GOG clearly do care because they censor topic titles, lock threads and have banned people from the forum in the past.

They are not lax because they don't care, they are lax because they can be. On the whole, we're a civil group, even to those we may vehemently disagree with. This means we don't need much oversight. Sometimes discussions get a little heated and most of the time, we resolve it amongst ourselves or in a bad case a member of GOG staff steps in and asks people to take it down a notch before it gets out of hand. I'm not sure if they are watching, just happen to see or if someone reports it.. but they demonstrably care.

And they have to care if they want to have a forum where lax moderation works well enough. If they allowed users to harass other users, (even more) good members would leave the forums. We'd go from a forum where the complaint of the day is "There are too many giveaways" to one where the only people with decent rep are those that can't speak their mind or tell a joke for fear of invoking the wrath of the downreppers or have their little clique uprating every post.

So no, I don't want the GOG forums to be moderated like other forums. Especially because if it was I would have been banned ages ago but I think it is worth finding out if these derep crusades have a significant effect and if so, be able to present solid evidence so GOG can investigate whether they need to change the system or just identify those abusing it and remove their ability to rate posts..

Anyways, I should be setting this thing up, not posting :)