Well, things have gotten way more polarized in real life as well, in many countries you've got political camps that don't talk to each other anymore and hate the other side. I guess some of that seeps into the forum as well.

A lot of people disagree with the new posting rules, and have left for the most part, including me... Although i'm replying to a few posts that catch my attention; Otherwise GoG that was my #1 site (for like 3 years) is now one of my last sites of interest

BWWWAAAAAAAARGRGRGRGRGGGRR

No you can't eat my goldfish.... even if he did turn into a cookie....

Delicious scrumptious looking tasty sweet edible cookie...

I'll have to disagree.

Cake is real.

That is true, but this didn't really become a problem until the large influx of customers when they started to carry newer titles and the period where GOG couldn't be bothered to enforce any of the rules.

There were some rather spirited disagreement threads previously, but GOG pretty much killed that off by not adequately managing the forum for so long.
A large part of that comes from how long it took them to start moderating the forum. For years they barely moderated it all all. Even GR's smut hut thread lasted for a number of hours because nobody was watching the forum over that week end.

People get used to the way things are and when they change slowly, you can get to a very strange place where a large change is needed. It would have been far better had they split the forum earlier and enforced some of the more pressing rules so that there wasn't as much of a change needed.

How can it be real when You're Never There?

idk... I respect this thread, but introducing moderation, even if it's been introduced half assed, is what got me to come back.

As far as groupthink etc, it's pretty bad yes, and sometimes I'm guilty of it. But IRL sucks so badly for so many people, this is one of the few places that despite as shitty as it gets, is still relatively decent.

My personal gripe is I find informative posts in General Discussion get swallowed up by posts that are often repeats of stuff posted hours or days earlier, or people not realizing there's a game specific forum for the game they're having issues with, which most of the time from the posts I've read, wasn't even bought on GOG.

I just want to drink me some wine
As soon as you're born you start dyin'
So you might as well have a good time

Sometimes those game specific forums are super dead. Most of the times i've had problems and posted on their respective forums, I'd eventually find the answer elsewhere before anyone answers. It could be that the games I play aren't popular.

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Yeah well groupthink comes with moderation if people aren't brave enough to push limits and also that's up to the moderator to balance. A wide or narrow forum basically.
That's also why people tend to get cranky and stiff minded. It's how we react to rules. Conformity kills dissent.


As for me. I do get back now and then to test the waters but otherwise I don't bother reading it anymore.
I should try making cake with wine instead of water. Best of two worlds. Maybe I could even get the cake to ferment! :D

To a large extent yes, but it doesn't need to be automatic. A lot of this comes down to not having specific subfora for certain common topics, but some of it also comes from inadequate rules.

The rules of a site don't necessarily need to be super-strict to prevent things from going to hell or having excessive group think, the problem tends to be in how good the moderators are at separating their feelings from their work and to what degree the people posting are trying to have a functioning community.

I recently quit a community I was a member of because I was rather pissed about some sexist one sided enforcement of the rules. I'm perfectly content not to give them any more of my money, but this kind of thing can lead to group think, especially if a lot of people that are paying have similar views.

Personally, I look forward to the future where moderation can be double checked via some form of AI to maintain a more level playing field for the effects of moderation.

Unfortunately, AI can, and is likely to be, biased. Remember the time an AI was unleashed on Twitter and it learned to be racist?

I could post a gif from Pink Flamingos, if you're interested. ;p