Nice! Will be waiting.

I’m not bumping the Gamergate: Origins thread and the basically autoerotic “Here’s why I’m gone” thread any more, so I’ll make an effort at dragging the discussion back where it (maybe) belongs.

The first is of course a thinly veiled attack primarily against me, to which I’d like to respond. I often chose not to bump the gamergate thread any more in recent months, and instead voiced protest in the wishlist entry. What I criticised there were mostly things that you yourself would have to classify as hateful and therewith derailing the discussion you often say you wished to have. The (anonymous) quotes are still there for everyone to read and assess, as are some as of yet unaddressed facts about the subject matter. Most of the by then recent quotes I gave in the wishlist entry were treated as completely normal by thread frequenters.

"Bashing" mostly translates to "quoting". And those weren't fringe quotes; they were at the heart of what kept the "discussion" alive.

As I’ve said several times, and I stand by that, the atmosphere of hate escalated in those threads because fewer and fewer people were making a stand against the hate, and it’s gotten progressively worse from August 2014 (Gamergate: Origins thread, which had some actual debate at the beginning) to last month (gamergate news thread) as more and more of the people who in principle stood against this forced and entirely senseless culture war were even willing to do something besides ignoring it in hopes it would go away – and some indeed did go away themselves if they couldn't ignore it.

This thread has dwindled down through its two iterations, through lack of opposition, through posts of the people you support and in part even your own posts, to the point where new potential enemies were just pooped in the thread, called “Fucking hipster punk faggot” without even researching the actual name, then a distorted and misinterpreted version of the “fucking hipster punk faggot’s” words were pooped in the thread, no one gave a flying shit about researching the actual words or even the actual meaning, and 99% of the time people evidently felt really great about all that, especially when no one protested against it. And it has been like that for years.

How that is supposedly the fault of people who still thankfully point a finger at that, dare to put things in a factual context, or ask for civility, compassion, forgiveness, that’s beyond me. I wish that opposition that you want to make responsible for your own failures would even be anything but largely fictional today.

Quoting posts from the GG thread itself? Those can be explained. People aren't 100% emotionally the same all the time and will have outbursts or post stuff without thinking. Things said in anger needn't be what a person believes in when he is normal self. Its up to you to interpret something out of context to make it proof of misogyny or homophobia or whatever fuck you think it is. Any other quotes other than from the thread itself or were you only referring to those?

You think everyone who ever posted against your opinions within that thread were reading every post and had nothing else to do? Plainly and simply, many people understand the principle of ''don't feed the troll'' and didn't reply or care about random alts coming in and trying to start a flamewar, so many didn't reply; and unlike the general forums where ''THIS is too far to ignore'' mindset is more prevalent alts didn't stay long or post page upon page of shit, like they did / still do on the general forum. I sure as hell know I didn't reply to many because of that. Again, it boils down to you finding whether there can be a motive behind the actions of people you hate to do something bad and if you find one, you abandon all other reasons (in this case, as to why they haven't posted to objectionable stuff) and believe that you've found some conspiracy among them to do what? Do things you disagree with? You're attaching motives and malice to the posters of a thread who barely have anything in common outside of it. Don't think its some big Sherlock moment.

And what factual context? What is factual about statements like ''channeling alt right propaganda'' ? The GG thread had no more worse name calling and insulting than many threads that are still open, but unlike the others had regular posters or people who would jump in to talk sensibly at least occasionally. The GG thread was no worse than the many others that still dot the forum, and in many cases much better if you count the ones about ''cannibal refugee scum'' and that guy posting neo nazi cartoons or the infowars thread (somehow universally hated yet reached so many pages and retained so many people for over a month or two).

You know it's a fantasy that those were "random alts". I'm trying very hard to not name names, but I shouldn't even have to, because you know these names, you do, at least a fat dozen. Those were the regular frequenters, those were what kept the thread alive, and many only came to the GOG forum for that thing. If we're establishing as fact that what I just quoted was hate speech (if you want 1,000 more examples, sure), then you were quoting, answering to, building on and therewith normalizing that hate speech yourself. Whatever fantastically selective blinders you think people wore on that thread day by day, you can't have worn those yourself.

I am attaching malicious intent to shockingly and routinely malicious posts; and I am insinuating that those who reply to exactly those posts as if they were the most reasonable thing in the world purposefully further the malicous cause and an atmosphere of hate.

I am of the opinion that people specifically came to the gamergate thread as a release valve to their hate. The "outbursts" or "posts without thinking" were therefore not the exception but the rule.

I furthermore, as a matter of opinion, lament the lack of clear cut opposition to the hateful posts, because yes of course if such crap stands undisputed, the impression absolutely everyone gets is that the opinion is universal. Where was that opposition when e.g. [redacted01] went on a pages long objectively unhinged and dangerously violent hate tirade against Alison Rapp? When I finally stepped in and brought a few facts along (and [redacted01] even eventually had to identify with the position he'd formerly called pedophilia a dozen times), you couldn't be quick enough with the downvotes.

And you know that it will be exactly like that with the next person that gamergate paints a target on her back. So, no, I don't think that GOG can allow such a thread to exist on its forums.

We may not disagree that shutting down some individual members for abject and hateful ideologies (or "opinions", eh? :) ) is sorely in order. We may not disagree that shutting down the infowars thread should have happened long ago (would you at least agree that this infowars thread "channels alt-right propaganda"? Because that is exactly and exclusively what it's meant to do). But we do not agree that the gamergate news thread was "no worse" than the infowars thread. In a sense, before [redacted02], who brought you a never ending and unchallenged stream of Breitbart/reaxxion/Aurini/Corbett Report/etc. link infodumps, finally left, those threads were identical. And even last month, the outrage continuously veered outside the gaming sphere while using hateful language that I haven't yet seen from the infowars guy.

