It would be fair enough to see who pressed the "Plus" button as a form of official "Thank You for your post"

We'll see how well these moderators fare when the menace of Baba-Ji and his love spells spam return. :D

It depends on community. Consider, that there would be implemented list of all people who used plus and minus button. Could it help? (basically idea proposed by psychosopher)

I respect opinion of people who desired remove minus button, but as explained before in my opinion it is only half way and now we should continue with second half. People decided one way how to fight anonymous (negative) heroes on internet and I do not want to spoil their work.

Allusion? I believe, that it is positive allusion. In this I must admit, that I am guilty. Generally in my life I prefer justice before injustice and in this case it mean equality. Removing minus button mean, that there is possible only one of two possible choices (considering, that people without opinion on particular comment would skip any evaluation).

Please, tell me why do you consider my comparison ridiculous? Would you consider it ridiculous also if you would exchange “plus button” and “minus button” for something else? Reason why I am asking last question is because for me it is matter of principle.

to see all the self upvotings and bots?:O

Gotta wonder if someone will start posting 'BoatyMcBoatFace' as often as possible on all threads and self-upvoting to 'highly rated'....

I've said it already in the forum update thread. The upvote function was already abused in this forum. This won't stop and it will also be abused in the future. The whole reputation system was abused. Not just the half of it. We will also see how propaganda, insults, conspiracy theories, discriminatory comments, etc. are upvoted. There are enough people here around who posted/are posting questionable things.

I can understand that people want a reward feature. But you don't get this feature by removing the downvote function and keeping the upvote function. The entire reputation system in the current form needs to be removed. There can be a "Thank you" feature where you can see who voted here. This is a must. You can create a forum rule then where also people are banned who are using such a function to reward a questionable post.

No one on GOG "weaponized" positive feedback as a tool of ridicule and bullying like they did with negative feedback. Many users had their rep plunged into the negative hundreds and thousands, whole threads were full of "low rated" posts no matter their quality, etc.

High rated posts worked, highlighting insightful or helpful content, but low rated posts were 95% miss and mostly just based on grudges. GOG did away with something that didn't work as intended and kept what worked. If negative feedback wasn't universally abused I'd be all for keeping it, but the way it went, I'm already not missing it. But positive? Eh. It's working as intended and wasn't abused, no harm in keeping it.

Such a useful function, you will be sorely missed...

Unless we get a 'hide' button to replace it, said wishfully...

It took them 12 years to implement this baby step. I guess even more baby steps might be a bit much to ask for.

With the present changes, reputation is obsolete.

Yes, of course a certain infantile group of people will upvote or even circle jerk upvotes into shitstorms, slander, misinformation and those ritualized negativity/boycott/protest threads that will continue to plague the forum.

But the damage that these upvotes do doesn't even begin to compare to the damage the downvotes did.

I never let bigotry, xenophobia, and hate stand unopposed in this forum. Then I was downvoted into oblivion and finally, I left some years ago.

I'm optimistic that the present system can cut it in that respect. Not just because the community builders might come back, not just because the people who will not let hate slide might be back, but also because there are more decent people on this forum than there are antholes.

Upvotes will reflect that.

The rating system was entirely abused. The whole rating system is faulty. Removing just one part of it is simply inconsequential. As you might have read in earlier posts, the JavaScript functions to downvote people are still there and can be abused by someone with basic knowledge in JavaScript. Removing the entire rating system also means that they could bring back the minus button as a hide feature. This is more important than the upvote feature. You can read the thread about the forum update. I've reported a case where a hide feature makes sense. Right now, the door is wide open for trolls and the forum software offers the users here no option to counter the trash. All we have here are cosmetic filters for your current browser which is not really an optimal solution.

I've seen forums where even the mentioned "Thank you" feature was abused. In one forum there were two groups fighting each other and they voted according to which group they belonged. Upvote functions like these were used as bully functions. In this forum this was already the case.

Personally, I really don't like any rating system in forums. But in the discussion in the forum update thread some people mentioned that they want a reward feature. Therefore, I think a "Thank you" function with a user list under each post and a forum rule against the abuse would be a good compromise.

I think these should be the next steps:

1.) Removal of the entire reputation system with all effects. No compromises here. Not just the half thing.
2.) Re-introducing the minus button as a hide feature.
3.) Discussion about other features like a ignore functions, report feature, etc.

HIDING a post and DOWNVOTING a post should have been separate things long ago. I suspect some people screaming about being downvoted by bots/trolls/whatever were just having their posts hidden by people due to being a mess or a huge reply chain or off-topic, etc. Really hope the minus button or something similar comes back as a feature to HIDE posts.

Speaking from experience, no, it wasn't just because the posts were "being a mess or a huge reply chain or off-topic."

Entire threads were getting downvoted. You'd see posts with "low rated" all the way down, every single one of them. Heck, recently I rarely posted outside of the local forum mafia games and yet my rep was still stuck in the negatives, like persistently stuck at -195. You really have to go out of your way and deliberately fuck up to get downvoted in a forum mafia game thread.


