And now that we have a new community manager, maybe he might fix it! But somehow you feel you need to shout me down? I like the way you accuse me of "bitching", how nice of you...

Because, you know...he's new. Show me another post that explained how much reputation is getting lost in succession or for how long? The new community manager created this thread so we can explain some of the problems we have been having. And here you are, as usual, trying to drown out other voices...

The reason we are skeptical and jaded is because we've heard this before. All these pages of drama aren't an attack on you, it's just the voicing of the overall discontent.

Personally I understand your position and really sympathize. I too have worked for a major gaming storefront and I too have had to deal with a nearly hostile community. The worst part of a community manager's job is that half the time you are on the side of the people who complain, but can't directly affect development. Various business considerations often prevent developers' time being spent on fixing a set of features that only a minute (albeit vocal) minority of customers is using. Devrs are expensive as all hell (I know, I am one) and it would be a poor decision to put them on a project that would benefit 100 forum users as opposed to 1,000,000 other customers.

All that said, we — the aforementioned 100 — are still bitter. Please don't take it personally. None of us (well, except maybe some of the most deranged ones) have anything at all against you. We all, despite our many differences and opinions of each other, wish you success at this job for your sake and our own.

deleted

Well, then while it's on your mind, may I offer an opposing view? I think negative rep has its place, and should stay. I think a far more useful endeavour - rather than removing the downvote button - would be to just have a way to hide a post without negatively hitting rep; building in a proper "Ignore User" function. Right now, your forum is so basic that the only tool it offers to ignore a post is a downrep button.

I've lost probably 1500ish rep over the years. Mostly from a few years ago when we had a problem with a scammer who didn't like a few of us trying to keep track of his shenanigans, but some of it quite justly, from me being a jackass. Don't rush to enfranchise the jackasses of this forum by taking away the only metric the community has to show disapproval with a user or their actions. There's no face-to-face, so you can't just walk away to drop hints that someone should stop chain-post ranting about chemtrails and fluoridation mind control. You can't do much after the first dozen times asking someone to stop coming into your threads and grinding their axes all over the place. And the risible conspiracy theories about bot script armies downrepping a select few to silence them hold no water, because a) the users who lost a lot of rep then stopped complaining all over the place stopped losing so much rep and b) having low rep doesn't prevent a user from posting.

Low rep prevents URL linking in posts, still? Is that it? That's all it used to do. And there was a trivial workaround, because of course there was, GOG forum software. That's not important at all.
EDIT: typos, as always

True. The issue with rep is not rep but rep abuse. If rep abuse is monitored, rep becomes an okay system again (which it was a few years ago). And rep abuse can be stuff like auomated bot repping (whether it happens or not), or systematic name-based repping regardless of individual post content. Both should be observable by the community manager.

Anyway, if rep was to be capped at 2018 (for now) and the numbers replaced by one random historical event from the corresponding year, that would also be fine by me (please pass this terrific suggestion along).

Another idea is to implement a minimum rep. On reddit, for example, karma can't go below -100; applying this to GOG, perhaps we set a Rep minimum of -100. Downvotes can't lower rep blow this number, and any user whose rep is below -100 would have their rep set to -100.

Of course, another option might be to remove downvotes entirely, and replace "report as spam" with a general report function that, instead of leading to automatic removal, gets seen by a GOG employee (like the community manager) who can then act on it.

I am not sure what the point of a minimum negative rep is. Sounds like a strange half-measure that achieves nothing.

The second part I'm on board with.

Well, since you've named me specifically and you're talking about perspective, I don't think I have accused you of whining about rep.

Are you perhaps referring to when I flat out told you that the most likely reason for your low rep is your propensity to verbally abuse people as soon as they disagree with you? Because I certainly don't remember accusing you of whining, just bluntly explaining that it's probably self inflicted.

EDIT: I should add, I've only downrepped posts in which you've attacked or insulted people and I didn't even particularly know/remember who you were until the second time you attacked me and I went "Hang on, I remember this guy".

The problem is the down rep itself, this has been proven. Community forum experts pretty much unanimously advise new forums not to include downvotes, dislikes or the sort. This is not unique to GoG. Forums with these negative incentives are far more contentious than those without them. In fact Blizzard took the step to remove their own dislike button too.

Here's a quote I found on another forum from a person claiming to be an admin for a 15k user gaming community...

"after one month of this [a dislike button] we removed it.. put it back in after a while.after another week we restricted the option to moderators(and higher) only.

people will thumbs up their 'friends' and thumbs down people they don't like, regardless of what they post."

Sound familiar?
Are you going to deny that you tried to claim "go die in a fire" is a death threat? I see you changed your forum title after I pointed out how contentious it was. Again with the self-inflicted. And like I said, I'm sure I'm not the only one here who sees you as part of a group of people who don't have a problem coming into threads just to personally attack a particular user while avoiding the actual topic being discussed. Exactly like you seen to be doing right now. Funny how I'm supposedly being annoying by talking too much about rep, but you can follow me and keep posting over and over again how you think I deserve it, but that isn't annoying...

How about you quit harassing other users...

I wasn't saying I didn't.

What I was saying was that I didn't accuse you of whining, which is something you just accused me of.
However no, I don't recall specifically accusing you of making death threats. I am however surprised you haven't had an official warning over explosions like that. Maybe now we have a proper community manager there's someone to tell you to stop when you start flaming people.

When did you say something about my forum title? I must have missed it.
Are you seriously suggesting I'm following you around? No, what I've been doing is reading the topic. You mentioned me by name and I decided to respond so I don't think the "Wahh, SirPrimalform is following me around and being meaaan!" card is going to work here. =/

Funny, because I mentioned it right around the time the new community manager showed up. And within hours you removed your attack on "Gamergaters". I'm sure it was just a coincidence...

I'm personally surprised that you and your ilk haven't been warned for your personal attacks upon other users. Touche.

Did you ever stop to think that the reason I don't get warned is because the mods read the entire thread and so the events that lead up to it? They see the people going out of their way to personally insult and attack me? That they can see you people going on the attack like you have done now?

Are you saying it was appropriate for Fairfox to go "Waaaa Waaaa" and insinuated that I'm a baby crying over rep? Are you saying it's okay that Richlind can call me "man-baby" or "twat" while never getting low-rated but all my posts in the same thread did along with 2 or 3 other users regardless of the content of the particular posts?

Hopefully they will tell YOU to stop harassing other users you take a disliking to. To stay on topic and avoid personal attacks like the one above where you are trying to claim I "deserve" low rep for telling harassers like you to "Go die in a fire".

Not you, but I have been informed that a user whom I had blocked years ago is in fact following me around and posting in every single thread I make (usually it's the first reply.) Now, personally it doesn't bother me, I get a chuckle out of it once in a while, but for someone who unlike me chooses not to block people, this could be annoying. This is to say that weird shit like that definitely does happen on this forum.