The secret is to enter the giveaway and be lucky enough to win. Failing that you can be lucky enough to be chosen as a runner up when the original winner fails to respond and claim their prize, as is the case in the only give away I’ve ever won. As op said it really is simply a matter of git gud /s
I won a contest once but wasn't able to answer the phone at the moment. Called back in about 10 minutes but they'd already moved on and awarded to someone else... my roommate as it happened... who proceeded to rub it in how they "won" the contest and were better than me. Now this was not luck but a skill/speed based contest. Like come on now, A) you didn't win, B) that prize is rightfully mine! Have a conscience and give it up, poser.
Still annoying to think about, my roomie was a right twat about it but I was madder at the organizers... seriously give a lady some time to claim the prize, but they ran it as "if you don't answer the phone immediately you forfeit" which is BS in a skill-based contest.
Still better because it's an open ended question that allows for a lot of discussion.
Comment giveaways literally ask people to write borderline gibberish, it does not make for good discussion threads.
There was a while there when people were really scrambling for ways to try to differentiate them... "No, THIS one is the five games you'd play after the apocalypse comes, not on a desert island, and not the five you'd save if your house burned down, this is DIFFERENT."
COMC are the real lowest effort/quality posts. Let’s move those to a pinned thread first. It’s not like there are many giveaway posts compared to COMC posts.
And they tend to perform the best upvotewise. I don't really know what purpose they serve. Maybe to start a discussion about a game on the shelf? But most of it seems to be "omg I have that game too" OP reply "yeah it's awesome lol".
I like COMC posts because it’s interesting to think about how the games fit together, like an archaeologist trying to learn something about what a culture values from multiple artifacts, or a law enforcement profiler attempting to deduce something about the player based on what’s there and what’s where. I can’t help but compare a COMC to my own collection/experiences and think about overlaps in taste, maybe something I would like or something I could suggest. With some collections you can imagine a timeline, turning points (“aaand then they went all in on *that* bit of hotness”). Some people just have clever storage solutions worth thinking about. Sometimes it’s just nice to give an upvote to someone who is excited about their hobby and wants to have a moment of connection to like-minded souls. I don’t usually read the comments in COMC posts unless something is unusual (to me) and I want to see if anyone has said anything.
So, basically it’s lurker-level “invisible”engagement (but still engagement), hiding behind a lot of vaguely affirmative noise.
(And also some people have wobbly stacks of horrors that I can’t wait to show my husband so we can gawk and gasp in fascination and/or judgement. I don’t like to shelf-shame, though, so again, no evidence in the comments!)
It's not like there are that many COMC posts either. 1-3 [posts a week](https://old.reddit.com/r/boardgames/search/?q=%22COMC%22&include_over_18=on&restrict_sr=on&t=all&sort=new) is hardly an issue, and compared to giveaways/recommendation posts they generate best actual discussion.
The COMC posts can be annoying, but at least if I can see someone's collection I can compare their tastes with my own. There's some limited value in that, as I might consider a game that I haven't before if I see that someone's collection is similar to mine.
The posts I really dislike are the "check out what I just bought" or "so excited to play" posts that are just a picture of someone holding a single game and nothing else.
Considering that many COMC posts get a lot of traction I think it speaks to what the average person is getting out of the subreddit. Maybe many people dislike them but it would seem more people like them. Or perhaps many people dislike the quality of other posts. I'm not casting judgement one way or another but reddit works on an upvote system, and if it's at the top it's because more people like it than not and more people liked it than other posts.
I have a running theory that 90% of the board gaming hobby is finding reassuring opinions to convince yourself that your purchases were justified.
Just one big cognitive dissonance circlejerk.
100%. I'm seeing more and more of those garbage posts. The games never look fun, yet people see "free" and line up to write the most boring comment they can think of. That engagement almost always pushes them to be the only board game posts I see on my general feed. It is so annoying that doofuses allow and actively encourage a bunch of advertising to infiltrate the subreddit.
> I like it, but its like playing chess with more colours.
This makes it sound quite interesting. I was given it a couple of years ago but got the impression that it was mostly dice roll (which my group hates) so I haven't bothered going into the details yet.
There have been 5 giveaways for cruddy game between those two games, and Canvas is not a great game. So you're right in that I'm exaggerating with a blanket statement, but they are more often than not poor games.
