time as good as any other to ask you for a way to look at it

One high-rated game will be randomly picked for a randomly chosen person answering a question about our forum:

Would you prefer to have it visible who, nickname under post, clicked at high rated green + button in each post?
Or rather have it anonymous, like it is now? and why.

My opinion does not participate in a draw, but I wish it was open and visible to all those who clicked "like" like on most forums.
If you feel it's not important or have a completely different vision, please write about it too.

this giveaway ends 20th December '24 at noon UTC,
The draw will be taken out of the first 100 highest-rated games and recorded,
should you win an unacceptable game we will spin for another one or again one more time.
[url= ]https://www.gog.com/en/games?order=desc:reviewsRating&hideDLCs=true[/url]

I'm present on forums where it's visible, and where it isn't, and both have something going for it.

I think when it isn't visible, a "high rated" mark (or more generally a high thumbs up number) for just a thoughtful / useful / in depth post is more meaningful, as no one is pressing the button for 'virtue signalling' / in order to be seen doing so, but it's all purely done as a show of appreciation. It does allow brigading, but when there's no number, solely a relatively-easily reached threshold (as here), and it's purely positive, not negative, I think that doesn't matter too much.

However, when it is visible, some valued community participants can become known for their thumbing-style, ranging from "I thumb everything I've seen" to "I thumb maybe one thing a month", with the latter then becoming a badge of honor in itself. This can be fun in tight-knit communities.

There are quite a few parts of the gog forum community I really appreciate, but also some unfortunate parts which are closer to a cesspit, to be avoided at all costs. Moderation has improved, but not yet really 'moderated' this, so in the present state, I would consider this community the opposite of tight-knit, and prefer the current situation where it's anonymous.

(Oh, and thanks for your continued generosity with your giveaways! I like how the questions you ask are always interesting.)

FWIW I'm not certain about the wisdom of this plan to gift a random game from the list. Looking at the current top 100, I see a lot of niche games, which appeal to their audience, but will never be looked at / played by people outside that audience (hence no negative ratings). Plus a lot of honestly amazing old games which I imagine almost everyone will own already. In total, at least for myself, overall far more games I wouldn't want than games I'd actually be interested in.
Maybe consider having the winner pick a top 20 from the overall top 100, and drawing from just such a subset?

No. Keep it light-hearted. Just appreciate somebody, anybody voted you up.

Both have their merits. The first establishes a sort of personality for a user by the replies they support.

The second maintains anonymity for those who don't like standing out.

Anonymous.

I don't like anything that could in any way contribute to turning forum posts into popularity contests, so I guess I'm fine with the way things are here right now.

How would people feel about having the ability to have a private indicator showing when people have thumbed-up their post? Not that much different than it is now, but you'd know if even one person appreciated your post. And if so, do you think that person should have the option of being identified? All this could be done in the settings, but would default to 'off'.

I think it's fine as it is now, though I don't have a strong opinion on it... I don't really mind whether it's one way or the other, honestly.

Anyway, I think the "nickname under post" thing could be done better. Maybe they could reuse the same + button so that when you hover over it, a popup shows the names or something like that. Mainly to avoid taking up space unnecessarily and to keep that info from showing up without asking (though they could also add an option to configure all this in the forum settings, but yeah).

I remember some forums where instead of "upvote" it was called "thanks", so under each post you would have a line: "The following users thanked for this post: ... "

In that case it made sense to have a list of people that a user had helped. It also reduced the cluttering of many different posts just saying thank you (for example, in forums with community-based support, like we often find on GOG). I don't personally mind very long or even resurrected threads but some people prefer "tidier" ones.

But outside of this very particular context, I don't think this or any forum really needs such a list. Even before considering how much change can realistically be done to GOG's forum software.

I'd prefer the anonymous method because the nickname-under-post version comes across as more narcissistic and hyper prone to brigading. The current anonymous method gets it right imho.

Just keep it anonymous as always

Now let me in!

I will be in this time. :)
Thanks for the chance! This is actually a very interesting question to me. Yes, I agree with you.
It would be nice to reinforce forum members opinions when they liked someone else's post.
Also, the dynamic of seeing a considered 'respected member' of the forum liking a post means a lot to how forum dynamics used to work.

Having your post validated by someone that is considered experienced by the majority of the forum also brings your point in case in many times.

You made me feel nostalgic for the classic forum days and said dynamics that dominated the internet from early 2000's, before Discord, Reddit and social media came "destroying them all like a flood". :)

Anyway... GOG did really well removing the negative votes because it reinforced bad behaviour and caused the abuse with bots we saw.
Making +1 voters stats transparent would reinforce good behaviour and concordance of opinions amongst users I think, because people would also think twice before liking a post.

Being able to agree with someone you previously disagreed with in something is a sign of maturity and something I think happened many times around here already through the voting system - but we can't see who voted - so the positive effect of this isn't seen by those who had been in disagreement before.

One objective positive immediate effect would be that Upvote Bots would have their accounts revealed easily and be quickly punishable by community by reports. I can imagine that a system like this would quickly bring a "Upvote Bots" Forum thread that Moderators could watch for users reports.

I really like that idea!

No show= force people to behave.

Keep things simple.

To be honest, I hardly ever notice the 'high rated' notification so give my opinion a little value.
I like it how it is now: anonymous. I feel like the amount of regular users of the forum are quite low and I'm afraid that showing who likes your post could develope into a 'circle-jerk' behaviour.

Thank you.

That seems like an interesting question. It made me thing across multiple domains, but sticking to the main question, I would say there are reasons why people vote secretly in elections.

In a situation where we only have upvotes, the "no upvote" can be interpreted as the new down-vote. I am sure there have been many people annoyed because their friends did not like their post on Facebook. Anonymous foments more honesty; and if someone wishes to display a more public approval, they are always free to write a post doing so.

There are good things that come with seeing who votes what, but I see most of that information falling under the aegis of good moderation.

Anonymous.

There's other functionality that I would rather have with the forums than a useless list of who upvoted my post. What would I even do with it? Besides stalking everyone here by making a spreadsheet to keep track of who has been upvoting my posts, I can't think of a use for it.

As for the functionality that I'd rather see - If you go into the forum settings, there's only three color schemes. I'd like to see more. When it seems like I'm not posting here much, it's because I have visual snow and reading the forum is really hard. Today is a bad day and text blends in with the background with the default aluminum setting. I'm trying carbon.

I'm sure that other people would appreciate having the option to increase the font size on the forum.

These types of quality of life improvements would be better than a stalker checklist.


I also don't want a notification of any sort if a post of mine is high rated, and I'm sure that others wouldn't want this either considering that people complain about the notifications they do get.