What does free speech have to do with it? GOG isn't some autonomous government, they provide a privately owned space for our use. Free speech doesn't enter into it. Otherwise I agree with your assessment.

This is not about Alex Jones himself, this is about the forum thread. The thread recaps hateful bullshit only a few people are interested in. It is regularly updated. Now:
- reporting on hatefull bullshit is not in itself bad when it's relevant -- such as when the bullshitters are poised to run the most powerful country in the world.
- even if you consider it unacceptable, other hate threads such as gamergate are allowed to stay.
- many other threads of limited interest are continually pushed to the front page.
- the posts are original content, not copypasta, and in "good-faith"-good English.
- the content is kept within one thread and the thread title is sufficiently descriptive for uninterested users to avoid it.

The Infowars thread breaks no established forum conventions. It might be a violation of the no hate speech policy if said policy were ever upheld. There's no policy against discussing fake news.

But the last three points classify is as Definitely Not Spam.
Spam is (1) low-effort, (2) commercial, (3) unsolicited.
The Infowars thread is (1) high-effort, (2) noncommercial, (3) kept within a properly labeled thread
[techinically, most forum posts are "unsolicited" -- one of the key elements of spam is getting 'nonconsenting eyeballs'. On a forum, this means many threads, bumping threads with low-effort posts, misleading thread title, offtopic posts and addenda to posts ("fake sigs") in other threads].

Here are some examples of threads (of intentionally varying usefulness) that share a trait with forum spam:
Just Three Words, Word Association Game, etc are low-effort
Gaming Deals is commercial (duh)
the Mafia threads are of fundamentally limited interest by design
Price Updates are machine-generated

TL;DR a thread isn't spam just because you (we) don't like it. Saying it is just devalues the complaint.

Its not GOG that I am invoking free speech on, its the people who often launch borderline crusades to have the thread removed, obviously if GOG had moderation for the forum and they removed it I wouldn't be saying this, I am more directing it at the above mentioned people, not GOG, if they were to make a decision, being of course a registered member of the owner and customer, I would abide by (but not necessarily agree with) their decision,

- The community has argued it is not relevant, by not posting in it, leaving him to continuously bump it himself.

- Other threads feature discussion, not merely link dumps.

- No other thread has been bumped nearly every single day by a sole individual, sometimes more than once per day, for several months. If it was not so extremely prevalent it would not be called spam.

- The posts are all links being copied from elsewhere en masse, with no personal opinion stated and no invitation to discussion. I wouldn't take someone's english being good or not as a factor in calling something spam or not.

- So it's just one spam thread, it doesn't make it not spam.

And I argue that it is low-effort: it's just copy pasted links, not a well-reasoned opinion; it is commercial: it's an advertisement for his favorite show with updates every time a new episode comes out; and it is unsolicited: he, and Kleetus making fun of him, are the only regular posters in it constantly bumping it, and 99% of the other people who bothered to come and post at one point or another were asking him to stop.

No, its political content doesn't make it spam, which by the way is why I don't oppose other threads in the forum, it's spam because of the form in which it is conveyed. If the exact same message was relayed through a discussion, I still wouldn't agree with it, but I wouldn't have a problem with it. In that same thread people have asked him to focus, to argue, not to dump links. To pick a single topic, argue for it, and let a discussion emerge, then later move to a different topic, instead of posting a hundred links at a time. But he ignored it completely, he decided to keep dumping every link he could find, he decided to spam.

Better to be anything than a fat suckhole I always say.

I want to help him.

I have used this analogy many times already when discussing this. Imagine this is an actual physical game store, where people buy things and also hang out. They hang out, talk, sometimes organise some events. And then one guys starts coming there to spread his propaganda. Every day he comes to bother people, preach to them, he gives out leaflets filled with lies and slander about random stuff and posts them on the notice board. Would "free speach" mean everyone has to now put up with that guy? Would it matter what exactly we call what he's doing? Or would he simply be asked to stop doing it, and if he didn't would be removed from the premises for bothering people and being an asshole?

Alex Jones used his mind control ray gun to force people to post in that thread.

Best post here.

Oh... no... brainwashing... failing... must take... supplements... Vitamin B12... Pure water... non-GMO foods...

Must contact... Alex... get control ray... to keep... enslaved...

I am now officially gay for Alex Jones

Good analogy but problem is that stores have security guards (moderation) which eventually GOG will NEED to get.
hint hint wink wink

In my view the content of the posts isn't all that relevant, save that it's unrelated to gaming, it's more so that the only person that seems interested in what is being posted is the poster himself. It's no different to if every day he posted a list of everything he ate that day or if he was to post a list of huffington post articles he read every day.

If people were discussing his posts I don't think it would be reasonable to complain, but it seems to me that it is just him spamming and I just wonder if his posts should be reported as such.

Not to be rude, but if you don't like the thread, then why make a second thread about it?
You have essentially created a thread that is more 'useless' than his because it's about his 'useless' thread, right? So.. Like... Double the useless! Again, I am not saying that as an insult, just an observation, I swear! :D

Anyway, I don't consider his thread useless or bothersome at all. That's just me apparently. I see what you mean by "He's the only one posting in it", but that's not entirely true, lots of people have fun heckling him for posting these articles... And there's even another thread about his thread now, so I'd say he's being pretty successful at spreading whatever it is he wants to spread.

I'd just tell him that it's not particularly smart to get all your info from one website, and then repost all that info from that one website onto this website here. It'd be much more interesting if he compiled a bunch of different news articles so that we could all debate about what is true and what isn't. If you only look at one news source and it turns out to be a corrupted little fountain of misinformation, then bam, all you've ever read from that one source is now worthless.

I want to make a third, what do you think of this as a thread title:

Spam and the Spam and the Infowars Thread.

On the one hand, the thread is out of place, utterly pointless, wilfully ignorant, extremely irritating, and cringingly embarrassing. It shows no respect for GOG or the community, and it's extremely selfish and rude of rtcvb32 to continue plugging away at it.

On the other hand, deleting it wouldn't be fair on Kleetus.

Seriously though, I do wonder how many customers, and perhaps even publishers and developers, check out the forum before deciding to do business with GOG and walk away shaking their heads because of the piss-poor impression the forum gives of GOG. Is it really worth keeping the laissez-faire attitude to forum moderation if it makes your company look so bad?

It's a GENERAL category and is the only place it could fit. I do my best to follow the rules of the forums.

People have posted about music, random videos, cats, guessing movies and/or games from screenshots, Promoting Youtube channels, Noah/Spoony, D&D, emulation, G2A, Gamergate, Castro's (or other celebs) Death, and a myriad of other topics that aren't gaming or don't belong.