Rule Clarifications & Staff Promotion

Golden Rule Clarification - Scraping Ban
Recently, we have noticed issues with users still employing automated tools (scripts, browser extensions, etc.) to interact with the site. In 2021, the Scraping Ban was enacted, but it seems there may be some confusion regarding what activities are allowed. Accordingly, the following activities are expressly forbidden:

Automated page refreshing: The use of any automated method of refreshing the site is prohibited. It does not matter why you do this, do not use any automated methods for refreshing the site.
Automated item/gold farming: The use of any automated method to generate item / gold drops is prohibited. Item drops are meant to reward normal site activity, not scripted or automated activities.
Artificial engagement: Using the site in an artificial way to generate item / gold drops is prohibited. This is abuse of the items system. For example, manually refreshing the site's pages many times per day in order to get item drops is considered artificial activity and is not allowed.



Alternative Options
For those looking towards alternatives, there are often better methods than manually scraping site pages. If you're looking for new torrent uploads, we have a notification system with a variety of filters to alert of any interesting new uploads. See the Notifications wiki article for an overview. Alternatively, we have an announce IRC channel that lists all new uploads and can be quite useful in conjunction with auto-dl filters, plus miscellaneous information announced in #gazellegames and #Log.

For other purposes, we have an API that enables applications to gather site information. The API can deliver a multitude of information, such as user information, conversations, information from torrents, and much more. Full details are available here. Finally, we are open to suggestions of new systems or information to be added to our API. If you do have any ideas in that regard, please post them in the API Changes / Improvements thread. For information on how to use the API, please review the wiki article here.

Exceptions
The rule does not extend to scripts that enhance or replace human activity that would happen anyway. For example, scripts that:

Alter the information seen on a page.
Carry out multiple activities on a page with a single click.
Assist with uploading.
Open a game's page you wanted to look at.


Are exempt from the enhanced site scraping rules (this also includes applications like Jackett) and can be continued to be used as before.


Upload Rule Change 2.5.3
We have also made a slight rule change to version trumping for update patches. To be clear, these new rules only state how we have been handling these cases internally, so there should not be much change for uploaders. This is just a formal clarification of how update patches are trumped, which should provide everyone with a bit more clarity and certainty around how these are handled.

The new rule (and sub-rules) are listed here.


Staff Promotion
In other news, ********* has taken up development tasks around the site and been promoted to Junior Developer! He has already fixed the long-broken QR codes generation for 2FA setup and the user/torrent charts. Additionally, forum posts now display seconds in the timestamp. Currently he's familiarizing himself with his new responsibilities and will take on more demanding coding projects for the site in the near future. Wish him luck!


GGn Staff