With the GGOTD new look do we no longer get Whiterabbit's reviews of the games? Am I just not seeing how to find them? Without the additional information I would never have downloaded the majority of the games I did. Sometimes you can't even tell what genre the games falls into. From the comments on the site, many people seem to be so disappointed they are abandoning the site. Please let me know what is going on.
No more Whiterabbit reviews?
(18 posts) (9 voices)-
ChrisS
AdministratorWR did post a message on the new and improved game giveaway page. It's very unlikely that you'll see any more reviews. The new site embodies the "less is more" sleekness of the low attention span social media age. But, frequently, less isn't just less, it's a whole lot less.
WR's message:
Hi folks it's me Whiterabbit-uk. The owners sent me a new password due to the changes, but unfortunately the password doesn't work, so I cannot access the moderators panel, so I won't be able to moderate. However, all comments should show with the new layout. I can't post my usual review though as it will would be thrown into the spam bucket due to the many links I usually include. I always add those via the admin panel.
Hopefully the owners will see my message, or read my email and send me a new password.
p.s. I don't use Facebook so have had to use my sons old Facebook account to be able to sign in and post my message. I can't use my forum account details with this new layout. (Personally I much prefer the old layout, but hey.... progress
Have a great weekend folks. smile emoticon
Posted 8 years ago # -
MaryLee53
MemberHi Whiterabbit, it's good to hear from you, and know that you're still around. I have a Facebook account, only because my son and my high school reunion group are there. I don't spend much time there, and didn't care for sharing the link with FB in order to get the download (though I tried and it didn't seem to work.) I had the download link sent to my email, a nice alternative - I guess. But I much preferred the old site. no matter what they call it, I don't think it's progress if no one much likes it. Hope you get your new password soon. Take care. ~MaryLee
Posted 8 years ago # -
Tiffany
MemberYeah I prefer the old way, and I don't understand why people are complaining about having to use Facebook. There is a link to use your email. Before this game you couldn't use hotmail.com. I know I had to ask for another alternative. At least this time it sent me the download link in fast time. Bonus.
Yes I miss Whiterabbit's reviews. It was a way to understand if anything was a miss with the games. Hopefully the new format will grow on me.
Posted 8 years ago # -
Tiffany,
The complaints are that you have to give ANY info -- Facebook is an increasingly controversial player but increasingly common way of "logging on" to anything. Like many have posted, I do not have Facebook and have absolutely NO DESIRE to participate at all. I view it as a totally unwarranted infringement on my privacy no matter what "protections" they claim.
The email address is almost, if not possibly worse, as far as acceptability. That gives a 3rd party (not just GOTD) a method to spam us or even have some hook into us.
It boils down to a simple question -- why? Last week, we had no need to tell anybody anything about us at all to get the game offered. Why should we, in any way, open up our privacy just to get something for free.
That conflict is what seems to be driving every body away and losing Stephens excellent reviews is just the last straw. That poor camel is walking with a third "leg" -- it's belly!
Posted 8 years ago # -
ChrisS
AdministratorAn alternative to the main page is the Giveaway of the Day Feed Service where you'll find the Game giveaway link example of http://export.giveawayoftheday.com/game.xml
Just open the above xml file, scroll down to find the download link, then highlight it and open it in a new page. You can also adapt the file to get it to display properly if desired. No Facebook, no Twitter, no Email required and it will probably disappear in no Time.
Posted 8 years ago # -
mikiem2
ModeratorPerhaps the new design will allow WR's reviews once he gets his password etc. sorted out. If not perhaps they'll host a blog page where he can post them -- with comments turned off [they'd be on the download page] it should be little work for the GOTD staff, & the page views might make it more than worth it. Alternatively if WR did the same thing off site, e.g. to a blog page hosted elsewhere, ad revenue should I think likely cover hosting charges, assuming there are any.
From the comments on the site, many people seem to be so disappointed they are abandoning the site.
Purely FWIW I'm not sure how many will, or if it would matter. With a billion people using Facebook, in practical terms that's not a drop in the bucket. I'm NOT sticking up for F/Book, & feel complaining about it is fine, but rather saying don't automatically expect that complaining to mean much.
As Dragonlair says, the big question is why? Know that & you might be able to pose alternative suggestions.
Posted 8 years ago # -
Tiffany
MemberDragonlair the point I was trying to get to was that Facebook wasn't the only option. There is an email option. You do not have to use your main email. You can open a fake one if you like. If there is going to be any spamming at least it wont affect your main email. Just grab the link and go. If you have problems (spam) in your email then your security needs looking at.
