Let's Talk Boards Org (part two)

ITT: we heard your feedback and are mostly disregarding it. Post your criticism in this thread so we can do it again LOL

Update: So by this point I've written and rewritten responses and am no closer to finding the magic words to drill into Riots head how bad of an idea this is. Riot is ignoring it's players like it has been for years and I'm just tired. Judging by the lack of response from this thread compared to the other ones (because this thread isn't even trying to pretend that you are willing to compromise with us on our top priorities) everyone else is tired too.

So congratulations Riot. You wore us down. You made us stop caring enough to talk to you because we know it's going to be ignored and steamrolled over regardless. You're gonna get your way as always but it won't be with player support. It will be directly in spite of player wishes for their community. I'd just like to point out that you were sure this stupid newreddit format was the way of the future for boards despite the majority of players saying they hated it and pointing out flaws. "we can fix it when we get there" riot said. Here we are a year later with the players looking like Nostrodamuses and many of the issues we called are no closer to being fixed before Riot comes back to us saying "NO wait we have it now. THIS is the new way of the future, trust us" Cant you see why we lost any drive to argue with you? Instead of all the please you had before people are just going to down vote you and not waste their time with you. You had over 20 pages of people trying to tell you what they want out of your forums but you're too blinded about what YOU want out of them to think about the good of the community that already exists. Over 20 pages in a day or so yet in this entire thread you barely reach 7 pages and still it's people trying to tell you how to fix your forums. "Well look into it", "we're open to idea" are you really? ARE you?! Because in this whole charade I haven't seen many instances of that. Maybe reflect on why all your posts are down voted and why most of the replies are critical instead of "thank you glorious Rito for telling us what we really wanted this whole time".

So why am I here? Honestly I don't even know at this point but I feel angry as a customer and this will stop me from coming back to the boards and has really ruined my opinion on Riot as a company. I guess this is one last ditch attempt to get me feelings across. I can't believe a company I used to count as "one of the good ones" would be so blind as to make the same mistake over again. Which sucks because I'm still addicted to your game but your practices leave me with a bad taste in my mouth after supporting you this whole time.

Edit edit: FIRST! :P

Why are you so insistent on upvote based thread sorting being the default for boards which are supposed to be active? The purpose of merging these boards is to increase their activity level and get more people posting in the same place, isn't it?

Upvote based thread sorting is good for inactive boards. It is great if you only visit the boards every few days or once a week. These are niche use cases and should be expected to switch away from the default.

For those who actually use the boards, and visit multiple times a day, upvote based thread sorting is awful. The same few threads sit at the top for essentially forever. The vast majority of people use the default view. Most people would, therefore, never see anything that is not one of the top threads.

(Why isn't this a problem for Reddit, then, you ask? It is a problem for Reddit. Reddit solves it with brute force, by simply having so many users that it doesn't matter that most threads are never seen by most users. I do not consider this a success case.)

Please reconsider. I don't mind if it's an option. Options are great. But if Recently Replied is not a sorting option, I will outright not use it. If it is not the default, the odds are extremely high that I will become bored by the lack of activity forced on the board by your use of upvote sorting as the default. I understand that upvote sorting is perfect for the Rioter use case, but as I'm sure you're aware, most of the users of the boards are not Rioters and do not use the boards in the same way as Rioters!

Side note: I have no problem with nested view being an option as long as you fix the interactions between nested and chronological. Nested view should work like the Red Tracker when seen in chronological view, providing an automatic quote of the post it was made in reply to. Without those quotes, if person A is posting in nested view and person B in chronological view, person A's posts make absolutely no sense to person B because there is no context provided.

As it is, the two do not play well together, in that particular case. Please fix it before creating an ecosystem where some users are using one mode and some users are using the other mode.

(Side note 2: I think The Jungle is a much better name than All Chat. I'm not 100% sold on it but it's definitely progress, good work!)

