I'm not sure who reports what. Frankly I just ignore what I don't want to read and move on. Getting all het up over something that is apparently not a big concern to GOG seems like a lot of wasted energy. For those that are bothered, an install of the script seems to work - so why the big deal?

What is truly harmful is calling out a specific person when that person isn't doing anything wrong by forum standards. If GOG began to specifically state "No Giveaways", then I can see an issue. But when laziness on the part of an user to click back a few pages to find something of value to them self or refusal to install a helpful script makes them decide to denigrate specific forum members, well heck that isn't the spirit of this forum - We're GOGlodytes and we're generally nice peeps even when we disagree on specific points.

.

If sub-forums were/ are to be introduced, a "Community Events" (or something along these lines) forum sounds actually like an elegant and fitting name - and able to trigger enough curiosity in new members to check it out.


EDIT:
Regarding the visiblity or use of the game specific sub-forums, maybe GOG (since we can't ourselves) could run a poll or survey to determine what would make people frequent them more?
That is, if GOG thinks that they're underused and that it should/ needs to change.
Then there's also the question - is the majority of the forum members happy with the way these sub-forums are used or does it want a change?

As I've said, I've got ADHD and going through the crap that's filling up page one makes it difficult for me to find things that actually belong here. I'm hardly the only one that has a hard time keeping up with the forum, especially during peak hours.

The problem isn't the generosity, the problem is that it we're doing basically everything in the same subforum which leads to a larger number of people than normal being irritated by the lack of any semblance of organization.

THink what could work better is: better forum software, phpbb or vBulletin would work wonders here, being able to "search better" mark forum as read seeing new post across the whole forum

EDIT: POsted halveway thru

A little off topic, but I read the title and thought "Drowning in Spam" would make a good band name.

True.. also some good band name sequel to that could be spam: you'll never go hungry

Don't get what you're refering to, but the part of my post you quoted was in relation to the 500+ sub-forums of the GOG games being almost exclusively used as our community support knowlegde base or FAQ.

Would you like to elaborate?

methinks GoG's whole forum needs an upgrade. the current one works, but using it as a forum isn't really working. methinks that a forum based upgrade using the software I listed would work way better, and might even get people to use the 500+ subforums

I completely agree with the OP. All these give-away threads have pretty much stopped me posting here. Any thread i participate in just gets drowned out in all the spam, so why bother discuss anything other than spam?

As an aside, a separate sub forum for these give away threads is a must. Also i wouldn't be at all surprised if some of the 'craze' in give away threads is not driven by GoG competitors in the DD space. One way to reduce people buying games from GoG is have LOTS of them being given away from free almost constantly.

They need to die imho, or at least be removed from the main forum.

Breathe in, breathe out... repeat.

There are no GOG competitors setting up giveaways to distract GOG's purpose. They really aren't going to do that.

Sadly, some people avoid using "giveaway" or any blockable pattern at all in the thread title on purpose.

I regard most of them as trash posts. "Spam" is a technical term, and one of the criteria is "automated". Giveaway posts are obviously done by hand.

As for the report - I do report nonspam posts, but only if I suspect GOG might be uninterested in keeping a particular post hosted on the forum - hate speech, etc. I do not waste mod time with direct complaints; now if multiple people are sufficiently offended that they report a post as spam, maybe mod action is really needed. Since GOG takes no action against giveaways, I do not report them. I suspect most of my spam reports come from accidentally downrepping a post instead of uprepping and hurrying to correct the mistake; my fingers do not work well even on a 10.1" inch screen.

edit (thought to add this since the thread has got personal):
I like ne_zavarj's threads because he's working directly with the devs to obtain free keys for unknown and (likely) underrated games. I do not understand the purpose of your (xyem) threads, since you are simply giving away free money to buy unspecified GOG games (that already have all the publicity as far as the GOG forums are concerned), but I do not dislike them. Plus they are marked "giveaway". People who deal in bootleg codes, however, are welcome to go live in a non-fatal fire.

Maybe GOG could try this to destroy its competition.

They can start with small ones like GG and GMG and eventually move to Steam.

Automation isn't required.. Spam is typically defined as being unsolicited commercial messages. However, most of the time they do automate. I did catch one in here that wasn't actually a bought, but a person in Taiwan manually posting messages here.

So, technically the forum giveaways aren't spam, they are however arguably an example of flooding.

Which I will start doing. To my regret, because I also liked to put 'giveaway' in the title. But given that it automatically classifies my threads as spam and blocks them out, then fuck that.