Let's Talk Boards - Improving Boards Culture

ModWuks·May 17, 2017·51 votes·11,495 views

New to the series? Check out our Part 0 - Introduction thread to get a good understanding of what this series is about!

Hey everyone, it's Wuks again, here to continue our discussion from last week on the state of the Boards. Today's emphasis is on looking deeper into the culture of the Boards as a whole, and also going deeper into the culture for each of the respective sub-boards within the Boards. On this topic, we have a lot of different communities to take inspiration from, whether it's the old League of Legends Forums or the Boards from other regions [Europe] [Oceania]. I'll briefly go over some of the differences that I've seen within these communities, some of my thoughts, and then open up the floor to you guys.

The League of Legends Forums (Retired) & General Discussion

The original General Discussion on forums.

The League of Legends Forums were something special, and General Discussion was a large, yet welcoming community that Summoners of various backgrounds didn't hesitate to participate in discussions or generate their own. It offered Chronological View, where comments were shown from earliest to most recent, and posts with new comments were bumped to the top of the forum. This had its upsides and downsides, however.

On one hand, having threads that were bumped exclusively on the basis of new replies affected visibility to new threads. A well thought out, newly posted discussion could potentially be seen by few and lost to the forums because two players are having a casual back and forth between themselves on an older thread. Boards Beta™™™ primarily utilizes Discussion View to facilitate most discussions. Discussion View is where the content with the highest number of upvotes are pushed to the top, while content with lower upvote values end up lower.

I can continue the discussion on the entire upvote/downvote system, but the main question I want to ask is, within the context of General Discussion, do you think there's value in maintaining the current Chronological/Recent-only view, or do you think it should be more like Miscellaneous / the rest of the Boards? What are your thoughts on the separation between General Discussion and Miscellaneous? What can we do to make General Discussion a better environment?

Comparing Notes With Other Regions

A dedicated place for Streams & Videos (EU Boards).

Each region has a lot of freedom to run their respective Boards the way they want to, and these differences shed light on how we, as the North America Boards, can identify what other regions have done successfully and potentially look at whether we can replicate that success here. For instance, Oceania has been running a few FanFiction events to showcase the talented writing community there; this sub-board and these events were part of the rationale behind creating this Boards Community & Moderation sub-board, so we can run future events and announcements through here (on top of gathering consistent feedback from y'all, of course). The European Boards are unique in that they have two separate sub-boards for content creators, one for Streams & Videos and one for Creations & Concepts, and they have a sub-board for new players.

We'd love to hear your opinions! What are some things you like or dislike from other regions, and how can we use this information to refine and improve the culture within the individual sub-boards, and subsequently the entire League of Legends Boards? We look forward to being able to hash out a lot of your ideas, and hopefully get to implement a good number of them!

-- Wuks

286 Comments

HateDaddyMay 17, 201727 votes

Just to kind of add to the list:

I much preferred the old forum style back in the day. I realize that may not be conducive to the operations of all these different sub-boards, however I can't help but feel these atrocious colors can be fixed to be easier on the eyes.

For a popular board like gameplay, I'd also like to suggest a system that prioritizes thread activity over upvotes. Additionally, I feel like something needs to be done about vote jerking on popular boards like gameplay in general. What I mean is that nothing is more frustrating than spending a good deal of time on a well thought out thread that may be against the common grain of thinking and two guys downvote it, sending it to the oblivion to never be seen again. Meanwhile, make your title click-bait or random circle-jerk hive mind and you'll have 100+ votes in a day. This negates productive and constructive discussion. I would go as far as saying removing votes from gameplay in general and having thread activity be the main factor for what makes it to the top but people are probably far too in love with this outdated, nonsensical Reddit-wannabe system. I like objective discussion and that simply doesn't take place on gameplay. It's dominated by the same 5-6 posters - who most of the time are usually right but again, that's not good for objective discussion.

kile147May 17, 20171 votes

Upvoted for removal of upvotes because it's the only way to get you noticed. Boards that promote discussion (Gameplay especially) should be about the comments, boards that promote sharing media (Concepts and Creations, Memes and Games) should keep upvotes. We'd see much fewer Yas/Lee/Fizz is broken threads unless they offered actual insight and promoted discussion, but I don't always have a strong comment about Laughing Fish's latest meme but believe that others should see it too.

