How the Comment Giveaway Picker Works
Copy the comments from your giveaway post, paste them in, and draw the winners. By default only line breaks split the list, so a comma inside someone's comment never chops the line in half. If you already tidied the entries into a comma-separated list of handles, switch the split setting and commas count as separators too.
When each line looks like a handle followed by a colon and the comment text, only the part before the colon is used as the entrant, which keeps the result readable. Switch the extraction setting to use the whole line instead. Add a required keyword and every comment without it is skipped, with the skipped count reported. Repeat comments from the same handle are merged to one entry by default and the merged count is shown, or you can give every comment its own chance. Up to 1,000 lines are used.
How the draw works
The eligible entries are shuffled with the Fisher-Yates algorithm and the first slice becomes the winners, so no entry is ever drawn twice. The chance shown is the number of winners divided by the eligible entries, rounded to one decimal place. Checking whether someone follows the account or liked the post is not supported, so eligibility is filtered by keyword only.
Where it fits
- Picking giveaway winners from a comment thread
- Keeping only entrants who used the required hashtag
- Collapsing repeat comments to one entry per person
Frequently Asked Questions
Not with the default setting, which splits on line breaks only. Switch to the comma option only when you are pasting a plain list of handles.
By default those repeats are merged into one entry and the merged count is shown. Switch the repeat setting if every comment should count as a separate chance.
No. The picker only works with the text you paste, so the only eligibility rule available is the required keyword filter.