This thread in a nutshell. XD
Good job!

That's chop's worth about 500 rep points. Nicely done! lol

I fear that the "New users" forum would not be frequented by a lot of old users, and the new users would effectively be reduced to asking questions of each other, which seems mostly counter-productive.

The reverse could also happen, in which the General forum gets neglected, and the New Users forum becomes a hotbed of political topics.

As always, I don't at all recognize my opinion in your paraphrase. :( :(

I described division of the community over an openly communicated ban decision, which could follow as one among many possible direct consequences of the specific kind of transparency you were asking for. I don't see how causation is reversed here, though of course one clear cut result of this transparency may be to escalate underlying animosities that have been there before. After all, you dig the trenches where you stand.

If I thought we were in any kind of "judicial system" here, I would have likened the publication of ban decisions to Trump's proposed immigrant crime lists, and that kind of denunciation indeed would have given good ol' Franz K. a justice boner of "In the Penal Colony" proportion. Thank god that's nowhere near what I consider an internet forum to be like. The truth is, the closest comparison has always been this:

And mommy and daddy have no intent whatsoever to discuss with the kids what friends of theirs they've just thrown out their own house. :|

Yes, but you can talk about ice cream connected to game. For example a topic like this would be "ok":
"Is Minmus actually an icecream in Kerbal Space Program?"
"Name game character favorite ice cream!"
"Is playing unmodded game as boring as vanilla ice?"

One could open "General chat" for offtopic, though. For example russian forum section has a topic "Cafe-Offtopic: About everything and nothing".

But doesn't the fact that the function is so easy to abuse mean there's a problem with the function itself as well? (as in, insufficient safeguards to prevent abuse)

In an ideal world, people weaponizing the rep-system wouldn't exist. But when trying to solve a problem, it's probably more productive to use the situation as it exists in our non-ideal world as a guideline on what plan of attack to pursue.

If those kids aren't willing to play nice, or be respectful, or follow the rules then it's well within the rights of the parents to thrown them out. If those kids don't like it, it's well within their right to move out and live somewhere else, if they can.

The rep system gives you the opportunity to express your dissatisfaction with certain opinions instead of voicing arguments against them. Naturally, that is a perpetual motion negativity fostering machinery. It's incorrect to assume that in a "fair" reputation system there should be a downvote opportunity in addition to an upvote one, because voicing agreement is always repetitive and could therefore be simplified, whereas disagreement demands argumentation. I've seen rep systems work out OK just with upvotes (it's still a silly popularity contest, really), but every community and/or comment section I've seen that has the literal thumbs down is toxic as hell. reddit or gamestar.de or formerly the Telltale forums (before they understood what they did to their community and themselves and abandoned downvotes eventually), nightmares.

Because a statement like "You should go kill yourself", in the normal context in which it is used, demands argumentation. :P

Well, no, that one demands post reporting and moderation, not downvoting. I don't think we're much in disagreement there. :)

Not to mention people claiming that GOG has put "DRM" on the general forum. :)
Indeed, if they're smart.

Daddy: <observing misbehaviour>
Daddy: Go to your room!
Trollboy: Why, what did I do?
Daddy: You know what you did!
Trollboy: I didn't do anything, it was him not me!
<continuous argument about who did what ensues while Daddy goes nuts explaining and explaining and trying to prove to Trollboy something that Trollboy will never accept and just argue about>

Only in the forums Trollboy gets joined by a mob squad of people who chime in, and another mob squad of people who chime in with Daddy and the two factions battle it out, one trying to make Daddy the unfair evil monster, the other faction doing the same with Trollboy.

Over-explaining the details which should be obvious to people in this manner is just pouring fuel on the fire and if a moderation decision is well justified and should be obvious to all parties, there's no reason to explain anything to anyone, and especially no reason to engage in the game of people demanding justification so they can disagree with it and continue an angry controversy.

Whip out the ban-hammer, let some heads roll and leave it at that. If people grumble about it but otherwise let the situation die down and fade away, great. If not, keep swinging until silence is achieved. Problem solved. No explanations nor justification required.

On the surface I do agree, but the underlying problem is that GOG's rep system was designed in such a way that it is easily abused to begin with. Things like this should be always designed from the perspective of "If I made the algorithm work like XYZ, if I was a 3rd party looking to exploit it and abuse it, how would I go about doing so?" and then "How can I redesign it to anticipate and avoid that?", reiterating until it becomes solid or very difficult to exploit.

It's like claiming that the reason why someone's restaurant keeps getting broken into isn't due to the door not locking properly due to a poor quality lock being used, but because the people breaking in are abusing the lock. :)

So yeah, there are people out there abusing the lock which are the surface problem, but the underlying problem is not anticipating them and designing a better door lock. :)