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1) Splitting the General forum in a game related one and an off topic one.
Also, a sub section for giveaways could be useful, and it would placate the people who don't like that stuff.

2) Better search system.

3) Checking the post history (especially our own). Also, if one could check another person's history rep could really become irrelevant.

4) More editing power over our own thread (change type, change name).

5) Changing rep system.
An option could be taking it off entirely (as stated before, seeing another person's post history could be more insightful).
Another one could be setting a minimum amount of rep required for uprepping or downrepping (es. 10), and setting a maximum amount of + or - that can be given to a person per month (es. 15).
This way, a single person can't bring another user's rep down too much by just downrepping every post he makes day after day.

6) Keeping a minimalistic style to the forum.

7) Changing how the notification works (as stated here)
Post edited April 18, 2014 by Shambhala
1- Limit downrep, uprep usage to once a day per user.

2- Addition of a public profile with portion that can be made private at the user's choice. The profile would include the person's library, and a "bio" section where user can post anything from their bio to an opinion piece.

3- Ability to put pictures inline with the text instead of as attachments only.

4- Emoticons, but just the basic set, ie about 10.

5- User generated polls.
What is an 'emoticon'?
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justanoldgamer: Emoticons, but just the basic set, ie about 10.
If image based emoticons are added please either prevent them from automatically converting text based emoticons (For example: instead of :) converting into an image emote the code :smile: would produce the image) or provide the option to disable image based emoticons from your post when you are creating it. ^_^

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tinyE: What is an 'emoticon'?
These are Emoticons:
^_^
-_^
-_-
T_T
:)
:D
XD
:(
>:D
,,,',,',,,
Post edited April 18, 2014 by SpellSword
Thank you. :D
Do smt about rep system, some ppl get angry about downreping thing that's going on for a while now, and leaving, new users can't gather positive rep cuz of same thing. (btw didn't post anything for few days, today I discovered that I lost 3 rep just like that, not that I care)

Proper search function would be also great.

Maybe some minimalistic user profile page?
Not yet mentioned I think:
- Fix the formatting (put coding around selected part of post instead of at beginning)

And these are good contenders as well (prioritized):
- Remove possibility of down-repping
- Improve the search function
- Make original poster able to edit the thread title
- Make original poster able to close threads
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Maighstir: Personally I do not see the need for an ignore function, but I do realise there are several people who do (I even coded a user script for that function long ago only to see if I could, because someone else wanted it, site updates have since broken it though).
Could you look over and see if it's possible to update the user script? I'm sure there are more than a few that actually want one.

Aside from user ignore function:
Proper and advanced search (filters, like most forums have)
Personal post history
Ability to edit thread title
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tburger: If you respond in your post to multiple other posts by quoting them - ALL those people you respond should get notification flag. AFAIK now only the first person you quote gets 'response' flag.
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JMich: It's the reply button that sends the notification, not the quote. Unless you mean using Barefoot Monkey's script "quick reply" feature, which is not something GOG does.
You can send notification without quoting someone, and you can quote someone without sending notification. Hell, you can quote one while notifying another if you want to do so.
I must be dumb. How to reply to posts of 2 persons in 1 post in the way that they both get notification?
Post edited April 18, 2014 by tburger
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tburger: I must be dumb. How to reply to posts of 2 persons in 1 post in the way that they both get notification?
If you post twice consecutively within 10 minutes, the posts get merged. So if you do 2 replies fast enough, it is in one post.
I'm late to the party, so whatever I had to say has probably been said by now, but the whole rep deal is clearly a hot issue. I personally don't think it's a big deal, but people are complaining so much that the complaining itself has gotten annoying to me. I don't care if the downrep button is there or not, just get people to stop complaining every 3 days. Please.

As for my personal experience, I'd like to have:
- post list for users (so I can check posts of any user, including myself)
- link from PM user to... somewhere with that user (post list?)
- why not integrate the stuff from Barefoot essentials, such as quick reply, on the forum by default? It works really well.
- The search could certainly use more work. It's impossible to find anything there.
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tburger: I must be dumb. How to reply to posts of 2 persons in 1 post in the way that they both get notification?
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JMich: If you post twice consecutively within 10 minutes, the posts get merged. So if you do 2 replies fast enough, it is in one post.
With notifications for both replied users?
I don't have any major issues with the forum as-is - I don't care about rep and I find the search function useable, if not exactly intuitive - but enough other people have issues with those things that they're probably worth addressing.

A "giveaway" tag for threads might be nice. Like how news shows up with a blue dot and questions with an orange dot - maybe giveaways could be tagged with a purple dot? (That's just a random colour selection, I'm not invested in it being purple specifically.) It'd just be nice to be able to identify the giveaway threads at a glance. If possible, you might want to include the ability for the thread creator to change a normal thread to a giveaway thread later on, so that when they inevitably forget to flag it as a giveaway and hit "post", they can go back and fix it.

