Add a category for Steam goods.

[alice]

There's actually quite a large market for Steam-related products such as accounts, groups, URLs, comment boosting services, wallet cards, community market items, whatever.

Some statistics found via the search feature:

• 612 threads with the keyword "Steam account" in them.
• 737 threads with the keyword "Steam ID" in them.
• 812 threads with the keyword "Steam URL" in them.
• 379 threads with the keyword "Steam Group" in them.
• 467 threads with the keyword "Steam card" in them.
• and so on... but only "481" for Minecraft account and "529" for Minecraft cape somehow.

Most of the Steam-related threads are dispersed over random non-specific sections, such as "Video Game Items" and the "Other" section, and users interested in Steam-related products have to dig through these sections to find what they're looking for. Many new users don't even bother because at first glance, it doesn't even seem like McMarket has a Steam market or a community interested in one.

There is no reason not to have a Steam-specific section, especially if you're planning to kill off the sale of Minecraft accounts. You need something to keep the forum activity alive and growing.

Now, you could add a subsection for "Steam" under Social Media Accounts, but I would go even further than that and make an entire whole new category for it since (1) Steam isn't really a "social media platform" in that sense and (2) there is a much larger variety of Steam-related products than say Twitter products or YouTube products, and it would also be messy to have all of these different Steam products congregated together.

Here is a example of what a Steam might look like (preferably a cog/gears Steam-like icon):

I am certain it would increase forum activity noticeably since a couple of other competitor forums have highly active Steam sections, but their administration is corrupt and simply lacks the professionalism and policy that McMarket has. They ban users all of the time for petty reasons, and many of those users would start selling and buying on here.

 

[alice]

yes, yes and yes. Ridiculous that everything is all over the place. Knives in one place and ids in another. Even more ridiculous that video game items is being crowded so over-crowded that all you can ever see is Skyblock. This is needed and would assist the site with growing, functionality and prosperity.

Yup.

Also:

• 599 results for "CSGO knife" --> would go in Steam Trading
• 575 results for "TF2" --> would go in Steam Trading
• 135 results for "Steam CD Key" --> would go in Steam Trading
• 152 results for "CSGO Boosting Service" --> would go in Steam Services
• ... plus the keywords I mentioned previously

I'd recommend that Mick hires someone to code a script that detects the section each thread belongs to and moves thousands of threads automatically to their appropriate sections. It would really clean up the forums and give life to it with entirely new sections and better SEO.

 

[Mick]

Our Videogame Items forum used to be called Steam Items but we renamed it to be more inclusive with other videogames. Personally I don't understand any confusion about why people would think that a steam item doesn't belong in the videogame items forum.

I'd recommend that Mick hires someone to code a script that detects the section each thread belongs to and moves thousands of threads automatically to their appropriate sections.

Realistically this isn't really possible. If any content is reported for being in the wrong forum then our moderators will move it to the right place, but there's no magic script that would be able to interpret and categories threads into forums better than our users can.

 

[alice]

Our Videogame Items forum used to be called Steam Items but we renamed it to be more inclusive with other videogames. Personally I don't understand any confusion about why people would think that a steam item doesn't belong in the videogame items forum.

I'd at least make a section again called Steam Items or Steam Trading under Videogame Items. 90% of the Steam threads in that section are buried beneath Hypixel threads. I just thought it would be nice if all Steam-related products were in their own subforum.

Realistically this isn't really possible. If any content is reported for being in the wrong forum then our moderators will move it to the right place, but there's no magic script that would be able to interpret and categories threads into forums better than our users can.

I meant just as a one-time thing. A script that you run once when you first create the sections that will scan through all threads in "Videogame Items", "Other" and "Other Products" for certain keywords and then move them to their appropriate sections. That would be far better than having thousands of threads dispersed over random sections.

There might be like 1% false positives, but you could quickly skim through the moved threads to double check and just move them back quickly.

 

[Mick]

I'd at least make a section again called Steam Items or Steam Trading under Videogame Items. 90% of the Steam threads in that section are buried beneath Hypixel threads. I just thought it would be nice if all Steam-related products were in their own subforum.

Since the intended purpose of that forum in the first place was for steam/other videogame items rather than hypixel skyblock items, I'd rather if we made a subforum specifically for hypixel skyblock instead. What are our thoughts on this?

I meant just as a one-time thing. A script that you run once when you first create the sections that will scan through all threads in "Videogame Items", "Other" and "Other Products" for certain keywords and then move them to their appropriate sections. That would be far better than having thousands of threads dispersed over random sections.

A system with a simple word checker will result in more issues than it will solve. Other than some sort of ridiculously fancy and over-the-top machine learning system which would require a ridiculous amount of training, there is no way that we could do something like this in a way that wouldn't cause more problems than it solves.