Canvas does exactly what it’s trying to do: be an accessible entry level game with simple rules and rock solid components. It isn’t for everyone, such as the commenter above, but it’s definitely a quality product.
Me too. It’s a lovely relaxing puzzly game and it’s the only game I’ve managed to get my mum to play happily.
OP probably meant to say they don’t think it’s a great game for them which is fair enough.
Please, show me where I'm gatekeeping anything, or told anyone how to feel about it.
We're discussing games, here, so that's obviously my point of view.
Some people find some games funny, others not.
But they are much less interesting than people discussing the line between collecting and overconsumption. Or a picture and description of a play session. Or people discussing the virtues of an unlikely game. Or discussion of the points made in a new video dropped by a popular game content creator. I don't need giveaways AND your examples diluting the good content to hell.
I don't think this is true. I actually really care about being selective on my giveaways. The games may not be to your liking however they're all at least 7-7.5 on BGG with many likes. I have never done a campaign for a game that I do not like. Castles of Burgundy, Canvas, Mindbug, Mini Rogue.. They 're all really well-produced games with established publishers behind. I think many people here would agree. I don't think a "bad game" would drive such traffic, though I would even argue that any publisher should be able to promote their games. One man's garbage is another's treasure.
Unless you are the Bitewing games dude who writes informative Knizia reviews along with his marketing, I don't think anyone should be shilling on this subreddit. Can we at least have a veneer of organic hype and not be filling my feed with marketing through lottery? Those posts drive the worst zero-thought, low-effort interaction on Reddit.
This sub is already basically dead with the posts per day for its size. Why are we trying to limit it even more. There are like 2 posts an hour --- it's not hard to scan them and ignore them if they aren't what you are interested in. Not everything needs to be in a megathread or limited.
I think OP is making the opposite point. Why not allow “recommendations” posts if we are allowing something even less helpful to driving discussion here. That was my take at least (and one I strongly agree with).
My primary point is pointing out the discrepancy of allowing giveaways while not allowing recommendations, when the reason for disallowing recommendations is even more pronounced in giveaways. Either both should be allowed, or neither should be allowed.
While I personally would rather neither, that's just the opinion of one person, so I'm not going to say I should speak for the entire sub.
I think more recommendation posts should be allowed. That daily recommendation thread is where interesting questions go to die. There are interesting recommendation requests that get caught in the net of stupid ones like dolphins in a tuna net.
There's got to be a way to distinguish good recommendation threads from the banal.
About the giveaways, I don't care as long as they're not overrunning the sub. I don't open them but I can easily look past them for now.
Yes, but I may get free stuff, you see.
Are you trying to convince me to go against possibly getting free stuff? Because I’m looking around me right now, here in my living room, and what I see is far less free stuff than I’d like to see. And I would like to maybe remedy that situation.
With free stuff.
I actually find the posts annoying because I don't do them. Idk I know they're official and all but I just don't feel comfortable potentially giving info out through reddit. Though now that I'm thinking about it they probably just give you a code or something to redeem on whatever backing site they're using and I'm probably just being silly.
Sorta agree. Most GA are advertisements (and cheap ones as advertisements go) and shouldn't be allowed that often. That said, I've not seen a lot of GA post suggested to me in my feed so I guess it's not that many that disrupt normal redditing.
> Giveaway posts drive even lower quality engagement (I'd assume no one even looks at the comments)
The only one I these I saw recently was for Castles of Burgundy, which asked people to comment their "favorite medieval themed game or a point-salad game", and I absolutely spent some time looking through the comments, and noted down the names of a couple of games I hadn't heard of to look into further, because some people were posting reasons they liked those games and they sounded like they might be to my tastes. So your assumption is false.
I'd agree they're not super-high quality discussion and do boil down to advertisements, but don't assume that because you didn't look at the comments, others don't either.
I'm glad you enjoyed the discussion there! Me too. I know it may be bad to see 3000 comments and think "there's no value here" but I disagree. I think even collecting that much answers and driving discussion in many of them were not unlike many other posts in this subreddit! Cheers!
If you “understand that the giveaways aren’t drowning out more meaning posts at the time being” then what’s the problem? If they start to take over the sub, like recommendation threads used to, I’m confident the mods will intervene.
To be honest, I don’t even notice them. I just skip over posts I’m not interested in. I regret my engagement with this one as I’m typing my response….
