Could someone please explain the 'Reputation' system and how does one achieve awards

Be a good boy/girl:)

What are these 'awards' of which you speak?

Roughly you get 1 rep per day just for showing up and posting anything.
You get up to 3(?) points per day for having posts upvoted.
You get 5(?) points for having your post chosen as the 'answer' in a designated question thread.
You lose up to 5(?) points through being downvoted.

You get stars at various point tiers - first one is at 50 or so, mebbe?

Most people don't care about rep anymore b/c it's easily abused.

If your helpful, polite, constructive and frequent the forums you earn reputation. You lose reputation if your the opposite. Hope this helps :)

By 'awards' I meant stars and some folk appear to have medals.

Psychology 101: If you have it, its not important
If you don't, behave yourself

Eh, even people who have negative rep will generally tell you it's no longer important. So it's not just people who have it undervaluing it, it's having seen people drop from 2500 to 0 because it can by botted.

People frequently used to host giveaways when the hit the star tiers (now that I think about it, it's 100/250/750/1500/2500? Something like that). I hosted them for each of my first two stars, IIRC, and was "proud" of it back then.

But pretty much no one does anymore.

Dun worry too much abt it, as it is now the Rep system is broken due to it being able 2 be abused so it counts 4 shit. Just contribute here positively & over time that's how u'll gain ur real rep here. Welcome, hv & fun & stick ard. Hope u enjoy hanging out with us here in the forum. :)

Ah. Yes. Of course. This question has never been asked before. Quick summary. :)

The reputation system on the GOG forum is a by-product of the ongoing ludicrous insertion of gamification mechanics into online communication. It is founded on three erroneous ideas, (a) that offering your help and opinion on an internet forum needs any reward besides the basic intrinsic reward i.e. the satisfaction of offering your help and the privilege of offering your opinion; (b) that a system that lets you "downvote" others would, given that the internet is a place in which negative comments/actions tend to outnumber the positive ten to one, not be abused beyond belief; and (c) that such a system would provide sage advice to new users concerning whom to trust/befriend/like and whom to shun/insult/write crazy PMs to that tell you in no uncertain terms that the fuckwit who just insulted the shit out of you on the forums is definitely in the right because he has a four digit reputation value while you're deep down in the negative threes, which will immediately happen when you e.g. offer philantropist views in some of the more political threads.

As GOG officials have been aware of those all encompassing flaws for many, many years now, plans and promises have been made several times to get rid of the reputation system altogether. You can find no less than four wishlist entries in the GOG database that ask the company to do exactly as they've said they'd do. However, the forum software is now so antique and the people who made it probably so not with GOG any more that this evidently simple cut could hurl the whole forum software to hell. So what basically everyone, GOG officials included, is waiting for is an entirely new forum software with no idea who is going to program it. Expect there to be a swift implementation before or in 2077.

TL;DR: What GR00T said.

The forum title can be changed in the "My Settings" link at the top of only the forum pages. The forum settings are completely separate from the account settings. Note in the forum settings it says the title can have up to 50 text characters.

It's possible to include special characters or emoticons, such as medals or stars or a penguin head (for Linux aficionados). Though their appearance in every brand and version of web browser might be unreliable, and maybe different depending upon the computer operating system.

On the other hand, such characters don't seem to be accepted by the text boxes for posting in the forums. Otherwise I would have included examples. On macOS, there is typically an option in the menubar of applications for using the symbols in "Edit" > "Emoji & Symbols".

The one advantage to a positive rep is the ability to post active links (and there's even a workaround for that, if needed). You need a rep of at least 7 — it may even have been bumped up to 10 or so — which means either making a post on seven separate days, being credited as the answer to someone's question, having your post(s) upvoted for being particularly good, or some combination thereof.

The idea was to deter spammers and bots from jumping in and posting a slew of links; not that they don't still try, sometimes. But the restriction means that their attempts won't work, even temporarily, before the community has had time to report them and have them banished. And they (almost) never attempt to play within the rules and fly under the radar for a bit; after all, if you're a spambot...

https://i.imgflip.com/wzykw.jpg

For clarification: if someone has negative reputation, it can either mean they are really a total jackass, but it could also be a helpful, positively contributing member of the community who has had the ill luck of stepping on the toes of trolls who use bots or otherwise abuse the system to constantly down-rep that person out of a feeling of personal vendetta that's totally undeserved. Like many said above: reputation doesn't mean anything. It used to do, but that was some five years ago, before when the community became bigger than just a few Good Old Games lovers and with that influx came the trolls.

First rule of the rep system:
Give a quote from a famous Brad Pitt movie that was cool in the late 90s, but not anymore.

Second rule of the rep system:
Give a quote from a famous Brad Pitt movie that was cool in the late 90s, but not anymore.

Third rule of the rep system:
Give a quote from a famous Brad Pitt movie that was cool in the late 90s, but not anymore.