For such a large community

Speaking for myself, I didn't really notice the Discussions section for the first 6-8 months I was on here.

... Then I realized that's where all the good giveaways were 😝 I discovered some trains, trains led me to puzzles, puzzles led me to commenting and participating in threads ... and now I'm using tools like Jigidi and Lockee to give my friends and my partner their holiday and birthday gifts 💝

I also suspect the recent rules change regarding the international conflict threads has had something of a chilling effect.

Steamgifts takes pride in it's forum moderation. Which imo lead to decreased activity of people on forum.

If you have too much time - this is quite recent:
https://www.steamgifts.com/discussion/npuFO/ban-political-posts
https://www.steamgifts.com/discussion/0NKnq/new-content-guidelines

I never cared a few freaks blacklisted me

In part, this comes back to the issue with autojoiners and bots, who naturally aren't going to participate on the forums and represent a chunk of SG membership (the specific amount is up for debate).

And as you note, randomly blacklisting participants is a real thing.

Additionally, there are a fair few people who see themselves as the arbiters of what should or shouldn't be discussed, who can and do make the forum a contentious place. Humorously, they also often like to play the victim when you hand it right back to them, lol.

And in general, nobody is meant to get along with everybody. It's not realistic.

And the list goes on. In reality though, such is the nature of forums. A lot of people simply prefer to not engage in discussions and prefer instead to just utilize SGs primary purpose: to giveaway and win games.

I might come back to this later to express my opinion, but for now a meme.

View attached image.

to be honest, whenever I comment "anything" in a discussion, I mostly get blacklisted.

Yesterday I commented on a fanatical bundle being crap and bam someone blacklist me after.

This may not be a thing for the majority, but this is a demotivating one for me

i wasnt gonna comment bc its about making posts/comments and since i got my bl pay out of it.. but i couldnt get this post out od my head and even if its irrelevant i wanted to share my experience. i actually cried when i saw my bl count. it was 5.
i joined sg 3 months ago, right after the currency change things on Steam. being honest i thought to myself that i can join every ga with games that has trading cards so that i maybe can buy things i want but even that thought comin to me made me feel bad so ever since the first day i only join ga's that i actually want. im not even joinin if the game requires maybe a few gb more than my pc can endure. i dont have any income and the curreny change affected me sm that i wont even be able to buy games for myself anymore, wish i could give out the games i enjoyed, i would want everyone to see/enjoy them. but sadly, this is the situation.
i didnt know how to check stats. i made some comments and after some time checked the stats to see that 5 BL. it made me feel like the worst people out there. slowly gettin used to it, its 13 bl's now. im still gettin sad when the count goes up but i can (sometimes) understand the bl's. without not being able to make good ga's i probably would get much more bls if i made discussions so im mostly stayin silent except bumping/thanking.
sorry for the long comment but i felt like i need to share it for once and all.
and if im correct im in your whitelist so thank you for that! <3
(funniest bl i had was on christmas, who bls anyone in the last day of the year, honestly....)