there is such a thing objectively:
hate speech
[hate speech]
NOUN
abusive or threatening speech or writing that expresses prejudice against a particular group, especially on the basis of race, religion, or sexual orientation.

the problem is that intention and context comes into play when deciding if something is hate speech or not and that's where subjectivity comes into it. when in doubt steer clear of what could be misinterpreted as hate speech. of course mods will need to take context and whatnot into consideration but if you're being civil and not obviously trolling then it's unlikely you're going to veer into hate speech territory.

i mean why would you be coming close to hate speech on a video game forum? sure there are some general chats about other things but you generally have to be going pretty off-base to be worried that you're going to be interpreted as hate speech imo.

I'm glad GOG finally took the initiative, set in stone reasonable rules and appointed both employees and community members to get the job done.
Hopefully this will improve he situation, so I might come back here more regularly. Good luck to the new mods!

That's just it, what is considered hate speech is 100% subjective and up to interpretation, there is no way it can be defined. The definition you gave is entirely nebulous... Who determines what is actual prejudice? or perceived as a threat? or abuse? This is entirely subjective. It literally cannot be objectively quantified.

Sure, it's possible to define some actions of an individual to be hateful, racist, bigoted etc, but this overarching term "hate speech" is a meaningless word and more often than not used to derail things over personal offense.
Not necessarily, these days plenty of people take offense at the drop of a hat over differing opinions or perceiving offense when none was given. Yes, If I've offended someone I respect, or who has shown respect, I will sincerely apologize, after all I do believe in basic civility and politeness, but in general I personally don't see offense in and of itself to be something automatically warranting respect. Context is everything, and a lot of the time, people just choose to be angry about something (real or perceived) rather than staying rational and/or taking it on the chin. Nothing truly happens when you're offended, and a mature adult should be able to identify that and move on.

Remaining calm and in control is the key to proper civil discourse. If the other person is actively out to be insulting or offensive, they have automatically lost.

i disagree with your comments about hate speech but i’m not pushing the point.
i will point out that the whole point of moderation is that things will be looked at in context. it doesn’t matter if someone takes offence at any old thing. a (presumably) sensible person will look at the situation in context and apply the rules as fairly as they can. i also assume that people won’t just be permanently banned at the drop of a hat. i assume people will be warned and whatnot, hopefully before things get out of hand.

ofc this relies on the mods being fair, but until proven otherwise i wouldn’t be too alarmist about things. as has been pointed out there’s been no actual change to the rules, they’ve just been highlighted as a reminder and to introduce the new mod

I think the posts above show that there is a lot of interpretation of these rules.

I do also notice that there is very little information on those things that don’t work on the forum such as rep, or tools provided by the forum to cover some of these issues. For instance another topic mentioned a “block” option. This is more important than trying to get some ad hoc list of what may or may not offend people. The simple fact that the pretty pink and sparkles existence which these kind of rules and thinking rely on does not exist, and so providing solutions to the real world is necessary.

You are correct, of course, i always forget that outrage culture is a thing these days. I always start from the premise of two rational, well intentioned, adults.

Of course, I've just had communities I've been in before completely ruined by a sudden, overly aggressive moderation push, so I'm just in my wary, skeptical phase.
No worries, It's a wonderful dream though, isn't it? That humans could all just work together in rational civility instead of devolving into petty, petulant squabbling.

The guidelines are already in the Code of Conduct, which is linked in the announcement thread. You can be civil while talking to someone with whom you disagree and it can even be done without agreeing with them. You might not like or respect a fellow user, but please be civil regardless.

Don't harass them. If they are harassing you, then let one of us know instead of getting into a flame war. Providing a differing opinion on the topic at hand is not derailing the thread. Trying to change the topic to something else entirely IS derailing the thread and is NOT going to change someone's opinion on the topic at hand.

If a thread drifts, it drifts. If a thread is discussing the nuances of drinking coffee and you try to abruptly change it to how much fun it is to climb mountains, then you're derailing. An impassioned speech about how awesome it is to climb Mount Everest isn't going to make one whit of difference to someone's opinion on how coffee tastes when taken black. This rule points you toward the idea of Being Polite because you are in a setting with other people. Excessive profanity isn't necessary. Being a jerk to another user isn't necessary. If you and a buddy are harassing each other for the fun of it, that's one thing. If the other person objects, you need to stop. Also, please be aware that you are not alone when posting on the forum; please don't make this a bad place for other guests.

If you're trying to joke with another user, and they ask you to stop, then apologize and stop.

If you are trying to antagonize another user, that's unacceptable. Don't do it. For technical issues such as these, you'll need to talk to GOG staff. They are outside the purview of the Community Moderators.

If you can't tell where the line is, then maintain a larger distance away from it.

Is "hate" a hate-word? o.O

That presumes that they know where it is. Well done! lol

https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Doom_(1993)

It goes like this:
[url=
fixed link
]
normal link with Doom_(1993)
[/url]

But yes, GOG should "fix" this, since most users won't know how to use this workaround.

Just to avoid any misunderstanding about gog moderation and hate speech :

Here are the avatars that are deemed perfectly fantastically okay on this website. Don't post anything political in the text part of the forum though, because a code of conduct is supposed to apply there, and it can't be solely used against those who point out these avatars. It would end up showing (oh wait).

Keep it up, gog. Nobody left on the forums to mind, anyway.

Things like a "exact and specific list of what is allowed and what not" don't exist. They never will! You don't want to read forum rules like:

1. It is not allowed to call someone:
- son of a bitch
- moron
- cunt
- dick
- ass
- asshole
- ...

For normal people it's not necessary to list all possible insults, since they'll get what's an insult and what not. For everyone else a list like that will just be an invitation to call people "butthole", because GOG forgot to put that one on the list, too.

Do you guys know why there's courts, judges, lawyers and stuff? Because even laws can't be 100% exact and specific. How can GOG solve what no government could the last few thousands of years? Everything that'll ever be said or written by any human being can be interpreted differently by someone else. There aren't exact and specific rules.

I think these rules are pretty clear already. They're basically "Don't be an asshole", just that someone at GOG-HQ felt the need to throw in some filler words... Maybe because of design reasons. I mean... an almost empty website looks pretty shitty, doesn't it? A few more words do look better and give the whole thing a slightly more official touch.

A lot of the game forums need their sticky threads updated because they are so old and have a fair amount of dead links. The mods could move the dead links to the bottom of the sticky so people won't waste their time sorting through them.
A lot of information is also hidden in the sticky threads which are old and have grown in size.

I can't see anything there unless I turn on a load of javascipt garbage.

One thing that should be addressed:

Let's pretend that a user is harassing me, and that user happens to either be a GOG.com team member (particularly one of the ones responsible for moderation) or a community moderator. In this case:
* How should I go about reporting this?
* What processes does GOG.com have to ensure that I am treated fairly, and that, assuming the complaint is legitimate, that the perpetrator gets appropriate punishment?

To be clear, I am not in this situation at the moment, and hopefully this doesn't happen, but I just want to make sure that this case is accounted for.

(Also, friendly reminder that harassment can come through other forms, including the repeated sending of friend requests to someone who keeps rejecting them and has said no.)