TL;DR?
With the kind of user-base SG, or any other internet hub, there will be those you find 'undesirable' and vice versa. It's too easy to get involved in some sort of conflict, so just do what you came here to do in the first place (give games, get games, participate on forum etc etc) and ignore the rest. Unless of course internet arguments are your thing :p
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Some people might argue that blacklisting is toxic for the community and contrary to the premise of this website and although I deeply respect the good-natured mindset these users have I disagree. Talking about people that have good ratios, never broke a rule etc.
Of course we could discuss what reasons are justifying a blacklisting and which don't, but to be honest, does this really matter? This website is solely based on games given away by users and when someone decides to stop giving someone the chance to win his or her games I don't question it. Of course I'd be curious about the reasons and I bothered someone once about it, since it seemed to be the first blacklisting that wasn't based on me blacklisting someone first, but I wouldn't argue about it being justified or not.
This is no charity, what some people view it as argueing about their financial situation and how they are deserving of every single game given away, and when somebody doesn't want me to win or vice versa it's okay. If I don't like someone I don't give them something for their birthday or any other occasion, why should I do it here?
And for the people you mentioned bothering you about being blacklisted. I experienced the same. People being offensive and rude about it and these are mostly the ones with bad ratios, histories of breaking the rules et cetera. They use this website to win games and nothing more, they will try to convince someone to unblacklist them and be rude if they fail to do so.
Same with all the discussions about leeching and everything else more controversial. Everytime the people in question are the ones justifying themselves and finding the most ridiculous reasons for their behaviour, but some people I talk regularly with know how pissed I get at this community sometimes.
Now I deal with it pretty quick, no more add me to talk about it bullshit. If someone asks about it in a reasonable manner I tell them why and move on. If someone is salty about it, get a sarcastic response or be ignored entirely. Done.
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Yeah,I hate when my GAs are won by some guy that is not thankful, that doesn't really want the game.
I blacklist anyone that I think deserves to get blacklisted, but that's not happening often.
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Honestly i think your a nice person. As you mentioned, not everyone can afford to give away games. I m one of them tough i already gave away some. But if anyone ever would complain to me about me giving away free stuff..... i mean cmon.. whatthehell -> blacklist.
I dont mind if anyone uses his/her blacklist on me because i got a bad ratio or anything. why? well its up to them. if they dont want to.. its ok. well imho i would propose they should just set a level or make it private.. but its up to them.
personally my blacklist only contains really stupid people and rule-breakers. and thus far its pretty small.
btw.. i know that some people think that steam is like pokemon (gotta catch em all) and they must own every game even if they will never play it. i own alot myself .. but with time i realized that i just buy games or enter giveaways for games that i actually want to play. since then i started to hide all games that i surely will never play and it improved the whole steamgift-site for me :)
on one page there are giveaways with up to 6 hours. thats really nice because so i 1. have enough points for the games i really want to have 2. i never have the feeling of missing something and 3. i dont need to look on this site as often :)
just everything a personal profit
sorry for a little off topic blabla but.. well i just felt the need to write it ;)
have a nice day and dont worry about blacklists too much.. its not worth it and maybe will make you unhappy ;)
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Blacklisting is a very personal thing. Some are more lenient and only blacklist for serious reasons, some do it for practical things, like ratio and such. Others hate thank-bots and throw everyone who thanks in there. Others throw those who don't thank. Personally, I only add people who have shown bad behavior as users or then have attitude issues or seem disrespectful to certain groups of people. I also plan to have most of my good giveaways with some restriction. I am quite poor, I want my games to go to people who will appreciate them.
Obviously, I will also reconsider at someone's request, if I blacklisted them for a misunderstanding. It happened with one user already. I felt they were offending a certain group, they actually meant problematic members of that group and had just phrased it with unfortunate generalization. We had a nice discussion about it and since they were respectful despite our original disagreement and being blacklisted by me, I removed them from the list. Personally, I would just ignore those who complain while having been shown as scammers, cheating the SG system, regifters and such. Don't sweat it and just speak with reasonable folks who have not done majorly bad things and who don't throw tantrums at being blacklisted.
Also, bump and thanks!
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Was looking forward to Colonial Marines (nah, not really). Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
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I've only had a single person complain about being on my blacklist (and that person quickly removed his/her comment). What I've noticed though is that I can't do public giveaways without getting attacked for whatever reason. People who attack other people for giving them free stuff will forever stay on my blacklist.
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I'm sure it's been said before, but don't let it get to you. If the questions get overwhelming, even the non-rude ones, you're free to ignore them. The main thing is that you feel good about being here, otherwise there's no point, really.
Also, thanks for the awesome train :)
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Thank you - I was struggling with confidence until relatively recently and it is good to hear that kind of thing!