AntiSkillshotMay 18, 20174 votes

{quoted}

Upvoted for removal of upvotes because it's the only way to get you noticed. Boards that promote discussion (Gameplay especially) should be about the comments, boards that promote sharing media (Concepts and Creations, Memes and Games) should keep upvotes. We'd see much fewer Yas/Lee/Fizz is broken threads unless they offered actual insight and promoted discussion, but I don't always have a strong comment about Laughing Fish's latest meme but believe that others should see it too.

You say it's the only way to "get noticed", yet, General Discussion has never used the upvote/downvote system in that format. It might be better to drop the format of upvotes and downvotes effecting visibility rather than removing the vote system all together.

For the record, General Discussion uses it as a "Agree/Disagree" gauge.

Which could also be fixed up a bit by showing the total of upvotes and downvotes (without the need of FEK) instead of the difference. Probably best to do that in the thread, rather than having those two numbers appear on the overview of General Discussion (or any other subsection of the boards).

EvilUnicornLordMay 17, 201720 votes

If we want to improve Board culture...

We need to contact a yogurt expert.

######Ok, don't lynch me.

ModWuksMay 17, 201712 votes

{quoted}

If we want to improve Board culture...

We need to contact a yogurt expert.

Introducing: Yakult Light - For your probiotic boost to get you through the day, now with fewer calories!

http://www.yakultusa.com/wp-content/themes/yakult-usa/images/bnr-top-productsSP.jpg

5000000000000000May 17, 20174 votes

http://i3.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/236/841/075.jpg?noredirect

Riotpasta mamaMay 17, 201711 votes

{quoted}

If we want to improve Board culture...

We need to contact a yogurt expert.

######Ok, don't lynch me.

yesssssssss more bacteria jokes pls

ModWuksMay 17, 201710 votes

[{quoted}](name=baby sparkle,realm=NA,application-id=6heBIhQc,discussion-id=Tb0KiGzh,comment-id=00010002,timestamp=2017-05-17T20:17:55.419+0000)

yesssssssss more bacteria jokes pls

http://i.imgur.com/6ush9ak.jpg

MelledoneusMay 17, 20177 votes

http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/913/004/d8c.jpg

Hope I cell you on this one.

2nd ChanceMay 17, 201713 votes

Four things come to mind -

Can you please, please reconsider removing the ability to make political threads in General Discussion once more? Look, I know there's a good chunk of people sick of me talking about it, but it's having a legitimate overall negative effect on the board section. The people who are still abusing it are still being a problem, and the mind-set it brings just isn't healthy, being brought in threads not even related to it. Finally... for every good political thread I've seen, there's a dozen negative ones to squash it out, where some of those negative ones were even intended to be positive turned negative due to that negative mind-set I mentioned earlier.
Tyler1 threads (-- insert meme I post in them here --). I feel these threads cannot exist on any board section ether, or at least need to be moderated much, much more. For as all I can recall, every thread about him I've seen is someone from his 'fan-base' screeching how they think/demand that he should be un-banned. That alone isn't the problem however. The main problem is that they get people from out-side sources such as their Reddit and other groups to skew the up-votes and put in comments to keep their threads up in a extremely board-effecting negative fashion, which is clearly against the Boards universal rules, yet every time it takes the moderation team so long to take care of them (if at all at times).
Streams/Youtube plays threads. While I and others don't have a problem when users that are a part of the community making these threads from time to time, there are random folk who take advantage of this not trying to fit in the community at all but instead just comments within their own threads to bump it back up for any means of advertising themselves as possible. This isn't healthy for the boards, gets them hated, while the people of the community annoyed as well. Back a year or two ago, we had a board section so they could post freely just that, so why not bring it back?
Make upvotes/downvotes only available inside the thread and no longer outside the threads. Straight forward right? It'll take care of the problem of people just doing whatever vote wise without reading the thread and force them to at least enter the thread to do so.

Finally, I think this might help you clean up some things around here board bugs/glitches wise - https://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/GD/LvvFVEPQ-itt-post-forum-bugs-that-are-still-plaguing-this-nearly-3-year-old-still-in-beta-boards

Got bored one day and decided to compile what ones I and others knew.

edit: Also yah, what Dusteon said about the Chronological/Recent view, 100% agree with that.

