Hoshi
Speedy Wing Rush Gonzales
Very recently, this topic was brought up in the official Discord and it got me thinking.
I don’t think unofficial giveaways should be completely disallowed. By doing this, you’re taking away a large chunk of community engagement and freedom. It’s also something that generates income for the network as none of these giveaways are sponsored.
The problem is that sometimes these giveaways end in the host not giving out prizes. When this happens, it results in there being quite a few disappointed participants, as well as it reflecting badly on, namely, the network and the community.
Now the question is: how do we solve this problem?
Moderation of Unofficial Giveaways
For Java, people rarely host giveaways nowadays so it’s not much of an issue anyway.For Bedrock, my suggestion would be that the giveaways should be moderated based on whether or not the host provided evidence of them actually owning a gift version of the rank or bundle. They can do this by attaching an image showing their gift inventory with the pre-purchased rank or bundle in it. If the host does NOT meet this requirement, the post should be either locked or deleted as a whole. That way, we can prevent players from participating in a giveaway that ends with the host not giving out the prize(s) and thus eliminates the problem.
Additionally, I think some ground rules should be set for giveaways. These would be some simple rules like no asking for likes or followers to count as a participant. It comes across as insincere and greedy and is like farming behaviour - which is already against the rules.
An argument against this would be, won’t it require more input from the moderation team or even admins? Yes and no. On one hand, it would mean moderators may need to keep a closer eye on players who host giveaways regularly and check every giveaway post they make. On the other hand, this should already be the case anyway as posts should be checked regularly for any content that goes against the rules regardless of them being giveaways or not. Message and like farming is already against the rules, so it should apply to giveaways too.
These are some of my thoughts on the subject I thought I’d share before a final decision is made. I’d like to know what everyone else thinks.