Hi everyone,
This has been discussed a bit by Riot, but I'm curious as to the community's opinions on this concept.
What are your thoughts on custom board creation? Would the additional customization result in a more diverse and deeply meaningful community, or segment it past usefulness? Or something else? I'd love to hear it!
ploki1222 votesI'm interested in seeing how they'll go about it. Personally, I do believe it'll turn into a pretty chaotic experience, and I understand why they wanted roughly 100k daily users. It won't take long that like 25% of the players won't even look at the front page anymore. Also, it'll end up with a "PlayWithRiot", "IPlayedWithRiot", "LetsPlayWithRiot", "PlayWithReds", "PlayWithRioters"... you get the point. I seriously believe that the community splitting up so harshly would seriously harm the forum (which all boils down to the requirement of opening up a board. One way to do it would be that you can create them at will, but it needs ## subs to be able to post in it, then you add a "New Boards" sub boards to be able to publicize it).
The positive side would be things like "SurrenderAt20"/"UnbannedOnGamers" subboards that allwos for an easy aggregator or "Support"/"Renekton" where you can easily find the information you're looking for.
Sir ArmaMalum2 votesIt all depends on how it's implemented to be honest. I doubt it will be easy to do for everyone, or else you would run into thousands of sub-boards flooding the area. But that of course begs the question of how these Boards will be created in the first place.
One guess is that players will not directly make sub-boards, but instead have it be somewhat automated. An interesting thought I had (looking over all the idea thrown out over the year) is creating Boards based off of tags. You create a post with a certain keyword as a tag. If that tag becomes popular enough (above a certain discussion/post rate threshold) a Board will be automatically created with that keyword.
Another (and probably more likely) guess takes Tamat's hint at a form of player moderation. Certain users that are active enough in certain Boards will have the power to create Boards as they see fit (maybe within a limit), and they have primary moderation and governing over said Board (of course red mods will probably check in now and again). If the Board remains popular and well-discussed then it'll stay, but if it becomes inactive due to lack of appropriate moderation or simply lack of discussion it'll time out. Of course the largest problem with this idea is it it's sitting right next to the idea behind sub-reddits and the massive GD lash-back will be.....ah, what's a good word....interesting.
And then there's the simple idea of votes. Someone could introduce an [New Board] Post with a unique voting option and if enough votes are reached the post will be created. This [New Board] idea could even be a Board in of itself, kind of like a Kickstarter for categories.
BUT this is all speculation with absolutely zero concrete information, I don't want to start any rumors now.
Pendragon2 votesWhat do you mean by "customization"?
Generally I'm a fan of the idea players creating and owning their own boards
GenoXx1 votes.....how is it that a Rioter is willing to listen to this, but doesn't listens to ideas or post about lore.....like in Lore Discussion
Daen2 votesNot that I don't appreciate your devaluation of the subject matter of my post, but it might be more helpful to create a post asking about this where it's actually useful. Someone did it here and got quite a few responses.
Hyrum Graff2 votesNot that I don't appreciate your devaluation of the subject matter of my post,
Speaking of things that I appreciate... This comment right here.
Sunfield2 votesMaybe its cause hes not working on lore
Daen1 votesIn the poll and OP, I'm using "customization" to refer to players' ability to create their own experience rather than utilizing the experience offered.
Is the goal internally to impose limitations upon the community for creation of their own boards, or will everyone be allowed to just create anything they want (within reason)?
Are there any internal concerns over segmentation of the population or underuse of the custom boards? On the opposite side, are there concerns that players might come to ignore the boards created by Riot in favor of the custom conversation locations?
Has the possibility of someone recreating a General Discussion-esque board been considered, and would there be systems in place to prevent a mass exodus of the community from the "original" boards to this overarching one?
Pendragon1 votesI'm a bit of an idealist when it comes to these things. I don't think Riot should "own" any board except for announcements, or other things that are unique to us - and should instead follow the general flow of the community. Who knows if we'll ever get to that point but that's what I'd love to see the boards as a healthy self-regulating organism where there's sufficient opportunity for people to find the right home - and if you feel like there isn't you can build it yourself.
Daen1 votesI don't think Riot should "own" any board except for announcements, or other things that are unique to us - and should instead follow the general flow of the community.
This is a great idea, and I definitely agree. That being said, are there any concerns about Rioters gravitating towards certain communities? Using General Discussion as an example, players tend to gravitate towards the locations where they perceive the most Rioter activity in relation to their interests. Is it useful to have a heavily segmented and customized community when there's the possibility of the playerbase focusing on a few particular areas where there's lots of discussion?