ModWuksMay 18, 20173 votes

[{quoted}](name=2nd Chance,realm=NA,application-id=6heBIhQc,discussion-id=Tb0KiGzh,comment-id=000f,timestamp=2017-05-17T21:17:09.822+0000)

Can you please, please reconsider removing the ability to make political threads in General Discussion once more?

Yes, we'll look at disallowing political discussions in General Discussion internally and then probably bring that discussion to GD to determine whether political discussions are inherently valuable and whether stricter moderation guidelines are required; but more than likely, the needle will lean towards removing political discussions.

[{quoted}](name=2nd Chance,realm=NA,application-id=6heBIhQc,discussion-id=Tb0KiGzh,comment-id=000f,timestamp=2017-05-17T21:17:09.822+0000)

Tyler1 threads (-- insert meme I post in them here --). I feel these threads cannot exist on any board section ether, or at least need to be moderated much, much more. For as all I can recall, every thread about him I've seen is someone from his 'fan-base' screeching how they think/demand that he should be un-banned. That alone isn't the problem however. The main problem is that they get people from out-side sources such as their Reddit and other groups to skew the up-votes and put in comments to keep their threads up in a extremely board-effecting negative fashion, which is clearly against the Boards universal rules, yet every time it takes the moderation team so long to take care of them (if at all at times).

If it violates the rules and you don't see any actions on it, pop into the Moderation Discord or message one of the moderators, and we can look into it again for you. We may clamp down on low quality threads, but I don't think there's a need to ban Tyler1 threads outright.

[{quoted}](name=2nd Chance,realm=NA,application-id=6heBIhQc,discussion-id=Tb0KiGzh,comment-id=000f,timestamp=2017-05-17T21:17:09.822+0000)

Streams/Youtube plays threads. While I and others don't have a problem when users that are a part of the community making these threads from time to time, there are random folk who take advantage of this not trying to fit in the community at all but instead just comments within their own threads to bump it back up for any means of advertising themselves as possible. This isn't healthy for the boards, gets them hated, while the people of the community annoyed as well. Back a year or two ago, we had a board section so they could post freely just that, so why not bring it back?

Yup! We'll look into separating YouTube/Stream threads in order to prevent these threads from detracting from other discussions. We should be able to come back with more details on this in the coming weeks.

[{quoted}](name=2nd Chance,realm=NA,application-id=6heBIhQc,discussion-id=Tb0KiGzh,comment-id=000f,timestamp=2017-05-17T21:17:09.822+0000)

Make upvotes/downvotes only available inside the thread and no longer outside the threads. Straight forward right? It'll take care of the problem of people just doing whatever vote wise without reading the thread and force them to at least enter the thread to do so.

I'll bring this up for discussion and come back with any updates.

Finally, I think this might help you clean up some things around here board bugs/glitches wise - https://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/GD/LvvFVEPQ-itt-post-forum-bugs-that-are-still-plaguing-this-nearly-3-year-old-still-in-beta-boards

Got bored one day and decided to compile what ones I and others knew.

I'll add these onto the list, but I personally can't do anything about development projects. Sorry :P

Busty DemonessMay 18, 20173 votes

I'm gonna have to respectfully disagree with you on political discussions being unhealthy. However, I'm not going to disagree with your assessment of them.

While their current use is unhealthy, many of them being bait threads or whatever else goes on, they still keep General Discussion from becoming stale.

InivtesPreezeMay 17, 201711 votes

The old forums were better.

The Reddit-style upvote farming trash system isn't good for this, as Reddit already exists. (I use Reddit, and it's not trash, but using its methods/style here is trash.)

ModWuksMay 17, 20175 votes

{quoted}

The old forums were better.

The Reddit-style upvote farming trash system isn't good for this, as Reddit already exists. (I use Reddit, and it's not trash, but using its methods/style here is trash.)

I miss the old forums too, mate. How would you change the voting system on the Boards if you could?

fumiefanMay 18, 20176 votes

You've been in PB&M and seen how downvoting is regularly abused there by the same people. People outright admit it and there's certain people who even downvote others because "they have a history" to quote multiple users.

Any thread going against the pro-Riot story gets downvotes and everyone defending Riot always gets tons of upvotes. It's incompatible with actual discussion and always favors the more common opinion.

