The Community Giveaway is different from any others though, being intended to reward active forum participation. At least from where I'm standing, that'd be more of a default-deny sort of thing, not accepted unless proven to be a bad actor, but rejected unless sufficiently active, and only if the activity criteria are met do we move to the bad actor check... Which will rarely even be needed in such a case, since few bad actors are notable in their activity outside giveaway threads or stuff like low-effort forum games sustained over a long period of time.
On that note, still say that if there's a need to prove you're eligible, as in forum regulars don't know you to also be one, you probably aren't. Main exception I can think of are perhaps users who are mainly active in specific game forums and not on general, but other than that...

I see, so five years before your registration date in July 2025 then. That would've been on your alt account I guess.

Suggestion: Eligibility depends on forum/community participation and having donated key(s) in the past (or having run giveaways of one's own).

That should be enough to prune out a lot of bad actors and alt accounts.

No. Forum participation is forum participation. Donations, purchases or anything else related to one's finances must not matter, neither as a positive nor a negative.

Care to expand? Because as it stands, your argument is pretty weak on its own, and I'll explain why:

A relatively recent maniacal blowup by a certain ban-evading user resulted in a multitude of alt accounts, through which he kept pestering forum users and starting quite a few obnoxious threads.

Taking this as an example, there is nothing that stops person X from creating as many accounts as X pleases, posting in the forums through those accounts, or even having conversations with oneself, which automatically would make X eligible for the giveaway.

Forum participation can be faked.

Now, in regards to the word "finances":
There are plenty of freebies on the site and giveaways from users with more lax rules in their giveaways.

Since this is specifically about the community giveaway thread, which has a constant stream of titles for a few years now, then it's understandable that the community would like to exclude people who are exploiting the good will of the donors.

I can expand even more if needed, but I'll keep it condensed for now.

I actually don't care to expand. If the stance needs expanding, our worldviews are clashing too hard for discussion to have much of a point.
There are people who barely make ends meet and for whom even a few bucks matter, you know? And there may also be people who, for one reason or another, may not have a suitable payment method available to them, or who may be prevented from purchases long-term for whatever other reason. Yet those people may well still be active and nice and helpful, and that should be the requirement, not anything else.

As for forum participation that can be faked... You know, if it's sufficient and sufficiently positive, what of it? In fact, it's only an issue for entries for starred games, which concept I'm still against anyway, because one would assume that a user with multiple accounts would have little reason to request the same non-starred game on more than one (except, of course, as an attempt to claim that those aren't alt accounts and make all of them eligible for starred game entries... which brings us back with the problem with that concept).

He is asking you to kindly provide an alternate solution, one that does not require prohibiting those who are not able contribute financially to the community, but are able to do so in other means that is currently measured by forum participation. Your suggestion may be effective in reducing the amount of people abusing the kindness of others, but would also go against one of the tacit underlying principles of the giveaway; that being potentially preventing the most needy and grateful beneficiaries from receiving gifts as a reward for aiding in fostering the community and contributing to its overall health.
With your suggestion, all that would happen is a continuation of what is already seen in the other free giveaways: users coming, claiming a gift, and departing once more having not contributed whatsoever; whilst with your suggestion the state of affairs would be that the wealthy few who are able to contribute pat one another on the back for being so charitable and continue stockpiling their already gargantuan collections; all the while the community population continues to dwindle in number with time. At least the current setup is an attempt at preventing this.

I'm actually open to a debate and could be swayed given enough evidence to the contrary, and also because it was a suggestion (i.e. I'm not married to it and in fact don't have a horse in this race).

We're working together, here. Not against each other.

Yes, I'm one of those people. But I've been on this site for 14 years now. It wasn't always like this for me, if you know what I mean. And again, there are quite a few number of GOG freebies and also many other forum giveaways from various users throughout the year, and the daggered keys that require no forum participation. That's more than enough. Considerably more.

I'm not being antagonistic when I'm repeating the following: some have been taking advantage of the good will of some people.

This had become extremely prevalent when we were running finkleroy's Steam giveaway on Discord for a few months and later.

GOG gives away quite a few freebies throughout the year, and the daggered keys in the giveaway thread are free-for-all and also not limited to 1 per user. There are also random giveaways by various users. The number of keys that can be acquired are more than enough. X person doesn't need to take advantage of Y's kindness just so they get an extra 12xAlt-accounts of games.

I'm far from being wealthy, and I've used to be financially able to run giveaways or gift keys in the forum giveaway in the past up until a little after Covid hit (again, I wasn't wealthy even before Covid). I'd personally hate it if I bought a game to gift in the giveaway, and X decides to hoard another title for the account he's planning on selling or just because he mistakenly thinks video games = gold. Especially now that my budget is so limited, that I can only do gifts for close friends over the Xmas holiday season.

Again, I'm not being antagonistic. I'm debating, and I'm open to a discussion in an attempt to solve this, so fire away.

Edit: clarified the "it wasn't always like this" part.
Edit 2: added another sentence to the first point.

Another suggestion (more of a tweak on the first one):

Users who haven't ran giveaways or gifted keys in the past are excluded from the Starred and store bought keys altogether, but not from the Amazon Prime Gaming ones, ones from bundles from other sites (the rare Humble Bundle odd bundle), and of course from the daggered ones mentioned before.

How's that?

I like the giveaway as a way to reward people for positive forum participation.

I'm glad donating to buy eligibility was scrapped in the current iteration. It incentivized certain individuals to give away low quality items.

Oh, if you condition eligibility on anything financial, we most definitely are against each other.

So the same hard no on your "tweak". (But, of course, I'd gladly scrap "starred" altogether.)

I think, you are exaggerating an issue, which is barely existent.
That would be extremely time-consuming. And probably exhausting as well. ;)

The condition in my suggestion was and. Not either/or. It's an additional step.

Well, that's a bit hypocritical. Where do you think those games are coming from?

The keys are bought. Somebody else buys them. The financial part's already in the whole transaction to begin with. I don't think it's OK to rely on other people's kindness for the "financial part", no matter how you try to paint it.

Probably. Not disagreeing. As I said, it's a suggestion in an attempt to solve a recent issue.

While I appreciate you coming up with new ideas, I'm not really on board with requiring people to have forum activity AND donating to the CG. It would disqualify a few people here who are very helpful on the forums but don't have much money. I personally think with my new method for qualifying people, you'll be seeing more denials for people who are only here for giveaways. I've been doing this for 2 years now and know just about everyone here.

As a donor I think Benkii is doing a great job distributing those codes.

I only regret not always being able to see how far the recipients are proceding in those games but I respect other peoples' privacy enough not to make a big deal out of it.