Posted 8 years ago # -
Like with any new websites there was bound to be some glitches and errors. I'm sure in time everything will get sorted out. And honestly it's only a matter of time before they change these forums to match the new site more. As for the Facebook integration it honestly makes sense from a marketing standpoint. As popular and commonplace as Facebook is these days many sites adapt the Facebook connect feature because it is easier for most people to just click and connect. Of course there are still those that have never and will never use it but in this case I think majority wins. It's just going to have to be one of those things we all get used to. But if they do change these forums hopefully they just change the css a bit to make it colorful and not change the whole platform entirely.
Posted 8 years ago # -
krypteller
Memberjust change the css a bit to make it colorful
The trouble with a lot of graphical designers, including web designers, is that they have an "onlooker" or "watcher" or "viewer" in mind, not a "reader". Many magazines and web sites are a delight to the eye, with all kind of beautiful colours, shades and fonts. But when you try to read the contents, it can be quite difficult. Especially if you are older. At the moment this Forum is a delight to read. The pages with the Giveaway itself are not.
Almost all mail clients I know let the reader decide with a simple click how he wants to have the mail sorted: newest first or oldest first. On the forum it is still (?) oldest first, on the site itself it is newest first now. Having the oldest first means you have to do some skipping, if you have read the elder postings already. But having the newest first means a lot of unnecessary postings are made, because we are inclined to react instantly instead of reading further to notice the newest posting does not contain any new point of view.
Posted 8 years ago # -
Whiterabbit-uk
Games GuruHi Folks, please forgive my late reply; I've been really busy with various things over the last week and haven't had the time to even boot up the giveaway forums (really). Though part of that reason was that my favorite gaming client Steam had just released a game I've been wanting them to add for years, called Men of Valor, a Vietnam based first person shooter that was released over 11 years ago (Oct 2004).
Amazingly only three weeks ago I dug out my old copy of the game, then checked eBay to see if there were any for sale and ended up purchasing a job lot of 15 hard copies of the game with a view to sending them to friends so that we could play the online portion of the game, which to this day I consider one of my favorite online games I've ever played. I didn't know and never expected to see Men of Valor being released on Steam (or GOG) three weeks later as i'd asked Valve years ago if they would consider adding the game to the Steam store. It was released there 2 days ago (9th Feb). Last night a fellow giveaway community member also purchased the game via Steam and we were able to play online, which was brilliant as I've been hankering to play the online game for years, but the servers have been totally empty over the last four or five years.
Anyway, to the point. I will still continue to post reviews, at least for the time being. I am finding moderation a little harder to do, but that may just be an unfamiliarity with the new admin panel. All posts show even before moderation now as opposed to having to be moderated and the newest post shows on top. Good in one way as it free's me up a little, but dangerous in others as spam and inapproprite posts will now be seen until I've moderated and removed if necessary. I thought the order of posting may have been a problem with my reviews because I am usually the first to post so as to ensure the reviews are at the top of the comments section. Thankfully, the giveaway owners have fixed it so that the first post remains at the top, so those who want to see my reviews will do so as normal.
For those having issues with the white page set up, you can change the background color if you wish. Community members have already posted details of how to do this in the comments made for last Saturday and Sundays games.
With regards to privacy and spam issues, I suggest creating a free email account specifically for your giveaways. I think you can get a giveaway email when you join the forums, though I'm not sure exactly as I've never bothered. That way, if spam does start to appear, it may be that that the giveaway team are harvesting our emails to sell on. If you don't get spam, the opposite will of course be true. At least creating an email specific to the giveaways will make sure your usual email is not compromised and you can continue to download software and games. You don't even need to vist the email once it's set up, just use it to get your download link.
I do believe, despite the recent changes to the game giveaway site that it is still a good site to download decent software and games from safely. If you are not happy with the changes you can always get free games from other free sites such as MyPlayCity, TooMky Games, FreeGamePick, Gametop and others, but they do come with potential problems. There are other places you can get free games from; for example, Origin offer a free AAA game every several weeks, (the present offering is the excellent 'Need for Speed: Most Wanted', that was released just over 3 years ago. Also, there are 70 pages of free games available via the Steam client; of those 70 pages - (each page holds 25 games) about 60% are what we call Free to Play games, where you get the basic game, but you can purchase extra's to enhance game play. Some call these pay to win games, which some are, but not all. The remaining 40% of games (that's 30 x 25 = 750 games, are true free games. you can find that list HERE If you can't see the free games, click on the down pointing arrow next to where it says 'sort by relevance' (at the top of the list and to the right); then, from the drop down menu, select 'Lowest Price', that will place all of the Free to Play and Free games at the beginning of the list. The bundle sites also offer free games occasionally (usually Steam keys) . You can usually see these by visiting sites like HotUKDeals or the American equivalent Deals of America. The only down side to Origin and Steam are that you do have to install their client to get the games. Persionally I have no problem with either of the Steam and Origin clients, though I did when I first downloaded them.