HateDaddyMay 18, 20178 votes

{quoted}

I miss the old forums too, mate. How would you change the voting system on the Boards if you could?

Thread activity > votes

It's how older forums operated and they did just fine.

ModWuksMay 18, 20172 votes

{quoted}

Thread activity > votes

It's how older forums operated and they did just fine.

Fair enough; I think I know what you mean. I'll have to think on this for a while longer, but solid feedback. Thanks for popping in!

IesbianMay 18, 20171 votes

You have to keep in mind that if you are going to use thread activity > votes, the moderation team is going to have the extra burden of dealing with posts getting necro'd again.

Maybe there can be a happy medium with both votes AND thread activity.

If we are going to go back to just thread activity though: If a post is 1 month old -> automatically close the thread. This could lead to a problem with "game" threads though.

Maybe if a post is 1 month old without any new posts -> automatically close the thread.

It might really tricky to find the sweet spot or the right trigger to automatically close a thread, but I have to agree that using votes is a much worse system than ANYTHING else, but at the same time thread activity might not be the right answer either.

One of the major downsides of thread activity is that we would see an increase in threads where the post is nothing but a title and "bump if you agree". Or the fact that people don't CONTRIBUTE to discussions and simply post "bump." in order to get the post back to the top of the front page.

I honestly don't like EITHER option. I just don't think anyone has honestly sat down and thought of a new system because, like HateDaddy said, "this has worked in the past" but overlook all the obvious downsides.

HateDaddyMay 18, 20173 votes

{quoted}

You have to keep in mind that if you are going to use thread activity > votes, the moderation team is going to have the extra burden of dealing with posts getting necro'd again.

Maybe there can be a happy medium with both votes AND thread activity.

If we are going to go back to just thread activity though: If a post is 1 month old -> automatically close the thread. This could lead to a problem with "game" threads though.

Maybe if a post is 1 month old without any new posts -> automatically close the thread.

It might really tricky to find the sweet spot or the right trigger to automatically close a thread, but I have to agree that using votes is a much worse system than ANYTHING else, but at the same time thread activity might not be the right answer either.

One of the major downsides of thread activity is that we would see an increase in threads where the post is nothing but a title and "bump if you agree". Or the fact that people don't CONTRIBUTE to discussions and simply post "bump." in order to get the post back to the top of the front page.

I honestly don't like EITHER option. I just don't think anyone has honestly sat down and thought of a new system because, like HateDaddy said, "this has worked in the past" but overlook all the obvious downsides.

As long as votes can determine a threads place, there will never be an incentive to actually discuss anything. It'll be easier to upvote/downvote and move on. I don't mean most recent post rises to the top, I mean what thread has current activity through posts/views and keeps constant activity. The threads that keep this remain at the top would be the ones that have this being true, not threads being one or two posts and suddenly go to the top. I think that style is equally bad for quality discussion.

VacusMay 17, 201710 votes

There is no value in discussion view IMO.

The OP calls out chronological view as having the possibility to kill recent threads? That's not what chronological does. That's what discussion view does.

Discussion view creates an inherently destructive culture, where only content that is popular gets seen. And new content is not popular yet. In addition to this, it creates a feedback loop where people almost never see things that the zeitgeist disagrees with, because one or two people downvote it early and then it disappears.

Further, the boards mechanically do not work well when people are using both discussion and chronological view on the same board. Some of the bugs with it have been fixed, but it always ends up confusing people; people using discussion view never quote anything or give context to their posts, while people using chronological view end up with repetitive and unnecessary context from the point of view of people using discussion view.

If it were up to me, no board would use discussion view or have it as an option. That ship has sailed, though, so instead I will simply argue against allowing it in GD. If it is allowed, it absolutely should not be the default, and the interactions between the two modes need to be looked into with much more eye to usability than has been done in the past.

NsaneMay 17, 20173 votes

{quoted} . . . the interactions between the two modes need to be looked into with much more eye to usability than has been done in the past.

This. Some kind of auto-quote would be nice so there aren't replies floating in the thread with no context.

Chromatic EagleMay 17, 20173 votes

Why should I have to either read through every post or skip to the last page to keep up with the recent discussion? Discussion is better for me.

