They were downrating many of his posts, and not just the "offending" ones.....the ones where he tried to apologize were even low rated in a few instances. That coupled with some acting rude/crass towards him seems a bit harsh to me.
Some of us are more trying to see things from both sides rather than paint a newcomer as evil incarnate just because he did something wrong on his first day.

Also how would abusing the rep system get him free games? The main gifting threads aren't rep based and the clubs are time based and he hasn't been here long enough....even if he did get a ton of rep in a short amount of time.

I interpreted that as meaning that people didn't find his apologies believable.
(And it might be a little hard to believe that somebody just stops being greedy when he first had such a give-me-stuff-attitude. It could be seen more like he saw that he couldn't get stuff for free the way he wanted and therefore decided to apologize just in case he might get something then.)
*shrugs* Sometimes you just fuck up so severely that apologizing doesn't help anymore.

I did think this, specifically this, was a good reason, or I wouldn't have brought it up. I know it upsets you, and I don't find pleasure in upsetting other people for no good reason.

And for the record, I'm cool with you GameRager. You've acquitted yourself admirably over the past year, and have truly become a contributing member of the community. I do not say this lightly, because frankly I didn't think that would ever happen. Whatever you were struggling with back when you joined, you've obviously managed to overcome it, and you should feel proud of that.

Yeah, that's it. Some of you would try to not see even satan as evil incarnate, be it for naivety or to have good feeling from fighting against "evil" majority or some other reason.

He asked for free games and was told to become more reputable member of community so I can see him gaining rep to get free games.
Besides, I've got feeling that he is just toying with people, although I have nothing to support this feeling.

"We found you out of it on V, covered in blood, burying the pieces of your wife and the pizza guy under a rosebush in the backyard. There’s a bloody chainsaw in the bathtub, and by the looks of it, they had been shot in your bed. The murder weapons have your prints all over them, and you say you didn’t do it."

Let's leave full-on deductive reasoning to mathematics and logic, shall we ? In real life claiming that something isn't 100% sure means almost nothing. Proving something "beyond reasonable doubt" is for courtrooms. In everyday live "valid suspicion" is sufficient to base reasoning on. You won't always be right, you will have to rethink stuff every time you are proven incorrect but you will have SOME foundation to conduct reasoning on. Otherwise you are left with complete skepticism and, as they say, "you can say nothing but may merely wag your finger" IIRC.

I don't get the reputation thingy. I understand it's a numerical value to get a rough estimate for how "loved" one is on the community, but that doesn't make up for actual personal contact.

I'll elaborate. I've never been much of an online person, but there was once another online community I was part of. I used to be very active there, met a lot of interesting people and I even got to know some of them in real life. Meaning, they actually invited me to go visit them in places as distinct as Norway or Philippines. And I really enjoyed it. Even now, after 2 years of inactivity there and with the forum stagnated, I still keep in contact with some of them through email. There was no reputation there, just the day to day of talkin to each other.

Similarly, I think here the rep is only used for initial reference, but nothing more. I understand the appeal of free games. Hell, even I was tempted when I saw the thread for the fist time. I thought, "WTF? These guys are actually giving free games for no reason? I'll post and see if I get lucky". I got nothing of course. Why? Because nobody knew me. I don't think people will give you games because you got 20, or 2k, reputation. Reputation point whoring goes nowhere.

When do people give games? Well, speaking from personal experience here, but I think there are 2 cases: love for the individual and love for the game. Oh, those 2 or having extra games that nobody, not even your real life friends, wants (That was my giveaway). Anyway, I'll put examples of the 2 important kinds here.

I'm pretty knew here. I joined in April and have been buying games since then, but on my first look at the forums I only entered the ones for the games I'm interested in and they were so... specific? Technical? Well, they put me off and only discovered the general discussion recently. So I post here and there, read other's posts, users start to sound familiar after a while. So, there's this one user I see often around. Telling names is bad manners, so let's just say he obviously enjoys Sacrifice. And I feel some empathy because I've been (and still am) on those same shoes when I promote Deus Ex. Just ask my offline friends, if you ever get the chance. And then I open the gog gifting thread and see him asking for a game. A game on a bundle that I own, so it costs 1€ to me.

