I've noticed it. But honestly...it's not worth losing sleep over it.
I wasn't the only "forum *pop*per" that got downvoted - I noticed at least one other "victim".
My best guess would be that some people just enjoy the "power", that little (-) gives them.
So - thanks for your concerns, but don't worry too much about it. It's just the new normal here on GOG.

This.

8 year old ? thats a coincedence , my pc was 'born' in the year 2009
after 3 years it began to suckz , hinting me that after another year it should be put to rest ( every 4 year a new pc)
it totally forgot the 2002 'happening' , introduction of the nasty Euro so it had to struggle on another 4 years .

Anyway, building/ upgrading a pc is not that bad ( its quite expensive and that is bad), but the fact win 10 is the only windows left and the last 'man' standing
the fact most games (old games) will not work properly. or not at all, and the biggest garbage and piece of she ites is the phoning home which can be block 90% or so, but this should not be neccesary.

Mickeysoft had no reason to build an OS in a piece of spyware, yup, and OS in Spyware , normally software can have spyware inside, but this windoze version is a artificial 'creature' and is spyware that happens to have a complete OS build inside, if mickeysoft allowed the win7 to support the latest hardware, i would have dumped my old 8 year setup and assembled a new one, but the main reason of hesitation is the evil win 10.

Good ol' "kumara paradox" ;D

I don't think I understand. What exactly does this popping fix? What's the state without and what's the state after?

A news post's forum comment thread is not created (i.e., it doesn't show up in the forum) until someone posts in it. Since a good number of forum regulars visit General Discussion waaay more often than the front page, this makes it more likely that they'll remain abreast of the latest releases. Thus, "popping" it into the forum is seen by some as a minor community service.

There's also a problem where news post comment threads will have the time of their most recent post antedated (in the list of topics, not in the thread itself) anywhere from a few hours to several days before its actual most recent post, meaning the thread might erroneously appear a few pages back in the list of recently topics. (I think that's what toxicTom was speaking of.) I'm not aware of "forum popping" being used as a preventative measure against that, though.

I don't see the urgency in these announcements at all, but thanks for the explanation.

I do, hopefully people will stop down-voting those posts, this bug is here to stay, since it haven´t been fixed for all that years.