What is going on with Valve and their Gestapo policies on certain groups like Hookups and Traders Guild? Why are they shutting these groups down? Does anyone have any inside information as to what is going on? Have any other groups been affected?

Alienating your subscriber base doesn't seem like a sound business practice and Valve has been so well known for community development. It doesn't make sense to what they are trying to accomplish.

The character-limit for game-recommendations has been increased to a value of 4,000. Before the change the limit has been at a mere 1,000, so now the recommendations you write can be four times as long! With the new character-limit, people will be able to present their opinions on a game way more accurately than before and should not be bothered by the previously rather low character-limit anymore.

I have no information on when the change has been made, but neither JonesR, nor one other group-admin I have contacted knew about this, so I assume it is a fairly new one.
So, enjoy being able to write way more detailed recommendations and bid farewell to the annoyingly low character-limit which may have forced you to needlessly re-phrase your opinions to fit them into the old character-limit as well!

Problem was my server got banned by the Steam Community server for too many requests. Ban is now lifted and the problem has been resolved. Now I just have to redirect some focus again to get them automated.

http://www.jonesr.com/SteamProfileParser.htm
http://www.jonesr.com/recs.htm

OFFICIAL VALVE NOTICE: We ran out of prizes and coupons from 3rd party publishers. The Great Gift Pile currently contains Valve games and coupons. Thanks to all for participating!

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2428973

This year's Steam Winter Sale offered users a look into a unique incentive system--gifts. By getting specific achievements, your effort turned into either coupons, coal, or games. To make it even more interesting, you could also craft 7 coal into another gift which would either be a coupon or a game. Include the lottery ticket coal factor with the grand prize of every game on steam and this system provided so much unpredictability in what coal was worth, it was quite insane. Coal was a fluctuating currency that offered amazing opportunities to make some great and often lop-sided trades.

Well my trading season is over and I had a blast. I've never used Steam trading before so here is my tale:

On my usual achievement spree during these sale event, I kept getting coal and coupons...bah hum bug. I ended up at a frustration point where I thought I might have a better chance at crafting. So I gathered 7 coal, hit the craft button and behold Jagged Alliance 2 Gold popped out. Not a game I would play I thought, but better than coal. So I started crafting more. Coupon, coupon....uhg...why did I do that!

Days go by I get more coal for achievements and craft Capsized. Yeah, a game on my wishlist! Then I end up with a magical gift for one of my achievements: Driver San Francisco. WHOA! I had to do a double take. Sure enough, a giftable copy of Driver San Francisco ($50 retail game). And that's where my adventure begins.

Now I'll probably buy Driver San Francisco...eventually, but not at $50, so I wanted to see if I could trade it for several less expensive games I wanted. I jumped on a couple trading groups and ended up with Payday, Dungeon Defenders, and a bunch of other retradable stuff that I thought I could use to get games I actually wanted.

Then Dead Space 1 & 2 went on sale for $5 each, I heard that some countries weren't able to get that price so the demand was up. I figured I would purchase a couple gift copies of each and see what I could fetch. I also had giftable copies of RUSH and Toki Tori from the Two Tribes pack I bought since I didn't have EDGE, and I was nice and bought some kid the DLC for Dead Island in return for a couple games and some coal.

My investment

Jagged Alliance 2 Gold (Free gift)
Driver San Francisco (Free gift)
2x Dead Space 1 ($10 total)
2x Dead Space 2 ($10 total)
Two Tribes Pack ($3.17) after subtracting out EDGE
Dead Island DLC ($6.69)

Total Investment ~$30

Here's what I ended up trading for my investment:

Aura: Fate of Ages
Torchlight
Dungeon Defenders
Costume Quest
Bastion
SAW
Global Ops: Commando Libya
Fallout Collection
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
Payday: The Heist Gift
Back to the Future: The Game
The Ship: Complete
Two Worlds 2
Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People: Season 1
FEAR 3

You're probably thinking HOLY SHIT! Yes, so am I. But it took a lot of patience and haggling and MOST IMPORTANTLY the currency of coal to make it happen. If Valve ever integrates the Steam Wallet with their trading system, watch out because deals are gonna fly!