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Boards Org Update + New Sub-Boards

RiotA Small Man·10/27/2015, 12:19:20 AM·19 votes·8,219 views

Earlier this year we kicked off a discussion with you all around the continued evolution of the NA boards, covering a whole bunch of sub-topics regarding what the Boards are and where they’re going. In addition to some conversations and updates around things like moderation, we had multiple chats with you around sub-board / sidebar organization - part one & part two.

TL;DR - We laid out various long-brewing concerns, mostly regarding excessive sub-board fragmentation and massive traffic imbalances between a few heavyweight sub-boards and the rest of the pack. This causes a ton of interesting conversations to be all but invisible to the vast majority, and is one of the main issues causing the Boards front page to sometimes appear stagnant. At the same time, we recognize the value even the smallest board communities can bring to the community-at-large, so we want a solution that gives those topics clear new homes while increasing visibility and evening out sub-board disparity. We proposed new organization centered around a smaller number of use-case focussed sub-boards (e.g., NA LFG and Riot Plz!), where what you were trying to do would matter more than specific topical accuracy when choosing a sub-board.

Many were receptive to some of the proposed changes, while others expressed concerns around potential loss of identity in cases like Story & Art and General Discussion. We do feel these concerns are both solvable and necessary in the name of fixing the Boards’ long-term organizational foundation, however, you raised valid points about needing better discovery options for finding specific content. In response to your feedback, we decided to temporarily hold off any significant changes to sub-board organization while investigating tech options (e.g., tagging / filtering). Since then, we’ve continued our behind-the-scenes work while focusing on other Boards improvements (e.g., more visible moderation, some early mobile stuff), though there’s still tons of work we’d like to do.

Recently, two cool new opportunities popped up that we’d like to roll out to you as soon as possible. The first is a new Player Behavior & Moderation sub-board, meant to provide players a dedicated place for discussing behavior measures (both in-game and on the Boards) as well as more easily getting in-touch with Rioters to have conversations about disciplinary actions.

The second is a little more novel - the Gameplay team would like to pilot a space (tentatively termed the Dev Corner) in which Rioters can kick off set-piece discussions with players around topics past and present. Posting new threads would be limited to Rioters, so the place is going to be specifically built around designers proactively reaching out to talk about projects they’re taking on, state of the game updates, retrospective dev blogs, or even regular ‘office hours’ to shoot the shit.

Of course, adding these two Boards only adds to our sub-board overload issue. With that in mind, we’re bundling these additions with some of the more minor Boards org consolidation and sidebar improvements we’ve previously proposed. To be clear, we’re not touching any of the main sub-boards or General Discussion at this time (just a couple minor title edits for clarity), and are entirely focused on redistributing conversations and content from some of the most egregiously underused sub-boards. The full changelist:

Removals

  • Tips & Tricks (now part of Gameplay)
  • Maps & Modes (now part of Gameplay)
  • Sound & Music (now part of Story, Art, & Sound)
  • Community Creations (now part of Concepts & Creations)
  • League Videos (split between various sub-boards)
  • Fantasy LCS (removed from sidebar, still active / reachable through Fantasy LCS site)
  • Announcements (simply duplicates news content & comments so cleaning up the redundancy)

Title Changes (for clarity / inclusiveness given removals)

  • Gameplay & Balance > Gameplay
  • Story & Art > Story, Art, & Sound
  • Skins & Champion Concepts > Concepts & Creations

The sidebar will be updated to reflect these changes and group sub-boards a little more clearly into conversation spaces, “red-zones,” and utility spaces. Finally, we’ll be posting updated Universal Rules (mostly aimed at greater clarity, no significant rule changes) and moving them to the sidebar to free up some sticky space. Once we roll out the update, you can expect the sidebar to look something like this:

http://i.imgur.com/4ALn2IG.png

(Clarity on the rules DO YOU GET IT!?!?)

A note on execution - the removed boards will still exist for the foreseeable future, they’ll just be locked to posting and removed from the sideboard. This should give players the ability to copy any in-progress conversations located on inactive sub-boards over to new locations where desired.

We’re currently targeting these updates for 11 AM PST, Wednesday Oct. 28. Several members of the Boards team are around to chat about these updates, so feel free to share any thoughts or questions!

38 Comments

Bladerunner777710/27/2015, 12:23:39 AM10 votes

someone get me some water cause I'm FIRSTy

....sorry

LegacyofTable10/27/2015, 1:53:21 AM7 votes

Player Behavior and Moderation? Is that gonna be kinda like the new Tribunal, or just general conversation about how we can improve players behavior?

Lord Dusteon10/27/2015, 1:33:31 AM6 votes

Why is Story and Art (an already awkward union, as people interested in lore probably don't care as much about art, and people who care about art probably arent looking for lore when they go to an art board) now having music added to it? If I want to read posts about lore and the recent event or such, I don't want to sift through all the music and art to get to what I actually want.

freeformline10/27/2015, 12:33:13 AM5 votes

I love the idea of the Dev Corner! Providing a space for Rioters to discuss potentially touchy subjects on their own terms rather than trying to insert themselves into already heated threads should hopefully allow for some really good discussion.

