Boards›Boards Feedback

Change Log

RiotKrylhos·7/11/2014, 11:58:41 PM·14 votes·17,311 views

There’s some changes coming to the community beta next week; check out a live preview here: boards.na.leagueoflegends.com. It’s new and shiny, but it’s mirroring the content from the current design. Any discussions or comments you create will populate in both versions.

###Change Log

Welcome to Boards beta!

It’s been a while since we introduced the Community Beta. Over the months since the CB debuted, we’ve been posting and commenting, lurking and reading feedback. Today, we’re rolling out what the team has been working on. We’re still in beta, and we’ll continue to respond to feedback and make changes. As a result, the Change Log works just like the Patch Notes, just with 100% less Pwyff. Whenever we make a change to the boards, you’ll find it neatly annotated here with an explanation of why we did it. Let’s saw into the first edition of the Boards Change Log.

-Boards Team

####General

So generally speaking, we’ve integrated a new visual style that enhances clarity and addresses a ton of player feedback. We’ve added enhanced moderation tools including action notifications you’ll hear more about below. For those of you who prefer a “flat” or chronological viewing format, we’ve overhauled the way it works on the boards. With additional improvements to discussions and commenting, we’re attempting to solve the problems you identified and build a platform that fits what the community needs.

-Not Pwyff

####Boards (formerly known as “Communities”)

It was kind’ve presumptuous for us to call these “communities” as if we were making them. With the new name and style, we took the opportunity to establish the boards as gathering places for content and discussions.

  						*-Not Pwyff*

We’ve changed, added, and removed some boards (listed below) from the Official Boards list. We’ve also updated all of the Guidelines for each board to help clarify general culture and etiquette.

  • “Site Feedback” has been renamed “Boards Feedback”
  • “Live Gameplay” has been changed to “Live Gameplay Balance”
  • “Summoner’s Rift” has been renamed “Maps & Modes”
  • “Riot Official” has been renamed “Announcements”
  • “Fan Creations” has been renamed “Community Creations”
  • “Pentakill” has been removed, but will return as part of a new board we’re planning in the future

####Moderation

We heard loud and clear that accurate and fast moderation is really, really important to a ton of you. Equally important is knowing why an action has been taken, and knowing that your reports are reaching real people. We’ve added a number of tools to our moderation toolkit, and poros.

-Not Pwyff (note: there are no poros)

We’ve focused a majority of our time lately rebuilding our moderation team and approach. Our biggest addition to this version of the boards is Moderation Action Notifications. Now, whenever a moderation action is taken within the Boards you’ll be notified in your boards profile.

  • Moderation Action Notifications
    • You will receive Notifications for the following actions:
    • When discussions or comments are deleted
    • When you are suspended from the boards
  • Report button added on all comments and discussions
  • All reports go into a queue monitored by our moderation team 24/7

####Discussions

Participating in discussions is literally the main function of the boards, so we’ve concentrated a number of our redesign efforts improving embedded media, attachments, share functionality, and thumbnails. Sprinkle in some additional improvements to creating discussions, and finish with clarity and a more defined visual hierarchy.

-Not Pwyff

Before our recent focus on moderation, the actual discussions that would happen on the boards were some of our highest priorities. We needed to expand the supported media types, and make it easier to add attachments. Taking into consideration feedback on the Community Beta, we simplified sharing to Twitter and Facebook. There’s a number of other discussion-related improvements, especially when creating a discussion whether from the homeboard or within a board.

  • Improved Embed media (a few supported examples below)
    • YouTube
    • Twitch
    • SoundCloud
    • Vimeo
    • Spotify
    • Vine
    • Instagram
  • Share to Twitter and Facebook from individual discussions
  • Thumbnail/image support on boards list
  • You can now create discussions from the boards home screen
  • You can now select the board you want to post to during discussion creation
  • Improved clarity and visual hierarchy
  • Cleaned up attachments

####Commenting

Creating discussions is great and all, but being able to comment and join in is also kinda crucial. We’ve removed the reply limit and made it easier to see new comments when you’re in discussion view. For those of you who prefer to view all posts in chronological order (like for role-playing--that’s for you, Kaz) you can now switch to chronological view and the boards will remember your preference. This is only the first step towards the completion of Skynet, so we’re okay with it.

