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Thread Voting and you (and me and him and her and little Jimmy and the community and...)

Deep Terror Nami·6/5/2017, 2:56:55 PM·1 votes·677 views

I've seen a handful of concerns about Boards voting lately, and while the opinions on what's actually wrong and how to fix it vary, it remains fairly consistent that people simply don't like when a discussion thrives or goes unnoticed for unfair reasons.

The purpose of votes is supposed to be a representation of that thread's value to the community, but in reality most votes are just "I agree" or "I disagree". Sometimes voting is padded by smurfs or coordinated groups which means it isn't even the community deciding what should be seen in a few cases, as the Hot sorting view is widely used since it's the default and is easily manipulated that way.

  • That brings me to my inquiry; Do you think threads should have their voting disabled (not the comments inside) to eliminate the Hot sorting method for fair exposure, so that instead a post is valued by the discussion that happens inside? Should this only be done for one specific board, several boards, or every board?

######Disclaimer: This is not an official post by the Arbiters. This is not to decide whether or not voting will change in any way, but to spur a discussion on it if necessary.

##P.S. Disabling thread voting is within our power so is the only topic of discussion here. Please focus on that.

26 Comments

Deep Terror Nami6/5/2017, 2:59:06 PM1 votes

And yes I disabled the votes in here.

Friendly Ram6/5/2017, 3:03:53 PM1 votes

gameplay so at least people would need to go into the thread to make their opinion known.

LostFr0st6/5/2017, 3:10:49 PM1 votes

Thanks for putting this up Nami.

I voted multiple. In my opinion, voting being present in C&C and Story, Art and Sound make the creators very sensitive to the +/- for no reason. Depending on when they post, their thread success will vary due to what group is on the boards at that time and who leads the "trend" in the votes that follow. It's also sad to see people get downvoted for no good reason (aka they just disagree or don't "like" the OP) when the OP is looking for feedback on their creation.

Player Behaviour should also have its voting disabled. It scares people into not posting their legit behaviour questions due to downvotes and hate which then brings more hate and downvotes. Nothing good comes of voting being present in that sub-board.

ModThe Djinn6/5/2017, 3:30:50 PM1 votes

I feel that Player Behavior and Concepts & Creations, at least, have a severe "like/don't like" mentality towards voting. Eliminating it from both of these may be productive.

In many of the larger boards, while irritating, I think it does serve to push conversations people are enjoying towards the top, which may be helpful for the more frequent posting rate of these boards.

It really makes me wish that "Hot" could be judged by the number of individuals participating in a discussion instead of the number of upvotes/downvotes. Then that category would actually be REALLY useful.

ZT Xperimentor6/5/2017, 3:38:24 PM1 votes

Gameplay; fan-bases of particularly popular people have repeatedly buried worthwhile discussions, while boosting uninteractive thoughts to the front page. Concepts & creations; I've seen people down-vote fan projects just because they didn't like their initial guess at the values, without providing any constructive feedback.

Last avatarname6/5/2017, 4:31:16 PM1 votes

I voted player behavior, I really think this should be split into 2 boards, named player behavior and ban questions. I feel that player behavior is a really divided board. Part of this boards is discussion regarding what should be the rules regarding behaving yourself and part of this board is people discussing their own bans. People that are there to discus their own bans always get down voted into oblivion so I feel that those players would have a better time discussing their bans without down votes.

DrCyanide6/5/2017, 4:50:28 PM1 votes

Player Behavior. Too many people view it as "you got banned? You get a down vote." Extremely few discussions there maintain a positive vote, even when the poster is being as respectful as possible or has a genuine concern they're addressing. It takes a fluke event like a Support <Insert not meta support champion here> player getting banned for a post to get a meaningful number of upvotes.

For the rest of the boards it doesn't matter much if it's agree/disagree or value/trash. In my opinion, you'd benefit more from hiding the OP's name from the homepage than you would hiding the votes.

Electro5226/5/2017, 5:08:09 PM1 votes

I too voted multiple.

#Gameplay

Its very hard to start or have any kind of meanigful discussion on Gameplay unless your a boards celebrity or you happen to have a thread that supports the current bandwagon. If the threads' popularity are based on comments, I can see the healthiness of the sub-board improve dramatically.