Technically, it was the containment thread that you wished for, and as you yourself have deduced, that in no way curtailed the spreading of the shit.

Now that we know we have (new) rules, that they apply retroactively and that failure to reply or comply to moderation's warning will ends up with our user account removed (games licences/ownership included) i have a few questions:

1) Where/how i would have to send a request to use one's rights of access, modification and/or suppression regarding any part of one's entire personal datas handled by GOG.com according to the Rulings N°2016/679 of EU parliament and council from April the 26th 2016 ? (which is in fact only a unification of already existing rulings regarding various member states' "Commissions for computing and freedom")

2) What is the time delay that is decided/set by the moderation for a user to comply or reply to warnings, before it is considered as failure to do so: 1 hour ? 6 hours ? 12 hours ? 1 day ? 2 days ? Calendar days or opened days ?

3) Given the unconvenient lack of features of current forum engine (compared to existing board systems even by the time of GOG's launch out of beta some 10 years ago) is there a reliable way for a given user to manage to find back each and every message posted with his own account for possible proactive review, modification or deletion ?
Can the tech support profide on demand a list of links to participated/contributed threads and post numbers ? (as direct post link can fail due to other users missing posts)

4) Regarding civil case, is GOG.com liable under customer's home law and court, and/or European scaled ones ? (...and penal case too, in fact)

5) How does moderation plan to react regarding users who would keep a public fair face but use alts to post questionable/objectionable contents, messages and/or private messages ?

6) Is there any warranty from moderation to prevent being used by willingly malevolent user/group of users to target, harrass (and ultimately also strip off one's library) a GOG user, from their own main account and/or alt accounts ?

7) how are we supposed to deal with conflictual rules (such as "search/look first for relevant thread that already exists" and "dont necro old threads back") ?

Thank for additional insights and answers from appropriate GOG's staff members regarding those questions.

(PS: use of masculine pronouns/words here are only made within usual grammar rules and/or for the sake of genericness, and not by any possible mean as a willing intend to offend any possible user)

Yeah, that is not at all what happens. No one is taking away anyones games. It's been stated multiple times that forum ban is not taking away your account, library or ability to buy/download/manage games. You can go back to Defcon 5.

I'm sorry to tell you that, but that doesnt answer to most of my question(*), which remain valid regardless of the point you raised.

(* in fact, it doesnt answer to any of them, as you were mostly adressing the preamble rather than the core content of my message)

Maybe not, but when you start your post with that misconception the whole thing loosk like a panicked "GOG is going to take away my games because I didn't respond to a blue's warning in time and I'm going to have to sue them!!1!1" So I just pointed out that nothing of the sort is going to happen. That's a rather huge misconception and it's best to clarify at once, before more people are misinformed.

well, my creed is "prepare for the worse, rejoyce for anything else"

Been around since 2008
Never bothered to "join" the community until 2015 exactly because the forum tool was archaic
It already was obsolete by the very day it started (as in 2008 i was setting up and administrating boards with more features already)
My 2 cents: if it is THAT an issue even for you to make your job, simply archive the whole stuff away and launch a brand new one along with the new rules, one with the features and tools both users and gog staff would need
Let the archived stuff accessible (locked) for users to at least keep, cut'n'paste the stuff tied to each game's sub forum

That's why I assume it'd be much easier to archive this and switch to pre-built forum software. The forum is coming up on 10 years old I think.

But the rest of the website is a bigger priority imo - for instance, being able to edit our own reviews should be a much higher priority.

yes, that, and also more convenient navigation butons on store pages, store filter for "dont display owned games", exportable library list, a way to list and quick access to our own gog mixes, and a few other things

I've been on and off this board for the past few months, mostly in release threads - I've been busy. Apparently I've missed some things - I don't recall being asked for feedback about the rules of conduct (and I suspect this might have been an example of GOG sometimes communicating important things - removal notices for example - in easily missed forum threads). Or maybe I've forgotten or didn't really realize what was being asked. Whatever the case, can I get a link to the discussion to read it please?

Let me tell you how it looks to someone who doesn't spend all of their free time here: Some of the most hateful, divisive ideologues on this board are celebrating your post as some kind of victory. They claim an interest in "civility", but these are the users constantly hurling invective - racist, misogynist, bigot, xenophobe - at other users. While there have been a *very* small number of users who expressed actual racial hatred (etc), most of the time these accusations are hurled at people who simply disagree with certain 'progressive' political or social views.

I have no reason to distrust you personally, fables - we have had some good interactions in the past correcting minor issues with the website, and I have a positive impression of you. But without transparency, it's tough to trust that increased moderation won't become what we've seen on other websites - a means for these progressives/SJWs/whatever-you-call-them to silence their opponents and police language and opinion.

For the present, I'm adopting a wait-and-see attitude. I usually drop a small cash bomb on GOG during the seasonal sales. Looking over the spring sale, I could easily spend $50 or more scooping up some cheap games for the backlog. However, in light of the uncertainty around this issue, I'm going to drop that down to about $8 and just pick up Hybrid Wars Deluxe + Season Pass. There'll be plenty of sales in the future if this all amounts to much ado about nothing.

Damn. You're making me feel obliged to pick up more games.