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mm I understand asking for informations about why one has been blacklisted, but arguing and moaning about it, is completely pointless.
If I get blacklisted, I'm ok with that, I deal with it. The creator doesn't like me for any reason? ok.
Was I an asshole? Fine, your blacklist your choice ^^
I usually blacklist who break rules, not activate gifts, regift, beg (this to a certain degree) etc,
I rarely blacklist people for other stuff (the gay marriage thread was an exception, there were plenty of people who deserved it).
Now I add a lil tag next to their name so I remember why they are there :3 This gives me a little more time to think if the user actually deserves to be blacklisted.
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So a while back I started making giveaways. And the first batch I made were public giveaways with no level requirements. And certainly some of the games went to people who seemed nice. But I couldn't help but notice that some got regifted or simply vanished without trace. And I had to chase some people who didn't mark the games as received and it turned out they didn't want the games because they thought they were bad games or because it as a waste of time activating them because of their VAC ban and so on.
And for a while I maybe felt like a dick for going to the trouble of giving games away to people who didn't even want them. And I resolved to start experimenting with ways to maybe focus my gifting towards people who weren't such assholes. And I have experimented with various kinds of giveaways with varying degrees of success. And I have experimented with whitelists and group giveaways but I would feel a little guiltY about entering public giveaways if I made no public giveaways myself.
And I have experimented with blacklisting. Which I felt in theory was a great way of gradually focusing gifting towards the more lovable members of the community.
It's fair to say that that my first blacklistings were fairly haphazard and I'm not a perfect person and I'll even admit that I blacklisted a few people for quite petty reasons while druNk - but all of those have been reversed and I'm now quite consistent about why I blacklist people and keep a list of why I have done it.
I'm blacklist people for badly breaking the rules or abusing the system (like multiple regifters). I'm blacklisting people for having a bad ratio plus something else naughty, because I wouldn't want to discriminate against people who just can't afford stuff (like people who have a really bad ratio and moan about only winning crap games in discussions). And I'm blacklisting people who I felt were rude or abusive or entirely unreasonable (because it would stick in my throat to give a game to somebody who had told me to kill myself). This seems reasonable to me.
But to me things began to seem unreasonable when I made a giveaway for 3 copies of Skullgirls and woke up the next morning to find that despite a large number of entries more people were moaning about being blacklisted than had actually said 'thank you'. And I spent half the next day Being harassed by and arguing with various people despite also being really busy in real life.
If somebody asks why they are blacklisted I don't mind checking if I have made a mistake or looking if they have mended their ways - but when I commit to giving a game away I don't also want to commit to wasting a bunch of time arguing with people.
More recently somebody took the trouble of contacting me after noticing they were blacklisted to tell me what a good user they were, to express their surprise and upset and to issue some vague but malevolent threats. I checked my list and saw they were blackListed for several things ranging from having a terrible ratio to scamming people in trades. And I also noticed that this user had never made a giveaway that I had been able to enter.
I had been excluded from every private group giveaway this user had made and apparently now this user had discovered that I had made a giveaway that he was excluded from he found this entirely unreasonable. Is it wrong to be pissed off about that?
In conclusion I'm now about bored of this shit. I'm considering how to move forwards on the matter and thought it would be interesting to have a discussion and hear peoples opinions.
But before replying I would like people to consider that whenever I have previously posted a rambling wall of text in 'puzzles' there has been something far more important going on than the topic that appears to be the issue.
EDIT - I literally have several hundred new messages. I hadn't quite expected that response. Clearly blacklisting is CONTROVERSIAL or else folks are just really excited about the other thing. I'll reply to as much stuff as I can but it may take a while.
To clarify a few things at the risk of making a wall of text even bigger;
I'll always check why I blacklisted people as clearly I'm not infallible. Although in the past I have had several productive discussions with people I blacklisted I don't feel able to commit to that in the future due to a recent onslaught of bullshit. At this stage I'm reluctant to even get involved in discussions when so many of them end up wasting so much time.
I'm pretty sure I know what caused the onslaught of bullshit. Participating in the 'midsummer madness' event clearly brought me to the attention of some people who hadn't previously noticed my more subtle giveaways. And also I added 'really bad ratio + only making private group giveaways while raking it in from public giveaways' to the list of things I blacklist for which upset a number of especially argumentative and entitled individuals.
I'm not upset or else I wouldn't still be making giveaways. I have vented. I have put my point of view across. I will honestly consider the feedback. I will move forwards.
EDIT2 - 890 messages since I made this. I have read them all but it is unlikely that I will be able to reply to them all. The main lesson so far appears to be that the people who have contributed the least to this community are the ones most likely to get outraged about what other people are doing with their giveaways.
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