See you all at the weekend. :)
emoticons no longer work on the site :(
Posted 8 years ago # -
mikiem2
ModeratorAll posts show even before moderation now as opposed to having to be moderated and the newest post shows on top. Good in one way as it free's me up a little, but dangerous in others as spam and inapproprite posts will now be seen until I've moderated and removed if necessary.
I'm not sure what the current legal regulations are, but the need to remove certain comments or posts *might*, & I stress *might* put some extra pressure on you WR. That's just from stuff I recall reading in passing, so you might want to check & see if that's any issue at all. If it might be an issue, perhaps a report inappropriate posts button or flag could allow site visitors [IOW us] to remove a comment from view until a mod had a change to review it? Or maybe that's playing with fire, & would allow the same sort of mischief makers to cause mayhem? I don't know.
I suggest creating a free email account specifically for your giveaways...
A *Maybe* easy way for some would be with Microsoft's outlook mail service. It's been a while, but I believe that when you set up a Microsoft account, e.g. when you use an existing email address with win10, an account including email is basically set up for you. Or you could do the same thing with other email services, like Google's Gmail. If you don't set up your email client software to download messages from that account, you could get hundreds of spam messages a day & never have to deal with them -- log in on the weekends to get the GOTD game links, & then delete anything & everything.
/////
Totally O/T in case you have a chance to read this WR, I've been seeing several mini-ATX cases on sale with very reduced prices. Might be of interest if your son's into LAN parties.
Posted 8 years ago # -
mikiem2
ModeratorAn alternative to the main page is the Giveaway of the Day Feed Service where you'll find the Game giveaway link example of http://export.giveawayoftheday.com/game.xml
Couldn't verify till today... If you take the js-sample.php file, rename it to whatever you want with a .html extension, it'll open in F/Fox with the daily link. Knew that -- old news -- but if you rename index.js to game.js on line 8, works for the game site.
Of course now that I posted that it may not work beyond tomorrow, but...
Posted 8 years ago # -
mikiem2
ModeratorAll posts show even before moderation now as opposed to having to be moderated and the newest post shows on top. Good in one way as it free's me up a little, but dangerous in others as spam and inapproprite posts will now be seen until I've moderated and removed if necessary.
Something I wanted to warn folks about...
As soon as you provide a text entry or comment box, it attracts vile people & trolls. The old way you didn't see it, but it's bad enough that most blog sites etc. require some sort of sign-in to post anything. The warning comes because the GOTD site will apparently auto-notify of replies, including the reply in the email.
Simply put, Please don't freak if you get an email that makes it seem as if Satan responded to what you posted.
Posted 8 years ago # -
Terri218
MemberTo get the game I used an extra email address I have that I never use. Since last weekend's game download I have received about 6 emails at that address which never received any before. It is obvious to me that our email addresses are being given out or sold to third parties. So far it doesn't seem to be anything malicious and I just delete them without opening them but it is an inconvenience.
Posted 8 years ago # -
mikiem2
ModeratorThe email address I used week before last is filtered by the email service, so it's quite possible, maybe even probable that that's why I never have seen anything besides the original email from GOTD with the link. So thanks for the heads up.
The method Chris pointed out still works... if you visit the 1st link in his post, scroll down the page to "JavaScript-based import method", then download the file from the link: "Download template`s sample", you'll get the sample-js.zip file. Unzip it to get js-sample.php. Rename that .php file to something with an .html extension, & open in your browser -- I use Firefox, which works well with it. Open a copy of that file in Notepad, count down 8 lines from the top, & change the word index.js to game.js, then save it under another name with the .html extension. Open that in your browser [again Firefox works well] for the game download.
Posted 8 years ago # -
Whiterabbit-uk
Games GuruThanks for your suggestions Mikiem, I've only just read your comments over two months later. I've hardly visited the forums recently apart from the odd flying visit to do some moderation and update the gamegiveaway posts. I hope you haven't deserted us. your posts over the years have always been informative and in my opinion one of the reasons this forum is still here. It's not as popular as it used to be, but i'm sure a lot of giveaway users still visit. Maybe not to post, but with your posts, there has always been something useful, especially your tech comments.
Posted 8 years ago #
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