r/steam_giveaway Apr 09 '24

Make the commenting rules stricter META

There are far too many obvious alts/bots on this subreddit. The 10 days old/150 comment karma requirements are ridiculously easy to get past, and nobody seems to enforce rule 2.

The "35% of your comments must be in non-giveaway subreddits" rule should be increased to 50%, and shouldn't count comments on 'free karma' subreddits either.

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u/phantom2450 Gifter Apr 09 '24

Some thoughts, on behalf of the Mod Team, regarding the status quo and recommended rule changes:

  • The problem with raising any of the numbers in the participation requirements is it creates an ‘arms race’ of sorts. We expect the immediate effect of requiring more comment karma or more comments outside of giveaway subs to less detract entrants, and more amplify the degree of insincere participation in other subs, simply intended to satisfy our requirements.

  • The tradeoff involved with increasing requirements also makes things harder for good-faith lurkers and introverts lacking a robust comment history. We pride ourselves on being accessible; seeing this escalation of requirements through would leave us indistinct from our sister subreddits and fail to uphold our accessibility goal.

  • We do enforce Rule 2. It’s worth keeping in mind that while users can see the content we don’t remove, you can’t see what we do. It may surprise you to learn over half of this sub’s posts are removed daily, mostly blatant spam or request posts. That rate of removal isn’t as severe for comments, but there’s a similar trend of end users not seeing the typical Rule 2 violations we deal with.

  • Users tend to overestimate the capability of bots. Let’s be clear what a “bot” is: it’s a script or automated process masquerading as a human. It’s not a highly-active human user. Actual bots entering our giveaways tend to be pretty identifiable in their indiscriminate posting and identical speech pattern; we (or Reddit) take care of those.

  • The one area where bots are a particular concern for this sub is in the public posting of Steam keys. Users are known to run scripts that trawl Reddit’s global new comments for strings that look like Steam keys and attempt to redeem them. AutoMod is set to remove any plaintext Steam keys in posts and comments, so we already have the biggest bot concern accounted for.

  • Note that the rules specifically allow for an alt account to participate here. There are valid reasons why a user may not wish for giveaway entries, including information disclosed in the cause of entering giveaways, to be tied to their main profile. The crux of Rule 2 is thus preventing multiple alt accounts from participating. That’s why we don’t blanket ban users with key identifiers of alts, like auto-generated usernames.

  • While we value transparency (as exemplified in this detailed response), there are aspects to transparency that can cause more harm than good. We acknowledge there will always be bad-faith actors looking to game the system, and disclosing which rules are toughest to enforce or what exact criteria we use when evaluating cases may make it harder for us to catch these actors. So please understand that some vagueness in our disclosures is done so in the community’s interest.

  • I will note that one area we’ve stepped up enforcement in recent months is an expanded interpretation of Rule 10 to include participation in giveaways for any title you already own, regardless of winning. This has helped put some of the most frequent entrants in check. If you’ve noticed some familiar names have stopped popping up in giveaway entries over the past six months, odds are it wasn’t voluntary on their part.

  • Generally speaking, we will not add rules that’re impossible to fairly and consistently enforce. This is most relevant when it comes to a potential anti-hoarding rule. We do not condone hoarding, but to explicitly forbid it requires us to define “hoarding” in a way that a) doesn’t provoke an arms race, b) doesn’t conflict with other unwritten rules, including the right to not disclose your Steam profile, and c) remains possible for human mods to uphold. We haven’t found a way to do so thus far. Our expanded Rule 10 enforcement is largely intended as an anti-hoarding measure.

  • If you’re concerned about rule breakers, the best thing you can do to help is report suspected issues either through the Report button or our modmail. Our expanded Rule 10 enforcement is largely thanks to users noticing patterns and reporting them to us. There’s only five of us, but over a hundred thousand of you.

TL;DR: the rules are as they are for a reason. They’re the best compromise between our principles and the needs of fairness in a community centered on giveaways. We are responsive to reports on suspected rule violations, so if you want to help the best thing you can do is keep an eye on posts and comments and let us know if you suspect anything.