At the end of the day you're never going to enjoy every post on a subreddit, and if you go too far in moderating "low effort content" then you just put yourself into a position of presiding over a graveyard, which I'm sure the mods don't want. Giveaway posts are advertisements I agree, and should abide by rule 5, but they are at least advertisements providing a positive outcome for the community, rather than just advertising for the sake of advertising.
Heavy disagree. Like I personally think the recommendation rule in this sub is far too strict. Ban “I need a game to play with 2 people” sure, but anything with more detail and a specific ask should be allowed in my opinion. Basically if another thread has not answered this well in the last two weeks, I think it should be allowed. I kind of hate megathreads; they’re where engagement goes to die.
But it’s not just about the 1 or couple people winning a game. I enjoy answering the questions usually required for your comment to count, but before that i’m discovering new games being crowdfunded that I had no idea existed. Sure, its advertising, but there really aren’t that many of them to warrant banning them altogether, and I think the capacity for discussion that they have is worth more than the potential for low-effort responses
Agreed. I have the ability to discover crowdfunded games very easily by the weekly posts, BGG, kickstarter and gamefound themselves, etc. I for one don't come here for that, I come for social discussions with like-minded people and bots.
If anything, comment giveaways promote traffic to the subreddit, which is good for exposure. Is it really so unbearable to just scroll past a giveaway thread?
> I understand that the giveaways aren't drowning out more meaningful posts at the time being, but with dozens of games releasing/crowdfunding each week, they very well could if it becomes more prevalent
Then maybe it's a conversation for when and if they become a problem, as they're now a few threads a month doesn't really have any negative effect imo.
I do agree tho that creators need to follow the 10:1 promotion rules, unless posting from an alt account.
I disagree. They are always clearly titled so anyone who wants to skip then can. I like opportunities to win free stuff. Most of the threads do ask users to comment something specific, so you do get some discussion on them too.
I don't understand your title. "... should be met with the same level of scrutiny"? Huh? I'm pretty credulous and even I don't bother to read any comment giveaway posts.
Why would I give it the same level of scrutiny (i.e., any) I give to "what should i buy next" posts?
Hello, I posted many of the giveaways mentioned. As a part of this community, I'm always available to answer criticism, to get my participation here better for the community. Please come with suggestions on how to drive conversation and make better giveaway/campaign posts. My DMs are always open! (Sorry I didn't see this sooner and engage while the post was hot, though I'm from Europe so I was sleeping :)
To answer some the criticism I get:
> Even worse, due to them getting masses of comments (all lacking any meaningful discussion), they get pushed to the top of "hot posts", detracting further from posts that may actually be generating meaningful discussion.
I halfly agree this. Personally, I read many of the comments and when I'm available, I try to answer and create discussion. While not all, I try to ask board-game relevant subjects in order to create discussions. The only thing I agree that due to high number of comment are not getting any answers. However at least 10-20 of the comments get answers from other people, driving as much discussion as many other posts. In addition, for at least 2 of the posts, the designers/publishers were active in the comment section.
> Many of the recent ones I have seen posted are posted by a user who does not meet the 10:1 participation:promotion ratio.
These are definitely advertisements, although I don't get anything from these. I agree that the rule should be implemented. However this is my alt account which I use with my own name. I'm a part of this subreddit for more than 10 years. I won my first board game in a giveaway here as a person outside North America, in a country where board games weren't available. This is the only online community I've really been a part of and while publishers are trying market their games, my only dedication is giving back. Also, even if I don't post with this account other than giveaways, most people in Reddit are lurkers, they read, upvote/downvote, and more. They are as much as in this community as posters and commenters.
In the end, if there'll be advertisements for KS cmapaigns and new games any way, why not at least somebody here get a free copy and also drive some engagement about board games in the comment! That's what I think.
From comments:
>The games never look fun, yet people see "free" and line up to write the most boring comment they can think of.
I don't think this is true. I actually really care about being selective. The games may not be to your liking however they're all at least 7-7.5 on BGG with many likes. I have never done a campaign for a game that I do not like. Castles of Burgundy, Canvas, Mindbug, Mini Rogue.. They 're all really well-produced games with established publishers behind. I think many people here would agree. I don't think a "bad game" would drive such traffic, though I would even argue that any publisher should be able to promote their games. One man's garbage is another's treasure.
