It's a great job to do, I would love to help with the giveaway, but only got times during the weekends.

Now when you mention I don't think anyone demands from maintainer to be here 24/7. Even checking and granting requests once or twice a week would be ok.

Maybe let the giveaway be done jointly by 2 or 3 peeps.

eg. Lone_Scout and 2 other volunteers.

I think that's reasonable.

Let's see if we can get the Community Giveaway running again by May... It's always good to have helping hands. One doesn't know what RL will bring, so any volunteers to help in specific moments or with certain parts of it will be welcome.
Speaking about asking for help, does anybody here have a copy of the rules of the previous giveaway?

Before starting a new thread and posting any rules, I'd like to ask your opinion about 3 points (a major rule change and two points that might need a better clarification) I think we should clear out before starting. I'll try to stick to the old rules in any other terms.

#1: "Cooldowns" - I have been thinking about this rule change for a while. The idea would be substituting the "one game per calendar month" by this rule:
-Users that are granted any non-daggered key will enter a fixed "cooldown period" of 28 or 30 days (period length yet to be decided, if it finally applies). During that time they can't be granted any other key (excepting daggered ones, that have no restriction) Nominating other users is also possible for a user on cooldown.
-Tracking this cooldown dates means some extra work for the GA administrator, but I think it won't really be so hard to manage.
-Instead of having a list of the current month's giftees, it would be a list of the users on cooldown, along with the cooldown expiry date, if there's room for it.
-Cooldown times would be considered since the request was actually made, not since the gift was granted.
-In any case, regardless if we set this new rule or stick to the old rule, all dates would be considered attending to my timezone, i.e. CEST

#2: Multiple requests per post. There has been a slight controversy about users that request a list of games in order of preference. The general rule would be not allowing it and limiting requests to one per post. However, there can be a few times (like when Doc goes on a mad gifting spree...) when that restriction might be temporarily disabled, to my discretion.

#3: Banned users: Since the previous giveaway rules have been deleted, so did this list with them (it can probably be recovered as well as the rules, tho). Although I don't know the specific reasons for banning in every case, I'm sure finkleroy had fair objective reasons for any of the cases. So the question is: Should we keep the bans on these users, give a general amnesty, or is there anyone on that list that could deserve a second chance?

Feel free to share your opinions and thanks for your trust and help.

I'd just think on...

... the ability to participate in the giveaway has been based on forum engagement... and... being on the forum, the giveaway also encouraged additional GOG engagement.

An internet app or off-site giveaway is a different animal.

Not saying the change is wrong... just that it doesn't necessarily add to community engagement on GOG.

So is the giveaway primarily about giving away games or driving forum traffic and engagement? If it's just about games, I do believe Finkleroy's off-site giveaway still accepts and gives away GOG games.

You mean like a rolling cooldown per-person instead of a fixed calender? I don't mind the concept but really whatever is simplest is probably going to be more sustainable.

Not sure about that one. Aside from the fact it's often viewed as "queue jumping", some people were posting +15-20x requests in order of preference during a "big" month, which aside from being unfair also massively adds to the maintainer's workload. Eg, if someone posts a list of 15x requested games and is 16th place in the queue, and every game has been requested it's the same amount of work on the maintainer to process just that one person's requests as everyone else's that went before combined. If that becomes popular and everyone starts asking 3-15 games per post to "reserve their place", it's going to massively bog it down, literally multiplying the workload. Keeping things simple is definitely the best way. Personally I'd be happy with one request per post as it does encourage people to scroll up and check to see if their requested game has gone before posting (something I've always personally done) and that in turn makes life much easier for the maintainer.

There were a few users caught scamming and even reselling keys, so definitely retain bans there or you'll end up getting targeted by scammers. I can't remember the names exactly but I do remember that most of those who were banned in the giveaways were never seen of again on the forum, ie, they were only here to scam games. It's certainly unfair to the generous key donors to knowingly give their donated keys to people who stole them in the past.

Then I'm in if Gogers agree.

Here you go
I'm still against this idea. It complicates matters for both the admin and users and is likely to make for a lot of early requests. And both methods still restrict to a game per month, but on top of being much simpler, keeping it to calendar month also doesn't turn leaving it later in one month, or not being around right at the start of the month, into a permanent "penalty" in subsequent months.
Fair enough. Normally single request, but when it's a rush and posts are likely to be written at the same time and, even more importantly, the new page bug may be triggered, making posts invisible for some time, the limit should be increased, I was suggesting 3.

I think a cooldown like this might cause some unexpected/undesirable effects. Consider for example a user who has missed some big key drops, and later picks something from the remaining keys. Having a 1-month cooldown starting from that date would effectively penalize that user, since their cooldown would still be "on" when other people's cooldowns (people who requested during the big keydrops) would already be over. It might lead to users having to plan ahead when to request keys just to optimize their cooldown periods.

[Edit: I notice that Cavalary also wrote about this potential effect]

Thanks for your thoughts, pals!

To sum up a few things:

-Thanks! Any help is welcome. However, distributing the work into many people without knowing the real needs of it might end up resulting in a bad organization. I will see what issues I need help with when we start the new edition and I'll count on you for it.
In any case, keep in mind that if you are collaborating in a task that involves the granting, distribution of keys or similar, you would have to refuse to request any keys or be eligible for nominations while you carry out that task. Otherwise, it would give you an unfair advantage over other users.

-The discord giveaway and the upcoming community giveaway are not excluding at all. They are different giveaways in different platforms. I advice you to continue dropping your non-GOG keys to finkleroy and a few GOG ones as well if you want. After all the work he's done for this community, I wish him the best success in this new stage of the giveaway, even if I like discord as much as a kick in the balls.

-Both Cavalary and finkleroy have provided a backup of the old rules, so we have a template to start with. Yay!

-The cooldowns idea was meant to provide a fairer distribution of the gifts, keeping them available for longer, giving more people the chance to get the games they wish and avoiding situations like users snatching any "leftovers" by the end of the month. However, the idea doesn't seem very popular and, giving it a second thought, keeping the old rule is enough to begin managing the giveaway, no need to add any extra work. So I'll keep a possible implementation of that rule change "on cooldown"

-The request rule will be: Only one request per post. If there's a temporary exception and the limit is increased for any reason I'll let everyone know.

-Banned users will remain banned for now.

I'm waiting till the May. Good luck :)

Sure, no problem. Tell me when you need it.

Of course, and it only makes sense that it has to be that way.

Nothing wrong with "snatching" at the end of the month from where I'm standing. Yes, it may imply that the request was made because nothing better came along while someone waiting for the start of the next month may have a very high interest, but one would assume that the user requesting at the end of the month has at least some interest in that game and, either way, they didn't request anything else that month, while one waiting for the start of the next month already did get one game out of those available during the month that's just ending and are essentially hoping to get a second from that same month's donations (or had gotten two from the previous month's donations and ended up needing to wait to get one from that month's).
... Probably explained in a too convoluted manner, but hope you can get what I mean.