I'd love to see the boards as a healthy self-regulating organism where there's sufficient opportunity for people to find the right home
I have no idea whether this has the potential to happen, but what if people start to feel as if there isn't really a "right" home? Choice is awesome, don't get me wrong, but it can also discourage discussion and/or visibility.
What if the community creates 30 different boards all meant to facilitate discussion on the same topic? Is that healthy for content sharing and enjoying each other's company, or does it actually limit the amount of interaction we can realistically have since there are so many "right" homes?
Pendragon1 votesThe boards aren't in silos the way forums are. Even if you tend to gravitate towards some boards - you can still get a great blended view. For example - I typically check out everything that's hot, then go really deep in boards feedback (sensibly). That's way harder to do on the forums where it's really tough to get a good sampling of active topics from every subforum.
What if the community creates 30 different boards all meant to facilitate discussion on the same topic? I
Whoever does it the best should win, or if both groups have different takes then they should co-exist. I think that's healthy. There are millions of players - plenty to make many many vibrant healthy communities.
Daen1 votesThe boards aren't in silos the way forums are. Even if you tend to gravitate towards some boards - you can still get a great blended view.
Agreed, it's one of my favorite things about the platform.
Whoever does it the best should win, or if both groups have different takes then they should co-exist.
What if two people make a board the same way but one person happens to be more popular? Or if one board out of a group of identical ones receives a single Rioter post and it basically sways the entire community to that board despite the validity of others? It starts to approach valuing a person over content, to an extent.
Pendragon2 votesWhat if two people make a board the same way but one person happens to be more popular? Or if one board out of a group of identical ones receives a single Rioter post and it basically sways the entire community to that board despite the validity of others? It starts to approach valuing a person over content, to an extent.
Seems really edge-casey and something I'd hope won't happen enough that we'll have to completely design around that possibility
Daen1 votesThat's way harder to do on the forums where it's really tough to get a good sampling of active topics from every subforum.
If there are thousands of boards, doesn't this problem still exist, just in the opposite direction? Instead of being unable to see the other boards from General Discussion, all of the boards would blend together.
How would a situation be handled where someone makes a General Discussion board essentially identical to the current GD and it becomes equally popular? Isn't that part of what this platform is trying to prevent?
BabySledge2 votes****> > What if two people make a board the same way but one person happens to be more popular? Or if one board out of a group of identical ones receives a single Rioter post and it basically sways the entire community to that board despite the validity of others? It starts to approach valuing a person over content, to an extent.
Seems really edge-casey and something I'd hope won't happen enough that we'll have to completely design around that possibility
Two people making an almost identical board? I can almost guarantee this will happen. Everyone wants their ideas to be seen and appreciated. They will want to be the one that started the whole thing.
I do agree that customization should be allowed, but I feel like there has to be some form of limitation otherwise it'll just grow out of control. Especially since a red post is the proverbial chum in the water. Players will swarm to those boards, regardless of how well they are executed. Cue the copycat boards made in hopes of attracting rioters also and pretty soon you have a huge disorganized jumble of boards.
Hyrum Graff1 votesHi! Welcome to Boards :D
Hyrum Graff2 votesWhat's the benefit to community-created boards?
If there's enough support for the creation of a given board, why not just have it created officially?
Tahalden1 votesInteresting idea, but something to treat carefully. Endless creation of sub-boards can become chaotic. So some sort of managing system has to be in place. Moreover, you want to encourage people to make use of the sub-boards without being concerned about the visibility of their post. So you'd have to combine this concept with a complete pool of posts that's visible to everyone, regardless of the sub-board it was posted on. Only when people go to a sub-board, other posts are filtered out (which is already the case, I think?)
Visibility is important though, but the Reddit format does not always work well for that.
Daen1 votesSo...I had to vote on my own poll to actually see the poll results. That's why I voted Other, and as required I'm making a comment on it. Woo!
Possibly something to look into, @Riot.
Omnipherious1 votesI think if we're going to be allowed to create our own boards, these new boards must have one of the pre-existing boards assigned as their 'mother board' if you will.
That way you could have - Champions & Gameplay > Garen OR Maps & Modes > Suggestions - but it doesn't separate posts into even more pages; all posts from all sub boards are displayed based on your sorting when you enter the main board.
The way you would then find specific sub-board posts would be via a search sort. That way someone could have the sort filter "Catch the Teemo" and be presented with posts only from - Maps & Modes > Custom Gamemodes > Catch the Teemo.
Good compromise?
Rhlax1 votesI'd be interested in a C9 boards for people who have bought a C9 summoner icon...