-Not Pwyff

We got a ton of feedback on how commenting worked on the Community Beta. Some of the biggest changes include the removal of the reply limit, and tweaking the way Rioter comments look for readability. Feedback regarding necessary features often centered on “flat” or “forum” view options, so we’ve added a suite of enhancements like a Quote button and the ability to select Chronological view as your preferred way to browse.

  • Removed reply limit
  • Flat View is now ‘Chronological View’ with the following changes:
    • Comments listed from oldest to most recent
    • Added Quote button
    • Replying is now included in this view
    • Reporting now available within Chronological view
  • When switching to Chronological view, this selection will be remembered as you browse the rest of the Boards
  • New comments are now easier to see in Discussion View

####Bug Fixes

Bugs happen, we exterminate like Blitzcrank when we can. Not much more to add. We’ll update the Bug Fixes section pretty frequently. If you find any bugs or have additional feedback, please head to the feedback section here and create a new discussion.

-Not Pwyff

The following bugs have been squashed:

  • Attachment difficulties in IE
  • Speed issues on boards listing and when searching
  • Hover on player name sticking to the wrong place
  • Minor issues within Rioter Comment box
  • Chronological view info not updating as fast as Discussion view
  • Permalink acting weird in URL strings
  • Profiles were getting confused, basically dopplegangers in your profiles

54 Comments

RiotPWYFF7/12/2014, 12:41:24 AM31 votes

I'm not sure I'm a fan of you, not pwyff.

Zerglinator7/12/2014, 12:13:12 AM19 votes

Whoa, it's dark in here. I like it.

Goldoak7/12/2014, 1:34:48 AM5 votes

It's nice to see a little more support for chronological view!

The only thing that I'm kind of missing here is some equivalent of the "show parent post" button. As clunky as that system was, something similar is going to be necessary if we're all going to be able to talk to each other. I mean, if it was just a traditional message board, presumably we'd all quite each other all the time when responding, but if other posters are going to have nested discussions, we'll need some reference while in chronological view to see what's going on.

Otherwise chronological view is going to be nothing but a stream of non sequiturs. In fact, I imagine that communication going the other way is also going to need help to make sense Direct quotes and responses in chronological view would need somehow be fitted into the nested conversations of discussion view, otherwise we might end up with a similar series of non sequitur posts that that start new branches while trying to continue ongoing discussions.

Also a little more robust quoting would be useful, hopefully including the quoted party's name and a link to their original comment? Right now it's just a slightly formatted copy and paste feature.

CeresX7/12/2014, 12:19:43 AM4 votes

wow much shiny

NiceFocus7/12/2014, 12:59:24 AM4 votes

cool

MXXIV2/14/2015, 3:05:26 AM3 votes

Speed issues on boards listing and when searching

Speed issues were definitely not fixed. The page lags, especially when loading (because you parse markdown in javascript instead of server-sided parsing, because you generate ALL the vote buttons at page load time). The time up to load is about 20-30 seconds, according to YSlow and Firebug.

I have already posted about using cache and no-cookie domains (especially important with your sick cookie over-usage). So please, take a look on these things! I know this is beta, but debugging is also MUCH easier when the page loads faster!

Also permalinks are still very bad, partially because you use GET parameters to pass them and your page loads for 20 seconds as I mentioned. Before the script that handles permalinks takes effect I'm already scrolling and reading posts.

Please don't lie to me, you won't get far.

Goldoak7/12/2014, 1:30:40 AM3 votes

Alright that's odd. I posted that comment with the quote chronologically later than my longer comment, but it's appearing above it in my feed. Is that intentional? It seems sort of the opposite of what you'd want with a chronological view....and now this comment is sandwiched between them.

Is this a feature? If it's organizing my posts based on their relative size because they're all from the same person and next to each other, that has some value and I could see a case for it, but it's not the behavior I would have expected.

Bourmegar7/14/2014, 7:03:46 PM2 votes

dear Riot Gods, when I try t upvote on the new Board I get asked to login while I am already logged in and when I do Login trouth that, Nothing happens

will u gods pls fix this?

