Why I feel that this Community Beta would never be as good as GD if given equal effort.
So, you are are trying to follow one of the arguably most strictly moderated reddit, whilst not really wanting to become so strict as to mimic its capablities. Meanwhile, you claim it is impossible to do the same for your current forum, due to traffic, and you claim the beta will be better.
Frankly, I'm just not seeing it. Without moderation, The new community will be about as successful as dominion was. There will always be that core of diehard users, but at the end of the day, what came first will remain the most traveled, unless you actively attend to it from day 1. Why did Dominion REALLY fail? A huge lack of attention from the balance team or "moderators" of balance. This is from someone who gave the community an honest chance, and still came out unsatisfied.
At the end of the day, I keep seeing that the current system is "impossible" to moderate. I also see a huge lack of effort on that front. I know I'm not alone in wondering who exactly the moderators are, or how to contact one if I find an inappropriate thread. I also have a hard time figuring out what [I]exactly[/I] is frowned upon hear. Besides the obvious gore, scat, porn, flaming, naming and shaming, There really isn't a clear ruleset to follow. For example, Captain Marvelous, one of our better posters, got perma-banned for posting a single picture with a no-no word on your list of words that aren't cool. I've seen it, I've used it. No perma here, so I must not be as popular.
Really not a good way to do this, tbh. If I recall correctly, you had this issue ingame with reports and trolls. Your solution was to basically pass the ball to us to police ourselves. Why not the same general idea? Create a Forum tribunal, and sort it out that way. Heck, even a report button stuck in the post box somewhere would do wonders for this forum, and you probably wouldn't even need to actively read or do anything with the reports to see an immediate change in behavior. Kinda like when the tribunal came out, ALOT of trolls insta reformed simply because there was the threat of punishment.
The general idea I'm hoping to impart with you is that visibility of the rule enforcement goes a long way. Simply an empty police car positioned in view of a common speeding ground will cut down on speeders, and publicizing a new system to punish trolls ingame went MILES for cleaning this game up. I would assume that an actual group of moderators that regularly showed up and flexed his muscles when necessary would do similar things.
REALLY hope you read this, because honestly, every rioter I see has failed to see the point of it, and has flat out ignored this simple staple of every well maintained forum. I really tried hard to be fair, and not vicious, but you (rioters in general) don't exactly make it easy when you go out of your way to ignore points like the above. I will bring this over to your community forums, so that there is an actual possibility that someone reads this.
"It's not about the money; it's about sending a message." -J
This is a post I used to respond to WookieCookie when he was attempting to explain why the Community would solve the problems of GD.
At the end of the day, it doesn't address the core issue that plagues GD. The Police are ghosts, and whether or not they do anything at all is irrelevant, because no one sees them. Which leads to the point I am making in the title.
Quite Frankly, this Reddit forum is HORRID at visibility. While some claim only the "good" topics can be seen, I would argue that a)population here simply isn't GD level, so we can't know if that will even last, and b)"good" is a very reletive term, and truthfully only the most upvoted content gets seen, unless you sort by new.
This isn't even the problem, but rather the visibility of posters within topics. While some may like the nested forums, others have a REALLY difficult time navigating responses. And tbh, I don't blame them. The site simply isn't user friendly, by the simple fact that literally everything is thrown at you and you are expected to simply know how to navigate it. This is arguably as bad as GD is, and GD is an unmoderated vbulletin forum with more traffic than vbulletin forums are designed for.
So where does this leave us? Both forums are entirely different, and neither address the issue which plagues GD. This forum is just as bad, if in different ways, as GD, and both are unmoderated, unless you are counting ghosts.
PROTIP: There is a reason we call them "ghost stories"; They may sound spooky, but in the end they simply don't really do anything but make gullible kids pee their pants.
BUT PRYOTRA, THEY COULD ALWAYS USE VISIBLE MODERATION! MAYBE IF THEY DID THAT THIS WOULD BE BETTER THAN GD!!!!
Not exactly. Lets assume they magically have enough manpower to visibly moderate both forums at equal capacity, and they do so justly and equally. We now have a cleaner GD, and if only "good" content is seen, then the moderators are effectively never seen moderating here; after all, if they are showing up then the post clearly isn't up to par. Where as in GD, you could watch the bad threads fall off the page. If the moderators are ghosts, then people feel more laxed, and post a little more flippantly, like GD current. Then they wonder why they are getting censored, as their posts magically vanish with no apparent reason. Sound familiar?
Even if a fair amount of reds stayed, unless they all ignored GD, this forum would move pretty slowly compared to GD, and GD would slow down considerably if it was moderated. Also, if the reds abandoned GD, then you have people accusing riot of playing favorites, trying to desperatelly get some return out of a failed project, or other things I can't really foresee. And at the end of the day, some of them would probably have a legit point, or at least one that wouldn't have a very good counterpoint.
Reddit style forums lead to circlejerking. This is catering to GD's biggest problem. The only response we get from riot when asked is "We got a lot of smart people on this." No offense, but Aaron Swartz couldn't figure out the answer. I have little faith Riot will find the secret key, but assuming they do, they are still fighting user friendliness. Another problem with seemingly no solution that must be answered if this forum is to compete with GD.
Meanwhile, lets assume they dedicate the same effort to GD. We now have post tracking, Skins, maybe even some form of avatars like here, alot of FEK features will likely become part of the natural vbulletin forums. And they also re-organize the vbulletin forums more efficiently. So GD actually gets functionality and moderation, whilst the Community struggles to get on it's feet and has ghostly mods, a problem that GD would have addressed. To me, GD seems like the clear winner, not even counting its current user count.
Tl;dr- If you need this, then the reddit system is worse for you. You actually need to read MORE in order to follow the conversations or comment. At least with the current iteration, this seems true. Go and read it, after all, how can you give "good feedback" if you can't even read the whole post?