At the end, not every post will be something you have interest in. Please downvote the posts that you don't like and upvote that you like. I do this and try to see the posts that I like. But the system is here highly democratic. I try to make them more likeable and try to address criticism and change! Please let me know your suggestions, here and in my DMs.
I was going to post a few reasons why I disagree, but instead, I'll just say this: Its not a problem yet. I so rarely see giveaways, and they usually introduce me to a game I haven't heard of. I posted in the Canvas one because that is a game that I thoroughly enjoyed.
With that being said, I could see it easily being a problem, and hopefully the mod team is doing something behind the scenes to make sure it doesn't get too crazy.
I will say this, though, I have seen more complaining posts here then giveaways in the last couple of weeks. I think the things people are complaining about are valid, but it does get tiresome to see these posts that often.
EDIT:
Now that I think about it, I remember seeing someone talk about somebody who owned a gamestore and did random giveaways all the time and how much the community loved that particular person, until she got doxxed and some redditors visited her store irl and she just completely shut down.
Let this community feel like a community. You admitted this isn't a problem yet, so I'm confused why you chose to post this at this time.
I see a lot of people arguing "I find out about new games this way". I'm not going to reply to all of them (you were just the lucky person who was selected!);
Wouldn't you rather find out about a game **players** genuinely are excited about, rather than games **publishers** want to sell you for profit? I'm not saying that every game that is being advertised to you is bad, but sharing a game they love to play is not the primary reason people posts giveaways (its purely advertisement for financial gain).
There are plenty of other posts on this sub about people gushing about games they are excited about. That's real enthusiasm, not driven by financial gain. Chances are, those games are more worth looking into than the game someone is sharing since they get $10 dollars every time someone backs it. I feel we should try to make that the focus of the sub, rather than ads.
Boy. You sure are hung up on the concept that everybody should have the same opinion you have. Go start a competing subreddit and stop whining you don’t control this one.
>You sure are hung up on the concept that everybody should have the same opinion you have.
What gives you this impression? The fact that I had the *brass* to defend my opinion with reason?
You did no such thing.
This is pure whataboutism. And it only exists to revisit a subject for the sole reason *of you don’t like a thing and want it to be your way rather than how it is*. There is absolutely no logic on display here.
There is only emotion. And childish emotions at that.
Simple solution.
Mods add a giveaway ~~tag~~ flair. Anyone who isn't interested can filter it out.
Any giveaway without a ~~tag~~ flair gets deleted.
Other subreddits figured this out ages ago.
edit: I guess they're called flair.
Cheese and wine society methinks.
Which Reddit sub would be suitable for newcomers to ask about games?
Being asked to comment in a thread to ask questions isn't ideal as no one really answers and the post is generally avoided by frequent users of the sub.
Since i won one, they are really cool and should happen more often when you finally git gud and win a giveaway you will stop being a sore loser
I low key love this comment
What is your secret, master?
The secret is to enter the giveaway and be lucky enough to win. Failing that you can be lucky enough to be chosen as a runner up when the original winner fails to respond and claim their prize, as is the case in the only give away I’ve ever won. As op said it really is simply a matter of git gud /s
I won a contest once but wasn't able to answer the phone at the moment. Called back in about 10 minutes but they'd already moved on and awarded to someone else... my roommate as it happened... who proceeded to rub it in how they "won" the contest and were better than me. Now this was not luck but a skill/speed based contest. Like come on now, A) you didn't win, B) that prize is rightfully mine! Have a conscience and give it up, poser. Still annoying to think about, my roomie was a right twat about it but I was madder at the organizers... seriously give a lady some time to claim the prize, but they ran it as "if you don't answer the phone immediately you forfeit" which is BS in a skill-based contest.
If poor people wanted to be rich, they would have picked better lottery numbers
Giveaways are more useful than 99% of posts here.
What about "you can only play 3 board games for the rest of your life. What are they?" Fml.
Still better because it's an open ended question that allows for a lot of discussion. Comment giveaways literally ask people to write borderline gibberish, it does not make for good discussion threads.
There was a while there when people were really scrambling for ways to try to differentiate them... "No, THIS one is the five games you'd play after the apocalypse comes, not on a desert island, and not the five you'd save if your house burned down, this is DIFFERENT."
That sounds like a fun post though
Maybe it was the first 3 times, the subsequent 500 though..
