[Idea] Having your cake and eating it too.

Kittoes·Sep 18, 2013·3 votes·734 views

I think most of us agree that one of the biggest problems with Reddit is the circle-jerk that systems like "Top Rated" and "Hot" naturally promote. I also think that most of us can agree that one of the biggest problems with regular forums is that there is far more noise than signal because of the constant flood of posts that we're simply not interested in. It could be thread spam, bump spam, duplicate posts about a subject that already has a good discussion going, etc etc. Forums, in general, are broken and need to be "fixed" but Reddit definitely isn't the answer. Reddit is a tool that is built for sharing more than it is a tool for active discussion.

The thing is, I DO want to see "Hot" topics. I don't want them to replace all of my content but it is definitely nice to hit the forums and see what the majority of people are currently interested in discussing. I think a lot of us do but we have issues with this feature A. Being the default and B. Replacing chronological order entirely.

Now I don't have a proposal for how to display the contents of the thread posts themselves because that's a far more difficult thing to tackle but I do think solving the issue of -finding threads- because I think it's a relatively easy thing to solve for. I think that, by default, the contents of Forums/Sub-Forums should show the threads in a combined format where the first X amount of threads should be the current "Hottest" threads and the subsequent threads are shown in weighted chronological order. What I mean by weighted is that threads posted by quality contributors should take precedence over threads that are posted by spammers/trolls. None of us care about XJ9Smurf9001's latest #FreeXJ9 thread or about WoodTierStreamer's 42nd post about his "new" stream. I don't know about everyone else but I'm tired of wading through such crap every single time I visit the forums.

The weight shouldn't have anything to do with the individual thread itself but only with the contributor who posted it. The weight should start out at 0 (an arbitrary value) and should be allowed to drop but not increase. It should also only drop after X number of "infractions" that can be calculated off of any number of things. You could say: For every X threads that a user posts that receive Y downvotes said user gets Z points deducted.

I think a similar system to the above in place we would ensure that:

Topics are balanced between "interesting" and new.
New contributors don't feel like there's a system of progression that they have to slog through in order to be heard.
"Toxic" contributors' threads fall to the back of the line.

Extra: I also think a huge improvement to filtering out peronsal preferences would be to add in a StackOverflow style tagging system. Users could tag their content with pre-generated tags like: ahri, summoners-rift, dominion, esports, meta, etc.

Why pre-generated? To avoid tag pollution such as: leagueoflegends, league-of-legends, lol.

Why tags? Browsing multiple sub-forums is exhausting. I want all of my information in one single place I want I want to be able to jump from subject to subject without multiple nav clicks. Having a static set of tags to choose from effectively establishes sub-forums without all of the inconvenience. It also allows for cross-related threads to show up in more than one area.

4 Comments

RiotKrylhosSep 19, 20133 votes

Kittoes,

Thank you so much for taking the time and energy to write this out.

We've been hearing quite a few players who are interested in seeing a combined approach of Hot and Recency, and it's something that we'll be looking into exploring based on all the feedback we've received. Thanks!

Tags are very valuable, but sometimes can get in your way, or sometimes makes you think like your post doesn't belong (if you can't quite find a tag that fits). We are keeping the idea of pre-generated tags on the table as we watch how this community evolves. Thanks for your feedback on this!

I can confidently tell you that we are going to implement a way to easily choose which communities you want to have populate your main feed, which will help to filter out discussions from communities you have no interest in.

To your "contributor karma" idea - I agree that it's important for a community member to know the validity of another contributor. We had given this some thought early on, and after doing some research we decided against it. A big lesson was when Digg had previously ran with the idea of allowing contributors to gain visibility based on "karma" and unfortunately, this opened up a lot of doors for troll-ability. For now, we'd like to give all players an equal opportunity to submit quality content, and have an even playing field for all players to be heard.

KittoesSep 19, 20131 votes

While I agree that tags can get in the way if you can't quite find one that fits and all that but I fail to see how their shortcomings are any different than sub-forums. Really, when it all comes down to it sub-forums, communities, tags, etc etc are all designed to accomplish the same goal: sorting content into appropriate containers. The exact implementation isn't important. What matters is that the UX is designed in such a way that navigating these containers is an enjoyable/fruitful experience.

As for the karma, I'm not looking for a user rating system. I don't want one user to be considered more valuable than another because it opens a lot of doors for trolling and because it ends up being very elitist. I was actually sort of getting at a "Forum Tribunal" of sorts. There's no forward progression in that if you're average or above the system doesn't have any effect on you whatsoever. The system only has an effect on a contributor when they have a steady history of negative contribution. Having some sort of system in place would go a long ways towards reducing the noise level while keeping the playing field level for everyone else..

OrianaSep 19, 20132 votes

TAGS -- Instead of tags for posts I would propose having sortable search results. Currently using the search function I can look for a topic I'm interested in like "PBE." I can then pare down to date range, riot responses, and subcategory but I cannot sort by how recent, popularity, etc. This solves the issue of tags because then every phrase I can search for is essentially a "tag." I can also save the URL for that search to revisit later.

KARMA -- I actually think this would be a useful tool but I'd rather see it in reverse. I'd prefer to reward rather than punish and as a safety net I would limit the ability to reward to Riot and "riot approved" contributors. By Riot approved I mean people that have been awarded x amount of Karma. So say riot employees have awarded you 100 Karma throughout the year, you are now trusted enough to provide good, quality contributions and may now award Karma to other users.

Granted, I see a lot of ways that systems like this can be trolled. In order to avoid that a lot of rules and restrictions are usually needed and that usually makes the system completely undesirable by all parties involved. However, I do think this particular one could be implemented with relatively few headaches but the design and development of it needs more thought than I'm currently able to give (shucks for posting from work). I will however revisit this and make a complete thread because it's something I'm actually interested in seeing.

RiotKrylhosSep 19, 20131 votes

Great discussion everyone.

Re: Karma If any kind of system were to be implemented (of which, there are currently no plans), it would be more likely that we would want to reward positive contributors rather than punish players.

@Kittoes - we're definitely open to looking into positive ways to help reduce unwanted white noise, and encourage quality (or in some cases, just plain fun) discussions.

@Oriana - Thanks for the input. I agree, having useful search sorts would be super valuable.