Removal of General Discussion from Sub Groups. Why it's good and bad.

AotW King·Sep 19, 2013·12 votes·1,910 views

Hey, first post on the beta so I thought I'd just start with the first thing I and I'm sure many people will notice when they eventually get try out the new forum.

No General Discussion.

I think that it makes a lot of sense to start. The growth of LoL has made it so that the GD on the current forums gets a little of everything which adds up to way to freaking much with the amount of traffic.

A huge flaw with GD currently is that good and bad ideas alike get swept by with the constant bumping of people trying to get their own thread some attention.

I personally try to stay active on the player behavior forums but the limited traffic by people and rioters alike make it hard to know if what we're discussing ever reaches the ears of those who make a difference.

The removal of GD should in theory stimulate other sub groups by making it so if your posting feedback, or art, or champ designs, etc that you post them where it will get seen by people who have an interest in these things and hopefully based on the splicing of overall traffic we won't have to bump mindlessly in the hopes of a red response which almost guarantees a living thread or at least a thread that gets some exposure.

This is all the good.

The bad is.

Actually no lets not say bad lets just offer a few suggestions seeing as how this is a beta.

Have a dual sub posting ability.

It seems to me that gameplay & strategy could easily have a connection with multiple other sub boards.

How often do we see a thread that links back to a "main thread" in a different forum, this is because people want exposure to people who do have an opinion on their ideas and they know no all of them traverse all the sub groups.

A way to follow writers you care about.

I'll start with rioters for example, few rioters give more enjoyable to read discussions then Zileas, Morello, and Xelnath (no offense to other rioters wah).

It would be great to have a little bell or notice like ebay and facebook when something that might cater to your interests arrives.

But it would be even more important for just everyday forum goers. I've read really well rounded, smart, and easy to read posts from people I've never seen again and that sucks, I'd love to be able to follow people who make interesting suggestions on the player behavior forum.

Maybe I'm interested in what Dyrus has to say on the fan creations forum.

Either way, I think that these ideas might make the forum just a lot more accessible.

Cheers, AotW King

Shout out to Xelnath for posting into 3 am PDT, when does he even sleep.

16 Comments

PendragonSep 19, 20137 votes

I think that it makes a lot of sense to start. The growth of LoL has made it so that the GD on the current forums gets a little of everything which adds up to way to freaking much with the amount of traffic.

We have a mixed view of all sub-communities by default, which means it's not as important that something has to go in the one area that sees a lot of traffic.

I personally try to stay active on the player behavior forums but the limited traffic by people and rioters alike make it hard to know if what we're discussing ever reaches the ears of those who make a difference.

It's more possible that more people will see those discussions on this platform

Have a dual sub posting ability.

I'd expect that people will start to frequent different communities primarily, and that the same discussion can exist with completely different conversations in completely different places. For example - eSports and Live Balance could have a really different conversation about an LCS game. We'd want for both of those conversations to make sense within the context of the community that they're in. That means that it's totally OK to have one thing posted in multiple places.

It would be great to have a little bell or notice like ebay and facebook when something that might cater to your interests arrives.

We believe that the most important thing for this platform to work is the relevance of everything you see to you. That means that over time we're going to try to figure out how to make the platform smarter and could include things like that.

All around - thanks for the feedback!

KoravelSep 19, 20131 votes

What do you mean by, "we have a mixed view of all sub-communities by default?" Could you expound on that a bit more?

PendragonSep 19, 20132 votes

Sure - the home page contains the hottest topics from every sub-community, and the home page is the jumping off point for most readers. That means that it has opportunity to get visibility no matter which sub-community it's posted in

naotasanSep 20, 20132 votes

You should add "Alternative Game Modes" sub-community. Because we technically are league's sub community ;)

TortferngatrSep 21, 20131 votes

I'm personally more in favor of being able to label/tag Live Balance discussions by map for easier tracking. Like [Summoner's Rift] or [Crystal Scar] or [Howling Abyss] before the title.

It's probably better to have some of the extra exposure being part of a "big" subcommunity holds.

VsinSep 19, 20133 votes

I think that the removal of General D accomplishes nothing. I don't even know why, but every single forum I've ever seen has a tendency to congregate around a single forum and just dump everything there. Give it a couple months and I'll guarantee that people will have set up shop in a new General D by any other name.

Simply put, the role of General D is to have your voice heard in a place where there are the most people. Why would I try to keep track of a dozen subforums, clicking and tabbing between them when I can just dump everything in the superforum?

Consider this: /leagueoflegends/ is the 2nd most followed subreddit. /SummonerSchool/, a related subreddit? Less than ONE TENTH the subscribers, and less than ONE HUNDRETH the active viewers. And that's the LARGEST related subreddit, with /LeagueOfMemes/ coming in with a hundreth the subs and a two thousandths the users.

AotW KingSep 19, 20137 votes

Like pendrag said, there is a general discussion like feature that you can view normally, and all posts go to it. I personally think its really cool.

RiotA1RD0GSep 20, 20136 votes

Unlike on the /leagueoflegends/ subreddit, the sub-communities here all bubble up into the same default view. Reddit does not work that way.

Sp1n KuroSep 20, 20132 votes

Reddit does work that way on your front page and on r/all.

But with this place it's that every "sub forum" is still league related so the "r/all" is just like a League General Discussion forum.

PhoenixSlayer13Sep 19, 20133 votes

Good suggestions all around. GD just become a mosh pit of people, hopefully this new set-up will break things up more.

CerubusSep 19, 20132 votes

I honestly thought it was just me not being able to access General Discussion.

I do think though that it should stay, even if that was where most of the posts went.

Edit: new posts automatically get 1 point?

Spectre GadgetSep 19, 20133 votes

Why of course, you upvote yourself don't you?

Spectre GadgetSep 19, 20132 votes

I like these ideas a lot. Also I like how if you just click on the community as a whole, it shows everything from all the sub forums, so it's kind of like putting all the sub forums inside of gd.

bahamutkaiserSep 20, 20132 votes

Thank god GD isn't included, it would have helped if Riot staff didn't pursue discussion on topics that belong in other forums to begin with and went to the right forum to bring up discussion on topics, as well as move subjects to the right forum regularly, but without a generalized place to put stuff, players will either be putting it in the right place or the wrong place, and Rioters won't have an incentive to raise subjects in the wrong forum just because it's the most trafficed...

AotW KingSep 20, 20133 votes

I agree with you to some extent but every gaming community has had that board, the only reason its not really able to be kept is the sheer amount of traffic, the amount of traffic is actually limiting the content from being seen instead of the opposite.

The new feature where the front is a mass off all boards is a pretty cool solution if you want some of everything whle also making things more organized.