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Welcome to the Community Beta

Pendragon·9/17/2013, 6:39:21 PM·40 votes·21,221 views

Hey folks,

For the last little while a small team of Rioters have been thinking about how League of Legends players interact online outside of the game itself. Players have conversations, they share awesome content, and they form communities.

A lot of that interaction happens back on our official forums. Traditional forums are pretty great at fostering discussion, but with a community as large and talkative as ours it can be truly overwhelming to find the content you want or the conversations you want to add your voice to. We’ve also heard a ton of feedback from you guys with ideas on how to improve the official forums.

So we took a step back and thought about how we could best serve the community’s needs. We looked at other thriving community and social platforms, we talked to players about what they want, we drank a lot of coffee, and we started building a new community platform with this goal in mind:

We want to create a player-driven platform that brings the community together around awesome content and discussions relevant to your interests.

  • You should be able to find awesome content that you care about
  • It should be easy to have great conversations with other players and Rioters
  • Your actions should influence the community
  • You should be able to form friendships and build communities with like-minded players
  • Your feedback should shape the future of the platform

So we’ve been working on this for a little while now – but we can only get so far on our research and assumptions. We need you to participate – post, upvote, downvote, discuss, debate, and test what we built (read: break stuff).

What we really need the most is for you to tell us what you think so we can move forward and work with you to build something great for the community. We’re excited to share what we’ve got today, but it’s important for you to know that this is an early look – it’s gonna change and grow and evolve based on the community’s direction.

So, welcome – help us test this and make it better. Community pls!

Oh, and go here to ask us anything about the project: http://community.na.leagueoflegends.com/c/beta-feedback/f1Fsz53Q-were-the-team-behind-the-community-beta-ask-us-anything

FAQ:

Will this replace the forums? Maybe one day. I can’t state this strongly enough, though: this is at a super early stage. We’re asking YOU to shape the direction of this platform to be the best possible place for League of Legends content and discussion.

Is this available globally? For our first round of testing, to keep things focused, we’re just launching this for the NA region, but anyone with an NA account can participate. Based on community feedback, we’ll think about the right time to bring this to other regions and languages.

Will posts from the current forums appear here? Nope. It’s a brand new platform and the way discussions work is fundamentally different so it’d be pretty messy to try to copy and paste things over.

Can I give feedback? YES! GIVE FEEDBACK! Go here and tell us your thoughts: http://community.na.leagueoflegends.com/c/beta-feedback

When will it be done? Short answer: never. Just like with League of Legends, we’re committed to constantly improving this based on your feedback.

Is this inspired by Reddit? We took inspiration from a variety of community and social platforms that have been extremely successful at serving community needs. Reddit’s a big one, for sure, but we’re also looking at Facebook, Disqus, and a dozen other discussion and social sites. That got us to where we are today – now it’s your opportunity to help shape this.

Why couldn’t you make improvements to the existing forums? The current forums use off-the-shelf forums software (vBulletin) that’s really great at what it does. However, the changes necessary to accomplish our goals would basically mean rewriting the whole platform anyway, so we decided to build something new ourselves.

Where will you keep us up to date on changes? We’ll have constant update threads in the Beta Feedback subcommunity with the latest updates.

370 Comments

Void Devoid9/18/2013, 12:08:34 PM44 votes

looks like garbage

RiotShoeface9/18/2013, 12:07:38 AM35 votes

I r excite

The MechE9/22/2013, 6:21:18 PM27 votes

This is terrible. I feel like my comment isn't going to even be read because of these reddit-style threads.

TheBagelCrusader9/18/2013, 12:33:04 AM18 votes

Would it make more sense that the link to Community Beta be under the "Community" tab instead of the "Forum" tab?

AlishaShatogi9/27/2013, 5:38:10 PM18 votes

Not a fan of this. :/ Much prefer traditional forums.

Tsaalyo10/17/2013, 7:13:00 PM13 votes

This is terrible, seriously. If I wanted to participate in a Reddit-styled anything, I'd just post on Reddit.

People like traditional forums. They just do. That's why they're the mainstream model, beating all the other silly versions of posting communities that competed over the past two decades. But even if you don't care much about that, then just accept this: This does not feel like a community. This does not feel like a forum. This feels like a news article and a little comments section.

Riot, Reds, if you guys like Reddit so much, use it, post there all you want, your posts will trickle down to the actual forums pretty quickly. But don't force the rest of us to adopt your fad. I am totally comfortable making the sweeping statement that the vast majority of the community does not like this new system. Don't cram it down our throats. The forums are already far slower than they were even this time last year, and THIS will just kill them.

Stop trying to force the rest of us to like what you like. I thought your parents would have taught you that when you called a classmate a cootiehead for preferring Big Bad Beetleborgs over Power Rangers.

AnonTwo9/24/2013, 2:09:01 PM11 votes

  1. Why Do threads show when the thread was made, and not when the last post was made?

  2. Why is there such an emphasis on popularity, and not the threads actual activity?

  3. How is this fair to neutral threads that get neither downvotes or upvotes? Can you still bump a thread?

4.Why did my 4 go here and not below 3? What kind of trippy auto-formatting is this using where i can't control where the 4 goes?

  1. How does this encourage good posts, and not bandwagon/trend posts that pander for upvotes?
  2. Why did my 5 and 6 turn into a 1 and 2? Why is numbered order auto-formatted unlike the forums? Even the forums don't do numbered lists well!

Not a big fan, and while i know some of this is bug related. i also know some of this is intended

Not a fan.

Japandroid9/18/2013, 2:30:10 AM8 votes

Can you guys make the formatting easier to use? One of the things I and many other people hate about reddit is the formatting, and you guys use the exact same formatting.

I thing you should make the formatting more like the forum's myself.

Yisery9/17/2013, 10:38:06 PM7 votes

Did you take a look at Discourse? I like it a lot, it's simple, works like a forum and can handle replies in a chronological way.

Yormaughm10/1/2013, 2:58:17 PM7 votes

I've never been to reddit before. How the hell do I downvote this and can I do it more than once?

AIexanderNW11/16/2013, 10:05:51 PM7 votes

its shit

VexingRaven11/25/2013, 4:27:58 AM4 votes

I do not understand how you feel that the reddit-style layout provides these stated goals better than a traditional forum. I think if you want to provide these things, you should include more of the features that other forums have. The LoL forums right now are extremely stripped-down and basic, going so far as to even hide user profiles. Start with restoring the community-building features other forum softwares have, and I think you will find that to be far more beneficial than this reddit-style software.

The Climax10/26/2013, 9:45:23 AM3 votes

The formatting is absolute crap. Coming from someone who earns his living entirely off front-end web development, whoever came up with the idea that "space space enter" should mean line-break needs to feel a little bit bad about it.

Why is enter to break not good enough? Who is expected to understand space space enter by default? I've never seen that anywhere.

Khmera11/22/2013, 10:12:50 PM2 votes

Late comment, but I'm sure it wouldn't have been read sooner if I posted a month earlier. But that is the problem this layout is making it hard to read comments in succession. Also when typing a comment you can't back track to mistakes because the box will move your words to the bottom. Also a filter is necessary. Originality is key too, I understand the usage of Reddit, but this is something you plan on expanding alone. Would be nice to have a better forum than Reddit. Or one more preferable. Also I noticed champions can be linked in and items, but what about jungle monsters? A little unsatisfied by this new mechanic, not because of change but because it fails to implement readability, ease of use, an it's own ideas. =/