VacusMay 17, 20177 votes

[{quoted}](name=Chromatic Eagle,realm=NA,application-id=6heBIhQc,discussion-id=Tb0KiGzh,comment-id=000c0002,timestamp=2017-05-17T21:29:15.250+0000)

Why should I have to either read through every post or skip to the last page to keep up with the recent discussion? Discussion is better for me.

Yeah, why would you possibly want to know what people are talking about and what has already been discussed before you join the conversation?

AMYS GRAVEMay 17, 20172 votes

How can you follow any discussion when 6 different discussions are taking place at the same time and are interwoven among each other in chronological view?

VacusMay 17, 20177 votes

{quoted}

How can you follow any discussion when 6 different discussions are taking place at the same time and are interwoven among each other in chronological view?

How can you follow any discussion when they are all hidden except for the most popular one, and create giant unreadable walls of text due to formatting even if they are not hidden?

(Also, do you really have that much trouble just....reading? This is a pretty basic skill, I'd be very sad if modern UI design and the fact that no one reads books anymore was taking it away from people.)

edit: I rewrote the above multiple times to reduce its rudeness, actually, because I was really trying not to be rude and my first few tries did not succeed in that goal.

The intent was a genuine question, not an insult, just like, is that the problem? Or is there some other aspect that I am not aware of that would make simply reading the discussion an insufficient level of information?

jaymc1130May 17, 20173 votes

{quoted}

How can you follow any discussion when they are all hidden except for the most popular one, and create giant unreadable walls of text due to formatting even if they are not hidden?

(Also, do you really have that much trouble just....reading? This is a pretty basic skill, I'd be very sad if modern UI design and the fact that no one reads books anymore was taking it away from people.)

Hey now, let's not be rude. This is a place for constructive conversation and disagreeing points of view are a vital component of that.

AMYS GRAVEMay 17, 20172 votes

How can you follow any discussion when they are all hidden except for the most popular one,

By scrolling.

Also, do you really have that much trouble just....reading?

No, but i want to read one discussion at a time. Chronological view is like reading 6 unrelated books simultaneously, one sentence at a time.

Also lol at the downvote while you're acting like you want to promote discussion. GD acts like they want discussion but they circlejerk downvote worse than gameplay ffs.

VacusMay 17, 20175 votes

{quoted}

By scrolling.

No, but i want to read one discussion at a time. Chronological view is like reading 6 unrelated books simultaneously, one sentence at a time.

Also lol at the downvote while you're acting like you want to promote discussion.

I have never had that experience with chronological view, it is entirely foreign to me, as is your experience with discussion view. Scrolling has never been sufficient for me to find discussions with any level of ease, certainly not compared to how easy it is to find discussions when scrolling chronologically.

Chronological discussions include context and callbacks to earlier things said, which makes it easy to track the thread. It's more like how actual conversations with large groups of people work in my experience.

{quoted}

You say that like its true.

EDIT: nice downvoting scripts, -3 within 5 seconds of refreshing the page.... Really shows you're taking the conversation seriously.

I have no such thing, nor have I downvoted anything on this page (or anything you posted since you started showing interest in an actual conversation).

And it is true. That's why I said it. Have you never seen the degenerate behavior that discussion view leads to? Gameplay is the perfect example, and it's been discussed multiple times in this thread.

AMYS GRAVEMay 17, 20172 votes

Chronological discussions include context and callbacks to earlier things said,

Except the callbacks only go back one post, so you lack the full context of the conversation without having to recursively go back over and over to find the previous posts. This is opposed to discussion view where the entire conversation is collected for easy following. Its the difference between a book (discussion view) and a series of post-its with words written on them. Both can be read but one is infinitely easier.

VacusMay 17, 20174 votes

{quoted}

Except the callbacks only go back one post, so you lack the full context of the conversation without having to recursively go back over and over to find the previous posts. This is opposed to discussion view where the entire conversation is collected for easy following. Its the difference between a book (discussion view) and a series of post-its with words written on them. Both can be read but one is infinitely easier.

I agree that it is the difference between a book and a series of post-its.

I agree that one is infinitely easier.

We disagree about which is which.

NsaneMay 17, 20175 votes

{quoted}

Except the callbacks only go back one post, so you lack the full context of the conversation without having to recursively go back over and over to find the previous posts. This is opposed to discussion view where the entire conversation is collected for easy following. Its the difference between a book (discussion view) and a series of post-its with words written on them. Both can be read but one is infinitely easier.

