Has she said anything wrong to be worthy of a downrep (other than being dtgreene)? It's a mod's job to step in in such circumstances and resolve the issue before it rolls into the circus that it becomes to be at the end of the day. A forum is meant to be used comfortably by any of us without being thrown slurs at or similar. 'Ignore the other person' is not a solution and never should be, sorry.

Now for the way of GOG forums, it might be against the established standards and thus hard to follow. But this should be the ideal situation, coupled with using the report button right away to report to the staff.

----

On another topic, the rep issue. Here's my way of doing it: Fix everyone's rep at 500, then hide the rep and downrep buttons and hide the rep counter. Problem solved. It's the same as being an orange or blue.

What powers the CM should have? Moderation of course. Deletions of threads and posts, kicks and bans from the forums by usernames (never by IP bans, that's horrible, and a ban on the forum shouldn't affect anyone's ability to buy stuff on GOG.)

The search function should be sorted by time, allows for search via usernames, allow special characters, etc.

Alt accounts is a difficult one since GOG has nothing on their hands to check whether an account is an alt or not. Rather than hunt out for alt accounts, make them useless. Useless by not affecting the rep counter in the aforementioned way, by having limits on posts until a certain quota, etc. A user willing to spend his time will get past those, while an army of alts will be slowed down a bit by that and won't have that much of a benefit if members were to get the aforementioned lazy rep fix.

I think that should be it.

Right, something else I forgot to talk about. When banning, the ban is in effect on only the forum in which they made their infraction. So if I made a ban-worthy ruckus in the Bloodrayne forums, I should have every other forum on GOG available to me. Why? You might want to see support on games through the community. You might also have tools or similar to contribute.

The bans themselves should only stop the user from posting new posts, but otherwise they are able to read everything when logged in. I feel this is fair and in line with GOG's approach to their customers.

A lot of people would say that a forum is actually a place to "have fun", and if you can't take "having fun", then you just need to "man up".

Me? I've just given up on any hope of anything being done, and decided to stick largely to tech support threads and Gydion's WINE threads.

But having fun doesn't mean throwing racial slurs or being insulted by alts or other such issues. Which is precisely the problem. I've given up as well, as I do come here occasionally and...nothing more really.

No suggestion. The fate of the previous, exactly similar thread, settles it. This forum now belongs to the trump-lickers, putin trollbots, and ukip grumbys, whose trouser legs get soaked wet as the mere hypothetical mention of moderation. It makes sense as these boards have become one of the last generalist safe havens for "alt-right" rants, one of the few places where racism gets victoriously redefined as "just one respectable opinion amongst others". This is a high stake for them.

For others, it isn't. While it was nice to have a forum attached to "good old games" in general (and to the store in particular), there are many other places with acceptability limits against hate speech propaganda. But this is now the identity of the GOG forums, and we can only hope (for business) that, as the departure of decent humans further defines it, it won't get progressively perceived as the identity of GOG. But it isn't in GOG's hands anymore. As each hilariously short-lived attempt at "community managing" illustrates it, it's too late for GOG to change anything to their forum demographics without risking too much backlash and customer alienation.

Have a look at the "GOG community" in the "political" threads (including the gamergate one). You want suggestions, and what ? Throw a willing CM into that cesspool ? Nope. If anything, the forum hosts the trolls it deserves. They don't feel at home for no reason.

Thanks for demonstrating the problem...
You who show so much contempt for the "alt-right" are proving exactly why they have contempt for the likes of you.
You are the perfect example of a liberal troll and you show as much "hate mongering" as those you condemn.

As you said, for every extreme-right troll we have, we also have one extreme-left one. And they're both just as obnoxious as one another, and neither should deserve preferential treatment from GoG, or any reasonable individual, for that matter.

And don't forget about all these hyper-sensitive PC Whiners who complain about random words (like for example: tranny, which is a completely normal word to describe MtF's, yet some retards want to pretend it's a slur equivalent to the N Word, just because they have nothing else to do) "supposedly" being racist/sexist/whatever... yet guess what, it's usually them who are the most racist and bigoted asshats you can find in the world, along with being the biggest hypocrites ever.

So if one side supposedly deserves mod action to take place, so does certainly the other too.

/rant over (don't want this to degenerate into another political thread).

Yeah, do go on pretending that the detestation of xenophobes is the same thing as the detestation of foreigners. This brand of self-serving selective relativism (very self-serving, very selective, as immediately followed by "waargh, them homo gays and muslims and darkies are subhumans, make them invisible or get them out") is exactly what defines GOG's norm right now.

Nowadays most legal and social norms show the same omg one-sided contempt for racist ideologies. But as the ww2 memory fades, as your extreme-right leaders get re-elected througout the world, you'll soon have your little revenge, don't you worry.

Too Late. :P

Ever since I decided to cut myself off from these fucking threads I find I have almost nowhere to hang out in here anymore. :P

Guess only thing left to do now is take a seat and have some popcorn :P

Sorry, Zeo...

Actually, the word "tranny" is a slur, as it has been used like one.

Are you a transgender woman? If not, you have no right to claim the word "tranny" to not be a slur.

I do like the general gist of your post 29. A solid road map. Start with scammers, spammers and those who seem to only be here to troll.

I wouldn't include dtgreene in that list. Maybe next tier, with all the alt-rights vs alt-lefts (who are so left they might as well be alt-right and fail to realize it). Most of which do more than just argue politics...

While I have to "friendly" disagree with him, for various reasons, this is neither the place nor the time. + discussing politics never leads anywhere... at least not anywhere good.

But you're right, best to leave the sinking ship than to drown with it :P

Not even gonna bother feeding you. Go bait someone else. :P

Yeah, most people think the political spectrum to be a line, when it actually is more like a circle, with both extremes getting closer and closer to each other until there is no difference in their nature, solely the pretense of being better than the other (and the target(s) of their ever-changing / ever shifting hate).

Sad thing is, if they kept their "political agenda" out of all discussions not pertaining to it, and toned down their extremism, most would probably be considered semi-decent human beings.

The irony is : Rwarehall completely agrees with me, and strenghtens my point. What he asks for, explicitely, is the "alt right" to be as respected as any other discourse or ideology. The current GOG forum norm is centered around this notion.

I only point out that the respectability of the "alt right" is an obscene notion in and by itself, as post-ww2 societies as a whole (just as most general public forums) used to agree about, hence "hate speech" laws and etiquette rules against "alt right" propaganda.

The very fact that, within the GOG forum's common sense, the "alt right" has to be treated as equivalent to, say, antiracism, humanism, etc, is a clear illustration of the local subculture. This normalisation is a victory. It's a re-definition of the range of the thinkable. And it is a general movement that is also visible in broader, (geo)political contexts.

Nothing escapes this. It's the core of the issue.

...somehow, I don't think you understood the fact that there was even a joke here.
You worry me some days...
I'd make a "Zeogoldilocks" joke but I feel like nobody here but Habanerose would get it.
I dunno, people might find it annoying. They complained about the login CAPTCHA as it was.
I do think that revealing who's downvoted/upvoted what would go a long way, though.
Just because this forum has a lot of Trump supporters, it's suddenly a bad place?
I'm not sure if that makes it a "bad place" or just "a place Telika doesn't like because of its political opinions".
I mean, I hate Trump as much as you do if not even worse, but I'm not about to go around saying his supporters are trash.