Why do Boards Exist?

What if rioter's had a special kind of upvote (aka "fist bump") that they can perform to an individual post/thread to indicate that they have read and/or support what is being said here?

[{quoted}](name=Riot Zwill,realm=NA,application-id=bzRrPGQO,discussion-id=LT3ez9dH,comment-id=000b00000000,timestamp=2015-02-26T20:17:38.071+0000)

Something that Meddler asked last night was (and I paraphrase here) "Is there value in Rioters simply acknowledging that a concern has been heard without specifically addressing it?"

I understood Meddler's comment quite differently.

Meddler said: "We can either say nothing, or we can tell you it's work we agree needs to be done, but that we're doing other stuff first."

That, as I understand it, means that Rioters can (and hopefully will) discuss certain issues and the solutions to those problems, even if they won't have the resources to solve those problems immediately. This is quite different from acknowledging without specifically addressing it. The former, for example, might lead to an involved discussion on mobility, which champions are problematic with their mobility, and possible solutions to those problems; the other might lead to a single post stating that a particular champion is problematic with no followup discussion or elaboration.

It might be my naive thinking, but I think that some threads (e.g. bug reports) are fine with a simple thanks, but it would be nice to get more in other threads that are more involved (e.g. balance, lore). It's a bit unreasonable to expect Rioters to have lengthy, involved discussions on a daily basis, of course, but it would be nice to hear from certain teams a bit more.

Tag systems have been suggested, as well as other tools to help us Sift through the raw amount of threads.

Personally, I would love a working search function. Frankly, the one we have is a joke.

Proof of concept, Search my username. Now enter each thread and CTRL + F my name. Find me? 9/10 times, when I do this I find threads that I have never even seen before, much less voted or posted or was referenced in. Same with just about everyone else. I don't know how these threads are returning, as my name as literally nothing to do with any of them.

By users defining boards I mean several things:

1. Users being able to discuss boards functions with the people who make these boards. I understand not every user communicates in a civilized form, but many do. Some moderators and Red users reply to these users, but reply isn't discussion. The point here shouldn't be to answer and never return (consider it closed) but really figure out how important user's request is, if it's possible.
2. Allowing users to interfere with boards structure.

• For example there have been many requests for board section split. These are things that should be picked up and voted on by the whole community - provided you're actually able to add new section at this moment.
• Allow users to define what is off topic and what is not. Sometimes topics dispensary and nobody is sure why. These things have been set up in background.

But the main point is really the discussion. In 3 days interval, there's a post complaining that feedback on this boards is ignored or not discussed. Instead features (dis)appear and people get pissed. Note that unlike balance (where you are bound by the need to make the game fair), here you have no reason to avoid making the boards to user's liking.

I've seen literally no post from anybody technically competent regarding these boards (I'm quite knowledgeable about website programming).

It can. As long as everyone understands what the post was downvoted for. (which is usually pretty easy if you read the post) As most good posts that are downvoted usually indicate player sentiment towards the opinions expressed, which in turn can aid riot with and further directional decisions.

But due to the downvote system, if there aren't any major counter points being replied and subsequently upvoted, then the downvote will rarely see the light of day.

Yes. There is a value in sentiment based voting. Otherwise Rito wouldn't have included it! =P

Snark aside, there is value in knowing when you are disagreed with by the majority. I just don't think it should impact visibility nearly as effectively as it does.

Oh god yes. You can have 30 people down vote Meddler (for example), or you can have 30 people yelling at him. It's the lesser of two evils.

I think there needs to be two types of votes, one for Good/Bad thread one for Agree/Disagree, that's why I often include a Poll in controversial threads, it tends to catch the downvoteas and thus increases visibility.

But that only works on threads, not comments.

slightly off topic, (but still concerns player communication) a feature I'd really like to see is a bulletin board like aspect for ranked teams to be implemented into the game client. It is really difficult to grab a hold of some members of your team since ppl have lives outside of league, and the current chat system won't let you communicate unless you both are online at the same time.

If riot could give players the ability to post messages to a team bulletin that can be checked out when players log on, it'd be incredibly useful to coordinate practice times, or alert players to unforseen changes in schedules.

If you had to prioritize a single tool that would provide the most value to the boards as a community, what would it be?

That's a great question, though it's a little hard to answer. The most valuable regardless of development effort, or the most effective tool for the production/maintenance resources?

Additionally, in my experience social tools tend to improve exponentially. let's say we have a system like chat rooms, which are really basic. We can do one of the following:

• Allow users to control their chat rooms with moderation tools.
• Set up a system that handles the ability to find chat rooms, sort of like an index.

In this situation, doing only the second option would be useless without the first. The first also has limited use, however, because there is no way for players to find the chat room other than word of mouth. If you are able to do both, however, chat rooms suddenly become an extremely compelling social tool; players have a way to have their chat rooms viewed publicly and can control membership/behavior.

Tough question, basically.

The tool I think would be overall most beneficial for the entire community, not just the Boards, is chat rooms. No question. When a chat system is sufficiently robust, it's like the golden doors of heaven are opening upon the community.

If players are able to individually control their chat rooms, they can function as home bases for any possible type of socialization. Clans? No problem, make a chat room. Boards discussion? Chat room. Random group of friends or a tournament? Chat room. The value is immense in something like that, because it allows each player to directly control how he/she interacts, with whom he/she interacts, and the types of interaction.

To be honest, I don't know if there are specific Boards tools I would consider to be higher priority than in-client social improvements; I feel that client tools would translate to Boards activity, especially if considering the possibility of Boards-client integration. That being said, here are the two most significant socialization tools I would like to see added to the Boards specifically:

• Riot-curated volunteer groups (Emissaries, Adjudicators, etc.) that have specific functions in the community

An example of this could be a group of players whose function is to help acclimate new players, both to the Boards and to League of Legends in general; this is what the Emissaries used to be, in part. Player volunteer groups not only provide the inherent value of the system (recognition and enhancement for people already providing this kind of content), they encourage others to collaborate and work towards being a part of them. This is potentially a thread in and of itself, so I'll stop there.

• The ability to follow each other's activity

A la Twitter, it would be fantastic to be able to create a network of people that are paying attention to each other as people rather than as blocks of content. This allows users to have more background and insight into each other's comments, which can create a more inclusive and engaging atmosphere.

Chat room tools, hands down. Ways to promote, moderate, and manage chatrooms would be EXTRAORDINARILY helpful. As much as I personally want tools that help privacy and control of the friendslist, I think as a community we need this more.

That said, I join 2 on startup and one is a cess pool and the other is rarely active, and when it is active it becomes a volcano quickly. Guess how often I actually participate in either one?

Not so much a tool but fix chronological. Nested replies need to automatically quote. This one fix would increase my interaction ten fold but since the beta it hasn't been acknowledged. Its really frustrating that this small but massive issue has been ignored since I brought it up in boards beta.