Books have a flow to them. Discussion view is a series of jarring starts and stops instead of one continuous stream.

AMYS GRAVEMay 17, 20172 votes

What? If you look at the post directly below another post in discussion view, it is by construction directly in response to the one above it. Discussion view has a flow to it because of how it is put together.

If you look at the post directly below another in chronological view it likely has nothing to do with it at all. You want to talk about jarring starts and stops in a flow of communication?

NsaneMay 17, 20175 votes

{quoted}

What? If you look at the post directly below another post in discussion view, it is by construction directly in response to the one above it. Discussion view has a flow to it because of how it is put together.

If you look at the post directly below another in chronological view it likely has nothing to do with it at all. You want to talk about jarring starts and stops in a flow of communication?

Each "discussion" has it's own start and stop to it. How does that flow? It doesn't. You have no idea how the thread as a whole developed because everything is compartmentalized and separated.

jaymc1130May 17, 20173 votes

{quoted}

By scrolling.

No, but i want to read one discussion at a time. Chronological view is like reading 6 unrelated books simultaneously, one sentence at a time.

Also lol at the downvote while you're acting like you want to promote discussion. GD acts like they want discussion but they circlejerk downvote worse than gameplay ffs.

Relax mate. Lol. No need to get bent out of shape, I'll make sure GD acts appropriately. He's sorry about his mistake and is correcting it now.

VacusMay 17, 20173 votes

{quoted}

Relax mate. Lol. No need to get bent out of shape, I'll make sure GD acts appropriately. He's sorry about his mistake and is correcting it now.

It would be more accurate to say I corrected it before posting it :P

I rewrote it in drafts, not by editing. Though I suppose I can edit my addition onto it.

jaymc1130May 17, 20171 votes

{quoted}

It would be more accurate to say I corrected it before posting it :P

I rewrote it in drafts, not by editing. Though I suppose I can edit my addition onto it.

What a nice young lad!

VacusMay 17, 20171 votes

{quoted}

What a nice young lad!

You know I'm older than you, right? :P

(edit: at least, if I remember correctly, I think I was a year or two older than you)

jaymc1130May 17, 20171 votes

{quoted}

You know I'm older than you, right? :P

(edit: at least, if I remember correctly, I think I was a year or two older than you)

I dunno, I'm still 31. You?

VacusMay 18, 20173 votes

{quoted}

I dunno, I'm still 31. You?

If you're turning 32 this year, then I am older than you, but by a matter of months, not years.

(I turned 32 this year already.)

Just because this happens to be what they are called, I have to do this to ya >vacus, and believe me I apologize ahead of time for this bit of devils advocary, >but;

Isn't a series of post it notes called a book?

(I'll show myself out now...)

A series of post-it notes could be a book, if it was bound together; a book is a physical construction, regardless of its content.

That said, I think the intent was clear that it meant 'novel', and a series of post-its will not be a novel unless it happens to be a novel written on post-its :P

AntiSkillshotMay 18, 20173 votes

{quoted}

A series of post-it notes could be a book, if it was bound together; a book is a physical construction, regardless of its content.

That said, I think the intent was clear that it meant 'novel', and a series of post-its will not be a novel unless it happens to be a novel written on post-its :P

Honestly, I see it completely different. I don't see Chronological view as "post-it notes", because in that view, the first visible posts generally have to do with the op (Original Post for those that don't know). The topic and the discussion will change over time, just like a book will.

Discussion view is more like a bunch of post-it notes to me. The first comment may have nothing to do with the op. This, thus, causes quite a bit of confusion for me, as I see it as illogical.

Like, if an op says "Did you see TSM's last game?" and the first visible comment says something like "Did you see Sjokz's pretty face?" The first post has nothing to do with the op. If it was in Chronological view, the first visible comment is more than likely say something actually related to the game.

Glory ln DeathMay 17, 20175 votes

Chronoview makes it unnecessarily difficult to actually have an extended discussion, or for anyone to jump into an existing discussion. On good threads where there are 5+ conversations going on at the same time, how are you supposed to follow a train of thought when each reply is spaced out 5, 10, even 15 comments apart? Especially when multiple people jump in and there are now multiple branches of the same conversation. Sure, it's not a huge deal for the two people talking, since they'll remember what the conversation was, but other people tuning in don't want to have to go forward two pages, skimming all the comments, to find the next one; or backwards to pages to find out what the heck is even being talked about.

