Posted October 14, 2020
It was a while ago now, obviously, so I don't remember why he discontinued it (maybe he'll pop in to share) but I think it was some combo of:
1) The first post still needed to be changed from time to time, and the mods didn't like having to resticky it
2) It didn't really seem to increase reading comprehension all that much anyway, people still asked for games that weren't on the list, etc.
Just as a design thought, if you were ever going to relaunch with a new thread, you could in theory create a new post #1 prior to the existing infrastructure of the thread.
One problem (which I experience in my work as well) is most people are just not going to read the rules. So you keep a post #1 very clean and simple, a la:
"STOP! This giveaway is a set list of currently available keys that may be requested by active community members"
Do NOT request any game until you have at least:
1) Determined the game is actually available in Posts X & Y (link to post #3, etc)
2) Considered whether you are an active community member in these forums.
If you are not an active community member, you may be able to request a list of asterisked games (link to post #4), but would not be eligible for games in post #3.
If you have questions about whether you qualify as an active community member, or any other rules of this GA, please read (link to post #2)."
And even that might still be too long, but at the least you want to highlight no one should be requesting any game that isn't available, and by making it shorter (and bold) you increase the likelihood someone might read it before asking or confusing this with the other GA.
Will that make a significant difference? Maybe. Probably half at best. But it would get around the problem of the thread unsticky-ing whenever a rule update was needed, and the real issue that the rules, while necessary, are kinda TLDR for routine traffic.