I don't think you guys understand that doing this doesn't do anything positive for boards but rather hurts it as a whole. Let me give you an example. I love K-Pop but a few of my friends absolutely hate it. Trying to shove K-Pop down their throats probably won't make them like K-Pop but do the opposite and even cause them to become very annoyed with me. I love GD but I find the Sound and Music section to be very boring. Shoving the Sound and Music section in my face is not going to make me want to participate in it anymore than I would have previously and it really just hinders me from finding what I want in most cases and therefore makes me more annoyed with you guys for trying to shove it in my face. That is just the way it works and no amount of reorganization will fix that.

Upvote thread sorting will never work on Boards if you want it to be active. Upvote sorting causes a few threads to sit at the top for all eternity only to be overtaken by another over the course of at least a week minimum. It causes it to become very boring and uneventful because you are seeing the same threads over and over again with nothing new so making this the default would do the opposite of what you are trying to accomplish.

Finally, GD. What you're doing here is really just reinforcing the fact that you hate GD and want to be rid of us. We are split off from the rest of the community because we are nothing alike them and that is why we have our own culture and set of rules we follow. Meshing GD with any other section of Boards is not going to work whether you want it to or not. Pages and pages of feedback from GDer's went completely ignored in the last thread. You guys always talk about how you know so much about us when, in reality, the only person that really has the right to say that is Tamat and you scared him away. You first created boards so you could interact with us more but instead we have Katey trying her best to answer our questions and concerns even though she has little to no info to give us because she couldn't possibly know every little detail of every single team.You complain that we give you so much flak when it really is on you guys. You can't expect to be able to call us Pedophiles and shitters and just fuck with us in general and not expect us to bite back it's just not how we are. When you forced us over here you promised you wouldn't screw with us anymore but it looks like it's just not gonna be kept. I want to support Riot but with these decisions and how disconnected you guys are from your playerbase it really is hard to.

I really don't want to keep typing the same thing over and over again to you guys to just have it completely ignored. I know you have probably worked really hard on your master plan to make Boards better but it is just not going to work. Sometimes you have to start from square one. Please reconsider what you are doing. It's not going to solve anything and it's just going to make everyone (ESPECIALLY GD) dislike you even more.

@The Rioters in this thread...

I... I think... You guys might need to take a few steps back and look at this from a different angle here.

Because as it seems now? You guys are very, very disconnected from your playerbase.

As player relation managers, I would expect that you would take what your players are saying far more seriously than you appear to be for the sake of both the community and the game you are representing. Because, yes, YOU are the voice for Riot right now.

And since it is (now) established that you are voicing for Riot, then you need to consider what that means for both yourselves and the company you represent.

When you interact with those that post on these forums? They are your customers. They are the consumers of this game. They are the ones that will help keep the game afloat for years to come... Or choose to leave should they desire.

Being a representative of Riot and part of the community relations team? I would imagine that you would be more willing to work with your customers, particularly when they are upset at something that has caused them dissatisfaction.

Step back, close your eyes for thirty seconds to clear your mind, and then read this post that you made as if you were a consumer of the game. Read it as if you were in any of our positions as the forum members. Actually try to have an inkling of empathy for our situation. Because as of now? What I see within this post that you made is that:

1. You do not care about what your customer's opinions are over the forum's situation.

2. You will not take advice from your customer to improve the situation.

3. Stating that you read and consider feedback is merely a comfort gesture, or a form of damage control.

4. You are disconnected/do not understand what your customer wants from you as a Riot representative.

Quite frankly, its a little baffling to me that you guys, as representatives of Riot, take so little concern in your community, especially considering that your actions reflect that of the company as a whole. As a company that runs off the free to play model, and as such off the well being of your customers(AKA The LoL community) I would think you would try a little harder to listen to us.

I stated this before in my rather long rant thread that there are three things that you guys need to have in order to run effective changes within the boards, and I am going to restate them here for clarity's sake:

• First: We, as a community, need to know Riot's vision of where they see this heading and what YOU desire from us in the long run.

