Oh who cares. Life is way too short for this.

I apologize for overreacting.

If you are sincere then I would also like to apologize for every post I've made in this thread. I really really really REALLY need to get a life.

I think I'm going to go play some actual games now. A bunch of people talked me into picking up Tropico, time to see if I was duped.

I'm completely sincere. My snarky response was hypocritical and undeserved.

I've tested the rep system and it doesn't work like that.

If you low-rate a post, that user loses 1 rep. Uprating it to "neutral" does not return that lost rep point. That post must become high-rated at which point the user will gain 2 rep points (regain lost one and gain one for high-rated)... but once it becomes neutral, there is no way to tell that it was ever low-rated so people wouldn't high-rate it to "fix" the damage.

Also, people who abuse the system will sometimes avoid being so obvious. They will target old topics, sometimes several years old, to reduce the chance their abuse is noticed.

In fact, it is even possible to decrease a users rep with no low-rated posts even being visible (stealth-drain).

The mechanic you descibe only mitigates some damage of the abuse and even then, only within a very limited scope (i.e. very active topics).

It takes 5 accounts to abuse the system. 6 to do so stealthily.
It takes 9-10 knowing about the abuse and co-ordinating to fix the damage.

The system is heavily biased in an abusers favour.

I could single-handedly "impose my opinion" on the entire forum using the post rating mechanics. Hearing about how there are some people on this forum who are silent when they would otherwise be arguing for [i]treating other people with respect and fairness[i] because of the abuse both saddens me and tempts me to set up such a system.. but I'm actually concerned about "becoming the monster" with such a thing in my control :P

A silly worry? Possibly. I've only downrated 2 posts (not counting downrates for system testing) in my ~1000 days here and those were both spam :)

GOG doesn't care about the abuse of the rep system, so would they care if I started abusing it for my own goals, even if they are noble (i.e. fixing abuse damage)? It really makes me wonder...

Unfortunately, GOG are too busy reorganising the game cards, making animations and breaking the site to implement something useful like an Abuse Detection System, even if a simple one could be created within an hour.

tl;dr

The post rating system is not self-correcting and is biased towards negative outcomes.

There you go: http://b.vimeocdn.com/ps/150/312/1503126_300.jpg
Thanks again for all that research. The outcome is interesting to know and is one more reason to ignore rep completely. BTW, did you contact a blue about your results? It would be interesting to get a statement what the officials think on the bias of the rep system.

Ah, I stand corrected then. I didn't know the system was that flawed, I only thought that people assumed that they're being unfairly treated because a large majority may disagree with them from time to time. Nevertheless, the system itself is what some seem to argue against as well which is what I argue for e.g the down rate / up rate buttons. I'm kind of tired of the whole discussion about it so frankly it wouldn't bother me if the system was taken down entirely but on principle it's a good system (excluding the fact that it's currently flawed, I'm talking about a working system where abuse isn't as easy to accomplish).

Gamers know that rules matter and can be changed. Downrepping should cost also reputation, i.e if every 2 downreps you loose 1 rep yourself you will not abuse it anymore. Additionally one shouldn't be able to downrep with less than 10 rep yourself.

That is only if one wants to keep such a system. I don't mind if it would go instead.

They refused to send me post timestamps for a topic which would have indicated if a user was abusing the rep system. I don't think they care.

After all, they did design it to work the way it does and (other) people don't seem to like being told that what they made sucks, even when its suckage is not subjective..

Maybe it's just that the current rep system was designed with somewhat different user reactions in mind.

I mean, obviously, people who complain about losing points actually care about them, at least to a certain extent. So what I think was expected of these people is that, instead of complaining, they would actively try to compensate their rep loss by helping other people, making good posts, etc. Complaining only seems to attract serial downreppers who find it amusing, while active work would make their job much harder and much less "fun".

This would mean that the GOG users were expected to be the kind that proves their worth through actions and patience, not through fighting and whining. But maybe things don't work like this nowadays...

I know this has got your attention, and that the issue is now prominent for you. However in defense of GOG, they really aren't servicing their community by fixing this. Only about 1% of people actually post in the forums (my guess - in fact I am guessing less given those counters that tick up in promos). Futhermore, those 1% don't actually make many waves, so they're looking at fixing about 0.05% of the community's problems by addressing this.

I'm not saying it's right, or that it should continue, just that I understand GOG's perspective. Hope that's cool.

No-one knew it was that flawed. I was surprised myself when I found out and I don't exactly hide my opinion of the web dev team or the priorities they choose/are given.

I think removing the system entirely would be "punishing" the vast majority of users who use it reasonably. People already raised the issue about "too many giveaway threads". What happens when the only way to show you appreciate someone's generosity is to post "+1" like some already do? Cue the "too many people posting +1, we need a like button!" topics!

GOG should just dedicate a developer to do my bidding for a week or so and this (and other things) would be sorted! :)

The fuck is this post low-rated ? :/

Have you been paying attention to this thread!? :P If someone post that they like ice cream in here it's bound to get low rated.

But... I love ice cream? Is that ok? I don't just like it...