Jester award ruined Steam Community and so many other Game Communities.

[Lady Alcina Dimitrescu]

• Workshops filled with random content just to receive ANY award.
  
• People making offensive comments about ANYTHING to acquire jester awards.
  
• Most other Game Discussion hubs are ruined because everyone is spamming negative comments/posts about the game to earn jester awards.
  
• Especially the Guide section, filled with "How to open the game" posts accompanied by gigachad meme pictures, with a ton of awards.

The award system was flawed but nice. If there were a punishment system in place, such as deleting comments for ANY reason, the points earned from those comments would also be deleted. Alternatively, giving heavier punishment to people who spam random threads or post negative comments in hopes of obtaining jester awards.

Valve needs to take action regarding this matter. Automated moderators CANNOT detect these individuals; therefore, they are free to farm clown awards or ANY OTHER award as long as they avoid including any kind of rule-breaking word or sentence in their posts.

Their posts could be unconstructive, their posted content might lack value, and their workshop items might even be mere troll posts with no substance.

But hey, as long as they gather those sweet, sweet points, everything seems fine. And they can't get banned because they simply don't break any rules, even though it's so obvious they are trying to provoke others to get clown awards.

This behavior is ruining the community, making it even more toxic than it already is.
Have any of you seen the off-topic section?

That place is a mess, with tons of people making random posts just to get awards.

[miakisfan]

The problem isn't the award itself but the reasons why it is given out and how it is received by others.

Don't you dare try to make it out like the only problem is the people receiving them. If anything the holier than thou people here should be among the first to deserve the award for their ego issues.

There'd be a lot less Jester awards given out if there was a mirror sitting in front of every device you can access the Steam forums from and people were forced to see how they themselves act as well as those they point the fingers at.

[Stiletto]

Publicado originalmente por X_Decimus:

Must've been a recent influx of newbies at Valve that wanted to bring their reddit garbage here and decimate the balance of things.

And there's been no shortage of users of that ilk who take advantage of it. The whole reddit vibe really toxifies any community it encounters, with the added bonus that it innately attacks anyone who calls it out, ultimately excluding those older users who liked the way things were before.

[Lady Alcina Dimitrescu]

Publicado originalmente por miakisfan:

The problem isn't the award itself but the reasons why it is given out and how it is received by others.

Don't you dare try to make it out like the only problem is the people receiving them. If anything the holier than thou people here should be among the first to deserve the award for their ego issues.

There'd be a lot less Jester awards given out if there was a mirror sitting in front of every device you can access the Steam forums from and people were forced to see how they themselves act as well as those they point the fingers at.

Well as I stated on the post, this award used to make fun of others or disrespect others.
Which people using this strat to anger or upset other users, kind of "manipulating their feelings" in order to get jester awards.

Of course I don't have a problem because people getting jester awards.
It's because they are ruining the platform while trying to get it.

[Lady Alcina Dimitrescu]

And I got my first jester award.

You guys are pretty much able to tell how I got all my other 52 awards.
As you can see stating something or sharing your opinion that someone disagree with is enough to get any of these awards.
Well, the only difference is unlike most other troll users who makes non-sense topics in order to get jester awards.

I'm here sharing my opinion with others.

You don't have to give jester award, you can simply criticize my opinion and tell how wrong it is or you can just "I don't think it ruins the community".
It would bring the conversation more than just an award.

[SqueakyTweaky]

Enjoy your free points.

[Lady Alcina Dimitrescu]

Publicado originalmente por SqueakyTweaky:

Enjoy your free points.

why ?

[Stiletto]

Publicado originalmente por Lady Alcina Dimitrescu:

And I got my first jester award.

You guys are pretty much able to tell how I got all my other 52 awards.
As you can see stating something or sharing your opinion that someone disagree with is enough to get any of these awards.
Well, the only difference is unlike most other troll users who makes non-sense topics in order to get jester awards.

I'm here sharing my opinion with others.

You don't have to give jester award, you can simply criticize my opinion and tell how wrong it is or you can just "I don't think it ruins the community".
It would bring the conversation more than just an award.

Sadly, there's a certain group of users that have made it clear that if they dislike your opinion, you aren't welcome here, and they savor the most passive-aggressive ways of demeaning you, if not censoring you outright.

[Lady Alcina Dimitrescu]

Me: Gets jester award for sharing my opinion.

This guy: Takes a "Take my points" award for making a non-sense non-constructive joke thread.

Congrats for proving my point.

[Seraphita]

What's funny is OP is right. I love trolls (or normal people alike) giving me jesters as they are free points but let us be honest. Ever since this award existed, there HAS been changes in this community, whether you like it or not. People are more toxic than usual.

It either comes from the award farmers OR from the people giving them. Some people want to believe that nothing changed at all when, honestly and reasonably speaking, a lot of the currently existing drama did in fact NOT exist before the jester. Be honest.

In my case, I don't complain. I prefer to take advantage of it. If someone is so pissed off about my opinion that they want to give me jesters, I'll even encourage them to give me more. I am not a jester farmer as I don't believe spam to contribute. BUT trolls be trolls...

And trolls are not exactly intelligent. So they're easy to taunt. Make them think that it annoys you and it's all it takes to empty their wallet on you if they must. A man (or woman) gotta do what a man (or woman) gotta do. Take advantage of users willing to pay. :)

[Hobbit XIII]

yep that is why I left this section of forums too.

Steam forums ignoring the specific gaming forums are polarised between really helpful people and those who just want to railroad people off them.

The moderators do very little on actually improving the forums and contribute to the brain drain.

[volusat]

can i have a jester? thanks

[Lady Alcina Dimitrescu]

Troll Guide
Troll Guide 2
Offensive Guide
This was also a troll post on Half-Life forums, the OP of this thread made even more troll posts after receiving 23 jester awards.

This is pretty much Steam and Steam Community right now.
Troll, no valuable content. Just bait posts on every thread and unconstructive guides/content to receive awards.

[Yujah]

This same thread has almost daily new instances of itself in this and especially the "Suggestions / Ideas" forum. Haven't been here for years very long yet (edit: is what I meant...) but that's also likely been the case for quite long now. All the same arguments are repeated over and over again and again -- and nothing seems to ever result of it.

Context; I'm one who agrees all "awards" need to go, but am already completely, totally and utterly sick of this same thread, every day again, on and on.

[Lady Alcina Dimitrescu]

Publicado originalmente por Yujah:

This same thread has almost daily new instances of itself in this and especially the "Suggestions / Ideas" forum. Haven't been here for years, but that's also likely been the case for quite long now. All the same arguments are repeated over and over again and again -- and nothing seems to ever result of it.

Context; I'm one who agrees all "awards" need to go, but am already completely, totally and utterly sick of this same thread, every day again, on and on.

Oh, I didn't see any.
Since VALVe doesn't even read any of the suggestions or the feedback from users I thought it would be better to just post a thread here.
If I knew there was plenty other threads like this exist, I wouldn't make a new one.
Sorry

[wesnef]

Publicado originalmente por SqueakyTweaky:

Enjoy your free points.

Points are useless, once you've bought the handful of point shop items you might want. (I got a background and a border. Okay, done with points. I'm up to 150k due to purchases & awards, and there's nothing to do with them. 'Free points' are. . . pointless.)


edit: and yeah, it's not just Jester awards that were a mistake. The whole system is junk - there's people trolling for non-jester awards, too.