@Pendragon @montag: Can We Get Some Feedback on Our Feedback?

djump·Oct 17, 2013·8 votes·1,503 views

Hey Pendragon, Montag and others working on community beta,

I'm loving the new community outlet and it's features. And I'm excited to see how you continue to develop it.

I've given some feedback on my opinions of how it's working and what features I would like and such, and I've been reading others thoughts and your responses. I must say though, I'm left not really sure what's happening with development. I don't know what the most important issues/features are form your perspective or what things you are specifically working on first. More-over, I'm not even sure what you recognize as the most common/important opinions of the community from our feedback.

Is there any way you could set up some more communication on what's being looked at or in the works? I know it's always a balance of communicating openly vs. not getting raged at from impatient/immature people for communicating openly, but I'd be a lot more excited and in-to the community beta if I had a better sense of what directions you all were moving. At the very least I'd like to see some sort of list kept by you all that shows a summary of the issues you have heard about commonly from the community. This way we know what's already under consideration and maybe don't have to give as much feedback about.

If all you can do for us is say "we're working on improvements" without giving specifics I understand. You don't want to come off as promising things if it's still in early stages of formation of course. But it's still disappointing to see the new cool forums and be asked for feedback then to not really hear anything about what feedback is being acted upon. I'd love to be able to tag along the development process more closely =).

Please let us know if you can give us more info, thanks!

24 Comments

PendragonOct 17, 201311 votes

Absolutely, great questions.

Here's my take on things that people feel strongly about right now.

Players feel like it's difficult to consume a complete discussion and difficult to consume changes to a discussion
- We believe this is because linear sorting provided people with a "progress bar" that was easily understood. . You know how much of a thread you've read, you know the last point that you left off, and you know how much is new when you come back. In a nested sorting model you've lost the progress bar
Players are concerned that some of tools needed to support the workflows of really focused & passionate communities aren't present
- Polls
- RP/Lore forums lack "continue the story" tools
- Help & support forums lack attachments
We are going to need much stronger moderation. We'll also need to moderate differently than we have before. With the forums we practiced very loose moderation in all sections. With this style of discussion I think we'll have to adapt quite a bit. For example I think it's very important that there are no off-topic threads in the Beta Feedback community. However - I think moving threads from one community to another is no longer an appropriate moderation tool like it was in forums - since communities are groups of people here, and not categories of content, the same topic should/can exist in multiple communities with different discussions. Example : Jinx release can have a different discussion in a competitive/eSports community vs a lore/story community
Players feel like important discussions can't live for a long time the way they could in the forums (particularly because there's no mechanism for them to resurface. I think we'll likely address this with a dual approach - one will be technology (things like subscriptions, updates, etc) and the other will be community management practices (things like posting long discussions in series, (weekly, monthly, etc) instead of a single discussion.
Players feel like like the formatting tools here are not as good as the forums. Partially because of a lack of WYSIWYG, and partially because markdown is a new language to learn
Minor annoyances
- Option to open links in new tabs
- Easier onboarding to help people understand sorting and threading
- Better browser/mobile support
- Red tracker improvements

Some of the driving philosophies behind how we make decisions

Make the best use of people's time (better signal to noise ratio)
We don't want to force people to switch. The burden is on us to make a better product.
The community is in control over as much of the experience as possible

These are the things that I'm spending a lot of time thinking through right now. Would love to see where you agree/disagree

Lots of us also sit in the communityplatform channel on PVP.net if you want to swing by.

I'd love to get your take on where I'm right/wrong. Roughly 80% of the stuff on our todo list directly aligns to these bits.

SlumlordThanatosOct 17, 20132 votes

Make the best use of people's time (better signal to noise ratio)

I'm not sure that this problem should be at the very top of your list of priorities, when so many of the ways to fix it are simple usability improvements and better moderation. I remember you stating something along the lines of believing that the Reddit layout would cut down on the signal-to-noise ratio, when I don't think that it would have a measurable effect. I feel that things like a blacklist feature and/or a "Report User/Post" button would have a greater effect. I could be wrong about those, so please feel free to correct me if you feel that I am.

