I think tips and tricks for specific champions/builds/etc. might probably be better-suited for its own board, since Gameplay is meant to be a place for players to give feedback on the game, but otherwise I completely agree. This should be a board for players to give constructive, well-reasoned feedback, and engage in productive discussion with Rioters, but instead it's become a cesspool of upvote farming and salt mining, with the loudest and most "meta" opinions receiving the most visibility, no matter how poorly explained or unoriginal they are, while the rest gets either ignored or downvoted.
However, I also don't think all of this can just be blamed on the playerbase; rather, the very structure of Gameplay is conducive to toxicity: for starters, the upvote system should not exist, as it is used exactly the wrong way: it's meant to reward constructive posts and push out those that don't contribute anything good, but it very quickly devolved into an "agree/disagree" button, which has then led to upvote farming. Another issue is the complete lack of supervision: Rioters rarely post here, let alone devote any resources towards curating the board, and there are few options to report or remove unproductive posts, or even just ignore annoying users. Because of this, it's very easy for the usual suspects to swarm the front page with essentially the same thread over and over again, while bullying everyone else out of the spotlight.
A while ago, Riot made a statement regarding its forum participation, stating that it preferred to have developers communicate directly with the playerbase. That mission statement has failed. Rioters rarely post on Gameplay, and it's not really their fault either, because they already have an intense, full-time job to work, and posting on the forums is another job by itself. Because the devs always have to mind their own, paying job whenever they go on Gameplay, they often post short, cryptic replies, if they ever post at all. There is effectively no real communication between Riot and the playerbase on these boards, which simply generates increased frustration and misunderstandings all around. Riot really needs to hire people specifically for communications purposes, i.e. employees whose job is purely to go on these forums, respond in detail to threads and comments, promote constructive discussion and visibility for good posts, prevent toxicity, and act as a relay between the devs and the players whenever there's a question on ongoing development. It is not reasonable of Riot to expect its devs to essentially work two jobs at once, and it's only logical that those devs would abandon their optional job to focus on the one they get paid to do.
