Hello,

I know I'm new here, and the community is great and generous, and I even got several games through giveaways that I could never get. I joined GOG recently, and I'm glad to find the community so generous and almost everything about GOG is true!

My question is, what's with all the low rated posts?
Ok, so I just got Witcher 3 GOTY on a giveaway (thank you, sanscript), I couldn't help but notice, that there were a few posts that were low rated. I don't understand why would someone do this, as the posts that were low rated, were those of
people being thankful. Isn't this a type of forum abuse, or something?
I read the rules, and now that rep is important, but why would people low rate a giveaway post?

Don't get me wrong, the community is great, it's just that I don't understand why the giveaways posts are low rated?
If someone could explain this, I would really appreciate this. I don't want to break any forum rules, written or unwritten.

The giveaway in question:
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/black_fridayholiday_2019_massive_giveaway_freeforallfirst_come_first_served

Thank you!

Too many crybabies inhabit these forums. basically have an SJW style opinion or get downvoted. Free speech is for one not appreciated here while I personally think it is the cornerstone of a free civilization. Since you new here get prepared to see games rejected by GOG with stupid excuses such as ''Too Niche'' or simply reject games cause they are AO rating which makes this storefront pretty low level if you just catering to the hippies.

Also, Your suggestion and opinion/criticism about GOG is useless cause they just get rejected and ignored. Welcome to Soviet Russia, my boy. Seriously all the complaints about their curation have been rejected and ignored this store only caters to GOG staff taste which seems to be hippie style.

Some people have angered a mob of people (or just a few with multiple accounts) and their every post is voted down for existing. It's silly and stupid, but that's what people do.

There are unfortunately a number of people (with friends and alts) who -- instead of discussion and walking away after a disagreement -- weaponize the reputation system.

While the system is broken, I would challenge people here to...

... when you see a thread you like or appreciate a response -- even on a basic level -- vote it up... combat the negative with some positivity. IMHO many are quick to vote things down but too few people vote things up. Show your fellow GOG posters that you appreciate them... even if your opinions differ.

For goods sake, never write that to newcomers - they might think it's a warning before we all do something nasty to them... :P

COLAPOWEREDGAMER - wtf are you doing here? You should be playing a certain game, hint hint?

Anyway; Welcome! :)

TL;DR: The rep system here is broken, AKA abused, GOG refuses to do something about it, mods are no-where to be seen... other than that the community here is great.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/jerkmuter/

Welcome! Correct. Not quite correct. It's only important in that you can't post links if you have very low rep and that some community members make it a requirement for entering giveaways, other than that, it has no real function. It's just allowing people to anonymously punish or bully others. It's broken and GOG knows and acknowledges it, but GOG is bad at fixing broken things that aren't games.

People who get downvoted are likely either targets of personal feuds or often engage in political flamewars, or both. They don't get downvoted for the posts you see but for things they posted in the past, or just because someone doesn't like them, and some people here apparently go to the lengths of creating several accounts just so they can duplicate their downvotes. It's not even clear to me whether they are active forum members or silent trolls.

My best advice is not to care and talk too much about the rep system, to stick to the forum rules, treat others with respect and not get involved in any petty wars.

Have fun!

To OP: There are systematic reputation system abusers here. I dont know if they use bots or do it manually though. Mods sometimes do show up (for locking the respective thread) when you criticize them but otherwise yes they appear to be unwilling to fix reputation system abuse. Didnt know this existed. It says "6 users" only though.

So, there is no way to successfully stop the forum abusers? I don't want to step on someone's toes, and get a bad rep.

Can I petition GOG stuff to improve the forum? If people are using multiple accounts or bots to give posts low ratings, it's a bad image for the forum. Anyway, that's just my opinion.

Think of it as a challenge. A game, if you will. ;p

Down voting here?????????? What a load of crap!

You can petition, but from various other posts I've seen, it's been suggested, and has been ignored. They need to just remove it, because as you have seen, it's a broken system.

You should certainly let GOG know that you feel there's a problem... add your name to the list of petitioners...

... but...

... I wouldn't expect a change anytime soon.

Again, I would highly suggest (just my opinion) instead of counting on the reputation system being removed, simply up-vote posts and threads you like. That minimizes a few "bad eggs." Currently few people up-vote and it gives greater power to those manipulating the system.

We've been doing that for years. Rep system isn't the only issue with the forum, but the only thing they've "improved" instead is the layout of the store pages (for the worse, IMO). The forums are a hopeless case, we should probably cherish that they're still up and more or less functional in the first place. Maybe one day, far off in the future they will replace this old forum with something (hopefully) better, but it will probably mean losing all the posts in the old forum, and maybe without warning. Don't worry about it. Unless you're out to insult others, condone piracy or DRM, or furiously fight over politics, I'm sure you'll be fine. The best thing you can do is chat about games instead. ;)

Sure. Easiest way is to use Wishlist. For example: https://www.gog.com/wishlist/site#search=reputation

(Not that I want to give the impression that this is expected to give you the desired results though.)