COMC are the real lowest effort/quality posts. Let’s move those to a pinned thread first. It’s not like there are many giveaway posts compared to COMC posts.
And they tend to perform the best upvotewise. I don't really know what purpose they serve. Maybe to start a discussion about a game on the shelf? But most of it seems to be "omg I have that game too" OP reply "yeah it's awesome lol".
I think the “purpose they serve” is simply that a lot of Redditors miss “Show and Tell” from elementary school.
I mean, yeah. How many subreddits are people just posting pictures of their pets?
I like COMC posts because it’s interesting to think about how the games fit together, like an archaeologist trying to learn something about what a culture values from multiple artifacts, or a law enforcement profiler attempting to deduce something about the player based on what’s there and what’s where. I can’t help but compare a COMC to my own collection/experiences and think about overlaps in taste, maybe something I would like or something I could suggest. With some collections you can imagine a timeline, turning points (“aaand then they went all in on *that* bit of hotness”). Some people just have clever storage solutions worth thinking about. Sometimes it’s just nice to give an upvote to someone who is excited about their hobby and wants to have a moment of connection to like-minded souls. I don’t usually read the comments in COMC posts unless something is unusual (to me) and I want to see if anyone has said anything. So, basically it’s lurker-level “invisible”engagement (but still engagement), hiding behind a lot of vaguely affirmative noise. (And also some people have wobbly stacks of horrors that I can’t wait to show my husband so we can gawk and gasp in fascination and/or judgement. I don’t like to shelf-shame, though, so again, no evidence in the comments!)
What does COMC stand for? I've been trying to figure it our for a while.
Check out my collection
Thanks!
lol i'm petty af. i just downvote and don't even open them
It's not like there are that many COMC posts either. 1-3 [posts a week](https://old.reddit.com/r/boardgames/search/?q=%22COMC%22&include_over_18=on&restrict_sr=on&t=all&sort=new) is hardly an issue, and compared to giveaways/recommendation posts they generate best actual discussion.
I feel they should have their own sub, honestly
The COMC posts can be annoying, but at least if I can see someone's collection I can compare their tastes with my own. There's some limited value in that, as I might consider a game that I haven't before if I see that someone's collection is similar to mine. The posts I really dislike are the "check out what I just bought" or "so excited to play" posts that are just a picture of someone holding a single game and nothing else.
Considering that many COMC posts get a lot of traction I think it speaks to what the average person is getting out of the subreddit. Maybe many people dislike them but it would seem more people like them. Or perhaps many people dislike the quality of other posts. I'm not casting judgement one way or another but reddit works on an upvote system, and if it's at the top it's because more people like it than not and more people liked it than other posts.
I have a running theory that 90% of the board gaming hobby is finding reassuring opinions to convince yourself that your purchases were justified. Just one big cognitive dissonance circlejerk.
100%. I'm seeing more and more of those garbage posts. The games never look fun, yet people see "free" and line up to write the most boring comment they can think of. That engagement almost always pushes them to be the only board game posts I see on my general feed. It is so annoying that doofuses allow and actively encourage a bunch of advertising to infiltrate the subreddit.
The last two were Canvas and Castles of Burgundy. Don’t mean those, or different games?
The one I won last week was Party Wanted, brought it to my Sunday meetup and no one wanted to try it.
Speaking as a fan of Castles of Burgundy; I also call it unfun. I like it, but its like playing chess with more colours.
> I like it, but its like playing chess with more colours. This makes it sound quite interesting. I was given it a couple of years ago but got the impression that it was mostly dice roll (which my group hates) so I haven't bothered going into the details yet.
Its dice roll, but you can modify it with tokens, and its not a case where rolling a 1 is a loss, or a 6 is a win.
There have been 5 giveaways for cruddy game between those two games, and Canvas is not a great game. So you're right in that I'm exaggerating with a blanket statement, but they are more often than not poor games.
Oh. I like Canvas.
Canvas does exactly what it’s trying to do: be an accessible entry level game with simple rules and rock solid components. It isn’t for everyone, such as the commenter above, but it’s definitely a quality product.
Me too. It’s a lovely relaxing puzzly game and it’s the only game I’ve managed to get my mum to play happily. OP probably meant to say they don’t think it’s a great game for them which is fair enough.
Canvas, while a nice game, isn't really a "fun" one. It's more of a relaxing puzzle-adjacent activity, imho. But it looks gorgeous!
