if they start making 'proper' contributions, then what's the harm in that?

The lost lamb, the prodigal son etc. Reform over punishment and so on. They would most definitely not change if never welcomed to or allowed to.

But it's the same premise.
You helped out in the spamwars as far as I remember, if you saw a post by one of spammers popping up with a normal thread title would you stop to consider it or just delete it because you knew it was the spammer who had been flooding the forum?

The fact is we have no proof who deleted alric's threads, at first or now.
Maybe it's the contingent who clearly dislike him, or maybe it's a troll trying to cause trouble. But if all you see is his threads popping up and disappearing repeatedly (particularly the earlier "Soon" threads with no content) then you may legitimately assume he's a spammer and start deleting his threads, and continue to do so. And now he's reached the point where what he is doing IS spam, so deleting it is actually a legitimate response.

I know alric isn't a spammer, or wasn't. But whether it was started by people who disliked alric or trolls it's probably being continued by someone else now that it is spam...

This is remarkably like a Mafia game...

Not sure who those two are, but I'd rather see a former "problematic" member start behaving properly than the other way around... you know, like a lot of regulars have been doing lately (but apparently nobody cares when the culprits are "people I like").

Vote ali books!

Elvis Presley
"finish with a bullshit symbol"

Hmmmmm......

Nope sorry. I don't see a connection.

But that's not the point. Gog will still not fix it. And you will destroy what's left of the forum. THEY DO NOT CARE. THEY HAVE NEVER CARED. There are a few hundred of us here, we are a drop in the ocean compared to the rest of their customer base.
Their most likely response, if they make one at all, is to shut down the forum. It's what I would do in their place.

I don't particularly dislike you, I just disagree with your methods.

It's not ignored because of who it is, that's taking this personally, it's ignored because that's what Gog does. If my threads were being deleted they wouldn't care about that either.

And see above.
Because underneath they're still the same asshole. ciomalu has started pretending to be a nice normal person, but every so often he still turns into a ranting, raving tin foil hat wearing lunatic.
Tauto has been behaving better, but still devolves into name calling and abuse when he wants to.

Maybe I'm just not big on forgiveness.

I kind of agree, but I think bad behaviour is bad behaviour and shouldn't really be tolerated, whether you were nice before or became nice afterwards.

What about me, you never acknowledge me or show me sympathy.

I have feelings too you know.

Because they have been promising stuff like that for years.
Seriously, did you see the last sale?
Do you think if Gog had the manpower that it would have been riddled with bugs?
And if they can't maintain the main core of their business, how do you think they will devote time to fixing an insignificant part of their website?
They mean well, but they do not have the manpower to do it, and won't do anytime soon.

Absolutely. I'm almost sure his spam now gets reported by legitimate users who report it for what it is: spam.

However, I'd say he was justified in starting this. Look at his situation before this started: his legitimate (he didn't spam then, so most his posts were legitimate) posts were deleted for no reason. Others were in this situation too: dtgreene had legit posts deleted too. His complaints to GOG will be ignored. So honestly, what would you do in his case?

Remember the last time we had a wave of scammers and someone started the famous F*** F*** S*** C*** thread (later renamed to FLOWER FLOWER SUNSHINE... etc)
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/fuck_fuck_fuck_jizz_cunt_asshole_blowjob_cock
That was spam, it contained expletives and normally should not have been accepted on any forum, but after everything else failed, it was made to get GOG's attention, and it did manage to finally make them notice (not to fix anything though).

If this is the only way to get GOG's attention, then Alaric is as justified as in starting his spam just as the F*** F*** thread was justified. And to be fair, Alaric's spam is just as non-obtrusive. I only hope this time GOG will genuinely do something to fix this.

But that thread is exactly the point.
Did Gog fix the forum?
No, they blocked capitalised swear words and renamed the thread.
They will not fix it this time, and alric will hand over the keys to delete all the threads on the forum to anyone who wants to.
Bye bye goes the update thread, my thread and Barefoot's thread, MaGog.

I really think they will!

This one is a simple fix. It will take 5 minutes to do and an hour (at most) to test. I already wrote up all the suggestions for taking care of both the deleting and the reposting exploits. Sure it won't address the major structural problems, but it will fix bad vulnerabilities. All in FIVE MINUTES.

I just can't imagine them not doing it.

Also, your logic would dictate that no vulnerabilities should ever be exposed. Even if someone is already using them for nefarious purposes. I'm sure that every security research firm and even someone like Google would disagree.

I know tinyE isn't really any better any more, and I don't agree with his behaviour any more than Tautos.
But that was his response to the same abuse you are being hit by, just on a different level.

Let me just point you to who Tauto is, and why he gets the shit he does.

https://www.gog.com/forum/general/gogfix_the_rep_or_delete_my_account_now

Swatkat, formerly known as gunsynd before he gave his account to one of the most prolific scammers on the forum and then opened his Tauto account.

I used to count gunsynd as a friend, before he went bat shit crazy about being down repped and turned into an abusive shit.

And guess what. Gog didn't fix the forum that time either.
I hope they do. I would love it if they did. But I really doubt it will happen. And just like every other time, the forum becomes a worse place to be because of the attempt to fix it.

I'm hoping they see the gravity of the situation and do fix this exploit this time.

Look at it this way: with the exploit out there it was only a matter of time till some malicious troll comes up and starts using it do delete update thread, adaliabooks, MaGog... etc. At least now GOG noticed it, and hopefully will do something about it.

How ironic is it that I'm marking all of Alaric's posts in here as spam? :P