• Second: You, as the Player Relations Manager, need to know what the community member's vision is. You need to know what WE want to see in the long run from both you and other community members.

• And Third: We, as a community and as the Player Relations Manager, need to come together and decide in what way is best for us to fulfill both the Riot and the Community visions, while in turn adding and removing to what each of our visions contain.

We, as a community? We know and see the vision that you have for us.

But do you, as the representatives of Riot, know the vision that we have for our community?

Based on your response to the previous thread, and other threads that have popped up in relation to that... You do not. And you do not care to know.

If you sincerely care as much as you guys say you do? Then I recommend you take a completely different approach to this matter.

Turn around, face your community, and make a thread. Make a thread asking US what WE think you should do to solve the situation.

Take the words of your customers in a far more serious matter than you do now. WORK with us. We are more than willing to work with you, representatives of Riot, but it is growing more apparent that you are not willing to offer that same service.

As of now? I cannot take the weight of your word for anything. You can tell me all you want about how much you have read our feedback, about how much you discuss it among yourselves, but all of that is a single grain of salt compared to the actions you have shown us over the passed few months.

Do yourselves a favor and reconsider the way you are going about this. After all, your customers are on the verge of taking their money elsewhere.

Still not sure about Strategy & Tactics' entire existence. I don't see what 'You should always upgrade your trinket!', 'Is Cinderhulk a good thing for the game?' and 'Watch my sick Katarina pentakill!' have in common. Same with Story & Creativity; you've stuck 'discussing the current state of the game' and 'here's this cool thing I did based on the game' in the same place.

Yeah, tagging exists...but if you're just going to let people completely ignore half the board, why are they still in the same board? I'd treat Story & Creativity as if that ampersand and the second word didn't exist, and I'd be using Strategy & Tactics just for general balance discussion. I'm not sure what purpose these changes serve beyond adding in more clicks (click the forum, click Story & Creativiy, click 'filter only story posts' vs. click the forum, click Story & Art.)

I mean, yes, maybe I'm in the minority. Maybe people actually use the front page, maybe some people want to see their music videos and splash art discussion in the same place. But I'm not gonna like this change until you explain why I should like it.

Please, for the love of all that is good, if you want a fresh, not stagnant board, DO NOT AUTOMATICALLY SORT THREADS BY UPVOTES. You want fresh, constantly moving things, then you sort by Latest Replies or Latest Threads (or chronological order for replies in threads), which brings new stuff to the top and means that all threads are seen equally.

The majority of people are lazy or don't know better and will never switch to a different view. That means the same highly upvoted topics will remain at the top of the page for ever and ever.

As for GD, others have said it before. You can't merge GD with Misc. because they cover two different areas. GD is mostly random discussions, off-topic subjects and itsurblog posts (i.e. things you did today, LoL or not). Misc. is a forum that talks ONLY about League of Legends, about things that don't fit in a definite category. You merge the two, one will swallow the other. And the bad part of GD that you're trying to purge will NOT be destroyed, it will come back stronger since 1. the regulars of GD will have moved on, 2. the board will be FAR larger and will require far more moderators and 3. there's no ability to self-moderate.

Seriously, being able to close bad threads by downvoting them was so good. It enabled the community to look after itself.

#Not that you'll listen. You've already made up your minds.

######Also, you NEED a better mobile site and to speed up your general loading times.

{quoted}

That leaves GD and the future of the Misc. / Off-topic / General space - let’s break this one down a bit. Our core objectives here are essentially two-fold:

• Bringing all these topics (misc, off-topic, general) into one sub-board that contributes to the front page like the other main content boards.
• Replacing “General Discussion” as a name - as we mentioned in our previous post, we’re looking for something that will more closely jibe with the sub-boards’ eventual guidelines regarding it being the place to discuss topics beyond League that still reside in the same cultural space.

