hedwards: I can't agree with you there, the forum used to be rather special, one of the few places on the net that hadn't been ruined by a bunch of griefers and beggars.
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Why do you think that folks were demanding moderation if there hadn't been a change? For the first couple years of the forum it was a relatively minor nuisance. It just got to the point where GOG could no longer pretend like there wasn't a problem.
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As for some nice people along with the freeloaders, some is the operative word there, having all these generous prizes being given out both by GOG and by individual users definitely shifted the scale substantially towards freeloaders.
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That whole years' long thread about scammers and people that don't abide by the rules of the giveaway is a really good example of what I'm talking about. You can't give things away and expect that people are going to honor the commitment after getting their loot. At least not if you're not restricting the gift to people you know to be good actors.
There we're beggars and scammers back then too(albeit to a lesser degree), and some were pretty infuriating/bothersome iirc.
As someone memed on another less popular site when someone said "this site isnt as good as it used to be"....."x site was never good". This might be stretching it a bit(as this site has been good on many occasions), but the general sentiment of not looking through rose colored glasses when evaluating things is a good one, imo.
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People were demanding moderation since the problems sprang up.....over time more voices were added as newcomers added to their sentiments and eventually GOG caved into the pressure and added them. I'm not saying the issues haven't gotten more multiplied over time(all growing sites experience this kind of thing)...just that saying/alluding to the fact that the site has gotten vastly worse over time is a bit of stretch from where i'm standing.
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It depends on who you count as a freeloader...one who comes to the site just for the giveaways or one who contributes to the site but also enters all/many giveaways.
Also, as I said above this happens with all sites....this doesn't necessarily mean a site is vastly worse off for having such types on it. Also, many such freeloaders(the actual bad ones) are easy to spot and ignore by most.
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Giveaways(again imo) rules should be up to the one doing them, imo....if they want to give to all and be more fair then fine, and if they want to give only to trusted people to avoid people reselling keys/doing other bad things then also fine....but i'd rather let in a bunch of people if it means we get some new people/blood and the sites/community'business grows rather than letting the site/business stagnate over time due to limiting the community's size.