This is the very question i hinted at in my original post.
Without moderation what will happen?
With too much moderation what will happen?
Where do we draw the line and based on what metrics?

Both extremes are bad in my opinion.
Too much moderation as it is the case on GoG now, will kill any interesting topic, so the forums are dead.
No moderation will kill the forums too, because they will drown in a sea of troll rage.

So what would be a decent solution?

On one hand we aspire for freedom, on the other hand we cant deal with the repercussions of freedom.

Not trying to pass verdicts, just trying to incite a conversation where people would give their honest input to this issue.

Comparing the relatively free forums of Steam

what
that's... not a thing? Game forum mods on Steam forums can be button-happy quite often.

Really?
At first sight this might seem true, but in reality, games do touch sensible areas such as politics, sex, SWJ, religion, and so on.
Its not realistic to BAN these issues out of casual social talk like forums, at least thats my opinion.
Also personally id rather put up with some trolls and smack talk, than having to content myself with benign posts like what music you listen to? what games you played recently? hows the weather? lets play a forum dumbgame, lets all pretend we are happy....and so on

Agreed, but in comparison to GoG, the Steam forums offer a lot more freedom.
Thats coming from someone that had posts deleted and warnings and bans issued on Steam forums for posting GoG links to sales and other transgressions, such as insulting people.
Still, the question here is not wether we should draw a line somewhere, the question is about where should the line be drawn?
Difficult question.

Define "bad thread".

Excellent reply.
Thats the essence of my question.
How do you define the "bad ones" that need to be deleted, based on what metric.
In absence of a clear definition of what makes a thread "bad", how do you decide which ones to delete?

The problem is that GoG's forum has been broken for years. I'd venture to guess that at least 80% of the time that mods have been accused of deleting threads, it wasn't them. Of course its impossible to know given those threads just disappear.

Lately it seems the official policy seems to be to just lock them. So unless there are multiple mods and they are on different pages, you can thank someone else for being that kind of special jerk.

Incidentally, it seems a 2nd Youtuber has reported that Linko has been fired and claims to have verified it himself. But keep telling people its only Youtubers, can't believe them.

Instead of "bad threads", it is better to consider bad posts: instead of removing or locking the thread, it should suffice to delete the offending posts, and if required, banning the offender. You remove the bad without losing the good.

A "bad thread" would be then only a particular case: the one where the original post goes against the forum guidelines. Although, even in that case there would be interesting replies. So, decisions should be taken on a case-by-case basis.

So, yes, locking or removing threads because someone spam it with crap only encourages that kind of behavior.

Things have changed mightily in a short time. Before it was like everything goes. GOG had a great community when it was Great Old Games. The changes in their strategy and expanded customer base lead to a big change in the quality of the discussion on the forums. They ought to have nurtured the community and make an extra effort during the transition and beyond. Instead, there was a steep decline, and many good contributors just left.

This heavy handed policying that you mention comes across as the wrong medicine applied very late. Especially, deleting or locking threads instead of targeting the offenders (via fair warning, editing/deleting and, finally, banning), strikes as a lukewarm and fundamentally wrong line of action: one that encourages the behavior that suppossedly intends to stem.

You don't really seem to know how the deletion of the threads really work. It's an automated system and no moderator is involved. I agree that it's not a good idea, but in the beginning when self-moderation was in place, it worked pretty well. Today the forum is broken an no one knows how to fix it any longer.

I think I've hardly ever seen a moderator on GOG delete a thread (Linko did it a few times in the beginning). Normally they get locked when user don't follow the rules (and Chandra for example gives several warnings before she does so).

I believe that so far, your post proves that on these forums you can discuss any topic within the specific frame of the rules (https://support.gog.com/hc/en-us/articles/115001814049-Forum-Code-of-Conduct) which, in my opinion, are pretty basic common sense.

Weather and "hot" topics aren't mutually exclusive and the latter being less frequent has probably more to do with user behaviour than censorship.

Look at the support Linko thread as a recent example (please don't begin a flamewar out of this mention), its intention was really nice and it was a relatively healthy discussion (albeit some odd comments) until a bunch of new users took it as an excuse for promoting their own agendas. At that point, the original thread creator tried to keep the discussion on topic but ultimately, as that proved to be impossible, the thread had to be locked.