We fully understand that some of you may disagree with these goals, however, we’re convinced that they’re necessary for making sure the upcoming updates have a meaningful impact in securing the long-term health of the NA boards. That doesn’t mean we don’t value your feedback on this proposed space:

I appreciate the update on what's going on since that other thread went radio silent as I assume you guys were talking about the things you read there.

I have to say I still am disappointed in your consistent inability to see the good things that come from GD as a whole and instead focusing only on things that further the agenda that you'd like to adjust the boards. I never see GD spoken about by Rioters in anything but negative tones when honestly the last few Riot posts Ive seen there (Katey for one) have received a staggering amount of positivity in their direction. There has been no "What is good, what is positive, what we want to keep from GD". Seems kind of off-culture for a company that preaches about positivity and anti-toxicity so much. Remember that bit that Lyte told us once about a negativity bias?

As for the name of General Discussion's mash up with these other boards, I do not particularly understand or see the reasoning behind your "renaming" and to be honest I think you are being disingenuous when you say that you are renaming it so it "jives better" with the guidelines.

Here is a short list I compiled in about 5 seconds of gaming forums that have a "General Discussion":

1. World of Warcraft
2. Star Wars: The Old Republic
3. Hearthstone
4. Bethesda (entitled "Community Discussion", actually)
5. EA
6. DOTA (On the official Steam channel, I didnt look into other places)
7. Wildstar

All of these places can outline rules for their conversations in their General Discussion without having to rename it to something ridiculous. I honestly think this is just a measure to place the board as far away from the community that lives there already (GDers) because you don't want that community to exist, whether they want to follow your new discussion rules or not. This is disappointing because honestly there are a lot of great people that post there, that would actively follow your new rules if they didn't feel so alienated by this "discussion" that has been happening since we found out we were losing our "home". To me, I can see no other legitimate reasoning to rename a General Discussion board (which is what it will be) to anything other than "General Discussion".

In the end, I suppose a name is a name is a name, and it doesn't truly matter in the grand scheme of things. What does matter is the implication that you do not want to associate with the people of General Discussion so badly that you will do anything to tear away from anything that resembles it in the slightest.

I've been such a positive supporter of Riot...been called a fanboy(girl) way too many times to count, but I am really finding myself struggling to find the positive message in this from Riot, and I pride myself on being able to find the positives in most situations.

{quoted}

That leaves GD and the future of the Misc. / Off-topic / General space - let’s break this one down a bit. Our core objectives here are essentially two-fold:

• Bringing all these topics (misc, off-topic, general) into one sub-board that contributes to the front page like the other main content boards.
• Replacing “General Discussion” as a name - as we mentioned in our previous post, we’re looking for something that will more closely jibe with the sub-boards’ eventual guidelines regarding it being the place to discuss topics beyond League that still reside in the same cultural space.

One problem with this logic (and I apologize I didn't address this sooner): Misc/Gen Discussion are not the same.

The Misc form; at least attempts to be, a real form regarding subjects about LoL that don't fit anywhere else: Whereas GD is a haven for trash and nonsense. If you were to mix the two together you will get the "legitimate" threads (ideas such as game direction, feedback that doesn't fall anywhere else, conversations about RIOT itself, or otherwise game discussions) flooded out by an army of GD posts. Therefore you would make the functionality of the forums far worse.

In battle.net (WoW) for instance they separate a "GD" that is supposed to be game specific with another combination of forums concerning "issues outside of WoW". This argument is repeated over many other companies as well. A "True GD" needs to be on LoL game topic... and not talking about random sex things or otherwise trash of the current GD.

IN summary... although the names could be different the need to separate GD and MISC is key to fundamental forum (on topic) function.

Indeed it is so...