I know it can be tricky to accurately predict when projects finish, but do you have a projected timeline for when a filtering system will be available? I love many parts of the Boards, but it would be a lot more enjoyable if I could simply prevent one or two particular sub-boards from turning up in my feed.

Sir ArmaMalum10/27/2015, 1:00:47 AM5 votes

I am a fan. It makes a lot more sense and I will say it's definitely a step in the right direction. The Dev Corner is particularly good imho, as it will consolidate the MASSIVE gameplay Q+A posts.

That being said I am still a bit miffed that skin concepts are being bundled in with champion concepts still. Now, granted, there are many additions like tags and filters that could completely solve that problem and this doesn't make it any worse than the current, so it's just a personal nit-pick really.

Thumbs up, but need to see more before I get too excited.

ChickenWrap10/27/2015, 1:37:00 AM3 votes

GD did it! http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/GD/MbHPFq2g-the-end-times-the-final-chapter-of-gd

Akali is SO HOT10/27/2015, 1:18:32 AM3 votes

Thank you for not deleting GD

NewMk10/27/2015, 1:25:08 AM3 votes

Thanks for keeping gd. The other boards suck.

The Soulforged10/27/2015, 1:41:20 AM3 votes

What the hell does story have to do with art and sound? When you think of lore do you think of sound effects and in game art?

Retillin10/27/2015, 2:44:51 AM2 votes

Is there any idea of "subscriptions" for the sidebar? (ie I really am tired of seeing all the Memes & Games posts)

Teslablade10/27/2015, 12:59:02 AM2 votes

GJ, Rito.

Solidair310/27/2015, 4:22:24 AM2 votes

gimme dat dev corner. that sounds right up my alley.

Minarde10/28/2015, 6:39:09 AM2 votes

The boards still don't have a tagging or filtering system yet, right? Then won't merging the smaller sub-boards into larger ones drown out less popular discussions? You acknowledged "needing better discovery options for finding specific content" before combining sub-boards, yet seem to have immediately disregarded that. Combining less-trafficked boards together is certainly understandable, but without filtering tools, it just becomes that much harder to get niche discussions started.

As a specific example, I frequent Maps & Modes because I'm mainly interested in discussions about non-SR maps. The vast majority of the Gameplay sub-board, however, deals with SR gameplay. It doesn't seem feasible to manually comb through a deluge of topics about SR in search of that one discussion about TT/Dom/ARAM. Could you suggest a solution here? As things stand, I feel like the boards are going to be mostly unusable to me for the foreseeable future.

Athenes Lulu10/27/2015, 6:09:49 AM1 votes

Well, I guess Rito has to have a place for them to ignore so people can post more random crap.

Just wondering, reasons for keeping GD, if I may ask?

Decrit10/27/2015, 10:04:25 AM1 votes

I love how there is only Gameplay and not Gameplay and Balance, cutting off the Balance.

... i am real, i loathe the "Balance" part of G&B - it should be about feedback and design discussions, not about barking at each other what is OP and what is not OP.

In short, talking about Gameplay that then resorts in balance is OK to me because there is a fundation of reasonable discussion at which anybody with reason and gut feeling can approach, but about pure balance the single user is too much skewed on what it thinks ( see Skarner ).

Swizzle10/27/2015, 2:50:45 PM1 votes

Why is the sidebar still not alphabetical :/

DrCyanide10/27/2015, 3:21:23 PM1 votes

What's that icon next to universal rules? I've never seen it in game before.

/s (but there's a lot of truth to it...)

I think these merges are generally more intuitive than the ones proposed earlier. While some things may not be a direct 1-to-1 conversion (my idea for a featured game mode probably doesn't belong in Gameplay), it feels like everything has a clear home (it has a lot in common with Concepts and Creations).

One thing that I'd recommend is adding some sort of link to the actual Support Page in the bottom group. Many times players posting in Help & Support need to actually file a ticket, and are under the impression that posting in Help & Support is the same thing.

Dicerson10/27/2015, 3:42:59 PM1 votes

"shoot the shit"?

Riot, you dirty mouth! :P

Pryotra10/27/2015, 7:18:48 PM1 votes

Announcements (simply duplicates news content & comments so cleaning up the redundancy)

Is there any plans to change the color scheme of the news section? I actually like how it is duplicated here because I could read it without getting first degree burns on my retinas.

Zielmann10/27/2015, 9:24:13 PM1 votes

Question about the Team Recruitment section: Can these threads be removed from the Main Boards view, especially when sorted by 'New'? These completely flood that section. And worse, it causes an awkward situation because these threads can't actually be up or downvoted, yet the voting arrows still show next to the thread (just get the Unauthorized exhaust icon notice).

I've noticed some people seem to be abusing the fact that the section is immune to downvotes, so they just put threads there that they know would otherwise be downvoted into oblivion. Granted, the threads just get removed by moderators quickly enough anyhow, it's just irritating to have to sift through all the Recruitment threads for actual content.

Archon X10/27/2015, 12:39:32 AM1 votes

I want a Rito Propaganda board where you can post things like this, if you remember it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugXC7g3p0JU

Vore Monster10/28/2015, 1:21:28 PM1 votes

Riot, can you give mobile users some love? Mainly for jumping to dev posts on a specific discussion? There isn't an option for that, and it can get time consuming.