Sad, but true. With extra sad.
I could do without the jolt to the genitals.

Giveaway methods evolving is never a bad thing. GOG team can do really unique stuff with the giveaways handling, they probably have something in store too, they just waited till a thread like that emerged to stir the flames >;)

soon.jpg

This is far from the experience I have of it. Actually, I tend myself to make the mistake of skipping giveaway threads, only to realise later that they were interesting threads. The last days you had "giveaways" that were actually about jokes, about book/series/film suggestions, about preferred fictionnal universes, about screenshots-with-a-spin, etc. All the regular stuff you get on internet forums. If you are personally "less likely to participate when there is a giveaway in it", then the issue is your own phobia, not the content. If anything, the giveaway craze just means to me that, on the gog forum, I very often have to type "not in" before my post's content (sometimes even in retrospect, when the thread only becomes a giveaway after some posters give games to the OP for that). I don't suffer that much from it.

This is very far from being the issue that people enjoy making of it. But whatever. I guess the forum will still function with the people who aren't turned off by hints of the presence of a giveaway in some OP...

not this can of worms again.

Which is what I try to do. But he's not wrong that sometimes other threads get pushed back because of it.

One person's spam is another person's light reading in my humble opinion.

Frankly, I tend to stay far away from the "news" threads that draw attention to negative actions on the part of a certain segment of humanity. Then for forum members kind enough to donate games - either in support of a game on the wish list, or as a puzzle or just as a plain, vanilla giveaway - I try to stop in and thank them - in my book, it is good manners. The regular theme threads might be given a scan on occasion - the drunk thread, three words, insult the user above you etc... I enjoy buying bundles since I'm still in my early days of collecting games I want to play so threads about those attract me as do kickstarter and new game news threads.

Anything I'd like to scan further, I check mark as a favorite until I'm done with it. That seems to work nicely in terms of organization - at least for me. Obviously I'm going to miss some threads - it's life and I accept that - there are only so many hours in the day. I miss concerts and events near me too but I don't get upset with the newspaper for not handing me the information I'm interested in on a platter...

I guess since I'm a relative newbie, the GOG forum seems fine to me though I can see the POV of users that have been here a long time - if you're used to a forum being a specific way then changes can't be good or welcomed. But it is always the way with life - change is the only constant.

Ultimately though, this place has allowed me to make some new and interesting friends around the globe. To me, that is the real value of this forum no matter its format/style/organization. It's a community of disparate users with different agendas and different ideas but the mishmash of threads seems to work fairly nicely as far as I'm concerned.

Anyway, that's my two cents worth of input - YMMV ;-)

I get that. :P

But the old Judas would have sneaked in and left the message in the mark's own lipstick on their bathroom mirror*. Hence why I suspect anal probes.


*This is especially intimidating when the mark is male.

This thread falls into spam category in my book.

At least there aren't multiple versions of this thread that take up 50% or more of the first page every day.

But there were more than 10 threads like that so far. And there is wishlist section and support section for things like that.

This thread is just as off-topic like giveaway topics. Although forum filter would be nice.

10 threads? You'll have to back that up.

Anyway, I know that there have been several threads like this, but they persist not only because the problem doesn't go away, but because the problem is also becoming bigger.

Call this necessary evil, or whatever.

EDIT: I'd like to also add that it's not about the off-topicness, as it this the GENERAL forum after all, but it's about the sheer size of essentially the same thing over and over again.

I'm not so sure this is indeed the case in most giveaway cases.
I've taken part in a handful of giveaways and I do find the ones that require or trigger some more interaction than "I'm in, +1" more interesting.
I usually check out the ones by HMDK because of the way he words the titles - it intrigues me to find out more about the context and what games it's about (usually not obvious from the titles), even if I have no intention to take part in it.
The one hold by JMich for his 1000 rep milestone was an interesting and I did read through it.
I wouldn't have checked the one K_1269 currently holds if you hadn't pointed out its context - I never noticed it simply because of its generic title.
There may be a few more examples that support your view, but I have to mostly agree with gooberking (post #101) about the majority of them not offering much of interaction or content.

Even the "Ninja Giveaway" thread was (to my big surprise, as I never bothered to check this before) started by wpegg within a completely different context than the one it's being run these days
I guess what I'm trying to say is that the context and content of most giveaways don't seem to support your view.

I don't know what the perfect solution is or if there even is one, but truth is it can be overwhelming at times to visit the General discussion forum only to be faced with a long list of giveaway threads by the same person.
I usually try to just move on - because "one man's scrap, another man's gold". But I can understand that it might not be as easy for other members to do the same.

People on GOG forums are generous since the very beginning, it's not like there's a sudden increase of such topics... It's part of the community, I'd say. It doesn't really deserve to be pushed on a side track.

But again, an ability to filter topics by keywords (include or exclude) would be nice

Thanks for the compliment. Appreciate it. But like I said, I don't have anything against a subforum. My only worry would be that new members wouldn't know about it.