What do you think about the 1000 user whitelist user limit?
Before people scream "server load!", do you know for a fact that it would create any significant load
of-course they don't but scream anyway
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I think it's an issue of concept, actually-
Whitelist is assumed inherently to be exclusive, and for anything less so [regardless of the depth of the sentiments expressed toward the people invited] steam groups can just as readily be used.
Blacklists, meanwhile, don't have a direct comparison in groups, and thus are a more legitimate discussion point.
Unless this is one of those 'I SAY whitelist, but you all know what I really mean' conversations.. :'P
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This really is about whitelists. Using groups is not the same. It requires sending and accepting an invite, may lead to unneeded questions, takes more steps, requires resyncing, is more difficult to cleanup without hurting people's feelings etc...
And whitelists may be perceived as exclusive, but I don't think everyone views them as such. To me they just represent the most convenient way to target great users with what I consider to be better-than-average giveaways.
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That's exactly my point, though.
The limit on the whitelist reflects- whether that was the initial intention or not- the assumption that it'll be exclusive, or rather, within 1000 people- and that for anything else, you'd be willing to use steam groups.
And no, you're misinterpreting my intent: I didn't mean exclusive in the sense of 'you're special to be in here', but in the sense of 'this is a group for giveaways with a limited quantity of entrants'.
Whether thats from a forum event, or your personal appreciation, or other conditions, the assumption still is that whitelist is a group specifically for a small quantity of users.
Certainly, that's how things generally appear to be in practice- though, pushing aside assumptions on use, there's certainly no reason someone can't make whitelist a casual list, and steam groups their exclusive groups, aside from the 1000 person limit.
And, how odd. People usually get far more upset about being kicked from a whitelist, in my experience, versus a group that clarifies the possibility of such.
And I think that's because there IS no enterance commitment to joining a whitelist, so when you get booted, people on occasion believe they must have done something wrong to get booted.
Not arguing your utilization, or arguing that it may be a preferable utilization for how you use the site-
just attempting to note that you seem to be using it in a rather off-the-path manner.
So on the one side, that suggests any increased load would be minimal- but it also suggests that cg's interest in it would be low. And that's not getting into all the many much more generally useful things that have been requested to be added, with no response, and how that makes this niche matter even less likely to be addressed. :X
Or, put another way: There doesn't seem to be any reason to naysay it, but no real reason to promote it, either, given how it seems unlikely to affect very many users.
Certainly, if that latter part is proven mistaken, that'd change things :)
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I agree the likelihood of this being implemented is very low. Still, it's a concern for me so better voice my request and see it ignored than not even bother to raise it up and wonder what if...
As for people getting upset about being removed from the whitelist, how do they even notice? It doesn't send them any notification. The only difference is that they'll simply not see some new giveaways in their giveaway feed. They'll have to actively check the GA creator older whitelist giveaways to know for sure. And it's not that it's so easy to remember that they were once on said user's whitelist. To illustrate this (or to illustrate my bad memory), I don't know if I'm on your whitelist without checking. I wouldn't notice if you removed me.
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I suppose if you do batch giveaways, it wouldn't really be noticeable at all. I tend to always have giveaways running, though, so generally they had their eye on an upcoming one and suddenly couldn't enter it.
And sure, wasn't trying to undermine you making the point, just was addressing your but I don't see why this limit is so low to begin with point specifically :)
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I assume they all said something you disagreed with?
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Lol @ Dan Quayle reference.
Still never did see him walk and chew gum at the same time though
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I'm fine with my whitelist of 150-200. Though I see nothing wrong in increasing the limit :)
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The SQL commands required to check the gifter's white/blacklists have to process the entire list for each person, so the longer the lists the longer the CPU is tied up processing that data. The process itself is fast, but with 10-100k active users, it does make a difference, especially if on rented servers
Edit: The unlimited game blacklist is beneficial depending on how the site is coded. If the first few steps in displaying the game list to people is to check if the game is already owned and then if it's blacklisted, then it saves on processing power to check if the person is white/blacklisted or in the proper groups.
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Isn't the same true for the option to hide giveaways for specific games? This one is also separate for each user, and doesn't seem to have a limit.
Also, among the 10-100k active users, how many do you think will have more than 1000 users on their whitelist?
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I'm not sure you saw my edit before posting, but that should answer why the game blacklist is unlimited. It skips a lot of unnecessary processing of groups and personal lists, therefore saves CPU cycles and database connections. Plus if the entire database is cached in memory then the limits prevent the database size from expanding beyond the available memory quicker.
Edit: I doubt many people utilize their white/blacklists at all, let alone being near max. The forums are the least utilized portion of the site, and the primary source of why people would want to use their lists.
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Whitelist's are for "small" groups... if its already capped at 1000 i thinks its fine...
If you plan on doing giveaways that you dont want everyone to enter it just use sgtools to make something with ratios, level, vac bans....
You will more likely filter half of that 1k whitelist doing that.
And increasing the white list to let's say 5k or 10k is the same as not using an white list.
Most of the giveaways dont even reach 2k people if you set it to level 2 or 3.
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SGTools is great, but it's no alternative for the whitelist. How do you, for example, target users who wrote great comments on the forum but don't have a profile that matches the rule?
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If you know the people you can give them the giveaway link no?
Since sgtools is just a filter thing that only shows the link if you pass.
But if you have the giveaway link you can enter it without the sgtools right?
If you cant put people inside a giveaway giving them the giveaway link without them needing to pass sgtools filter them thats bad, and probably increasing the whitelist is a better option, but still 1k people is a lot for a whitelist are you sure everyone on your whitelist is still active here? some may have not logged for months.
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I don't keep track of why users were added to my whitelist. I assume 90% are for good profiles, the other 10% are for good comments. Even if I did keep track, sending a link manually to dozens of users is not practical.
I'll need to clean up the whitelist from inactive users and from those who may have been added too quickly (it seems not all profiles that look good actually are), but this is something that is not likely to solve the problem. There are "too many" good users on this site, and I'm sure the rate of people being added will be higher than the rate of people removed, even if I worked on this cleanup daily.
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I'm at 914, maybe I should consider going though it to make sure everyone is on there that should be. Things change after all.
I wonder if there is a way to get some sort of whitelist/blacklist checker with rules you can set which would tell you which people pass those rules and it allows you to manually remove them or to check a box and have them all automatically removed.
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I don't think there's such a checker, but maybe KnSYS (SGTools author) will be interested to create one. You might want to suggest it here. I sure would be thrilled to see something like that. The thought of manually cleaning up such a long list of users is daunting...
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Ok posted. I blamed/credited you for pointing me to that thread. ;)
:)
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It would be nice to be able to raise the limits for lists. If server load is or might be the issue some numbers would be nice, in case cg reads this :)
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I've heard there was no limit for the whitelist while the limit of blacklist is 1000, but he may be wrong. I didn't test it myself yet. -_-a
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I'm not there yet, but at 764 users and counting, it's definitely going to be an issue. It's probably not a very common concern for most, but I don't see why this limit is so low to begin with. Wouldn't it be better to allow GA creators to increase the number of users who could join their whitelist GAs? Before people scream "server load!", do you know for a fact that it would create any significant load beyond, say, the option to hide giveaways for specific games (which doesn't seem to be limited)?
I'm well aware that the same issue can apply to blacklists, but discussions about blacklists tend to become ugly quickly, so let's focus on whitelists first :-)
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