If you don't like Discussion view's "most upvotes comments to the top" system, why not mix the two? Use Discussion view's format (replies are embedded in the parent comment) with Chronoview's "oldest comment at the top" system.

VacusMay 17, 20175 votes

[{quoted}](name=Glory ln Death,realm=NA,application-id=6heBIhQc,discussion-id=Tb0KiGzh,comment-id=000c0003,timestamp=2017-05-17T22:16:08.967+0000)

Chronoview makes it unnecessarily difficult to actually have an extended discussion, or for anyone to jump into an existing discussion. On good threads where there are 5+ conversations going on at the same time, how are you supposed to follow a train of thought when each reply is spaced out 5, 10, even 15 comments apart? Especially when multiple people jump in and there are now multiple branches of the same conversation. Sure, it's not a huge deal for the two people talking, since they'll remember what the conversation was, but other people tuning in don't want to have to go forward two pages, skimming all the comments, to find the next one; or backwards to pages to find out what the heck is even being talked about.

If you don't like Discussion view's "most upvotes comments to the top" system, why not mix the two? Use Discussion view's format (replies are embedded in the parent comment) with Chronoview's "oldest comment at the top" system.

No, that's what discussion view does.

Discussion view forces everyone to either participate in the most popular discussion or not participate at all.

I don't see any reason why anyone would support that as a design.

And, frankly, to reference my earlier comment: If people don't want to learn what has already been said and learn what is going on before they join the discussion, I submit that they should not be joining the discussion at all. Making it easier for uninformed people to believe that they have all the information necessary (when they, in fact, do not), is not a good thing and should not be considered a goal.

A mix of the two would be better than discussion view, but that is not a high bar, and given that it is still a downgrade when compared to chronological view, I see no reason to reinvent a worse wheel than we already have.

{quoted}

Discussion view has its benefits though. Sometimes you only want to read one comment thread. Like this one, for example. It's hard to understand what's going on in that specific comment thread without having to wade through the entire comment section until you find the parent comment.

How do you know that you're only interested in one comment thread without having read, or even seen, the others?

AMYS GRAVEMay 17, 20171 votes

Discussion view forces everyone to either participate in the most popular discussion

You say as i come in to participate in a discussion which is not the most popular discussion on the thread while using discussion view. It just takes some scrolling dude.

VacusMay 17, 20175 votes

{quoted}

You say as i come in to participate in a discussion which is not the most popular discussion on the thread while using discussion view. It just takes some scrolling dude.

There are relatively few people participating in this thread. Discussion view sort of works for small groups; it's more difficult for no good reason, but it sort of works.

The larger the group gets, the more it breaks down. (Up until you reach the size where it is impossible to read everything posted on your own, where it works again; this is why it works for reddit, because in reddit, every group is either absolutely enormous or a niche subreddit.)

AMYS GRAVEMay 17, 2017

The larger the group gets, the more it breaks down.

You say that like its true.

EDIT: nice downvoting scripts, -3 within 5 seconds of refreshing the page.... Really shows you're taking the conversation seriously.

jaymc1130May 17, 20175 votes

{quoted}

You say that like its true.

EDIT: nice downvoting scripts, -3 within 5 seconds of refreshing the page.... Really shows you're taking the conversation seriously.

Nah, that's just da rest of da GD clique. The longest standing community members are very protective of their specific sub community and with good reason often enough. You just made a comment GD doesn't like and that's gonna happen. Don't fret brah, it's harmless. If you really feel that sad about it just ask me and I'll correct your vote total for ya.

[slayer-jinx-wink]

jaymc1130May 17, 20171 votes

[{quoted}](name=Glory ln Death,realm=NA,application-id=6heBIhQc,discussion-id=Tb0KiGzh,comment-id=000c0003,timestamp=2017-05-17T22:16:08.967+0000)

Chronoview makes it unnecessarily difficult to actually have an extended discussion, or for anyone to jump into an existing discussion. On good threads where there are 5+ conversations going on at the same time, how are you supposed to follow a train of thought when each reply is spaced out 5, 10, even 15 comments apart? Especially when multiple people jump in and there are now multiple branches of the same conversation. Sure, it's not a huge deal for the two people talking, since they'll remember what the conversation was, but other people tuning in don't want to have to go forward two pages, skimming all the comments, to find the next one; or backwards to pages to find out what the heck is even being talked about.