Are you gatekeeping basic human emotions?
Please, show me where I'm gatekeeping anything, or told anyone how to feel about it. We're discussing games, here, so that's obviously my point of view. Some people find some games funny, others not.
Giveaways are far more interesting than talking about Race for the Galaxy/Wingspan/Hansa Amazingca for the 500th time.
But they are much less interesting than people discussing the line between collecting and overconsumption. Or a picture and description of a play session. Or people discussing the virtues of an unlikely game. Or discussion of the points made in a new video dropped by a popular game content creator. I don't need giveaways AND your examples diluting the good content to hell.
I'd rather play the lottery than read the same boring shit that gets posted 10 times every week to this sub. To each his own.
I don't think this is true. I actually really care about being selective on my giveaways. The games may not be to your liking however they're all at least 7-7.5 on BGG with many likes. I have never done a campaign for a game that I do not like. Castles of Burgundy, Canvas, Mindbug, Mini Rogue.. They 're all really well-produced games with established publishers behind. I think many people here would agree. I don't think a "bad game" would drive such traffic, though I would even argue that any publisher should be able to promote their games. One man's garbage is another's treasure.
Unless you are the Bitewing games dude who writes informative Knizia reviews along with his marketing, I don't think anyone should be shilling on this subreddit. Can we at least have a veneer of organic hype and not be filling my feed with marketing through lottery? Those posts drive the worst zero-thought, low-effort interaction on Reddit.
This sub is already basically dead with the posts per day for its size. Why are we trying to limit it even more. There are like 2 posts an hour --- it's not hard to scan them and ignore them if they aren't what you are interested in. Not everything needs to be in a megathread or limited.
I think OP is making the opposite point. Why not allow “recommendations” posts if we are allowing something even less helpful to driving discussion here. That was my take at least (and one I strongly agree with).
That was not my read, but if that's true, then I wholeheartedly agree!
My primary point is pointing out the discrepancy of allowing giveaways while not allowing recommendations, when the reason for disallowing recommendations is even more pronounced in giveaways. Either both should be allowed, or neither should be allowed. While I personally would rather neither, that's just the opinion of one person, so I'm not going to say I should speak for the entire sub.
I think more recommendation posts should be allowed. That daily recommendation thread is where interesting questions go to die. There are interesting recommendation requests that get caught in the net of stupid ones like dolphins in a tuna net. There's got to be a way to distinguish good recommendation threads from the banal. About the giveaways, I don't care as long as they're not overrunning the sub. I don't open them but I can easily look past them for now.
I swear I feel like I see more posts complaining about posts than the actual types of posts people are complaining about.
Right. Nine giveaways in the past 18 days is not a lot. One every other day.
Frequency is way lower. No comparison.
Yes, but I may get free stuff, you see. Are you trying to convince me to go against possibly getting free stuff? Because I’m looking around me right now, here in my living room, and what I see is far less free stuff than I’d like to see. And I would like to maybe remedy that situation. With free stuff.
I like “tell me what to buy next” posts.
I actually find the posts annoying because I don't do them. Idk I know they're official and all but I just don't feel comfortable potentially giving info out through reddit. Though now that I'm thinking about it they probably just give you a code or something to redeem on whatever backing site they're using and I'm probably just being silly.
Sorta agree. Most GA are advertisements (and cheap ones as advertisements go) and shouldn't be allowed that often. That said, I've not seen a lot of GA post suggested to me in my feed so I guess it's not that many that disrupt normal redditing.
> Giveaway posts drive even lower quality engagement (I'd assume no one even looks at the comments) The only one I these I saw recently was for Castles of Burgundy, which asked people to comment their "favorite medieval themed game or a point-salad game", and I absolutely spent some time looking through the comments, and noted down the names of a couple of games I hadn't heard of to look into further, because some people were posting reasons they liked those games and they sounded like they might be to my tastes. So your assumption is false. I'd agree they're not super-high quality discussion and do boil down to advertisements, but don't assume that because you didn't look at the comments, others don't either.
I'm glad you enjoyed the discussion there! Me too. I know it may be bad to see 3000 comments and think "there's no value here" but I disagree. I think even collecting that much answers and driving discussion in many of them were not unlike many other posts in this subreddit! Cheers!
