You don't know? When you vote it down, it hides the post from you. When a lot of people vote it down, it gets hidden to everybody and it says low rated in the corner. Fun stuff.

I think so far the pragmatic approach is the way to go (still).
The number of spam and personal attacks are very small so there's no real need to introduce a report post button.
This could change of course when the userbase continues growing.

Then pray it doesn't. Or at least they don't go to the forums.

As long as moderation keeps dung like "Banana Test 4" down, I'm all for it.

Ok. But do people vote things down much? I'm never sure if i should be voting things down cos i disagree, or cos i want to hide it, or to report it.
Having a + and - button makes it seem like many blogs etc.. where its just a sign of agreeing/disagreeing. (joystiq for example).
Renaming it to "hide" or something might make it clearer.
I've never seen a "low rated" post though...

Well, enough people vote to make things high/low-rated, that's for sure. It's like Digg.

I hereby deputize myself as community moderator, I also deputize all of you who aren't staff.
there we go, we're all just very low powered mods.

You need to look harder, those "low rated" posts do exist. In fact the UK_John locked thread that was referenced above has several prime examples in it.
From what I understand, low rating a post does bring it to the team's attention, just like high rating a post does, so if we see something that we don't like, then hitting the minus is, in effect, just like reporting the post to a moderator (if enough of us think it is low rated). The GOG guys can take a look at what makes the post low rated and decide whether actual moderator intervention is required or not. Most time it is not, since most low rated posts end up dying a natural forum death.

ok. i'm voting everything down from now on. ;-)
(or at least anything that mentions other games services..)

Moderation is the first step towards forum fascism!!
/anarchist!

Well said. Couldn't agree more.

i still can't figure out how we ended up with such an incredibly not-forumy forum. seriously, this sort of thing never happens on the internet, there is always someone to screw it up. but gog honestly feels like a little community.
i guess we just happened to get exactly the right combination of people.

gog's unique traffic is so low, it's not funny.

I find forums usually turn to crap after a while. They turn into popularity contests with mods generally stoking the flames of the process, and when not doing that, at least not stopping people from butt kissing and every sort of slimy behavior. Very few mods seem to come out of the whole process with their humility or perspective intact.
Regarding their personal lives, that may matter to no one, but it tends to strongly influence what goes on in the forums they moderate. Mods tend to support their friends' misbehavior and casually stomp on others, which derails threads and guides and censors them by intimidation. Often forums dwindle down to nothing from this sort of thing, eventually becoming an embarrassment to be a part of and uninhabitable by human beings. They become more of an insider's club of weirdos and ass kissers and the currency is popularity and conformity.
I would much rather have people strongly disagreeing, even offending each other, than mods coming in to tell us who is nice and who isn't, or letting people know indirectly that certain of their favorite kiss arse posters are off limits from being disagreed with even when they're just out to pick fights and be jerks. I've seen the DRM/Steam/Demigod threads referenced here as reason for a heavier modding hand and they are minor league and quite interesting overall. Nobody is threatening to kill anyone and the cursing is moderate.
I have a better solution for threads you don't like: Don't read them. For posters you don't like or who use language that gets your panties in a bunch, we should have an ignore button we can use. In other words, worry about moderating yourself first before you demand others be moderated out of your world. It's not your world.. And with any luck, it never will be. And that goes double for me and anyone else. Attempts to make this forum an exact reflection of any particular person's preferences are bound to make it a worse and less interesting place to visit. If you want to change a forum for the better, worry about yourself and make better posts. If people disagree, even if it pisses you off, so what and grow up.
It's people who want to overregulate the discomfort out of our lives who make it so that we can't have nice things.