That's what I mean by love to the user. I kinda like this guy, why not give him what he wants? Why not spend one sad euro and make his day? And my deeper point is, I don't care about the rep. He could have had -300 and I wouldn't care, I just liked his posts so I sent him a gift. In the OP's case, what I see is that he "wants 20 rep so he can join the gifting club", and that's not very loveable. I'm not going to go out of my way to downrep him, like some others seem to be doing, but I won't give him a gift either until I get to know him (and like him). Even if he does reach 20 rep.

Now, love for the game? Well, I did say I love Deus Ex, and I want as many people as possible to play it, so I actually bought 5 copies of it on the promo and I am planning to give 2 here as giveaways. Normally I would just give it away among the people I chat with, but since I still don't know many people I can't really do that, so rep is the thing to make up for it. But I suppose older members don't really need to resort to that.

Similarly, I just made a trade with a user who had 200+ reputation. Seeing that number does give me some peace of mind while I wait for that user to do his part of the deal.

mmm... I think I lost track of what I was trying to say, but I don't feel like re-reading the whole thing to figure it out. In summary, I just don't get why people appear to be so obsessed about reputation.

Yes, I truly believe some here let their emotions rule over them and let the fact that he's a newcomer unfairly influence their replies & responses to what he said and did. I also think this is wrong and that it runs contrary to some of the principles we all claim to hold so dear as GOGgers.

I never said he was 100% innocent or undeserving of any backlash in response to his recent actions, just that he didn't deserve to be treated to the extent he was/is so far.
You call it playing devil's advocate.....I ask you to prove he is the devil and that I am wrong to advocate for him.
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I don't get what the big deal is, to be honest(Not that he got yelled at but the degree to which some people responded to some of his past actions.). So he asked for something......so what? Was it worth the amount of outcry some voiced over it? I see such requests all the time. I usually ignore the ones I don't want to be bothered with and move on with my life.
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If he is later proven to be a truly bad person I will change my views accordingly but until then i'm not going to assume the worst of him just because he's new & asked for stuff on his first day.

I haven't and won't look up what he did in other threads. If he gotten downrated there - totally different story.
Here he just claims to be new, not knowing his way around here, what he's trying to do and that he can't see what he did wrong, looking for answers about it.

If that's considered to be downrate worthy, I remain on my point of view about lacking class.

No, that's not it.......it's always the newcomer's/person being downrated's fault, they totally deserved whatever they got(So they should just stop complaining about it already because it's bloody annoying.), and the ones downrating were totally fair for doing so.....always. No exceptions. Now just get in line and take your bread ration for the day...that's a good GOGger.

/sarcasm mode off

(I was just musing in general, and was being sarcastic....just a head's up.)

Bang your dead...Just a head's up.

Oops too late.

That's what I get for not paying my union dues & blowing it on games......again.

its time we cut him some slack and put this behind us,
us quarrying about this rep crap doenst make us any better

Nice Max Payne 2 reference

Hmm, a few of my posts are going downrated in here......*Runs screaming into the night....(j/k)*.

I guess the bits of truth within them must've hit a nerve & struck home with a few people.

That's how it is, though...the truth hurts sometimes, and some things need to be said(albeit civilly) sometimes......this doesn't mean those saying such are trying to ruin someone else's day by doing so, though.

I just want to close by saying this: If some here can't take a bit of (imo mostly fair and civil)criticism as a result of their actions without feeling the need to punish those who "slight" them then they need to learn to relax if such things upset them so much.
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(To be honest I could care less about a few points here and there.....I just thought i'd add this little bit before ending my posts in this thread and moving on.)