At first: This should be a topic without any salt, insults or whatever. I just wanted to share these suggestions!

If you ever created more than one public GA at once you see a lot of people that enter a lot of GAs at the same time and prob even post a "thank" msg in all of this topics in seconds. If you check these Accounts you see that they entred a lot(!) of GAs and it's clear that they don't enter them by themself.

So ho do get rid of these autojoin/autocomment users?

I already postet this in the Archibot topic but it's closed so maybe we can talk about this here...

Some ideas for GAs:

  • an "i'm not a robot" button on public GAs (or an option in the creationform to use the "I'm not a robot" option) so we could get rid of all this autojoin stuff (Googles reCAPTCHA service is free, easy to use and don't cause any serverload on the sg-server (it will prob. even reduce the load cause it will stop the bots))
  • less points and/or higher points to enter (there is no need to enter 300 GAs each time)
  • 5sec. cooldown for posting and entering on forum/giveaways

all of this suggestions would not only stop bots but also reduce the sideload without any benefits. Maybe people would even think about entering a GA double time and we would get rid of a lot of rerolls and people would back public GAs more often (I formyself would do more publics if I would knew, that no bot is entering).

AGAIN: please don't fight to each other in this topic.

7 years ago

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  1. So bad idea it will be so boring when you want entry more GA.... And all captcha you can cheat with script/bot (google recaptcha too so it's bad idea)
  2. If you do not need point so you no need to entry if you do not want 300 points its okey no more no low
  3. It will be so boring if you want reply for all your big GA comment... So its so bad idea, cooldown with entry it's bad idea too
7 years ago*
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@MachinesAreHuman
Point 1: Maybe.
Point 2: No, it's fine as it is.
Point 3: Useless, it's very easy to do that for a bot.

7 years ago
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What kind of captcha? If it's a simple "click here to prove you're not a robot", maybe. If I have to do even a single one of those obnoxious "Select all images with Pizza" things I'm quitting entering GAs. I mean considering I win around 1 game per 800 GAs I enter, even if it only appeared once every 10 entries, I could probably buy the game for myself with the money I'd make working that amount of time at minimum wage(Around 1 minute per captcha, so 80 minutes per game, which is enough to earn 23.6$ which is enough to buy most games)

7 years ago
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Aren't you overestimating the time it takes to solve a pizza/storefront captcha? 1 minute?

6 years ago
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I don't like the captcha buttons purely out of laziness. I mean it would be fine on login. Maybe for a giveaway or two but it quickly becomes a pain in the ass for us normal non-bot users as well... even if I only had to do it once a day, I think I would probably start coming to SG less if there were captchas.... and you might think "one less competitor for winning my precious gibs" but it cuts both ways (look at my ratio; i give away quite a bit more than I win). That said, maybe I would finally become more productive lol.

Anyway, I haven't had a lot of issues with this kind of thing and frankly if someone wants to enter my GAs with a script, then more power to them *(as long as they don't enter dlcs/packages for shit they already own). Anyway, if the mods really thought it was an issue I could live with more passive things like cooldowns and/or less points. Just not a fan of captchas in general and especially not for things I do with any frequency.

7 years ago*
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I was reading until seeing the word "reCAPTCHA". Seriously, even humans can't overpass reCAPTCHA sometimes.

By the way, "MachinesAreHuman" is a pretty funny nickname to use on a thread like this. Come on! Bots are machines. Which side are you on?

6 years ago*
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Given that Google is offering an invisible reCAPTCHA, I think it would be no problem if that's added to all giveaways.

The downside I see is that it will prevent scripts which allow to enter giveaways from the main page, or other such legitimate time saving options that don't go to the actual giveaway page.

6 years ago*
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as much as I hate autojoins, entering a giveaway shouldn't be more difficult.

View attached image.
6 years ago*
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Deleted

This comment was deleted 2 years ago.

6 years ago
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but, it's not against the rules 😱
i mean, a lot of people do it. there are even groups with well-known users in them, also they make and post scripts on the forums to autojoin, and nothing is done to suspend or ban them.

it doesn't matter if it's in the terms of service, it's obvious cg doesn't care at all about people using scripts.

maybe we are idiots for not using scripts to join everything we want?

6 years ago
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not even sure why this topic back again but i like your new avatar

6 years ago
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I have no problem with solving captcha from time to time. But it would be very annoying if on every GA.

For me best solution is to show captcha only when you entering GAs too fast. For example if you enter 5 or more GAs in 10 seconds then you'll have captcha on every GA for a hour for example. Or we can put other numbers here. I find this idea are best to me. With manual browsing you probably never hit that limit. Or when you arrive after some time and see many GAs you want ending soon and entering all of them in a rush... well i'm fine to solve captcha few times. But i'll be sure i know it come from my recent actions, rather than it will randomly appear on some GAs or on any every GA.

Also note that here are already exist some protection from autojoin scripts. It automaticaly put you on 24h suspension if it find you using autojoin scripts.

6 years ago
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google offers an invisible captcha now.
you don't even have to do anything:

https://developers.google.com/recaptcha/docs/invisible

6 years ago
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I hate you, and I hope you will die painfully. Captcha is worst thing in the world (and reRaptchat is worst of captchas), how could you seriously suggest it? Don't you understand that this is humiliation of human dignity?

6 years ago
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I don't care, I am machine.

6 years ago
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I feel like this issue has become a bigger concern after the whole new way of gifting on Steam. I understand some people don´t even care now If a SG user is entering a GA only because a +1 on the library, for farming cards, because of auto join scripts, etc...but this way of thinking is (IMO) because they can´t do anything about It besides create GAs on the discussion forums or small groups.

I don´t know... I like the public giveaways. To be honest, It´s a bit annoying for me that my odds of winning are less because somebody is just entering everything automatically or the fact that I´m giving a small game to a person that doesn´t even care. I´m pretty sure most of the GA creators would preffer to have 1K people that want to try the game at some point, than 1K people that only want a +1 library, farming cards etc.

So +1 to a solution to get rid of all the auto join scripts. It will benefit everybody.

6 years ago*
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Closed 6 years ago by MachinesAreHuman.