The ideas itself are good because the graveyard members (inactive in sg since years) make it difficult to check member stats, know how many real (= at least a bit active) members are in the group, how the real numbers for wishlisted games in the groups are etc..
Obviously these accounts would not be able to enter SteamGifts in the future
Sadly wrong. Permanent suspended users can come back after 1 year.
Happened multiple times with multiaccounters (that need then to delete the other accounts) and autojoiners (that were "only" perma suspended for unactivated wins 4 or 5x ... and autojoiner tickets to this member were never checked. Of course the user needed to activate all missing games [which was cheaper from trading/buying as 1 year+ before]).
One multiaccounter done as first thing when he were back..... AUTOJOINING (and as far as i know he still do it till now). Was a very funny thing for my group members. Partly because it shows that such $§"!%/$ shady people can come back and aren't controlled/observed in any way.
One of the biggest reasons why i made a 2 years+ break with hunting the cheaters and after this only hunt the ones down that jump into my spotlight (mostly because of applications for my group). You invest more lifetime to get them perma suspended as they are "perma" suspended in the end...
Comment has been collapsed.
Ahaha I made a topic complaining about this eight years ago, I still agree!
Some of the suggestions on it
Group refresh buttons! The group creator can force synch everyone's SG account in the group, likely limited to once a month so the button doesn't get spammed. This would clean out and remove inactive members who were removed from the group, but never logged back on to refresh.
Give support members the ability to force sync groups via ticket request, or have permabanned SG members to have their "groups" reset/zeroed out upon being banned.
Comment has been collapsed.
I don't think there is any need for a manual button.
If a SG account doesn't sync for longer than {duration}, for any reason, then SG treats them as not belonging to any Steam groups until there is a successful sync.
Comment has been collapsed.
That is not correct (at the moment).
If a user doesn't connect to SG for more than a month, his image is "greyed out".
But they still appear in the lists of all the groups they were member of, last time they logged in.
Comment has been collapsed.
True. But if the automatic process removed them from the group on SG, the manual button would be unneeded.
Comment has been collapsed.
That's technically impossible AFAIK.
As the user needs to log in into SG (using Steam login), in order for SG to be able to sync their SG account with their Steam account (for example in regards to group membership)
EDIT: As per cg's reply below, this appears to be incorrect.
Comment has been collapsed.
I don't do groups but I think banned account should certainly be scrubbed from membership lists.
People can be gone for a long time (I certainly was) and so time limits are probably worth discussing, but still well within the rules of membership.
Can't group admin kick?
Topical I'm sure but that should be an option.
Comment has been collapsed.
group admins can kick on steam side, but if they don't sync on SG they will still show as a member of the group here.
Comment has been collapsed.
Nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
Comment has been collapsed.
Couldn't SG just regularly sync with the groups on Steam and get the group member lists from there?
This almost for sure is possible, but depending on Steam API it could be easy or hard to code in.
Comment has been collapsed.
That's not possible AFAIK.
The user needs to login to SG using the Steam API (login part) integration, in order for SG to have access to their Steam data via Steam API.
Comment has been collapsed.
The login only verifies a user is the owner of a particular Steam ID, it doesn't actually provide any permissions. For example, SG can use the Steam API to request the information for any user, regardless or whether or not they ever logged in. However, the data returned by Steam depends on if their Steam privacy settings are public or private.
Comment has been collapsed.
Oh.
I wasn't aware of that.
What are the chances you could implement occasional sync of user groups, for users inactive on SG?
Even if it's once a year - it would still be better than nothing.
So users who haven't visited SG for years, can finally be removed from groups.
Comment has been collapsed.
Bump please - whether automatic or manual refresh for group admins, it will help big time to all involved in group giveaways
Comment has been collapsed.
Bump.
Would be really cool to clean up the group stats, so if its possible to do it somehow i think many would appreciate it, cuz sooner or later there will be more "inactive/kicked/perma banned" users in the stats, than those active ones.
Comment has been collapsed.
Just fyi, Steam provides an XML file of all group members (as steamID64 values). Basically:
steamGroupURL + "/memberslistxml/?xml=1"
Combined with Steamgifts "https://www.steamgifts.com/go/user/" feature, it makes getting which users are still in a group very easy.
Comment has been collapsed.
One of the most annoying thing of running a group over time, becomes understanding the group size.
There is an inherent issue in SteamGifts, in the fact it needs to sync with Steam to understand group membership.
What this causes is that groups over time become graveyards of abandoned/dormant and suspended accounts, which no one can remove from the group.
The optimal solution would be to allow group admins to remove group members from within SteamGifts.
Worst case - the user will be re-added to the group once he/she syncs his/her Steam & SteamGifts accounts.
But I realize this solution requires some development effort.
So I have an even simpler solution:
Obviously these accounts would not be able to enter SteamGifts in the future, therefore there is no need to keep their group membership.
There is no sense in keeping group membership for accounts that have been dormant for such a long time.
Even if a person comes back to SteamGifts after such a long hiatus - His account will simply re-sync between Steam & SteamGifts.
And all the groups he's still a member of in Steam will be automatically added back to SteamGifts.
Comment has been collapsed.