why would you even get mad at someone down voting something? [Modded. Don't be rude towards others.]

Ignore the haters. Quoted for truth, and upvoted too.

I bet you are! ;o)

I'm just so disappointed that the hide post button had to go along with it...

I don't even think a "major overhaul" would suffice. They have to implement an entirely new storefront.

A forum with proper formatting, pictures, ignore function, a sensible search function, a report spam function. If they want to keep the upvotes, people should at least see who upvoted (upvoting by alts or bots is definitely still going on). The four hundred eighty three boycott threads should be moved into their own forum subsection where they can be conveniently ignored.

Users should be able to see a list of their reviews, be able to change a review and its score if e.g. a crucial bug is encountered or fixed. Non customers should not be able to write reviews. The whole silly "combined score" mechanics should go. The popularity of reviews should not be decided by 'upvotes' or 'downvotes'. The possible review length should be much extended. Etc. etc.

I am not sure if I agree with all of your points, but a lot of them would be greatly appreciated (I mean, being able to see a user's reviews, editing them and probably a higher character count would be a godsend).

Removing non-customers reviews is kind of debatable (I know I found many useful reviews in that category), but I could understand having the default score and review list not include those or separate them in some other way. What do you think would be a good way to measure a review's popularity, if not by upvotes/downvotes?

The forum could use many improvements as well, but honestly I don't think it's that bad. The downvotes probably had to go because they could hide comments, but upvotes aren't really meaningful, so does it even matter if someone is using bots for those? The fact that "low rated" still shows up sometimes should be fixed, though. We do have a report thread for spam, don't we? Do the forums get that much spam?

I don't know how I'd feel about removing existing non customer reviews. I'd be for preserving those as legacy reviews, but not accept new ones.

Life's a popularity contest anyway, why measure a review's popularity at all? I think it would be an interesting idea to implement a random sorting mechanism.

"Getting into the green" is yet another silly popularity contest that people are attempting to "win". If you see at first glance who upvoted a post, you can assess if an opinion indeed is popular or if the author is so insecure about himself that he needed to make his post look like it is more popular than it actually is.

Which would be great, and what GoG has been needing for a long time. But if anything like that was to happen, we would have to say goodbye to all the contents (user posts, useful guides etc) that currently exist in the forum up till now, (off-site stuff would obviously be safe and easily linked to). As the chances of GoG's existing (proprietary) forum software contents being compatible with any future forum software are likely zero > Nil... So everything would have to be either manually entered from scratch or linked-to from the existing (frozen) content. I can see this being a very time consuming and possibly difficult transition (for members as well as staff), that I think GoG are probably not willing to risk, especially since the site is (technically) still working (of sorts) with its blu-tac, glue and paper scaffolding providing it a firm foundation for it to sit on....

Sure, but I feel the system isn't that bad to begin with. We get stupid reviews at times, but how common are they on average? If most of the "non-reviews" reviews are from people who don't own the game on GOG, I can't say, but that's probably something GOG would know better than me, so I concede it might not be worthwhile to keep the feature, I just didn't have a bad experience with it personally, overall.

I am not sure that's a good idea, but if it was available for those who want it alongside the "regular" system, I wouldn't mind, of course. While some reviews might abuse the system, the overwhelming majority of the ones who raise to the top are the more articulate reviews (among the early ones), and those are still the best in the short term to get a feeling for the game before a purchase. They aren't necessarily the most accurate ones, mind you, but not many people might go back to the reviews after they play the game for themselves, just to rate who was wrong (unless they feel strongly about the game).

I mean, sure, but is that really important? I know which posts I agree/disagree with regardless, and I can't imagine anyone can claim much just for having an undisclosed amount of upvotes. Once again, it's not like I am against the feature, but it also doesn't seem vital. I guess if the forums ever got a significant update, this feature would likely come bundled with it, though.

I bet you are!

Of course!. It was such a useful option that allowed one to lower the volume of certain noisy threads, or reduce interruptions in others...

Unless you happen to be part of an unpopular minority and the majority is mostly made up of smug cretins that think their poo doesn't stink as much as anyone else's.

Or maybe some people just don't shit where they eat.

Some people do, and there are also those who think they know what's right for everyone and have no shortage of rationalizations to support their delusions of superiority. For them everything is black and white and their opinions are puely objective -- which goes against everything that is known about human perception/psychology.

When you have power you love conformity, if you don't you hate it, and good people are never the ones who end up with it because they appreciate that human perception is subjective, and consequently eschew absolutism. This is why war is a permanent feature of the human landscape. Power and absolutism are two peas in a pod, and violence is the lingua franca of this insane asylum we inhabit. Power doesn't solve problems, but it sure does feel good when you have it. As does cocaine.

Smells like rampant self-projection in here...