I don't know if you consider this part of the "forum" or not, but for the community wishlists, a "show all" button would be nice. Currently if I want to browse the lower tiers of the wishlist, I have to scroll down, hit "load more", scroll down, hit "load more", etc... it can get a bit tedious.

EDIT: Again, I don't know if you consider this part of the forums, but there's a bug with the PM system. I think it's triggered by a user getting banned or their account deleted or something, but if you try to load a PM from them the whole PM page locks up. And if their PM is the most recent in your list (and thus loads automatically when you go to your PMs page) you can't access your PMs at all, at least not until another user sends you a PM and thus becomes the "most recent".
Post edited April 18, 2014 by Azilut
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JMich: If you post twice consecutively within 10 minutes, the posts get merged. So if you do 2 replies fast enough, it is in one post.
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tburger: With notifications for both replied users?
A merged post is two (or more posts) so notifications are sent for all of them. No different from replying to user A in post #32 and to user B in post #34.
You tried too hard to redefine what a forum is with this place and kind of tripped over your shoelaces. It worked in 2008, it's not workable anymore. You're too big.

It was smaller, yes, but still on day one you needed moderators. Every single forum on the internet needs them. You should feel a bit ashamed to hear that even 4chan has them. Yes, /b/ is a moderated board. You also need a rule-based framework for those moderators to operate on. The social constructs you rely on at the moment don't work. Yes there are common courtesies you should adhere to in all social environments, but how do those courtesies serve to build an environment of constructive, useful, insightful and amusing discussing? Unwritted common understandings should not be relied upon unless your community is made up of around 5 people.

So there's point one. Get some moderators and some rules. Rules can be based on your little understandings, but they also need to include clauses about worthwhile contributions, meaning practical points about how the forum should look. You really shouldn't be allowing these one word, content-free threads and posts to conintue. They're wasting valuable bytes in your database and they're wasting space good discussions could be taking place in. How you choose your mods is up to you. You could pick them from the community, but be careful and be sure to vet your candidates for a week or so before announcing them. You could also dedicate staff to the job. Okay, you all fulfil some moderation roles as it is, but moderation is dependent on you actually bothering to log in. You need people with hours assigned to moderation, it can't default to back turned.

The rules need to, in some part, define what your community is about. I think this is primarily a classic gaming enthusiasts' forum with tinges of DRM-free revolution. Or at least it was. Okay, so sure, GOG isn't a values based service anymore and will probably have a DRM-like client or some other scheme in a year or two. But no matter how the service changes the community is separate. The rules need to be positive, by the way. The word "DON'T" should not appear anywhere in them. Nor should it appear in unconjugated form, either. Encourage people to be positive and constructive rather than discourage them from being idiots. Idiots don't know that they're idiots so they won't stop being one if you tell them to.

Finally you need organisation. It is not appropriate anymore to a) dump all non-specific-game-related discussion into one area with a max thread view of 50 and b) to list your entire 700+ title catalogue in one big thing and expect specific game forums to be easily found. Group that shit alphebetically. To solve point (a), stick a damn off topic section in there. Include a GOG-specific section and maybe a General Gaming discussion area. Whatever you do - for god's sake - you need a bloody off topic section. Trevor likes to tell me that General Discussion is off-topic, if that's the case, where is on-topic? They can't be in the same place.

Writing this I feel like I'm teaching grandma to suck eggs. You should know how to operate a forum. You've been on forums before.

It is utterly terrifying that GOG is the one forum on the entire internet, given how much it represents, that fails to provide the basic fundamentals of a constructive and accomodating community discussion area.

You're still very proud of this place. And I assure you that in its current state it is losing you sales. It's giving you negative publicity. From a buisness point of view you must do something about it. At the moment you're kind of like a posh restaurant specialising in grand dishes in a seedy part of town whose owner is scratching his head wondering why his windows keep breaking and why no one is buying, not realising it has everything to do with the crack den across the road and the thugs who mull around in the street just outside the door.

I'm glad you've decided to take some action on this, anyway. Even if it is a few years too late. You should have revamped the forum as soon as Gamerager turned up. That should have been your first indication that there was a problem. Sadly you failed to respond, but it's good that you are now doing so. I'm sorry to name names but I think he was such an exceptional case and the whole thing was such an exceptional failure that it needs explicitly pointing out. Learn positively from failure.

And anyone I've managed to offend with these words feels rightly so. I don't care. The forum's current rules are trust-based social constructs, and you've spoiled the forum by breaking that trust. GOG wouldn't need to take any action at all if you could have just been constructive this whole time. Sometimes you have to acknowledge that you've done something wrong. GOG are doing so now, I'm sure you can too.

Anyway that's my two and a bit cents. I'll be back to check out the updates in a few months, I expect.