{quoted}

• Replacing “General Discussion” as a name - as we mentioned in our previous post, we’re looking for something that will more closely jibe with the sub-boards’ eventual guidelines regarding it being the place to discuss topics beyond League that still reside in the same cultural space.

or you could not

Name the new off-topic forum something like "Mid or AFK" or "The Institute of War" (since neither the Institute nor GD will exist any more)

{quoted}

• Replacing “General Discussion” as a name - as we mentioned in our previous post, we’re looking for something that will more closely jibe with the sub-boards’ eventual guidelines regarding it being the place to discuss topics beyond League that still reside in the same cultural space.

So you rename it to "The Jungle"? I'm sorry, but what? How does "The Jungle" fit that description better than "General Discussion"? This makes absolutely no sense.

{quoted}

• Story & Creativity: Discussion of official creative content, creative videos, fanart, cosplay. (Fan fiction / roleplaying to potentially be integrated at some point based on efficacy of tag/filter tech.)

It's like you guys didn't listen to anything that the Roleplaying Board said, at all. I personally spent hours typing up posts and replies to the situation as it pertains to the members of our community, and you handily disregarded it. If you reply to this message at all, I expect you all to say something like, "Hey there, and thanks for your reply. We care about how you guys feel about this, and nothing is set in stone. We think filter tech will be an awesome change to make everyone more active and bring people together." etc etc

But you cannot possibly understand how damaging that system is to our community. If you and the rest of your team did, you wouldn't be trying to lump us in with the rest of the creative community. We're different and unique, with very specific needs and a very ordered and structured world that allows our members to do, and play, and enjoy themselves in all the creative ways we love and require to thrive and build.

Our board desires to go public. We still do. Our full-on segregation is killing us, slowly. But what you're suggesting will disrupt the community in ways that it, quite frankly, will never, ever recover from. It will never be what we made it again. We have spent years, literally years, that's not an exaggeration on my part, building and growing a community, and a world.

We have dozens of threads that represent specific areas on Runeterra in which characters can have their own stories take place. We have world continuity, and way for people to interact with specific champions if they wish to do so. We have cohesive stories that go between threads, and the entire thing is built upon structure.

What you are suggesting will destroy that structure. It will destroy continuity between threads by throwing fanfiction, and art, and cosplay, and music, and whatever other nonsense in with that world, and any sense of cohesion and a unified world will be destroyed. Even if a person hides literally every single thread that is NOT a roleplaying thread, people will be spamming inside closed roleplaying threads, interrupting stories, barging in where they don't understand, or don't care. They will be trolling, asking questions, laughing at goings on, commenting, disrupting the flow, and damaging the hard work we've all tried to make over the last few years.

Imagine, if you would, an author trying to write a story, but every time he writes something, huge walls of comments, or emotes, or downvotes, or criticisms, start popping up between each line. The story, the atmosphere, everything, would be utterly disrupted. Imagine trying to watch a film, and in the middle of the movie, the scene is spliced with random pictures, songs, or other such things that don't have anything to do with the film itself. It would be worse than commercials, because at least those are usually timed in specific places.

It will ruin the system we have in place to regulate ourselves, our community rules and guidelines, our means to accurately judge and weigh decisions with wide-reaching consequences for the community itself, due to outside interference from people that aren't part of the community or don't participate. You will break us, and everything we've made.

We want to go public, but we do NOT want to go public like that. Not in the slightest. And for all the time our community members took begging you, trying to explain to you, you've all plugged your ears and gone on your merry way, intentionally ignorant of our plight. I honestly don't know how we can make things more clear to you that what you are doing will break our community apart. It'll be the nail on the coffin and the stake through the heart that ends us.

I know if you're all reading this, you're chuckling and shaking your heads in your desk-chairs and looking at your monitor and thinking, "Man, this Kaz guy is completely overreacting and blowing things out of proportion."
And while I may be exaggerating to some degree to make my point, for the most part, I am not.

