Please read the entire suggestion before voting.

Giveaways in Main have crossed the line. Lots (and I mean LOTS) of players have expressed lots of frustration about how difficult it is to chat in main anymore, with giveaways and the amount of new players increasing in both frequency and duration. People genuinely have trouble having conversations in main, and a lot of players who used to frequent main (including lots of my friends) don't ever talk there anymore just because of the giveaways. I think that they've gone too far for not just one but three different reasons- chat spam, begging in chat, and harassment of players. I got tons of support when I asked whether I should make this suggestion. Finding out how many people hated the giveaway rule really made me feel validated, so here is the suggestion in full.


There are two solutions for this problem:
-Add a 'Giveaway Chat' for people to give away their lions there. Chatting would be allowed as long as it's centered around giving away lions/etcs (e.g. "Would anyone be interested in me doing an Ice app giveaway?" and discussion of this, "What lions do you guys all like? ;)" with replies or "Anyone need food?" The only messages not allowed would be completely offtopic things like "I had fast food for lunch" or talk about Lioden unrelated to giveaways and NOT hinting at gifts.) The problem with this is that it wouldn't prevent main chat begging at all- in fact, people could defend themselves begging now by saying 'that was meant for giveaway chat' or something and escape penalty. Also, it'd be utter HELL to moderate- I really think it's a good idea to keep it to forum threads entirely, in the community's common interest, even though people might complain about not being able to get all their free stuff as easily.
-Just flat out remove giveaways being allowed except for a section of the forums, like it had been for years before. I'd prefer this because a Giveaway chat wouldn't prevent harassment and begging in there.

Either option would be great. Most people would prefer a giveaway chat, but I'd argue the amount of begging/harassment would be far less if there was a clear message that giveaways are never allowed off of giveaway/freebie forums.

Now, a more in-depth look as to why I think giveaways are very detrimental to Lioden chat:

Chat Spam

Everyone guess between 1 and 300,000 for this cub!

Chat spam. There's a rising problem with Main giveaways that during some times of the day people actually have trouble speaking. It's getting worse and worse with more 'giveaway contest' sort of things being held- Usually you see guess a number, guess my favorite band, guess my favorite color, etc. Sometimes in about ten minutes you get multiple of these, and they drag on for AGES. The lion reward gets reposted sometimes for more people to enter the contest, and eventually you just have to leave chat and wait for it to die down.

Also, you have lions that no one wants (such as a Rosy Brown NCL without marks for example) posted over and over four or five times within a few minutes, until the person trying to give her away just gives up.

There's so much frustration from lots of people over this kind of thing. I can't remember there ever being a conversation in Main without an interjection of a lion giveaway. Main chat practically already is Giveaway chat I was here before giveaways were allowed, so I was here to see main chat without them, and it was a lot more peaceful, with conversation flowing better. I saw lots of different users back then. You would think there would be more nowadays with a larger player base, but now it's the same people around the same time every day, with older users avoiding main.

In a reply by Angry Goat Woman, which you can read below:

"To add to my reasons, since I just noticed how bad it is;
Currently I am counting eight giveaways in the last 5 minutes, four of them in the same "page" of chat; as well as one fake giveaway that was actually an advertisement.

I think it is so, so nice that all these people want to give out free lions! But then chat turns into
"Does anyone want [link]?"
Followed by atleast 4 pings, but frequently more if it is a pretty lioness.

As I'm typing this, I have glanced down at chat a few times. Every time I look, there is a new free lion. A new wave of disruption.
You can't have a normal conversation in chat anymore without being bombarded and suffocated with kindness.

It is awesome that our community is so giving; especially with nice muties. But it drives away people that just want to talk to eachother."

Begging

Begging. Lots of begging.

I've seen more users than ever before beg for free assets. It's not just newbies, no, it's people who have played for ages who should totally know better. I'm absolutely convinced it's due to chat giveaways. People are used to getting things for free, and they know that they'll scarcely get a slap on the wrist for asking for it, unfortunately. Also, there's "can i please have her" in PMs, there's "will you give her away! i want!" when people post their lions to main, and there's "hey if you're just foddering this cub can i have her? i want her." In chat beforehand, or even just a year or so ago, there was much less begging, and I saw much more of an immediate negative response towards it, I feel.

I've seen a lot of hate towards newbies for this kind of thing, and I really think it's a little bit unfair, since it's more of a rules problem and an entitlement problem, in my opinion. Getting rid of all the giveaways is the first step towards pushing older players to be less hostile. The second step would be cracking down on beggars more and making reading the CoC mandatory to type in Main, but this isn't the suggestion for that.

Also, with begging and attitude comes people who act aggressive and persistent about it, which leads to...

Harassment

...harassment. It's unfortunately very common.

In a lot of giveaways in main, people PM afterwards and are really upset about not winning for some reason. I've seen multiple stories (and would like to hear more below) about experiences with this. One of my friends gave away a random cub with a rare base and gave it away to a random user, only to get a PM from someone that just said "i asked first" and then got blocked. People get guilt tripped with things like "i'm so unlucky I never win anything good :(" or "i want to cry that i didn't win." I feel like the trouble created about main chat giveaways is much more than it's worth. PMs and real rage about not getting a free asset is just way too far, and it gets more and more common.

I can literally start a tally board of the amount of times I've seen 'but I asked first', I swear. Ridiculous.

That's about all I have to argue for right now. I'll insert a TL;DR for people who scrolled down without reading. If you did read it all, thank you, and whether you support or not I'm glad just to have my words considered by someone. I'd love additions and further discussion below.

Also, reminder that many of the people arguing against giveaways being allowed have been here and were active before they were allowed, and know the difference.

TL;DR: The harassment, spam, and constant begging caused by main chat giveaways along with the spite of older players over it is causing a lot of harm to Lioden. I don't think it's worth it anymore. Add a Giveaway chat and find a way to deal with the problems caused by begging and harassment there, or better, just keep it to giveaway forums.