Some people also increase their rep by daily posting just or [url=https://www.gog.com/forum/general/just_three_words]3 words.
HeresMyAccount has like 1000 posts in his thread (probably 99% of his activity on Gog).
Various other users do the same (e.g: redwin), scammer alts included.

Maybe some people just like the games?

Well, too bad this conversation came out on a date when I don't have the time to participate, but I'll try to make a quick comment or two.

I agree that the forum has become... not nearly as nice as it used to be, to put it mildly, over years of neglect; but I am seriously worried a sudden overcorrection of moderation will do more harm than good. We're very much used to freedom here, even if that freedom has been overused by the userbase. As a famous song over here says, who doesn't love freedom even if it ends up blowing up in your face.

I'm particularly worried about the whole hate speech thing being a criterion for moderation. Hate speech is indeed a dangerous thing, but defining it is a really hard thing to do and tends to be overused to protect the feels of some and stop discussion. I'll bring my own minority credentials here, and say that as a Basque I'm used to my people being comically (and seriously) equated to terrorists and how nasty it can be when that jumps to real life and I get detained (at gunpoint, even!) by actual police just for my origin. But, I don't feel like that's a reason to prevent those jokes, some of which I actually find really funny myself. I may get angry and annoyed at some people pushing this view, but I'd rather see them coming that force them to hide and let it fester where I can't see it and then have it stab me in the back somewhere down the line.

Personally, I like being able to read some of these arguments and go "wow, some people actually think this stuff" even if I completely disagree with it. Plus, I find some of these threads (like the gamergate one) to be a lot less 'hateful' than what they're made out to be, and would be sad to see them closed. Honestly, I feel like the line should be drawn on actual calls to violent action and not on mere speech, even if such speech is a prerequisite to the violence like Telika says. It's too close to thought police to my liking. It reminds me to those who claim videogames promote violence, and when told "but it's not real!" their answer is "that is the next logical step". Sorry, but I don't agree with treating something that may lead to something bad sometime down the line as if it directly was the actual bad thing. It is a very dangerous position to take, IMO.

Anyway, those are my two cents. Maybe tomorrow or so I can afford a third cent, we'll see. Plus, no offense to Fables, but I find it kinda hard to believe a community manager from GOG who have always been centered about social media campaigns will bother with our little forum, so it's hard to take this discussion seriously in the first place. We'll see.
People liking games? On a videogame forum? Oh, please!

That at least takes some time and effort... I wouldn't know how to prevent this.
As for scammers... it's a thing that concerns both the users and GOG. The users are in the end responsible for being careful with whom they trade. On the other hand GOG staff should be as responsive and helpful as they are able to, when they learn about fraudulent accounts.

Yes. Or do you not know what passes as a videogame these days, on mobile?

85%* of the population are gamers these days, yo!

*and 76,3% of all statistics are invented

So how should we handle stuff like "Send all sunnite muslims to the gas chamber."? It's actually a quote that was there (and it took more than five days and two mails for GOG to remove it). One could argue that it isn't a real call to violent action. None of us owns a gas chamber after all. And yet I don't want to see this kind of stuff here and I really think GOG should get a little more proactive when something like this shows up.
Sure, but on the other hand it doesn't really boost the rep. You normally just get one point per day and I've never seen high rated posts in these threads.

I would call it a call to action. How many of us has the means to execute the action is irrelevant to whether the call to action is such or not, IMO. "Send all sunnite muslims to the gas chamber." isn't hate speech by my book, it's a clear wish to see a whole bunch of people murdered. Genocide, even on the wishing stage, is way more serious than hate.

Why not? Sure that game can be "abused" but there are also people who just enjoy the game. I remember a time in a different forum where we had a forum game going on and there were several of us who posted multiple times a day for months and since that forum had no rep it certainly was not for increasing rep, it was just for fun ;-)

That sounds also like a good possibility. I do not think that this would take so much effort to implement for GOG.
Plus this could also stop the problem of those bots, it would be far easier to see who (which account) is doing it.
the term you are looking for is, incite of violence ;)
Which in most countries is a crime.
To enter an interesting point/suggestion into the debate:
How do you think about?
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/forum_etiquette_discussion_and_welcome_to_a_new_cm/post163

Seems some irritation in this thread comes from the fact that we don't have a definition for hate speech yet. In my eyes it's everything offensive and aggressive that is aimed against a certain group of people just because of their ethnic origin, religion, gender, believes, sexual orientation (and similar stuff that I probably forgot).

That's why I asked about the quote. I've seen people that want indeed allow stuff like this here and cry about GOG violating their "freedom of speech" when it gets deleted.

HeresMyAccount at some point was surprised to learn that his rep couldn't grow too much daily.. and then his posts started to appear each N days instead of each N hours.
Anyway, I won't insist on this point, I just wanted to show another issue about the rep system.

You are forgetting disability. (Also, I would suggest explicitly stating gender identity.)

Good point Peter Alf,

I will use this as a starting point for the definition or discussion about ;)

ethnic origin, religion, gender, believes, sexual orientation, disability so far

dtgreene, isn't this already covered under sexual orientation?

PaterAlf, believes: A bit vague, or? And not the same as religion? And if you do not mean religion than anything could be covered under it, so we would be back to hate speech, or ;)

Just my 2 cents for it ;)

It's PaterAlf, not Peter. ;)

And yes, believes is a little vague, but in my eyes not the same as religion. One could have moral or ethic believes that makes you the aim of hate speech, but which are not covered by religion.