This is the best decision you could have made. The idea of having a rating-system was never bad. Get many positive votes and you are shown to be a pillar of the community, someone who others can turn to with serious problems or questions and receive the best help they can get. The execution and how it was really used and abused by members and bots:

Don't like what someone has to say? Give that post a negative rating and move on. 200 posts? Scan for something you don't like, leave a negative vote. Don't like the user? Just click that minus or thumb-down button. On some websites, as a consequence, even the best thought out reply would vanish or risked to be deleted once it received a random number of negative votes. This should help to display positive and helpful posts first and improve the discussion culture. Members who were not liked it was always easy to get rid of by just voting them down until they were eventually removed. Or their activities so severly restricted that they could only post very short passages at any given time.

Forum like this, with a rating system, they usually don't help to create an atmosphere for a positive exchange. They don't make the forum a nicer place. If there is a rating system at all, there should only be positive votes. Not because it changes people, haters are going to hate, but because if someone dislikes what has been written they would now be forced to leave a reply instead of just pressing that button. This will most likely lead to some receive a warning or ban and removal of posts, just because they really dislike both the person who dares voice an opinion they don't like. This little toy is then gone and with one less troll the discussion culture should improve.

I have seen how voting systems can lead to people internalize the rules, learn what earns them positive votes and what has the majority vote them down. Even if there was only positive ratings, being used to express consent or support or in case of negative ratings to disprove and show dislike to the person, both aren't helpful for the individual receiving either one. Some take negative votes to heart, it bothers them, they get anxious in real life - it has a negative effect on them and ruin their day.

In conclusion and for what my opinion is worth to you to decide what to do in regards of a possible reintroduction of a rating-system in whatever shape or form, as long as people and bots exist, the rating systems are just a convenient way to silence opinions you don't like and get rid of someone who actually contributes something to a discussion, or support people who just say what you like and get them vote them up, even it's just one-liners. Some people opinion are their Alpha&Omega and anyone who dares say different is the worst enemy and must be punished.

When you decide to bring back the voting system, allow to award points for the most helpful answer when there's a question having been raised, tie it to an earning-system which awards helpful community members with store credit of several cents/day at most. Implement it in a way it can't be abused with bots. Only members with several posts (20) can start placing votes where it isn't a question topic. This will liven up the forum, draw new members, who - one can only hope - are willing to voice their real opinion and become a contribution to the forums. New member == new customer == new source of income for you.

In a scenario where only positive ratings are allowed, you could use it to promote community moderators, again receiving some sort of reward for their voluntary duties. One game of choice per month for instance for free. In that way this place could really become a safe-heaven for discussions, where opinions have to be exchanged and accepted, not like a my little pony world where everyone loves everyone else. People do have bad days, not all that's said in a discussion must be positive just for the sake of it. A healthy discussion with both positive and negative opinions makes it worth to contribute.

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Since reviews also got a rating system, the only place it really makes sense to have one, maybe you could find a way to allow us to have a discussion forum for them? It might help to improve that part of the website as well.

Do you mean the "report as spam" link that shows up when a post is downvoted? I just tested and it still shows for me, though perhaps you just disabled the functionality?

I'd appreciate keeping the ability to hide posts I want to, but if you want to chop off the rep system away for good, that's fine with me. (It was fun seeing my rep at 5k+, but plenty of people got loads of rep but get unjustly botted and downvoted and thus lost loads of rep.) I think high rep was mainly useful for letting people know who was most active (higher rep = more active) and possibly more credible, but as the bitterness over the years has risen I guess some people have sicked bots on others causing unjust downvotes around left and right.

I'm not sure if you want to allow new members post links right away or not, but personally since I can usually tell what's spam I'd be fine with it. Otherwise, if it wouldn't depend on rep, would it be a "a certain amount of time must pass before you can post links" thing?

Also I'd like to see a brand new forum as long as this one is archived. I assume everything is basically intertwined code-wise though - store and library and forum - which is why we haven't gotten a new one yet in 13+ years of business.

