Who is responsible for auto rep-voting?

chandra
ponczo_
SmollestLight
Beaubergine
watvin
crazy_pixie
Framboos

GOG Community Moderators:
PainOfSalvation
BKGaming
Sarafan
Do something or do nothing. That is your choice.

No, you can't spam but I wouldn't consider this a spam. It's a legitimate question.

But.

No one is going to tell you. You can't find this out without data mining or man in the middle.

Edit:

If you search the forum for "rep" then some interesting topics pop up and more names as well.

There's one user in particular who changes their username. Or you could say even several. And they upvote their own, their alt accounts and people they like. While downvoting people or topics they dislike.

Since I have lost my ability to influence rep myself then it means that admins have the ability to remove this functionality from users. Furthermore, this means that they are actually actively fighting with this "rep wars" or however you want to call this. And, since it's still happening this means that whoever is doing this is constantly creating new accounts to influence rep OR they have multiple (and by multiple I mean an army of) old alt accounts they only use occasionally.

Since this have gone on for years (the first topic about this was 2015 I think) I don't think it's going anywhere.

Now I personally don't see any issue with these "low rated" threads. It's good way to let some steam out. At first I thought that it's bit disturbing that there are few people who have been targeted personally with low rep campaign. But, since they don't care about it themselves it just looks amusing how they get all this attention from someone (or lets be honest, it could be a whole group of people). It's like having your own personal secret admirer, digital stalker or even an entire fanclub. That's actually cool if you think about it. You are like e-celeb or influencer for them. Or even an icon.

So when you go to bed at night you can think that there is someone or someones out there who admire you and you got their attention. Aw, so cute.

The idea that anyone is responsible for anything on these forums is a bit far fetched. It's like going to a shady neighborhood and wondering why people are spitting in your face and the police doesn't do anything about it.

Not that this is a shady neighborhood in particular, but "welcome to the internet"...

As with all things, enjoy the good conversations you have and the nice people you meet, lower your expectations when it comes to anything else.

And if you needed to hear this said one more time, the rep system has been broken in like forever. The forums are hardly a priority for GOG, they only make sure the superstructure doesn't collapse on itself.

There's at least one group of people (or one with multiple accounts) who does subtle marketing on these forums. They create fake threads just to promote their products. You might not even notice them but since I have met them on other forums and sites, it's easier for me to recognise them. There might be more of these groups/companies here but one is far more active then others.

There are also several individuals having different accounts ontop of that. Sometimes they are having conversations with themselves (thinking they boost their perceived status or something). Sometimes they argue with someone else using their different accounts. And there are some other funky things going on here so it wouldn't surprise me if there's someone (or a group) who likes to mess with the rep. Not like the rep matters or anything.

Considering what's going on in bigger sites/forums then things are really calm around here indeed.

Giving creidt to Gog, while they might have neglected the appearance of the site, they do take security and privacy seriously.

I don’t think that is credit to gog, the forum has pretty much died, a few bot accounts, and a few of the customers who perhaps don’t use social media, and the occasional user who ended up here as galaxy links to forum are broken.
As for security and privacy, they have all the usual Facebook, Google linked in, so security and privacy is zero, or less.

If they are doing it manually, maybe, but if they have a script or bot that does it automatically then it is like a set and forget, especially if the post is fully zapped and never seen even as a hidden place marker.

There would be people downvoting or hiding on GOG for a variety of reasons, upvoting too, but there is also some body engaging in a deliberate war or targeting beyond the norms ... so beyond reasonable.

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At the end of the day, REP just really isn't that important. I certainly don't judge by it, except where the user has a very high negative REP, which shows they either have enemies or post a lot controversially.

I always judge others by my own interpretation of or experience with them, not by using the view of others ... same as I do in the non virtual world. I'll never be a good candidate for Mob Rule or Mob Hysteria, where the individual mind is subdued by the collective one ... like with Ants or Bees or Sheep.

I will not eat spam from a can,
i will not eat spam with a hand,
i will not eat spam on a boat,
i will not eat spam on a float,
i will not eat spam after dark,
i will not eat spam with a lark,
i will not eat green eggs and spam i will not eat them, sam i am.

Maybe you can't spam, but you can certainly troll. Some have made it their life mission in here. It's been going on for years, so apparently GOG are fine with it. Maybe not "grave" enough to warrant penalties or bans *shrug*

Apparently it's really effective to piss one of them off first; Then reply to their comments... Just reminded somehow i pissed off Tiny-E or someone, and replied with a perfectly reasonable answer, only for them to snap at me and telling me not to reply to them...

Can you at least disable it? Nobody sees a point in it anymore since it's so dysfunctional now.

I'm going to call BS on this one. The system tracks who votes the posts up/down. Otherwise when you're logged in you couldn't see what you voted on something nor have the +/- of the post, and you could vote the same post up/down to oblivion...

Although that depends on the type of access they'd have to the database. If you only can use an API and never have any access to the SQL database, then sure that makes sense, but there's certainly a way. And it wouldn't be hard to incorporate either.

someones spamming is others forum game

+1 to remove reps
yup the data is there , only need a not that hard query to find the abusers

Just think what they must have felt to write that script in the first place. I mean someone had to trigger him so bad that he created that script. Like first love or something. Sure later usages of the script might have meant less but every single one have to remind him the first one at least to some degree. Also the targets should care about rep or it would be pointless. By hiding do you mean that they observe and read but don't post themselves? For me low or negative rep shows that someone is rebel and anarchist and they don't care about social norms and formalities. They are strong individuals who dare to have independent thoughts and express them even if others disagree. Or that's what it should show IF it would work as intended. But since it doesn't work it's sorta pointless "feature".

It could be something IF let's say there are stats tracked like for example whose posts you have liked and how many. What keywords are the most common in posts you have liked. Or who likes your posts. You know, like some meaningful data behind the click. Or automatic tracker that knows which posts you have already read and which not.

Or the ability to mark posts with different flags/tags useful, informative, funny, agreeable etc.

Or the ability to hide posts automatically that contain certain keywords so snowflakes who find some things unsavoury wouldn't get triggered. Better than censoring for everyone anyway.

I mean there are so many things Gog could do. Being (relatively) small company gives the oportunity to try different things and to lead the industry with innovation rather than lagging behind behemoths. Friendly pisstake is not trolling. There's no trolling here. Humorous dissing maybe. Also it's fantasy-racism to assume the worst from trolls. I hope that one day trolls could be treated equally with humans and elves alike. Without prejudice and slurs.

That account goes by the name of "Fuk the Anti-Vaxxers" now but he has many names.

It's probably something only admin could see but it would take too much hustle to track all that down. I doubt mods or ordinary staff could do anything about it. I didn't mean FB and Google. You can block third party scripts and cookies with ease. Of course I don't like them being here but I don't even see them. If you set your browser up correctly then neither should you. (Except for checkout if I remember correctly)

So that's who that is...