Also (and I've said this many, many times), I still think that the Community site needs to differentiate itself more from Reddit. It still looks and behaves an awful lot like Reddit, and as long as that is the case, comparisons to Reddit will continue. It needs to look different and ACT different, or else this website runs the risk of becoming redundant. People will just assume it works the same simply because it looks the same, even if it doesn't.

First impressions are important, and if the first impression makes it come across as a Reddit clone, that is a bad thing.

But, overall, you have picked up on the majority of our complaints. A little disappointed that you haven't mentioned avatars and/or post signatures, but this is a huge step in the right direction.

Also, props to OP for asking such a good question!

PendragonOct 17, 20133 votes

I'm not sure that this problem should be at the very top of your list of priorities, when so many of the ways to fix it are simple usability improvements and better moderation.

That's not a problem as much as a philosophy that influences lots and lots of problems.

For example -- if we believe we should make a better use of your time and one of the things getting in the way of that is spam/troll posts, then it's really important for us to focus on moderation.

As I said here (and elsewhere) - the software is not the end-all solution. It's a combination of the software, moderation procedures, other community management and lots of other things that makes this true.

First impressions are important, and if the first impression makes it come across as a Reddit clone, that is a bad thing.

It's been just over 3 weeks since we put this platform up and we've made lots of pretty big changes in that time I think. We also aren't driving tons of people to this platform specifically because we know there's lots of stuff to work on. That's why all of the AMAs done recently weren't here for example.

SlumlordThanatosOct 17, 20131 votes

It's been just over 3 weeks since we put this platform up and we've made lots of pretty big changes in that time I think.

Eh..I was thinking more along the lines of when you get to the finished product, not what it looks like now (since it is subject to change). There have certainly been changes since the community site went live, but not any of them were particularly drastic. To me, it looks like a much cleaner, nicer Reddit with some usability improvements.

PendragonOct 17, 20132 votes

We're kind of a splintered R&D team here - and our view is that we should not force people to migrate to this platform if we can avoid it. That means:

We don't want to encourage Rioters to post here versus forums or Reddit
We don't want the teams to use this platform for Q&A discussions unless they think it's a better choice
We don't want to tell players they have to post here

Again - the burden is on us to make something worth using which means we'll have to reinvent software development, moderation, communication, etc.

VerandureOct 17, 20132 votes

You might want to relay that to the rest of your team. While I don't admonish them for their personal decisions, there has been a post trying to get people to migrate over by patronizing the General Discussion forums as being non-conducive to discussion (not that I blame him).

I'm sure the people who are here wouldn't mind if it stayed the same size -- less traffic = less trolls.

Peer moderation on the actual forums worked for a large majority of cases (large volume increase in downvotes peer closes a thread) yet still left the door open to some abuse cases from people with a lot of clout or from people with a lot of smurfs.

The ability to flag mis-tagged discussions may help stymie the amount of troll threads (or simply misplaced threads) but is open to the same fringe abuse cases.

If the platform isn't widely used by Riot, it is unlikely to be used by common users who typically see the forums as a means by which to communicate with riot (or to refine their discussion so that they can send in more private correspondence). Again, I'm sure a lot of the people here are fine with that, but it invalidates the medium if the end user finds it without purpose.

ploki122Oct 17, 20131 votes

Just sayin' but Krylhos (iirc), said that they'd try to leave a ~15 mintues gap open to be able to re-community (aka change the containing community) your discussion. Do you think that'd fill the self-moderation part?

VerandureOct 17, 20131 votes

That would be self moderation, which would definitely be a nice ability if I make one of my many faux pas. What I was more suggesting was for other posters to be able to flag a wrongly placed discussion for movement. It could probably be done as a suggestion to the original post in tandem with the former point in order to try to make sure each discussion finds its rightful place (but still doesn't address purposefully misplaced threads).

ploki122Oct 17, 20131 votes

Indent limit -.-'
Yeah, but apparently they wanna discourage such strict moderation for some reasons... at that point we'll have to ask the man (Pen).

