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Opinion: "Low-effort" rule should be done away with

notkai·12/1/2019, 4:14:01 AM·3 votes·3,468 views

According to the Universal Board Rules, low-effort posting is considered a form of trolling/spamming, and is an offense severe enough to have your post removed by a moderator. Here is the specific chunk of rules that mention this:

No spamming or trolling. Some common examples of these behaviors are listed below.

Posting content not related to the discussion. Posting a discussion or comment repeatedly, or across multiple sub-boards. Posting designed to bait conversation or falsify content. Posting designed to spoil things (movies, shows, books, etc.) for other players Posting repetitive non-constructive or low-effort content. Bumping of discussions while adding no meaningful content. Excessive emoji / icon spam. Necromancy of old discussions.

More and more, I have seen posts taken down because they are low-effort. And frankly, I just don't get it.

For reference, I cannot find anything in the UBR that clarifies what "low-effort" means exactly, and I've yet to see a mod clarify it either. Some people are interpreting low-effort as being a single sentence post, while others are positing that a low-effort post is just a complaint without any suggestions on how to remedy the problem causing the complaint. And I disagree with all those interpretations. As a matter of fact, I don't think there is such think as a low-effort post.

I believe that there is room for discussion and discourse in everything- even a single sentence complaint. For example, if I were to head into the Gameplay board and post, "I think Garen is broken because his Q deals 30 base damage, and he's the reason I'm stuck in bronze", that would be considered low-effort by most standards. It is a single sentence posing a complaint with no constructive criticism about Garen, just dissatisfaction. But that is still opening room for discourse. From that single sentence, I could open up a conversation about what it means for a champ to be broken, about how to get out of bronze, or about how a single ability does not make a champion "broken". I could agree with the statement, I could disagree with it, or I could qualify it and engage both elements. My point is: just because something is a complaint or a single sentence without "thought" does not mean it is low-effort, nor does it disqualify itself from being a gateway to discussion and community engagement.

Because there is no clear definition (that I have seen) about what it means for a post to be low effort (and I encourage moderators to share their interpretations of this rule, so I can better my understanding of it), there is a lot of room for subjective moderation of "low effort" discussions. This is causing quite a bit of animosity from posters who feel that they are being insulted or silenced, or not meeting an invisible "effort" standard. I've watched this rift grow deeper for the past few weeks, and I firmly believe that lack of clarity in some of the Universal Rules and when they are to be enforced is causing this.

Personally, as I mentioned, I don't think there's such thing as a low-effort post. Moreover, I don't think low-effort posts cause harm. The great thing about boards posts is that nobody is forced to read any of them. I can scroll for hours if I want and not read a single post if I think it isn't up to my personal 'effort' criteria. So that does away with the explanation that low-effort posts clog up boards- there's no clogging of a river if nobody is forced to swim in it. I just don't see the point in moderating low effort-posts.

And as a quick note, this is not at all meant to diss mods. I understand that y'all are doing your jobs to the best of your abilities and are not maliciously silencing players who dare insult Garen, or whatever posters are now claiming. But I do want to engage both mods and non-mods in a larger discussion about the purpose and clarity of some of these UBRs.

Aaaaaaand as an even quicker note, this post IS NOT encouraging people to make low-effort posts in an attempt to challenge the rule. Please do not go out actively breaking rules because you think they are dumb, here or otherwise. I am seeking to open a discussion about rules, not start an insurgency over them.

11 Comments

ModUlanopo12/1/2019, 4:52:37 AM6 votes

That's language we're working to change. It's no longer being used in removal messages - or at least it shouldn't be.

Personally, as I mentioned, I don't think there's such thing as a low-effort post.

I disagree. The most obvious part of moderation is removing offensive or inappropriate material, but another part that often gets overlooked by the community is curation. Think of the Boards as a newspaper. People go to specific sections looking for specific things. The thing we hear most often about Gameplay is that people don't want to use it because it's riddled with complaints. It's good that you don't personally have a problem with Gameplay, but we don't feel it's in a good place right now. We know from our experience with G+ that people will post great content, but not if it gets drowned in a sea of "OMG Senna OP, RITO NERF NAO!!!".

We're going to be posting the new Gameplay guidelines in the next couple days. With luck, that should provide some clarity. We also have some other plans, but as an all-volunteer group headed into the holiday season, these things take time. Ultimately, we want to change the culture so that Gameplay is about discussion and GD is about conversation. Trust me, if we could move these threads, we would.

KFCeytron12/1/2019, 6:41:16 AM5 votes

{quoted}

For example, if I were to head into the Gameplay board and post, "I think Garen is broken because his Q deals 30 base damage, and he's the reason I'm stuck in bronze", that would be considered low-effort by most standards. It is a single sentence posing a complaint with no constructive criticism about Garen, just dissatisfaction. But that is still opening room for discourse.

Here's the problem: no it isn't. Potentially, hypothetically, a priori, it might. But that theory has been dashed against the rocks time and again. Low-effort posts like that just result in more low-effort posts without anything actually interesting being said, often devolving into flaming.

{quoted}

From that single sentence, I could open up a conversation about what it means for a champ to be broken, about how to get out of bronze, or about how a single ability does not make a champion "broken". I could agree with the statement, I could disagree with it, or I could qualify it and engage both elements.

Those things could happen, but they actually don't. We just get "stay in bronze" and "whoa 30 dmg stop the presses" and "I hate Garen too," none of which add to discourse.

{quoted}

My point is: just because something is a complaint or a single sentence without "thought" does not mean it is low-effort, nor does it disqualify itself from being a gateway to discussion and community engagement.

The "low effort" label is literally correct (that kind of post is very easy to make), and posts like that have proven a posteriori that they will not become gateways to discussion and community engagement.

{quoted}

Personally, as I mentioned, I don't think there's such thing as a low-effort post. Moreover, I don't think low-effort posts cause harm. The great thing about boards posts is that nobody is forced to read any of them. I can scroll for hours if I want and not read a single post if I think it isn't up to my personal 'effort' criteria. So that does away with the explanation that low-effort posts clog up boards- there's no clogging of a river if nobody is forced to swim in it. I just don't see the point in moderating low effort-posts.

As I explained, low-effort posts get their name from how easy they are to make, and they have historically proven not to engender good discussion. They're being removed due to the latter aspect, not the former. If posting merely e.g. "wtf is even kalista pls buff now" resulted in good discussion, that would be great. We'd be up to our ears in good discussion. Unfortunately, that's not how it works.

We aren't forced to click on bad threads... unless there are a ton of them and we can't easily distinguish them from the good threads and we're looking for a good thread to participate in. A high volume of garbage makes the good content harder to find. This is okay with systems like Stack Overflow, which is best used via Google, but becoming an actual user is a recipe for disaster, and Boards' identity as a discussion board rather than a Q&A platform relies heavily on that "actual user" experience.

Take the "Discuss the Boards" section as an example. This thread was created two hours ago, and two additional threads have been posted here since that time. What if those two were 30, and they were all along the lines of "this place b trash" and "i liek boards"? It takes that much more effort to scan through all of those and determine that your thread actually offers worthwhile discussion, if we even see it among the flotsam.

Inkling Commando12/1/2019, 5:41:14 AM1 votes

I could make a smartass response but i'm not going to.