That I don't disagree with, the usual sorts of unwanted content could get upvoted and "high rated" despite being say, xenophobic. The fortunate part here is that actively being xenophobic (by writing a post or a thread expressing your "views") is harder than passively being xenophobic (upvoting posts with said views). Assuming mods take the report thread seriously, hopefully this thing should sort itself out. As much as it'd be nice not to have these posts upvoted, the bigger problem is them being there and readable in the first place.

That's not to say it will be a bulletproof solution, but like Vainamoinen said, this baby step is an implication someone of decent rank at GOG decided to make the forums a priority, if even for a second. I'm not too hopeful it'll turn out PERFECT, but so far that's better than the nothing it got all these years.

This.
The way it is now, our only options are to:
- either remain silent, watching from the side line, while the haters of all varieties have their field days, or
- engage in senseless (!) discussions that will inevitably (maybe?) lead to closed threads, and/or banned users (not to talk of unnecessary high blood pressure and (even more) hostilities among the forum users).

And senseless these "discussions" are, since nobody here is interested in having their opinion challenged (much less changed), by anything anyone may have to say.

As a matter of fact, we don't have discussions here - we have battles over opinions.
And half of the "opinions" (if we want to call them that in this context) come from trolls who get a hard-on whenever somebody replies to their troll posts.
There's no point in arguing with those. Or maybe there is - if you're a troll yourself.

Previously, I could - true to the motto: "what the eye doesn't see, the heart doesn't grieve over" - simply hide these comments, sparing myself from:
(A) having to see/scroll through them ever again, when I returned to a thread, and from
(B) having to engage in any (most probably: negative) way with this kind of people.

Granted: (B) is still a possibility. Nobody can force me to engage with these people.
But the option to hide them from my view, made that decision much easier/more convenient.

Now, whether it is desirable in general, to leave the haters the field unchallenged (as I admittedly did with my "rather-hide-them-than-engage-them" - policy), is another (valid) question, of course.

But: at the very least, my "ostrich policy" didn't actively worsen the forum.

What we have now, however, is clearly a change for the worse.
And no amount of "high rated" comments can change that.
No matter who does the upvoting, and who "profits" from it.
+++++
Btw: I also find it funny and telling, how now, that (to quote some users): "this arbitrary number, that I totally don't care about!", aka: REP, is finally invisible to the public, people are asking for a restoration of said number, resp. a "compensation" for their loss of REP...

So, "that arbitrary number, that [you] totally never cared about" does in fact seem to be important enough for you, that you want to keep it - and much more important - that you want to keep a method (aka: upvoting) to raise it even further - though nobody will ever see it anymore (as long as you don't post screenshots of it).

And please, spare me with: "it has nothing to do with me wanting a high REP number - but the way it is, I can't put links into my posts...(oh, and people thought of me as a bad guy, due to my low rep, despite me giving helpful replies and gifting games to the "community GA"...that's so unfair! Help me, GOG!!)"
Funny enough, I saw a lot of people with REP in the minus, who posted links...all the time.

As a matter of fact, that was THE massive flaw in GOG's reputation system, right from the start:
a negative REP doesn't mean shit.

Only - for years, nobody knew it...

In the beginning, when people still thought (!) reaching negative REP, would punish them in some way, they behaved accordingly.

That was the time, when this forum was "self-regulated" - and worked as intended.

You didn't behave in a "grown up" way, threatened others, or posted hateful comments?
The community answered with a "low rated" comment.

And since people expected the worst from becoming "negative", they changed their behaviour to the better.

But with the flood of new users (and therefore: trolls), that came with Galaxy, etc. and who hadn't been "brought up" in the system, and who TRULY didn't give a shit about their REP, it became soon clear, that a negative REP did absolutely nothing negative to you.

The "not able to post links" - "punishment"?

A week after the first troll hit negative REP, he also found a workaround and posted it in the forum.

And that was that. All floodgates open. No more "self-regulation". No more "community".
+++++
So, to end this rant:
Hey, GOG - how about you get rid of "that arbitrary number" - but this time for real - and give us a "hide comment" button, instead?

THAT ̶w̶o̶u̶l̶d̶ could really help this forum.

By the sound of it, you've had a policy of quietly running around downvoting most discussions (we don't have real discussion here right?) and people you disagree with.

Exactly the kind of toxic behavior that made the forum terrible.

You forget to mention that I wrote tons of scripts to downvote each and everyone of you.
Out of sheer spite, and simply because I had nothing better to do.
Phew...finally...it's out.
It was me!
I did it!
And yes: the Lindbergh baby - that was also me.
Now that that is out, maybe I can sleep again...keeping my secret for so long was really eating me up.

And yes: if we still had the (-) - button, I would've simply pressed that now, and ignored your post.

I let you decide, which of my statements is true.