PendragonOct 17, 20131 votes

It's an ongoing education process. I say my fair share of stupid stuff (probably like 80% of what I say, np). In retrospect it's easy to look at errors but in the moment it's not always easy to know what the right/wrong thing to say is.

ploki122Oct 17, 20131 votes

I think you should update the FAQ about the "not merging with forum anytime soon and possibly never" part... I feel like a lot of users didn't understand your words that way.

ploki122Oct 17, 20132 votes

For example I think it's very important that there are no off-topic threads in the Beta Feedback community. However - I think moving threads from one community to another is no longer an appropriate moderation tool like it was in forums - since communities are groups of people here, and not categories of content, the same topic should/can exist in multiple communities with different discussions.

I'm just wondering why you aren't plannign on moving off-topic/misplaced threads? I understand that a thread about Ao sin's releae could very well belong in 3/4th of the communities, but what if someone puts it in Help&Support, or Fan Creation (and we're not talking about his Fan Art of Ao Shin, but truly talking about the release)? Is is simply to leave the power in the players' hands, where the thread would probably end up being downvoted to oblivion, where it would actually get upvoted in another?

[snip]the other will be community management practices (things like posting long discussions in series, (weekly, monthly, etc) instead of a single discussion.

Just saying, but this should be used for the update thread, I feel like a lot of cool features are being missed o because there is no "BANG" to say it's there since the thread is already stickied.

Otherwise, I do have 2-3 small concerns about the "hot" filtering, and I wonder how you guys are planning to address them :

First on the list is the "Hi mom" plague, where everybody wants to get to first page, and there are always a few dozen threads about anything new, only to get that spot on the first page (since like on Google, nothing exist past Page 1 for most people).
Next, we have the "non-GD red post" plague. Basically, since the basic sorting is "Hot" the threads with the most interactions will always rise to the top. I fear like this will blow out of proportion very quick and end up in a red post-hunting. If you want more detail on that, you could have a nice chat with Ames, who spent quite a bit of time on the Player Concept and suffered from that thing. Basically, I fear that once more people and Rioters start coming in, only threads with Red Post in them will rise to the top since people will flock to Red Posts like flies to old Evelynn (hue).
Last, but not least, the GD plague. How do you guys plan on addressing the fact that one community (most certainly B&F) will get most posts, and that that single community will end up flooded and very stagnant (from circlejerking and circlekarmaing)

True-lastly, I'm simply wondering how siable it'd be to have a more dinamy Recent-Best filter. Basically, instead of having a "Hot", we'd have a slider that chooses the proportion of recent-to-best, so that I may choose I want fresh threads getting some views/upvotes, or relatively new threads that are really packing a punch.

P.s. I you never experienced that "non-GD red post", I can relate that one more clearly, but I think form posting on the tribunal, you should know pretty well what I mean.

PendragonOct 17, 20131 votes

I'm just wondering why you aren't plannign on moving off-topic/misplaced threads? I understand that a thread about Ao sin's releae could very well belong in 3/4th of the communities, but what if someone puts it in Help&Support, or Fan Creation (and we're not talking about his Fan Art of Ao Shin, but truly talking about the release)? Is is simply to leave the power in the players' hands, where the thread would probably end up being downvoted to oblivion, where it would actually get upvoted in another?

I think in this case they should be deleted (or likely soft-deleted) not moved. Moved means that there's a "right" place for every discussion which is how the forums were built. On this platform the sections are more about the people/higher purpose than the discussion category.

Just saying, but this should be used for the update thread, I feel like a lot of cool features are being missed o because there is no "BANG" to say it's there since the thread is already stickied.

Yeah... we should probably do periodic discussions instead of the single one. Or have a way for people to follow changes

Last, but not least, the GD plague. How do you guys plan on addressing the fact that one community (most certainly B&F) will get most posts, and that that single community will end up flooded and very stagnant (from circlejerking and circlekarmaing)

It's something I think we'll address as we scale, but I don't think we can discuss the solutions there yet.

