giveaway creator when requesting a new winner. This information cannot be seen by anybody else, and will avoid those tickets that might be sent to check for an infraction that is earlier than the check date. Like you, most of my tickets are about historical unactivated wins and multiple wins. Likely most have already been addressed and the result is unnecessary work for support, plus a delay for the winner to get their game.
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You speak out what i think and your suggestion how the "one step further" info sharing would be practicable is great.
I stand fully behind all your sentences and the exact way to implement it.
My stats would be around the same from the percentage but with 175 reroll tickets much more wasted time in the end
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I will say upfront that I have no computer skills, no idea of how they work, the coding and software involved, so I hope this suggestion will not be a stupid one. Can a check date be created for a user when an old unactivated win or multiple win shows up on their Steamgifts profile?
If this is possible, then a check date is created when a winner is investigated by support. This date could be shown on the Steamgift profile. When this winner next wins a game the new gifter can see this check date, can see that it is after any infractions and be confident that their winner has served his suspension or been cleared. The winner can then be sent his gift without another support ticket.
Initially this would be more work for support - if a query is sent for an old unactivated win, then support would have to check both unactivated and multiple win history to create the check date. Hopefully it would massively cut down later tickets.
This discussion arises out of my recent spate of public gifting. A lot of recent gifting of mine has been to the Unlucky 7 group - I like the concept of gifting to those with few wins. But I decided to dedicate a bunch of games to the general Steamgifts population for a change. Wow, the first 4 games were sent to levels 0 through 3. I had 3 rerolls :( One of the new winners also got rerolled. Another game is in flux - the winner did not seem to want it and some successive winners have also been rerolled.
I do not want to be a level snob ... to gift only to those on higher levels. I still want to gift my unwanted games to those who want to play them, no matter what level they are on. And I have another batch of unwanted/spare games that need homes ...
So in case the above suggestion is utter rubbish, I have gifts :)
Level 0 https://www.steamgifts.com/giveaway/bOFNM/tabletop-playground
Level 1 https://www.steamgifts.com/giveaway/kI9f7/the-haunted-island-a-frog-detective-game
Level 2 https://www.steamgifts.com/giveaway/YP5UI/frog-detective-2-the-case-of-the-invisible-wizard
Level 3 https://www.steamgifts.com/giveaway/IocJj/zwei-the-arges-adventure
Level 4 https://www.steamgifts.com/giveaway/5NkNt/still-there
It's late, I am tired and have an early shift tomorrow, so will try to address any gifting mistakes when I get on tomorrow.
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