#Story, Art, and Sound

There are people that put a lot of work into threads on here that rarely ever get noticed because they happened to post at the wrong time, get a single downvote before any upvotes come in, and thus never get the attention that the thread deserves. I say this because I speak from experience. Also, there does seem to be a sort of trend to downvote every other thread in the sub-board, regardless of you like the thread or not, so yours stands out a bit. That crap needs to stop.

#Concepts and Creations

This tends to have similar problems as SA&S, but also the community in this sub board is just blatantly smaller than any other, so, there are just less votes to go around. That said, I do know that the community it does have is very passionate, so if you disable voting in it, the community in it will easily improve its healthiness without even trying.

Stars Shaper6/5/2017, 5:15:24 PM1 votes

Honestly what I would make is putting an option to see who down/upvoted the threads/comments.

The issue with nowdays voting is that ppl are feeling safe to instantly up/downvote things because they are anonymous and thus it's just a rush to keep down/up arguments you do/don't agree with. There are even ppl that simply "hunt" down ppl downvoting every post/thread of him/her, there ppl who downvote each and every character creation and/or fanfic, not to talk about the Gameplay board where anything that has "Yasuo" not followed by insults to the character of his playerbase gets downvoted to oblivion.

FurriesAreHot6/5/2017, 6:29:22 PM1 votes

I believe the ability to express opinion is very important in PB&M (it's PB now rip). But I can definitely see the arguement a for disabling it, if that's what the community thinks is best, so be it.

OldTrooper6/5/2017, 6:39:31 PM1 votes

"Player Behavior" hands down.

Krigjer6/6/2017, 3:18:14 AM1 votes

I don't think downvoting should exist at all.

Upvotes help emphasize popular opinions or ideas. All downvotes do is discourage discussion.

Aeszarck6/6/2017, 9:38:16 PM1 votes

I think all of the Boards except for Memes and Games would be healthier without voting.

Doomyous6/7/2017, 8:02:00 PM1 votes

I have a rather crazy idea: What if we disable voting on discussion posts?

Otherwise I would disable voting on the mainpage and you can only vote in the post itself, if that would be possible.

Teridax686/8/2017, 4:20:15 PM1 votes

I would very much agree to disabling voting on threads in Gameplay. There's still some amount of voting abuse in the comments, but really, the largest problem comes from the upvote system being abused to send low-effort threads to the top of the sub-board, and bury other, potentially more interesting discussions in the process. Some threads are upvoted on sight simply because players agree with the title, despite them being void of actual content, and similarly other threads immediately receive downvotes because they express an unpopular opinion (actual unpopular opinions, not any of those "Unpopular Opinion: I Hate Lee Sin" or whatever threads that keep coming up). All too often, people treat upvotes as a point system to farm, or as a means of exerting personal power over people and opinions they personally dislike, so this could help address those issues.

However, I also feel basing thread visibility on discussion with here could be a tricky subject on its own: often, highly-upvoted shitposts have a ton of volume within simply because it begets more shitposts, and other not-particularly-serious discussion. Conversely, some threads make interesting points, but generate little to no activity, simply because many players don't want to make the effort to produce a response, counter-argument, etc. (this is also likely why some threads get more downvotes than actual comments). Whichever system is put in place needs to reward effort and thought, as well as usefulness to Riot (for Gameplay, at least), and should promote a larger culture where people put in the same, instead of simply going for what's easy or most immediately emotionally appealing.

EvanThomas6/9/2017, 12:57:01 AM1 votes

I voted "multiple."

The idea behind the voting system is to, obviously, bring good posts to the top while suppressing bad posts. Sometimes "healthy discussion" isn't exactly the aim. Sometimes the aim of the post is just to get a reaction. While this is good in certain sub-boards, in others, it is not.

Gameplay:..........Discussion > Reaction C&C:...................Discussion ≤ Reaction SAS:...................Discussion > Reaction Player Behavior: Discussion > Reaction M&G:..................Discussion ≤ Reaction

For Gameplay, Story Art and Sound, and Player Behavior, voting rewards reaction instead of discussion. My solution? Sort conversations by number of comments instead of votes. This means posts that provoke / encourage discussion will go to the top, instead of posts that get a good reaction.

For Concepts and Creations and Memes and Games, the Reaction based system, voting, works well for them. However, there are still some posts that want discussion more than reaction. So for this, I think the scoring system should add the total upvote score of the post to the number of comments. That way both reactions and discussion will be weighted equally.

I can see potential problems with this system, but I'd like to see how much anyone else thinks the new systems would affect each sub-board.