GOG is actually pretty reliable...just...avoid...the...forums if you don't want to look at unreliable things. Actually GOG is reliable in giving you the games without forcing you to look at its infrastructure: just download the installers and never visit the site again.

is there such a thing as a reliable, functioning digital gaming storefront? sounds like they're all dumpster fires.

I particularly love the GOG forums as an example of how ruined rep systems can be. You can find people descending in negative hundreds and continue to do so for no reason. Aside from looking worse off than your peers (which by the way, even those very peers understand that the system itself is broken and shouldn't be counted on, but it CAN make you look worse for outsiders), you can't post links...unless you include a quote in your post (doesn't matter if it has content or empty). That's all the disadvantages of having negative rep. It should be done away with given that its easily prone to abuse and the only tangible punishment you get can be bypassed.

Unfortunately, rep isn't the GOG forums' worst issue. The whole forum software is so bad, that even staffers couldn't ban users from the forum without banning them from the rest of the website until some time last year or so!

fair enough

Offtopic: Rep is short for reputation, on forums it's basically a system where you can upvote or downvote posts, and the post owner then gets reputation points to show how helpful and/or popular they are when it comes to forum activity. Basically just like the "like" button on literally every single social medium these days, with a profile counter and/or ranks attached to it. It's super easily prone to abuse such as friends spamming rep to each other to farm, or in the case of negative rep (downvotes), bully/threaten/pressure anyone they like or have a differing opinion. It really is the doom of the concept of a forum where you are free to post your thoughts the way you want to (within reasonable limits of course), and just puts a lot of pressure on people for either not having enough rep, having negative rep, or competition of others having a different amount of rep. Negative-Positive Rep systems are notorious for being used as a public soft-report button (AKA public shaming/defamation), singling people out and exerting group hatred upon singular members or groups, and it is perhaps most known for being unjustly used as an "agree/disagree" system, where you simply just upvote whoever agrees with you and downvote everyone who doesn't. Arguably, on a Q&A forum board it could be used as a tool to state whether a question has been answered properly and how many people found it helpful, but even this depends on the community type and can still generate a lot of turbulence.

Most forum software usually comes with simple regulation settings for rep, such as limits to positive and negative rep per day, per situation, and so on, but there is no such thing as an algorithm that can detect whether reputation is spammed, used as a social weapon, or misused in any other sort of way. In my experience, literally all it does is create a lot of tension and fighting within a community, creating even more work to be done by the moderation team with absolutely zero benefit. This is why bigger social media corporations (and the forums I maintain) simply use a "like" system that boosts forum activity incentives and can at least show how helpful a person has been, which (in the case of having a counter/rank attached) helps with newcomers seeking help/advice or even with cases of impersonation, and helps with determining popular contributions they may want to follow.

i'm not sure what you mean by "rep", honestly.
i know a few definitions of the word "rep", but none of them are relevant to forum software.

Rep should be especially axed when your forum software can't even handle their abuse proper.

Ray

Rey

Red

As long as it ain't Capitalism!

i see what you did there

rep