Toxic people with alternate accounts are attached to respiratory devices after this decision. Good job.

Great to finally see you doing something. :)
But ... are you just hiding the REP, or have you also disabled the UP and DOWN voting as well?
In other words ... Is this just a superficial fix, and our REP is still going up or down in reality? Many of us aren't sure what you mean by this.
If you are referring to the 'rate this post' option, then yes please disable the minus and plus, though we should still be able to report a bad post, and hiding obnoxious posts is also desirable.

Supplementary Question - Will scripts be able to bypass your measures? In other words, alter the REP count?

P.S. When I came to GOG tonight, I noticed the forum pages load more slowly. It might be due to a script by GOG that hides the REP, or it might just be a coincidence ... time will tell I guess.

Thank you GOG. Getting rid of the Scarlett Letter / reputation number is a start.

While I have little issue with the actual reputation number, removing it from public view (my guess is it's still there... just not publicly visible) is potentially a step in the right direction -- toward eliminating down-vote harassment.

But...

... the real culprit in down-vote harassment is the negative ability to down-vote.

IMO the ability to down-vote should be removed altogether; the only abilities a reader should have -- other than replying in kind -- are...

... HIDE a post...

... UP-VOTE a post...

... or...

... REPORT a post.

That keeps moderation aware of problem posts (posts potentially against GOG's TOS) via reporting to mods (report), allows forum readers to hide a post if they so desire (hide), and most importantly...

... displays posts' positive engagement (up-voted "high rated" posts).

IMO this orients the forum toward a neutral (0) to positive (+) review system and completely removes the ability of those who would manipulate a down-vote system (-) to harass and intimidate others.

(And removing the ability to down-vote does not remove a forum reader's ability to respond to a post in a contrary or negative manner; they can still reply with their contrary or negative opinion. They just can't down-vote the original post -- making its quality look low [low rated] -- and brand its author as a negative part of this community.)

Many thanks for taking the first step in tackling what has sadly become a serial issue here. A move toward a positive forum orientation is a good thing!

Nice try but failed: Still my negative rep account does not recover the privilege to post URLs...
Evidence attached

URL posting privilege test (Replace Xrl by Url)

[Xrl=https://www.gog.com/]Gog Link[/Xrl]

Crikey, this is fast for GOG, I only suggested it 3 or 4 years ago and look, they are finally doing something about it!! Maybe there is hope for the pages upon pages of other issues here.

Huh, is that why I noticed the reputation number missing from the posts?

Will the illuminati still sell me healing crystals though? I need to know the various numbers they're advertising under.

+1000000000000
Thank you so much GOG. No sarcasm here - just pure ennjoyment. Probably the best decision you made in a long time. Thank you! If you really want to make this perfect,: remove the donvote button completely but keep the upvote button. This way it would simply mark those posts that were extremly helpful which would give an incentive to ... well ... be helpful :) It would be more like the "like" button on youtibe or facebook. When it comes to spam and abuse people can still contact a blues so that they can manually check if a certain post actually is spam to prevent abusing the "report as spam" option.

Thanks for such great removal.

This system was toxic and used to psychologically threaten users with different / harsh opinions, which is not the best use of it. If we disagree we must chat about it instead of just pressing a button saying it internally "I win!". Being it through bots, or clicking in the ( - ).

Now, on the topic of post review, which by what I understood is the + and - : Remove it completely too, as it serves the same purpose. Still, probably the best action is to keep the + , as it is well used many times to highlight good answers and helpful posts.

I would have preferred, if you kept the Rep and instead removed the ability to up- and downvote posts. The rep was more or less the only indicator for forum/community activity. As it's not really possible to search for forum posts or reviews of single users and the profile pages don't have a post history, we are now left with nothing. But instead we still have threads in which every single post is downvoted.

I see the downvoter has made a very recent visit.