Deleting Threads has a Chilling Effect on Speech

Mortusvorge·Feb 19, 2015·6 votes·1,301 views

I've just posted a thread on the "Report a Bug" forum, which has been incredibly popular over the past day. The entire thread was deleted half an hour ago, along with the comments of over seventy people who were experiencing the same error. The thread contained some helpful suggestions as to how to fix the error by other summoners, as well as further reports of exactly what might be causing the errors. Now the thread is entirely gone.

The frustrating thing is that, I've reviewed the guidelines for posting in the "Report a Bug" thread, and remain convinced this is the correct place to post this discussion. However, there are no means of appeal in this case. The threads gone, and while I'm able to repost the discussion, I can't restore all of those incredibly helpful comments and suggestions.

This of course is very convenient for Riot administrators who are able to conveniently delete posts that point out glaring technical errors in their client under the guise of "keeping the boards clean and organized."

11 Comments

ZheszparFeb 19, 20153 votes

That explains it, bug board says to put connectivity issues in Help & Support. Support forums tend to have a sense of urgency because there is a "I am having a huge problem right now help me" vibe, y'know? Reporting bugs is more like "thanks, we'll look these over in the morning" kind of thing. Whoever is in charge of connectivity stuff is probably just watching the support board.

I saw something somewhere that the horrible weather may have knocked out a major link somewhere. I mean... There is nasty weather out there, anything could happen in the thousands of miles of wires between Riot and everybody's homes that isn't Riot's deal, too, but now i'm off topic :D

MortusvorgeFeb 19, 20151 votes

Right, but I'd disagree with the categorization of this problem as a "connectivity issue." I'm not having trouble connecting to League of Legends, the client is bugged, and has been bugged, ever since I downloaded patch 5.3. As these issues have been persistent for over a week now, I doubt that it has anything to do with weather. It seems that any downed wire would have been fixed in this time, and it would be an incredible coincidence if the power line went down at exactly the same moment that myself, and thousands of other people, downloaded patch 5.3.

Once again, this isn't a connectivity issue. While the error message might read "connection error," that cause, I have little doubt, is due to a bug with the client.

Because these issues have persistent for over a week, I'd doubt

DaenFeb 19, 20153 votes

As Zheszpar mentioned, connectivity generally goes in Help & Support.

If anything, these type of threads (discussions about deletion and the guidelines' lack of clarity) and the frequency in which they appear are a very clear demonstration that the board guidelines and moderation messages are not entirely effective yet.

@Riot: If this stuff is too much work to add to your plates, feel free to outsource it to the community. I'm sure there are many people willing to help rewrite the board guidelines and/or moderation messages to have more clarity.

Hyrum GraffFeb 19, 20152 votes

{quoted}

@Riot: If this stuff is too much work to add to your plates, feel free to outsource it to the community. I'm sure there are many people willing to help rewrite the board guidelines and/or moderation messages to have more clarity.

Tangentially relevant.

DaenFeb 19, 20152 votes

It's very strange how none of Riot's stances seem to extend to community involvement in any way. Riot seemingly simultaneously does not want to curate the community yet does not want to give the community the tools to curate itself. It's frustrating.

My personal opinion is that the community is bad/perceived as bad because we don't have the proper tools for interaction. I have no idea why this is never addressed by Riot, and nothing has changed in this respect since beta other than the release of the Boards platform over a year ago (CB at the time).

ZheszparFeb 19, 20151 votes

What was the thread about?

MortusvorgeFeb 19, 20151 votes

The connection issue that hundreds of people are having at the moment, a bug in the 5.3 client that is acting as a barrier to connecting to the PVP server. If you want more information, head over to Help and Support, where you'll see hundreds of posts about it, but none as helpful as the thread they deleted.

ZheszparFeb 19, 20151 votes

{quoted}

Right, but I'd disagree with the categorization of this problem as a "connectivity issue." I'm not having trouble connecting to League of Legends, the client is bugged, and has been bugged, ever since I downloaded patch 5.3. As these issues have been persistent for over a week now, I doubt that it has anything to do with weather. It seems that any downed wire would have been fixed in this time, and it would be an incredible coincidence if the power line went down at exactly the same moment that myself, and thousands of other people, downloaded patch 5.3.

Once again, this isn't a connectivity issue. While the error message might read "connection error," that cause, I have little doubt, is due to a bug with the client.

Because these issues have persistent for over a week, I'd doubt

No disrespect, but I mean, is it up to you to decide if its a bug or a support issue? Put it where the people who are paid to fix it want it to go so it shows up on their radar faster and they can track it down and fix it quicker.

It is kind of in the same feeling I have of everyone wanting a red response on the issue... Yeah, a quick 'hey we're aware and working on it' would have been great, but, which would you rather have: the person working on this spending their time fixing it, or spending their time making people feel better on the boards by responding to 100+ threads? Either people are going to be mad or people are going to be slightly mollified yet the issue takes longer to fix.

MortusvorgeFeb 19, 20151 votes

And none taken. My point is that I believe that there's quite a bit of ambiguity regarding guidelines for posting in forums. Even after double checking, I'm still convinced my discussion thread was justifiably posted there.

As long as that ambiguity exists, I object to the deletion of discussion threads. Riot shouldn't be punishing people, and deleting a host of helpful ideas and comments for posting a discussion thread in an area they consider certain content doesn't belong, but which their guidelines don't make clear.