And yet - you answered your question already - even if only indirectly: See - your answer is already implied.
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Btw: I love how you mention these two extremes, but completely set aside the non-extreme third possible option:

Forum users, that are able (and willing) to discuss things in a civil way.

As long as you manage to keep things civil, you can have conversations about pretty much any topic.

So - the real question is: why can (some) forum users seemingly just not behave civilized?

Simple: the forum guests (you and me, for example) read the rules, and follow them.

That's easy, they believe they are right about whatever the topic is no matter what and are unwilling to disengage from the person with the opposing opinion. This usually leads to escalating stupidity and rudeness. It's an entitlement thing. When I can tell that the person I'm talking to is incapable of having a reasonable conversation I just stop talking to that person, not everyone is capable of that.

Bingo!

To put it differently: The unwillingness of some users to behave civilized is the disease - and GOG's forum moderation is the cure.

Edit: because it fits so well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mE2-7a_F_B0 ;)

Sorry, but the solution won't be "Everyone reads the rules and is nice". We all know that won't happen. The interent where people were all nice died a long time ago - probably together with Tom from Myspace :'(

It won't happen. All we'll get with reading the rules and going without moderation is another Zoey Quinn thread, the return of NES (the scammer, not the console) and Tonerboy (KiNgBrAdLeY) and more "Gifting Wars" with people like Sachys and Momo leaving the forums because everyone's fighting each other about how to gift games correctly. We had that already, don't want it back...

Haha - well, the on-paper solution is for us guests to follow the existing rules. Though the extension to that is that when we don't, gOg deals with it. Which is pretty much what they do in the cases that some are calling censorship. Sometimes it has been locks, sometimes vacations, sometimes strategic edits, and maybe a couple deletions here and there (I think mostly for repeat threads?).

Either way, they do have rules, they're willing to let those rules flex a bit, and they generally use a light hand when intervention is deemed necessary.

Thooooough, AB2012 does have a great point, that there needs to be consistency. That could go a long way in the matter.

Cheers.

Easy. The threads that offend the delicate sensibilities of the GOGbear circlejerk.
/s

That's why I don't get the "censorship" drama... Forum rules are pretty clear about posting offtopic and about political discussions (for example), yet I see political discussions in many threads that have completely different topics. and as long as it stays civil, GOG doesn't intervene. Can't see any censorship or iron fist there...

I don't know any forum where there's consistency in moderation. There isn't much consistency in anything, to be honest - be it referee decisions in sports, sentences in court or moderation in forums on the internet. Another problem with forums is that we never know the full story. We don't know what mod and users wrote in private messages and we're probably not aware of the history a certain user has. I think we shouldn't nail mods on "consistency" too much.

But I'm probably a bit biased here since I was a mod on a huge german sports forum for a long time. Back then we made a clear difference between long time regulars who generally behaved well and new users who went into a discussion "all guns blazing" repeatedly. It was just a sensible thing to do...

Iron fist, LOL.

Anyways, we had extremely free forums for years and it drove a lot of people away. Even now, GOG allows a lot of shit-posting and thread spamming that probably shouldn't be permitted.

I haven't seen the scammers thread in a while, so hopefully they finally locked it and any new versions. That thing was like pure trolling from people butthurt that some rando online either scammed them or didn't do what they wanted with the key they were given.
No swearing? Since when, I've literally never had any of the mods complain about me swearing, even when they complained about not wanting flame wars or politics.

This is the internet, if you can't handle seeing curse words, then what happens when you see actual nastiness like lemon party, tub girl or goatse man?

I've meant no excessive swearing. :D

I don't see it as over-moderating, either. Some do, though, as evidenced by similar threads that pop up periodically. gOg's place, gOg's rules. They usually (always, lately?) do us the favor of a warning, too, so it's really on us.



OK, in rereading the rules, technically cursing could be considered as breaking the rules, but the wording is fairly up for interpretation and probably isn't meant to be taken too literally. I suspect it's mostly intended for extreme cases.

It's one of the downsides of an international forum. Having rules that make sense, but aren't subject to rule lawyering from people speaking a dozen languages.
That might be in part because they did basically no moderation for so many years. Even the rule against insulting and attacking other forum goers frequently got ignored.

I like it how it is now where they usually give an informal warning ahead of time for things that are drifting out of bounds. Obviously, not every time for various reasons, but seeing publicly posted threads helps give people the sense that the rules exist.

In the past where the rules were posted, but nearly completely ignored, it was really annoying as there was no real saying when or if the rule would be applied and there wasn't any guarantee that you'd get any sort of warning if you did step out of bounds by a bit.

How do they know when you’re swearing? I can’t tell what your saying at all half the times