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.
PaterAlf: Maybe some people just like the games?
People liking games? On a videogame forum? Oh,
please!