Next, we have the "non-GD red post" plague. Basically, since the basic sorting is "Hot" the threads with the most interactions will always rise to the top. I fear like this will blow out of proportion very quick and end up in a red post-hunting. If you want more detail on that, you could have a nice chat with Ames, who spent quite a bit of time on the Player Concept and suffered from that thing. Basically, I fear that once more people and Rioters start coming in, only threads with Red Post in them will rise to the top since people will flock to Red Posts like flies to old Evelynn (hue).

yeah man - you have a lot of forward thinking stuff in this post. I think it's all stuff we'll have to solve but don't have a clear solution for yet.

I'm just wondering why you aren't plannign on moving off-topic/misplaced threads? I understand that a thread about Ao sin's releae could very well belong in 3/4th of the communities, but what if someone puts it in Help&Support, or Fan Creation (and we're not talking about his Fan Art of Ao Shin, but truly talking about the release)? Is is simply to leave the power in the players' hands, where the thread would probably end up being downvoted to oblivion, where it would actually get upvoted in another?

My view here is that if something is posted in a place where the people who own that place don't find it relevant then it shouldn't see the light of day. I think the question here is who is the burden on - and I think the burden should be on the person who posts to consider the relevance of their posts to readers if they want more people to read it.

Moving the burden to moderators (to move threads means you're taking away the responsibility of the poster to consider where they're posting which I think is bad.

djumpOct 18, 20131 votes

lolz, you posted the 1st/last quote twice. =P

Also just wanted to say thanks pendragon for the reply to this thread and I think I can speak for other's when I say it's really cool/fun to get to partner with you guys in developing community beta.

djumpOct 18, 20131 votes

Wow, great thoughts.

I want to particularly reiterate my agreement on this point:

True-lastly, I'm simply wondering how siable it'd be to have a more dinamy Recent-Best filter. Basically, instead of having a "Hot", we'd have a slider that chooses the proportion of recent-to-best, so that I may choose I want fresh threads getting some views/upvotes, or relatively new threads that are really packing a punch.

I think a key of this format of forum being successful, and in fact one of it's strengths, is being able to find the content you want to find. On that point, I would also very much like some more customization sort criteria or at least a couple more options. I think giving posts a "score" under each sort order category in such a way that you can move a slider between them would be great.

Donno if this is plausible or not, but at any rate, I do feel the current best/hot/recent option set is too limited for me.

HellsawOct 18, 20131 votes

Text width Vs. Large screens. How much wastage is to much?

PendragonOct 18, 20132 votes

There have been a ton of studies done about the readability of line lengths and we take this into consideration even though there's more room.

http://psychology.wichita.edu/surl/usabilitynews/72/LineLength.asp for example.

No matter how wide the screen is, you'll still read a lot faster if we cap line lengths.

ploki122Oct 18, 20131 votes

So basically, writing for the web is like nerfing Irelia? You use statistics and other things to get a point that you're happy with an fits what's expected to be good, and you know beforehand that it'll please a plurality of players, btu you also know it'll annoy an equal plurality of players?

PendragonOct 18, 20131 votes

As someone who has been using 1920x monitors for a decade, I hate wasted space and I love the responsive movement. That being said, sometimes the best solution is counter-intuitive.

We could very easily get rid of the wasted space, but the invisible cost would be that it'd be harder to read, you'd more easily lose the line you're on at the end of the existing line, etc etc.

HellsawOct 19, 20131 votes

That is a nice study I have to admit, however I think there should be still be some give on how long this width can be. To long and you get that low readability to short and you get whats currently riot comment section and the massive tower that is text from your first post.
So it shows that each effects readability.
Since using the max with of our screen is out of the question and others and myself included fine this to be too small.
Is there any possible way to say if this is 700x increase this to 750x - 850x? (I'm leaning closer to 850)
And/or centering the text a bit more?

PendragonOct 21, 20131 votes

We will definitely work on the feeling that there's wasted space. How? I don't know yet...

HellsawOct 22, 20131 votes

Thank you

ploki122Oct 17, 20131 votes

We have a lot of exciting things in the oven: integrated polls, formatting toolbar, and being able to report a post to name a few.

Quote from "Recen Updates", which I feel should be split into multiple smaller threads to actually show when updates happen (to convey the evolving feeling better)