Kira Onime7/15/2014, 1:54:02 PM2 votes

Welp, seems the post preview area font-size got bumped up to 14px. Way easier to read.

Hexflashed7/12/2014, 3:58:24 AM1 votes

Too dark for me. I find it hard to read on and is strenuous on my eyes. I'm not saying it looks bad, I just request a 2nd theme where I can switch to a "brighter" and more readable theme.

Kom7/12/2014, 4:51:58 AM1 votes

I like the dark style, however I believe you should add a button to have a light version and a dark version toggle. Personally like the dark version because it's easier on the eyes but some seem to like the lighter version.

Davepowa7/12/2014, 4:56:47 AM1 votes

Im not sure if it already there but can we follow our thread so we never loose track of them For exemple i have a thread where i draw for fun is there a way i can alway access it

konradh7/12/2014, 5:29:04 AM1 votes

What I like most, is that finally I can post from my eune account.

Viktor Viktor Viktor

TheStorm7/12/2014, 7:24:54 AM1 votes

[deleted]

kiloampbanisher7/12/2014, 12:11:15 PM1 votes

All that concerns me for now is that you remove the reddit style upvote and downvote format from community beta.

Also Ahri Ahri

Yisery7/12/2014, 1:00:49 PM1 votes

I like that you are exploring both ways, hierarchical and chronological, for displaying discussions, but It's almost impossible to follow a discussion in chronological view now because the comments are not linked.

Discourse, which I linked somewhere before and you'll likely have seen before, provides a button/link to the post that has been replied to and a button to show all replies to a post. When you click it, you get a dynamic popup of the referenced posts so you can read in on the discussion without leaving the chronological view. It's a sort of hybrid view and I think it works great.

Also (nice <hr> you have there), rioter's don't have their avatars anymore ;(. Well, they do have one some icon, but it's their summoner icon and at least I used to identify rioters by their avatar. Any plans for bringing back the custom avatars for rioters?

SW1FTmeister7/12/2014, 2:03:53 PM1 votes

I don't like the new font, rather use another that fits more that style. Also, it looks a lot like Reddit, which isn't bad, but could have a better UX.

MajorPain97/12/2014, 6:59:56 PM1 votes

Chronological should be default. Its going to annoying having to come back and switch off of Reddit style every damn time.

ExpertSockThrow7/13/2014, 5:11:48 AM1 votes

I love everything that's been proposed! As someone who suffers from cluster headaches, knowing I can visit the CB without worrying about triggering a headache is awesome! Thanks for all the hard work. :)

P.S.: I also really appreciate the full support of the flat lay-out. Thanks so much.

Kira Onime7/13/2014, 1:32:43 PM1 votes

THe theme seems easier on the eyes but at quick glance, my only recommendation is the increase the size of the font in the reply textarea. It's rather small. Either bump it up a notch to 13 or keep your default 14 found in the body.

12 is just too small.

PaperMache77/13/2014, 4:51:04 PM1 votes

I don't see why you wouldn't be able to up/down vote also it's hard to follow because you don't know who's responding to who from the reddit style interface.

Hyrum Graff2/14/2015, 2:16:47 AM1 votes

I'd looove to see more of these.

Hellioning7/12/2014, 2:56:17 AM1 votes

Finally, that reply limit is gone. I hated having to stop having a discussion because of it.

GMB VoidIe7/12/2014, 1:57:01 AM1 votes

This is all cool and nice, but will you ever consider, or better yet, do some sort of merger between eu, na and other forums? They can have their own separate section for non-English speakers and stuff, but it would be pretty cool to have a global board rather than separate for each region so Europeans have to register here and Americans on EU ones or any others just to reach out to Rioters and what not.

Saint Tryndamere7/12/2014, 3:19:12 AM1 votes

Hi, I'm from EUW and I wanted to know if this site is worldwide or if it seperates post/comments from EUW,NA,EUNE etc. like in the official forums. I know that this post here is from NA, does that mean it will be like this for every post? Because if I switch from reddit to this site I dont want to miss any posts just because I dont live in that Region.

Edit: And Another thing I'm missing is a button on the FrontPage where all posts are listed. on Reddit there is a spoiler function if you click the button, the post will show up (without reloading the site). right now you can hover over the Headline but I think a button would be more handier.