Concerning profile links

[Smashman]

I believe (and I am not the only one) that the profile links are somewhat superfluous. The only link I understand as a default show is SteamRep. The rest are honestly, rather pointless, covered by another in the list or downright broken.

I personally believe that the current list should undergo an examination and a decision should be made as to whether each link should stay, be entirely deleted or simply hidden by default.

I hope you understand.

[jshackles]

The purpose of these links is to expose users to cool Steam-integrated sites and give them quick access to user's profiles (or their own) on said sites.

A few of these sites we had to coordinate with site owners to allow this integration to happen.

The good part is that we've set this up so that each site can individually be disabled in the options. I agree there are a few (such as "Wasted on Steam" and "sAPI") that are generally really slow to load for a lot of people and have a hard time keeping up with the server load that their web applications cause.

I agree that we should constantly be evaluating and re-evaluating these links, but I believe that links such as backpack.tf, AchievementStats, Steamtrades, Steamgifts, and SteamRp are still very useful for a large number of users and should be kept where they are.

If we are going to replace any of these links, do you have any suggestions? Whatever site we link to here needs to support viewing an individual user's profile on that site by their Steam64 ID.

[AviDuda]

Something I wanted to do a long time ago, but forgot: replace Wasted On Steam and sAPI with SteamDB Calculator. SteamDB doesn't have own rank system, but it actually works (don't hate me iveinsomnia pls).

[Smashman]

One issue I see highlighted a number of times are the icons. They do seem rather large and out of place.

Do you think it would be fair to simply remove them?

[jshackles]

The icons are made to be the same pixel height as the numbers used by Steam.

I suppose we could add a "hide icons for profile links" option that is disabled by default but would allow the individual user decide how they would like them displayed.

[Smashman]

Sure, I get that, but they are rather unthematic and could be jarring to a newer user.

I think a default false option to show images would make more sense.

So I propose this for the new list:

• SteamRep
• SteamDB
• SteamTrades
• SteamGifts

I feel backpack.tf may be too game specific to be viable for a main profile link. Perhaps within TF2 backpacks would could provide links to alternatives?

Thoughts?

[Smashman]

I have done the few things I said I would and have gray scaled the icons, as well as making them smaller, so that are not too obvious and distracting.

Perhaps like this, we could keep the images on by default?

Thoughts?

[AviDuda]

SteamDB icon is weird. Use this one.

[Smashman]

I obtained the current SteamDB favicon.

[Smashman]

I think this one would be better. Due to its transparent background.