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[Feedback] The little things

Sir ArmaMalum·4/11/2014, 4:27:52 PM·1 votes·42 views

Phew it's been an exciting time on the CB lately, but I realize It's been a little while since I've actually tried to help out the Beta part of Community Beta, so 'ere we go!

###Visibility of ordering options
Recent? What Recent?

So the dropbar does its job, but a problem I'm seeing happen consistently with new users is not realizing that the 'Recent' and 'Best' ordering actually exists. Probably because they don't recognize at a glance that that thing is actually a dropbar. Personally I think showing all the options upfront and visibly would be awesome. Now I don't have much site design experience, and clutter may be an issue but something like a non-paint version of attachment #1 may possibly help?

###Static 'Best' ordering

Beating the dead horse, one topic at a time

I have never used the 'Best' ordering more than three times. No exaggeration. What's the point if nothing changes? Granted x-post visibility from popular GD topics (Sion Re-launch thread for example) throw that off, but the problem would have been there anyway. The 'upvote creep' established would eventually mean a post maybe once a year would get up there. Now I'm not saying it's not useful to have an 'all time best' option available, a lot of forums have that and it's a great archive thing, a nice goal to set for the community. But the ordering itself is useless without more option for time.

As shown is attachment #1, Best by day, week, month and even year would be Leagues (hehe) better than what it is now.

###Sub-community names

Nerf Annie!!! - posted in Site Feedback

Okay this will always be a problem I think, but right now I think the major sore points are Site Feedback and the recent change with Live Gameplay right now. Or at least their sore points for me. While better than the confusingly specific, the SF sub-comm name is a bit too general now, and I think a lot of people are just reading 'Feedback' because 'Site' is really vague.

I hate describing problems without at least trying to think of a solution so here's a brainstorm of mine. I think using the playerbase's use of "CB" for Community Beta may help.
Possible re-names for Site Feedback:

  • CB Layout Feedback
  • New Platform Feedback
  • CB Testing

Live Gameplay I only really have one problem with, Where do I put Strategy related material now? My best personal example is my [Guide] collection. They aren't about speicifc champions and they aren't about direct Gameplay, they're mostly about planning. Now I don't have any problem with the sub-comm itself, but can we tack on a 'Strategy' to Live Balance please?

###Tutorial

#IHaveNoIdeaWhatI'mDoing

Now, the Community Beta isn't complicated. But it's not too intuitive right now either. Many new users don't...

  • see the 'my profile' box
  • see the ordering options (problem 1)
  • know how up/downvotes affect posts
  • know where the Formatting Guide is
  • know that Help & Support posts don't show up on the Front Page
  • they can directly reply to a comment (They just reply to the OP above the comment they're replying to)
  • and more...

Granted they can learn as I did, through massive amounts of trial and error, but I think a lot of the CB frustration can be mitigated by showing an introduction of what the CB can do and how to do it. Hell, I'm making a "Welcome to the Community Beta" post myself to help out, but until either a post like that is pinned or a tool (an overlay or beginner tooltip style thing), the learning curve for here is going to be a bit higher than some imho.

###Formatting Lag

Bold text where?

It seems to have gotten much better, but there are still times where I (and others from what I can see) certain formatting doesn't load. For me, it's bolded text. Occasionally (less often now) posts have their bolded text just not show up, like someone had switched them to white colored font. The alignment is the same, everything else is fine, but bolded headers, bolded normal text, bolded embeds, bolded anything is just invisible.

I have also seen similar bugs talked about with bullets, italics, and hyperlinks.

###Badges/Accolades

nothing clever this time, this one's beaten past the dead horse

Update on this? I see some have it through the whole 'submit a ticket' method, but any further info on the blanket implementation?

###Sub-Community Guideline Text

Instructions unclear

As with the names I think this will always be a problem, it'll never be perfect but with the new Live Balance sub-comm I'm worried about where these boxes are going. First off, they aren't looked at much. I've been on the forums more than any normal person should be, and even I rarely find myself from looking at them. Here's a small breakdown of why I think that is:

  • It doesn't actively update, I get nothing for checking on this more than once.
  • The info is somewhat redundant. It explains what the sub-comm name should already.
  • The font is the exact same as everything else, nothing is grabbing my attention.
  • All of them are nigh invisible. I can only see the header and the first few lines at any given time unless I specifically read through the guidelines.
  • Why isn't this just a pinned post? Seriously, why not?
  • That real estate is just not meant for reading paragraphs, most sites have areas there with ads, links and other such things that people actively avoid. It's a legitimate reflex to not look there for anyone on the internet a decent amount of time.

Again describing a problem without proposing a solution annoys me, so what if the Guidelines are transferred to a pinned red post. And this 'box' is replaced with pinned community posts? They should be good examples of what the community is about through nothing but the posts' titles, civil, possibly hilarious and possibly cycled through for new updates to that area. Whether these are chosen through an upvote threshold, Riot choice, Community choice or some other method is up to the future, but the result I think could be cool. Not to mention also allow for more space for things like the e-sports sub-comm picture.

3 Comments

Hyrum Graff4/11/2014, 7:35:06 PM1 votes

I'll add on to this:

  • I think from the OP's description that Sub-Community Guideline Text is the box on the right when we make a post, but if he hadn't written that explanation, I'd be at a loss for what it even is. I read the info, but not until after I had written several posts. and I doubt I'll look at it again.
  • Having the formatting guide in an obvious spot would be awesome. A question along similar lines: What if I want to use the * character as a character? Sometimes it's really hard to do that (the formatting rules are unclear).
  • I'm wondering about the scalability of the forums. Given that threads from all communities show up on the homepage, how do you plan to keep up with the massive amounts of traffick if this were to become the primary forums platform? Let me be clear: I think having one page where you can see all the posts is a great idea that brings the sub-communities together (whereas now it feels like GD or bust), I'm just worried about how it will handle the volume (especially given the size of the text for each post).
  • Tags? Right now you encourage us to put our own [Tags] in the title of our posts. Are you planning on adding in actual tags, which maybe we could then filter by? This could (but doesn't have to be) an alternative to sub-communities, since you give your post multiple tags.