I've been a major part of the community for longer than it's been its own forum, and even when it used to be on the Lore Discussion Forums. For over three years, I've watched and helped the community grow. I've played a major part in trying to be a force for positive change to bring everyone together and attempted to foster a feeling of communal wellness among everyone there. I've had my finger on the pulse of the RP Forums ever since, and few know as well as I do its moods and its careful balance. I even acted as a go-between of sorts between our community and Tamat via Skype to help get things organized after the move last October, and after all the chaos it created for us that we still haven't recovered from. My words populate the sidebar when one goes to the RP Boards, voted there by members of the community, and while I have my fair share of naysayers and haters, few people, I believe, would be able to say that I have not gone over and above what is expected of any community member in terms of trying to make things better for everyone.

I never speak my opinion without first trying to understand how it will affect the community as a whole.

And right now, I know exactly how devastating this change would be for us.

I'm just trying to make you folks understand it too.

So, again, I am asking you, even begging, on behalf of the entire RP Community, and countless people who feel their only real home on the forums is about to be destroyed, who have lost any faith in your ability to listen and empathize with anyone outside of your own goals, please do not roll us into this conglomerated subforum. It is not the beneficial choice that you want it to be for us, and it will not serve to grow or build our community in the ways that you think.

You cannot know our community better than we do, and this kind of change will end it.

"Replacing “General Discussion” as a name" AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAnd. You didn't learn.

I don't get it. Why is there this HUGE amount of effort/energy put into these changes? I keep seeing "the community is fairly fractured". Well yeah... Has anyone who is part of this project looked at websites like Reddit/MSNBC/Fox/NPR/ect...? You notice how they have a fractured set up, it's because each person likes something different than the next. I don't go to Team Recruitment simply because it doesn't interest me. Nothing you do is going to make me want to see Memes & Games. It doesn't float my boat.

All of this time/effort can be fixed with a simple subscription mode like Reddit for example. Let me subscribe and block some of the different boards. That way the front page for me will change often. If someone doesn't like GD, they just unsubscribe and problem solved. You can't FORCE people to interact in the way you wish. Give them the tools to do it, and they will find the way they enjoy it.

http://imgur.com/6aohRa5

I thought we had reached an understanding when I talked to Zwill in this post....

The Jungle: Video games, movies, anime, “nerd culture,” and any of the many other fandoms that exist in the same cultural space as League.

Literally a worse name than all-chat. I didn't think it was possible. To me, those topics don't seem all related. Pretty general. Pretty general topics. And if we're going to be discussing them...

May we at least have a poll for the new name of the merge of General Discussion/Misc./Memes&Games?

Look at this past poll: http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/GD/mcOWaRKa-poll-what-should-the-new-name-of-gd-be

There was an overwhelming people saying "We want General Discussion as our name" and General Discussion makes the most sense to be the name, because if we're going to to DISCUSSING GENERAL stuff like: Anime, League, other nerd stuff, etc.

I REALLY do not want it to have such a cringeworthy name

There is also some other ones I think need to not be name changed into what you have. I'll go over each one for you.

• The Jungle - Make a poll for this like I said. A lot of good posters who has been around since they first the yellow themed GD are pretty much super against as myself, and A LOT of them will probably leave or become a lot less active. Reason why? Mainly cause you are not listening to the majority who are getting merged into this new board.

• Riot Plz! - Too unclear to what you want it to be. This isn't really needed while having these other subsections.

• Strategy & Tactics - This is unclear too. Doesn't really say "We can talk about balance here" or "We can post big plays vids here".

• NA Looking For Group - Just needs to changed to "NA Matchup & Events". This makes that events are here more clear.

• Story & Creativity - Again, unclear. Let them know that fan art stuff goes here. Creativity backs up with Story so hard. I would say name it to "Story & Fan Creations".

tl;dr; Make the names more specific so people can know what to expect more off just the title of the subboard.

So basically it's gg. We lose, they're gonna ignore us again. Nice job.

tl;dr:

"We heard your feedback, but we don't give a shit because we know what's best. Deal with it."

Will vote based threat sorting be the only way to sort the threats, or will you also able to sort them by recently bumped?