If you don't like Discussion view's "most upvotes comments to the top" system, why not mix the two? Use Discussion view's format (replies are embedded in the parent comment) with Chronoview's "oldest comment at the top" system.

Well, you ain't wrong. It really is confusing.

I don't have any trouble with it at all (clearly, right?) and I use only chrono view and because of that I know exactly what the context of this conversation is because I've been part of it for the last several hours while I'm on down time out here. I've been keeping up with the entire discussion as it goes along. That's the real trick, veterans get the hang of it eventually because it does help to quote (for context, like you say) and use chrono for a full convo picture, but it's a tough skill to master.

Got any recommendations on how to make my board viewing skill set more accessible to players? Maybe like a sort button specific function that can sort by poster name so you can follow along easily with them or something?

Glory ln DeathMay 18, 20171 votes

{quoted}

Well, you ain't wrong. It really is confusing.

I don't have any trouble with it at all (clearly, right?) and I use only chrono view and because of that I know exactly what the context of this conversation is because I've been part of it for the last several hours while I'm on down time out here. I've been keeping up with the entire discussion as it goes along. That's the real trick, veterans get the hang of it eventually because it does help to quote (for context, like you say) and use chrono for a full convo picture, but it's a tough skill to master.

Got any recommendations on how to make my board viewing skill set more accessible to players? Maybe like a sort button specific function that can sort by poster name so you can follow along easily with them or something?

You know, thinking about it, I can see the appeal of Chrono view in how it encourages more of a "community conversation", where Discussion view is very good for 1-on-1 conversations. Unfortunately, one of those has to be excluded - in Chrono view it is more difficult to have a 1-on-1 conversation (or, specifically, to read someone's 1-on-1 conversation - not everyone wants to join it, but they may want to read through it), and in Discussion view it is more difficult to have a "community conversation".

What if we kept the Chrono format to encourage community conversations, but added a "show context" button/link to make it easier for 1-on-1 conversations in the middle of big community ones? Essentially, a link that will show you just that comment's context - all the comments previous to it in the chain leading to the parent comment and the replies/branches after the comment you select.

jaymc1130May 18, 20173 votes

[{quoted}](name=Glory ln Death,realm=NA,application-id=6heBIhQc,discussion-id=Tb0KiGzh,comment-id=000c000300010000,timestamp=2017-05-18T00:13:03.017+0000)

You know, thinking about it, I can see the appeal of Chrono view in how it encourages more of a "community conversation", where Discussion view is very good for 1-on-1 conversations. Unfortunately, one of those has to be excluded - in Chrono view it is more difficult to have a 1-on-1 conversation (or, specifically, to read someone's 1-on-1 conversation - not everyone wants to join it, but they may want to read through it), and in Discussion view it is more difficult to have a "community conversation".

What if we kept the Chrono format to encourage community conversations, but added a "show context" button/link to make it easier for 1-on-1 conversations in the middle of big community ones? Essentially, a link that will show you just that comment's context - all the comments previous to it in the chain leading to the parent comment and the replies/branches after the comment you select.

Quite right indeed. This is why, particularly in larger threads like this, long time board vets use chrono view for the community discussion and to keep up with the big picture.

And we post with quotes to aid the other board vets who are doing the same thing so the context and flow of the conversation stays smooth. You really only get weird things with discussion view when people do stuff like I did in this chain where I thought of some more things to say to expand on the point and wound up with a double post in the chain to a single comment. I was too lazy to go back two pages and hit the edit button, lol. So I just threw in another response. Sometimes I feel like this might break up conversations but I don't use discussion view except in rare situations like today where it's convenient to hop between the two. Did that feel like a weird conversation bubble in there? Was it confusing? I've always wondered and never asked any one I did it to.

jaymc1130May 17, 20178 votes

The whole not having the option of discussion view in GD is confusing to me. I don't know why that board has never had it. I mean... I never USE that view, lol. Chrono view master race. But I feel like some people would prefer to at least have the option to swap between the two based on need or preference.

Oh, and yes to the sub board for new players on na. This board has needed something similar for the longest time.