OMG you made it then!
Good job!

(just don't exaggerate now lol)

I'm certainly not official, but these don't seem like hard questions to me. (I don't mean to be mean here; I have quite a bit of respect for you, 227)

-I can't imagine that minor off-topic conversation is anything except a non-issue. People will sometimes veer; it is simply a thing that people do. Major derailing might become an issue. Deliberate derailing just because you don't like the topic isn't cool.

And before anyone goes "How do you define minor versus major"?
Edit: I also like this one.

-As a general rule, someone else acting like an idiot is not just cause for (generic) you to also act like an idiot.

-Remember the complaints about dozens of threads on the same topic coming up within just a few days? Do at least a cursory look around to see if a topic has been opened before. Extensive searching probably isn't necessary.

Try these:
1) Don't be an asshat.
2) If someone else is being an asshat, don't be an asshat.
3) Don't do illegal things. We don't want to be in legal trouble.
4) Remember that some people may be more conservative than you. Try to have at least some respect for their sensibilities. This basically just goes back into Rule 1.

Corollary: Don't try to be pedantic about these rules or try to find loopholes. Again, Rule 1.

I am a fan of this post, and I second pretty much every sentiment that Adalia has expressed in this thread so far.

I’m fine with strict rules if they are enacted fairly, i.e. for everybody. If you go the route of Twitter and Reddit (deleting exact same content depending on their author’s beliefs and on which group it targets), however, that will be the end.

I wouldn’t be so sure about that.

What do you mean by “the other camp”?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTh5JzRziHE



Btw, speaking of "bans", can instead the term "readonly" be used? Like "1 week of read-only", sounds more nice than "1 week of ban".

oooh so it did puzzle you too, right ? :)

anyway, devil's advocate here:

no advertisement (including but not only limited to commercials) ?
ok, so basically that means that talking about or linking to any essential or high quality game mod (even some tech fixing mod) IS advertising them
therefore, it's forbidden...
also mentioning other drm-free stores that have games unavailable here in gog catalog seems obviously forbidden too
as well as linking to any informative/entertaining related material from any content creator on youtube or twitch or whatever

also i suppose such new rules are to be enforced retroactively and people having posted messages that are not complying to those rules prior to their proclamation shall worry too ?

finally should we assume the banning from forum for violating these rules (even unknowingly or unwillingly) will result on the termination of our gog account (and its library) ?

then as bonus, i guess triggers and offenses will be appraised not on an unpartial basis but upon biased spectrum ? which means what would offense "me" for exemple wont worth a crap if i'm the only one that get offended even for logical/meaningful reasons but the "common trend of triggers/offenses" of the loudest and/or largest group will prevail even if it is not backed up by eny logical or legal reason over than "personal feelings" ?
something like some sort of "double standards" ?

given how lehality and moral values can differ widely from one country/culture/religion to another, i wish you good luck enforcing all that, or at least partially enforce it for only some groups while denying it to other groups and finding explanation for them afterwards.

I guess i should resume lurking (if i value my gog library), grab popcorn and watch the show

Okay so I just got chewed out in a PM from someone more or less blaming me for these changes. :P

I guess you have to break a few eggs to make an omelette.

Good Lord. I thought I'd never see the day.
Fables, whatever strings you had to pull or work you had to do to get this done, bravo to both you and whoever was involved with this. We've been waiting ages for this to happen. Hopefully things should become much cleaner around here, although it'll take some time. You're inevitably going to get a fair number of people who're going to complain and whine about it, and I know this is likely an unfair and broad generalization here, but let's face it:
A lot of these people who're going to complain were part of the problem anyways.
Good luck with the implementation, as the enforcement will be no easy task, but I'm confident you'll do well in it.

This is awesome news. I'm all for freedom of expression, but there are sensible limits that need to be imposed at times on that IMHO for civility to prevail lest fora degrade to utter anarchic chaos, which is how things seem to have turned more and more over time.

I know there will be some controversy about this, but I think any resistance will mainly be from people who are hell bent on wanting to break the very rules in the first place for their own personal amusement or whatever.

Personally I'm very very glad to see GOG finally trying to do something about this problem in the forums, and while I'm sure it will be a bit of a learning process to figure out what will work best, I think that the kids just even knowing that mommy and daddy are now at home and keeping an eye on things is going to be a huge step in the direction of them not destroying the entire house metaphorically speaking. I'm sure that GOG will be more than reasonable about any moderation personally, and have full trust in balance in fairness transpiring.

Considering the millions of users GOG has, and the thousands'ish that have actually used the forums, and the few hundred that ever post on any regular basis and follow things, keeping a few dozen people who don't like rules in line shouldn't be a difficult task for GOG to handle now that someone is "on it" so to speak, and I like the wording you've used in all of your communications about this so far. I suspect some will leave the forums entirely to no great loss, others will pull themselves in line to some degree or another, and others may get the steel toe so to speak. :)

The CDPR forums are relatively well moderated in my experience in the past and I've always wondered why they weren't also moderated here to the same degree. Then again I've also wondered why GOG doesn't tweak the CDPR forum software and replace the outdated software in use here with it. :)

Thanks very much for taking this problem seriously and setting out to do something to correct it and bring our forums back to their former glory relatively speaking.

10,000 golden thumbs up. :)

No. There have been forum bans in the past, with the user still able to access the store and library, as well as the (then) PM system. So GOG has always been able to restrict forum access without restricting store access.

tbh, a more robust forum engine with more features and possibilities, a search function that works half-decently at least without having to resort using (excellent) adalia essential scripting and such... that TOO would help a community to grow.

more rules, or more precise rules, or harder-enforced rules won't help much if we are still crawling in dirt instead of having a better sandbox/area to play

when i joined gog beta in 2008, i barely ever participate in the forums.... as long as until late 2015... because even in beginning, the forum was techwise years years backwards compared to what was the standards in most other websites (at that time, i even was administrating several mmo guild forums in phpbb which was yet better than gog forum on those regards in their versions of those years)

my 2 cents

Considering how nice of a change this is, I would take that as a compliment.

I haven't actually read the rules but I would imagine usual advertising rules apply. If you are a genuine member of the forum who wants to promote your Youtube or Twitch channel or your gaming website, that's fine.
If you have just signed up today and your first post is about this fabulous game that you've heard of (but are in no way affiliated with, no, really! I promise) and you then make four more posts about it, that's not acceptable.

I think Bookwyrm's got a fairly good set of rules going in his post ;)

well, to me, people harassing you in that way through PM seems against those very rules that are promoted/advertized here... and you shouldnt have to cope with such stuff.

i'm eager to see/hear about how moderation will ever deal with such cases... rules shouldnt apply only to the public forum but also to PM communication.

True, you can ignore a user annoying you, but beyond that, if the user break the rules, it's not only your problem but GOG's, and it shouldnt be only on your shoulders to deal with it, but GOG's too.

let me know if said shiny new rules only apply to forum or if they plan do actively DO something regarding PM violations of them

deleted

Yep :D
Always wondered if no one cared or if there was actually a technical reason considering how messed up a lot of things are here in the forum at times :D