Continuing from this, but shifting gear.


OK, another thread just disappeared on me. And I had just posted something funny on it! Considering the huge amounts of downrepping, it was probably due to spam reports again.

This needs to stop, IMO. No matter how low ratted or spammy the OP is, threads shouldn't automatically disappear. Except if it's actual spam, as I don't want to see it, so it's not a simple matter. My personal suggestion would be to not delete a thread that has a certain number of replies to it. Even actual spam from a bot can (and has already) spark a conversation, and I don't like getting those deleted.

So if a post is flagged as spam, it gets deleted automatically. If it gets flagged as spam, but there's conversation going on in it, it shouldn't disappear. Maybe hide it from the forum, quarantine it in a way, but leave the URL alive for those already participating on it?

Anyway, thread to exchange ideas on the subject. We can create a wishlist item with our suggested solution, and GOG will then go and fix it for us. Because that's what they do, fix the forum. Like with the search. Right?

Right...

Yeah... It will be interesting to see if this will be called a glitch again. If yes, the forum guys should check the report function since the glitch is probably happening there...

Right! I noticed Cyberchief's infamous pirating thread had disappeared too. That's three highly downrated in a rather short time, pretty picky glitch it must be.

And now, if you excuse me, my working time finished so I have no reason to keep putting up with you all. I'm leaving.

Ripley: Whenever he says *anything* you say 'right,' Brett, you know that?
Brett: Right.
Ripley: Parker, what do you think? Your staff just follows you around and says 'right'. Just like a regular parrot.
Parker: Yeah, shape up. What are you some kind of parrot?
Brett: Right.

My best guess is that the anti-spambot-auto-delete function relies on several factors, all of which Cyberchief happens to fulfill:

1. Sufficient number of spam reports.
2. Sufficiently low rep of the poster.

In a spambot context it makes sense, because a spambot won't have had time to build any rep. Then there are people like Cyberchief who, by being consistently annoying, manage to build an impressive negative rep over time.

One possible criterion that could be made is for the poster to have never downloaded a game from here. That should take care of all the bots, while hitting a minimum of actual community members (even if applying the label "community member" to the likes of Cyberchief is stretching the definition of the term to the breaking point).

So it's more or less confirmed that the "glitch" was basically too many GOGlodytes from our "classy community" hit the spam report link?! You know what? It's not the forum that needs to be fixed... It's the users! Don't hit fucking spam report to delete threads you don't like! What's wrong with you guys?

If a feature can be exploited, someone will exploit it. That's just a sad fact of existence. I agree that using the spam report function for this is stupid, but I also know that it will happen. Welcome to the internet.

If this problem is to be solved, it will require a technical solution.

To be fair, people may not know that this will be the end result of reporting as spam...

But it is a problem, not least because (unless the poster rep has something to do with it) you could delete actual useful threads with a concerted effort by a number of members...

A thread for elders only, I see (winks significantly). I can sign under suggestions.

It is not confirmed, or at least I am just guessing that this could be the problem since the thread was downvoted when I saw it, but that does not mean that it was reported as well.

I didn't. I honestly thought reporting something as spam simply meant that a Blue had been alerted to keep an eye on the thread and only then close it if a) it turned out to be a spam bot or b) it got waaaaaaay out of hand and went from a conversation into just screaming obscenities and threats at each other.

Of course (b) is currently taking place in the Diablo 3 vs Torchlight thread and it hasn't been shut down. :P

Or a single member with a number of alts. We don't know how many spam reports it takes to remove a thread, after all.

There was another thread deleted months ago when some guy, apparently inspired by an academic article written by someone named Gandhi or something, said that he was canceling his Witcher 3 Preorder, because CDPR's actions (namely DRM-Free and free DLCs), were leading to the collapse of society or some other Twilight Zone scenario.

And Cyberchief's post from today Downvote Blues is gone as well.