Overall happy with the forums here.

What I'd like to see:
1. Better search.
2. Ability to see one's own post history. (somewhat distant second)

I don't care about rep, but if you eliminate downreps, make the uprep (or "Like") something that can be toggled on and off.

Please don't merge those sections. It's hard enough to sort through Alone in the Dark 1-3's forum to find posts related to specific entries in the series without adding the 4th game. (imo)

Drop the rep system. It serves no purpose except to squabble amongst ourselves. Bring in something neutral, like a post count. The rep can be hidden and only affect the number of stars, if some older members would like to keep with the style.

I agree with many things already said here (especially the search function things), and I agree that the down repping is ridiculous, but I like the rep idea and I don't want it completely gone. Maybe you could have a limit on the down repping to only be able to down rep 3 times per day and the need to be at least 10 rep to down rep someone so people can't make a bunch of accounts to troll (instead of removing it completely).

Just another idea, replace the rep system with a level system which you get a bit of xp with each post, more xp by getting upvoted and even more xp by awnsering a question (but you can't lose xp).

Anyways, its still a pretty good forum.

Several things already discussed that brought up some nice ideas:

There are people here that dont like giveaways and for a time brought up the subject weekly with a new thread each week to ask for a seperate subforum for giveaways. The reasons were varied, but some kept mentioning "bringing the wrong kind of people here". This of course caused some discomfort, arguements and general nastiness on both sides of ths small rift that opened each time until we all got bored of it (seemingly) and then Grimwerk made a script that allowed people to ignore threads utilising the term giveaway, but a better idea was had prior to that - a new category for when making a post (much like we have with news and questions) for giveaways - but one that would only be visible to signed in members (this by itself would also calm some other issues / angles on it without segregating the forums and allowing this place to die out).

Obviously the rep system in its current form is FUBAR. Changes need to me made and I dont think theres an easy way around it to appease everyone. It has a purpose but that is abused and the community as a whole needs some form of input on it - but other than discussion, we need some positive action. How about it gets frozen for a week (other than spam reposts o fcourse or we'll be overrun by black magic love doctors!)?! - See if that lightens the mood a little to begin with.

The ability to lock our own threads might be useful in some circumstances.

A better PM feature that doesnt swallow messages so frequently and allows you some form of filtering.

Better forum search and filtering of course.

Licurg to be neutered (for the good of all humanity).

tinyE to perform previously mentioned operation (for our own amusement).

Less GOGbears,

There's probably more but now I'm starting to get silly!

Edit:

One more thing... GOG should ensure when people want to know who won a GOG Birthday giveaway (and see the promised results), that it happens... O_o

One feature I'd like to see added is a way to convert a thread you've started from a regular thread to one of the ' Mark as "question / problem" ' thread types.

At the moment I don't believe there is a way to do this, if you mistakenly forget to set it as a question the thread it's just stuck in the regular format. >_<

* Better search engine.
* Ability to access previous thread open by a user.

I'd like the rep system gone, I get downvoted for damn near anything and everything. I think there's a group of people just looking and downrepping certain people while being too much of cowards to speak up. I'd say get rid of the rep system and instate a typical post count thing if we need ranks at all.

I've found some of the forum sections that cover more than one game in a series can be difficult to navigate when you're searching for posts related to only one game in that series.

Perhaps when a post is created there could be a set of radio buttons like the "Mark as a question" button. These buttons would each related to one of the games in that section of the forum.

If a button is selected an icon or quick text prefix would proceed the post's topic subject in the forum thread display.

Example: A post about 'Alone in the Dark 1' asking where to find a object would look like this.
AitD1 : Where can I find the bronze key?

Posts that haven't had a specific game selected would be displayed like this:
Series : Where can I find the bronze key?

Or the post creation menu could prompt for a game button to be selected before allowing a thread to be added.

Just a thought. ^_^

I seriously doubt that scrapping anonymity would have that effect. If anonymity is no longer possible, they'd just set up a bunch of accounts to use for this purpose alone which would reveal nth about the actual user, plus cause more discussions and PMs to Judas.
Even with the current system, it's quite likely that they're not using their regular account.

What I would like to see:

1. A usable search function that allows "and/or" commands, shows all matches and allows to order them at least according to date.

2. A way to subscribe to the game subforums such that I get notified when a new thread is opened there. I would probably be able to help people with a lot of games, but monitoring hundreds of subforums on the off chance that someone might actually have started a thread there just isn't practical. So lots of people never go there, which also means that people who know this will often ignore those subforums and simply use the general forum for their thread, knowing that it will be seen there.


What I would change:

Nothing really. Apparently there is some concern over rep lately, but I can't really relate to that since I usually ignore that feature anyway.

I'm also regularly seeing requests to put threads about this or that into their own subforums, but personally I'm against compartmentalizing the general forum this way. The requests are usually targeted at one specific type of threads that the respective person does not want to see, but for each person the types of threads that annoy them is different. This means that either GOG only listens to some of those requests (which would be unfair to the others), or we end up with a horribly segregated and inefficient general forum. I believe it's best to simply let the general forum remain exactly that, a general forum.

In my opinion:

Keeping the upvote is important as a mean to say "thanks" without spamming a thread with "thx" posts.

Scrapping the downvote would avoid much unneeded drama and force people to spell out why they disagree, with words, instead of mashing that (-) button out of anger (or just shut up if they can't).

Adding a post count would be bad because it pushes newcomers toward spamming meaningless posts just to boost their post count and look less newbie or something.

Being able to search through someone's post history allows me to track down randomly mentioned interesting threads from the past that I missed. Or just look back on a post I made long ago for whatever reason.

I dunno, it just strikes me as odd that we have a forum for "Alone in the Dark series," and then that other Alone in the Dark game. I can't see it getting that much more difficult to go through, neither forum has that large a thread count, but if it does happen, by all means go slow, we wouldn't want to lose those posts.

Replace the downvote button with a report "spam/abusive" system with public dumps of the reports so that everybody can see who reports what.

A general gaming board split from the general board.

Improved search function.

A "mark all as read" button within each board.

Availability of user own post history.