So far I'd say forum moderation tells more about us than it speaks about unfair censorship. If these forums could "bury" comments according to downvotes (leave moderation to the community), I wonder if we would be better off or if that measure would otherwise prove to be unfair. beautifully executed.

Wears a black hat.
Smokes.
Doesn't pay for it's drinks.
Returns videos without rewinding them.

What the...? You clearly haven't been around here much. There's people here who can't stop to provoke fights over politics, gender or other controversial crap. This is going on for years already. There's a guy who calls everyone who doesn't agree with him a nazi. There's someone here who couldn't stop lecturing everyone about transgender stuff in completely random threads (this stopped and nowadays I even like some of this user's threads). At some point we even had a nutcase caling muslims "subhumans" and wishing gay people death. There was one dude with probably a hundred fake accounts who braced himself to scam users here (trading games). He couldn't get enough of telling us how GOG can't do shit about him and how he'll ruin this forum. Paying customers left because of him!

What we have now, is just the bare minimum of necessary moderation to stop people here from killing each other.

We had that already. Good users left the forums and never came back. Trolls started fights everywhere. Some users registered alt accounts to delete posts and threads by abusing the spam button (a certain number of spam reports will auto-delete a post/thread). Plus all the stuff I already mentioned above.

GOG's forums will turn into a place where people talk about games and ask for support. Maybe that's a bit boring but... You gotta understand GOG, too. They're a storefront. They're not here to defend free speech. All they want is to sell games. It's not in their interest to hire one or two moderators to keep political discussions civil. Employees cost a lot of money and I doubt that GOG will sell more games just because they allow a handful of users to discuss controversial stuff on their forums.

It'd be awesome if we could get back to a pre 2013/2014 state, where there was no need for moderation (except the occassional "Keep it civil" post from a GOG employee every few weeks). We had political discussions in the early years of GOG. But we were just some users who respected each others opinions. But GOG grew a lot since then. It's not the niche store for old farts who love old games anymore. There's just too many users here for that.

It's not our line to draw. This is GOG's place. The current moderation already costs them money and I bet they don't want to spend even more just to allow us to have our little fights. "Fair" moderation costs a lot of time. And if users realize that there's a chance to discuss stuff with the mods, they'll... well, discuss with the mods - which'll cost even more time. That's some very expensive moderation. Why would GOG want to pay that? You always have to remember what this place is...

The problem is that GOG did nothing when things went south. It was just the forums. We had approximately two years without ANY kind of moderation. You couldn't even gift someone a game without getting a war started! There were users telling you HOW you have to gift games and to whom you have to gift them. If you didn't follow their rules, YOU were the reason why GOG turned to shit. You, who just was crazy enough to be nice enough to gift a game to a stranger...

GOG was a lost case. And thus came the day where people actually left this place and GOG had to do something. And how do you deal with a scammer with hundreds of alt accounts, obvious trolls and insecure loners who call everyone a fag*** or subhuman, just to belong to any group (even if it's just some pseudo right nuts)? Damn right, you ban the shit out of them! And that's what "saved" this place. Things are still heated, but at least you can start a giveaway again without being called "the reason why this place sucks".




tl;dr
Yes, deleting/closing threads is the solution. And I have to say that chandra is doing a VERY good job so far. There's more than just one warning before a thread gets closed. And don't worry about "abuse" (=getting threads you don't like closed). chandra isn't stupid. If we see that it's always the same people getting threads locked by starting fights, chandra can see it too. I'm pretty sure those people will be dealt with.

Maybe it'll turn the forums into a boring place... But GOG's not here to entertain us with discussions about politics. They're here to sell us games. And seeing how they struggle with their storefront and to get devs to deliver patches in a timely manner, I think there's more important stuff to do than to turn the forums into a beacon of hope for free speech.

I'm not familiar with the Steam forums. Is there no moderation at all? What happens in case of flame wars or deteriorating levels of politeness?



Unless the content is illegal, the thread should be closed and allowed to sink but not deleted.