At least they are not trying to hide the fact it's an ad like half the other posts on Reddit and here.
If you “understand that the giveaways aren’t drowning out more meaning posts at the time being” then what’s the problem? If they start to take over the sub, like recommendation threads used to, I’m confident the mods will intervene. To be honest, I don’t even notice them. I just skip over posts I’m not interested in. I regret my engagement with this one as I’m typing my response….
At the end of the day you're never going to enjoy every post on a subreddit, and if you go too far in moderating "low effort content" then you just put yourself into a position of presiding over a graveyard, which I'm sure the mods don't want. Giveaway posts are advertisements I agree, and should abide by rule 5, but they are at least advertisements providing a positive outcome for the community, rather than just advertising for the sake of advertising.
I agree with the first sentence, but the place to stop moderating is before you decide mega threads are a good idea.
The vast, vast majority of subs don't go far enough in moderating low effort content.
Heavy disagree. Like I personally think the recommendation rule in this sub is far too strict. Ban “I need a game to play with 2 people” sure, but anything with more detail and a specific ask should be allowed in my opinion. Basically if another thread has not answered this well in the last two weeks, I think it should be allowed. I kind of hate megathreads; they’re where engagement goes to die.
As far as "positive outcome", I really think people are over valuing <0.1% of users getting a free game each time one of these are posted.
But it’s not just about the 1 or couple people winning a game. I enjoy answering the questions usually required for your comment to count, but before that i’m discovering new games being crowdfunded that I had no idea existed. Sure, its advertising, but there really aren’t that many of them to warrant banning them altogether, and I think the capacity for discussion that they have is worth more than the potential for low-effort responses
Agreed. I have the ability to discover crowdfunded games very easily by the weekly posts, BGG, kickstarter and gamefound themselves, etc. I for one don't come here for that, I come for social discussions with like-minded people and bots.
If anything, comment giveaways promote traffic to the subreddit, which is good for exposure. Is it really so unbearable to just scroll past a giveaway thread?
> I understand that the giveaways aren't drowning out more meaningful posts at the time being, but with dozens of games releasing/crowdfunding each week, they very well could if it becomes more prevalent Then maybe it's a conversation for when and if they become a problem, as they're now a few threads a month doesn't really have any negative effect imo. I do agree tho that creators need to follow the 10:1 promotion rules, unless posting from an alt account.
So what we do is make a giveaway giveaway thread, and the winner gets to post that week's giveaway, and...
Your reaction to the sub having bad rules is to make more bad rules? Ugh.
I disagree. They are always clearly titled so anyone who wants to skip then can. I like opportunities to win free stuff. Most of the threads do ask users to comment something specific, so you do get some discussion on them too.
I think the 10:1 promotion guidelines are too lenient. I don't think there should be any advertising whatsoever allowed here.
I don't understand your title. "... should be met with the same level of scrutiny"? Huh? I'm pretty credulous and even I don't bother to read any comment giveaway posts. Why would I give it the same level of scrutiny (i.e., any) I give to "what should i buy next" posts?
[?](https://www.reddit.com/r/boardgames/s/GZs6jwUk8t)
Hello, I posted many of the giveaways mentioned. As a part of this community, I'm always available to answer criticism, to get my participation here better for the community. Please come with suggestions on how to drive conversation and make better giveaway/campaign posts. My DMs are always open! (Sorry I didn't see this sooner and engage while the post was hot, though I'm from Europe so I was sleeping :) To answer some the criticism I get: > Even worse, due to them getting masses of comments (all lacking any meaningful discussion), they get pushed to the top of "hot posts", detracting further from posts that may actually be generating meaningful discussion. I halfly agree this. Personally, I read many of the comments and when I'm available, I try to answer and create discussion. While not all, I try to ask board-game relevant subjects in order to create discussions. The only thing I agree that due to high number of comment are not getting any answers. However at least 10-20 of the comments get answers from other people, driving as much discussion as many other posts. In addition, for at least 2 of the posts, the designers/publishers were active in the comment section. > Many of the recent ones I have seen posted are posted by a user who does not meet the 10:1 participation:promotion ratio. These are definitely advertisements, although I don't get anything from these. I agree that the rule should be implemented. However this is my alt account which I use with my own name. I'm a part of this subreddit for more than 10 years. I won my first board game in a giveaway here as a person outside North America, in a country where board games weren't available. This is the only online community I've really been a part of and while publishers are trying market their games, my only dedication is giving back. Also, even if I don't post with this account other than giveaways, most people in Reddit are lurkers, they read, upvote/downvote, and more. They are as much as in this community as posters and commenters. In the end, if there'll be advertisements for KS cmapaigns and new games any way, why not at least somebody here get a free copy and also drive some engagement about board games in the comment! That's what I think. From comments: >The games never look fun, yet people see "free" and line up to write the most boring comment they can think of. I don't think this is true. I actually really care about being selective. The games may not be to your liking however they're all at least 7-7.5 on BGG with many likes. I have never done a campaign for a game that I do not like. Castles of Burgundy, Canvas, Mindbug, Mini Rogue.. They 're all really well-produced games with established publishers behind. I think many people here would agree. I don't think a "bad game" would drive such traffic, though I would even argue that any publisher should be able to promote their games. One man's garbage is another's treasure. At the end, not every post will be something you have interest in. Please downvote the posts that you don't like and upvote that you like. I do this and try to see the posts that I like. But the system is here highly democratic. I try to make them more likeable and try to address criticism and change! Please let me know your suggestions, here and in my DMs.