If I am selling a service and say that I'll accept steam giftcodes as a payment method, a system like the one you proposed will automatically move that to the steam forum. Obviously this is just one very specific example, but I think it illustrates how a simple check will just lead to more miscateregorisation.

 

[alice]

Since the intended purpose of that forum in the first place was for steam/other videogame items rather than hypixel skyblock items, I'd rather if we made a subforum specifically for hypixel skyblock instead. What are our thoughts on this?

Better than the current system for sure, but I still think Steam Items deserves its own section. But don't forget that there is also a massive market for Steam accounts and OG Steam URLS and Groups. Those should at least have their own combined section for "Steam Accounts & OG IDs", if not 2 separate ones as I initially recommended.

A system with a simple word checker will result in more issues than it will solve. Other than some sort of ridiculously fancy and over-the-top machine learning system which would require a ridiculous amount of training, there is no way that we could do something like this in a way that wouldn't cause more problems than it solves.

If I am selling a service and say that I'll accept steam giftcodes as a payment method, a system like the one you proposed will automatically move that to the steam forum. Obviously this is just one very specific example, but I think it illustrates how a simple check will just lead to more miscateregorisation.

I don't think it would be nearly that bad. If you search "Steam Account" and look through several pages even, there is like ... nothing that could be miscategorized. Same thing for the other keywords like CSGO knife, OG Steam URL, etc...

It's pretty staightforward in 99.9% cases what an OP means when they have "Steam Account" in their thread title/thread post and especially if they have a flair like "Selling" or "Account", since then that pretty much confirms it.

You could also just do it for some keywords rather than all of them, but you could still probably do it for most keywords and get away with little to no false positives.

 

[Franix]

Instead of creating a whole new forum for Steam goods, how about just creating thread prefixes under videogame items for things such as "Hypixel", "Steam", etc..
This way people could search for the Steam prefix under Videogame Items and find threads there

 

[Mick]

Instead of creating a whole new forum for Steam goods, how about just creating thread prefixes under videogame items for things such as "Hypixel", "Steam", etc..
This way people could search for the Steam prefix under Videogame Items and find threads there

We won't be creating new prefixes ever again. We are planning to implement a filtering system that will fix all of the shortfalls that prefixes have, but in the meantime I feel like a subforum specifically for Hypixel items would work far better since they're so niche and (likely) won't remain as popular as they currently are for too much longer.

 

[Franix]

We won't be creating new prefixes ever again. We are planning to implement a filtering system that will fix all of the shortfalls that prefixes have, but in the meantime I feel like a subforum specifically for Hypixel items would work far better since they're so niche and (likely) won't remain as popular as they currently are for too much longer.

So implementing a new subforum for something likely to fall is better than creating a subforum for something likely to stay popular for far longer?

 

[Mick]

So implementing a new subforum for something likely to fall is better than creating a subforum for something likely to stay popular for far longer?

From experience, it's far better to create a subforum for something specific, rather than a broad forum. Once the Hypixel hype dies down we can simply move those threads back to the parent forum and delete the subforum, whereas if we created a steam subforum in the videogame items forum then when the Hypixel hype dies then it will be the parent forum dying.

Also, because Hypixel Skyblock is so specific and unlike anything else in that forum it makes sense to keep that separated, rather than keeping Skyblock items and Origin accounts in the same place.

There are just a whole bunch of minor factors that do make a Hypixel Skyblock subforum a more intuitive and beneficial choice than a Steam subforum.

 

[Franix]

From experience, it's far better to create a subforum for something specific, rather than a broad forum. Once the Hypixel hype dies down we can simply move those threads back to the parent forum and delete the subforum, whereas if we created a steam subforum in the videogame items forum then when the Hypixel hype dies then it will be the parent forum dying.

Also, because Hypixel Skyblock is so specific and unlike anything else in that forum it makes sense to keep that separated, rather than keeping Skyblock items and Origin accounts in the same place.

There are just a whole bunch of minor factors that do make a Hypixel Skyblock subforum a more intuitive and beneficial choice than a Steam subforum.

You're saying the parent forum would die when Hypixel Skyblock dies, if there was a Steam subforum. If Steam and Hypixel Skyblock are the only things keeping it alive it seems natural to make a specific forum for Steam alone, and keep other small businesses like Hypixel Skyblock, Origin, etc... in their own forum. That's just my POV from what you just said.

I also understand that Steam alone is not what's going to keep the Videogame items alone.

 

[Mick]

To add onto what I said previously, I'm not wanting to add a new subforum to this particular section as I don't want to expand/encourage more activity to go there. I'd rather we focus on expanding the forum sections that are positive and helpful and moreso in line with the future I want for the site.

Denied, thanks for the suggestion