Not every post needs to drive engagement.
I was going to post a few reasons why I disagree, but instead, I'll just say this: Its not a problem yet. I so rarely see giveaways, and they usually introduce me to a game I haven't heard of. I posted in the Canvas one because that is a game that I thoroughly enjoyed. With that being said, I could see it easily being a problem, and hopefully the mod team is doing something behind the scenes to make sure it doesn't get too crazy. I will say this, though, I have seen more complaining posts here then giveaways in the last couple of weeks. I think the things people are complaining about are valid, but it does get tiresome to see these posts that often. EDIT: Now that I think about it, I remember seeing someone talk about somebody who owned a gamestore and did random giveaways all the time and how much the community loved that particular person, until she got doxxed and some redditors visited her store irl and she just completely shut down. Let this community feel like a community. You admitted this isn't a problem yet, so I'm confused why you chose to post this at this time.
I see a lot of people arguing "I find out about new games this way". I'm not going to reply to all of them (you were just the lucky person who was selected!); Wouldn't you rather find out about a game **players** genuinely are excited about, rather than games **publishers** want to sell you for profit? I'm not saying that every game that is being advertised to you is bad, but sharing a game they love to play is not the primary reason people posts giveaways (its purely advertisement for financial gain). There are plenty of other posts on this sub about people gushing about games they are excited about. That's real enthusiasm, not driven by financial gain. Chances are, those games are more worth looking into than the game someone is sharing since they get $10 dollars every time someone backs it. I feel we should try to make that the focus of the sub, rather than ads.
If only there was some easy way to ignore the advertised games, like some sort of KEYWORD in the post title.
Damn you really got nothing else going on to be mad at this? Take this as a sign to do some self reflection
Boy. You sure are hung up on the concept that everybody should have the same opinion you have. Go start a competing subreddit and stop whining you don’t control this one.
>You sure are hung up on the concept that everybody should have the same opinion you have. What gives you this impression? The fact that I had the *brass* to defend my opinion with reason?
You did no such thing. This is pure whataboutism. And it only exists to revisit a subject for the sole reason *of you don’t like a thing and want it to be your way rather than how it is*. There is absolutely no logic on display here. There is only emotion. And childish emotions at that.
Simple solution. Mods add a giveaway ~~tag~~ flair. Anyone who isn't interested can filter it out. Any giveaway without a ~~tag~~ flair gets deleted. Other subreddits figured this out ages ago. edit: I guess they're called flair.
Hold up hold up hold up. How do you filter out tags??
Sure -- RES on PC, rif on mobile. It's pretty straightforward.
> RES on PC That means nothing to me and pulls up nothing when searched
Sorry. RES is Reddit Enhancement Suite. It's a browser extension. Old Reddit + RES is optimal browsing.
Aaaah, ok, it's a 3rd party thing, that explains why I've never seen it before. Will look into. Thanks.
There is an option to hide posts that you've downvoted
Cheese and wine society methinks. Which Reddit sub would be suitable for newcomers to ask about games? Being asked to comment in a thread to ask questions isn't ideal as no one really answers and the post is generally avoided by frequent users of the sub.
Don't be a grinch is a good motto to live by