#TL;DR

I am proposing the addition of one sorting option and three viewing options for the Boards. They are as follows:

• Recent - Organizes comments based on chronology of most recent post in a string

• All - All comments are maximized by default, there is no Show More anywhere.

• First - All comments are minimized by default except the original post in each string.

• Smart - All comments are maximized by default until encountering key posts.

The link in the OP is a clickable mock-up for the First viewing option, and the attached static screenshots show different parts of the proposed functionality. I'm happy to answer questions and such!

Hey all,

There have been a lot of discussions on how difficult it can be to follow huge threads with hundreds of responses. Show More tends to be a bit illogical or move information around in unexpected ways, and it's extremely difficult to find new posts or look for the most recent comments on a big thread. In the current platform implementation the user has to parse through a lot of irrelevant information to find what is important, and this is what I am looking to resolve.

This concept was discussed heavily with Sir ArmaMalum, shoutout to him for offering great ideas and being an awesome debate partner!

The link on the OP is to a website called Solidify. I have put together a series of mock-ups that can be clicked through like a website, with an intermediate frame between each click showing clickable areas in red boxes. This is intended to be a rough example of the functionality I am suggesting here, and is by no means final. I will attach the screenshots individually on the body of this thread so that they can be independently viewed.

#Current Thread Functionality

One thing we need to keep in mind right off the bat: There is a difference between how content is sorted and how content is viewed. On the Boards, there are currently two options for sorting content: Best and New. Best organizes the comments section primarily based on upvotes, New organizes it based on the chronology of the original strings' posts that are directly replying to the OP. This only affects the order in which you see content, not which posts are visible to you.

At the present moment, there is only one default option for viewing content. Current implementation shows the full content of each post that is visible, and other posts are hidden behind Show More using an algorithm I don't particularly understand. Rioter comments can be hidden from view due to this functionality (I can confirm this), and comments that are upvoted significantly more than surrounding content can also be hidden. It appears that Show More is based on nesting limits primarily, rather than showing the content the user wants to see and hiding the irrelevant information. Content can be expanded and minimized via the minus signs and plus signs in the upper right of comments.

For the purposes of the proposed functionality outlined below, the current implementation is closest to what I will be calling Smart viewing.

#Proposed Thread Sorting Functionality

As mentioned above, there are currently two options for sorting content, Best and New. I would like to extend this to three:

• Best - Organizes comments based on upvotes
• New - Organizes comments based on chronology of original post in a string
• Recent - Organizes comments based on chronology of most recent post in a string

The addition of a Recent sorting option would allow the user to more easily navigate to the most recent content on a given thread, which is generally a significant reason for returning to a large discussion. The string at the top of the comments section would have the most recent comment on the thread at the bottom, and would thus be significantly easier to find. The New sorting option does not give any indication of where the most recent content is located on a discussion, and if there are 500 posts it is almost impossible to find unless switching to Chronological view.

Proposed Thread Viewing Functionality

The current implementation of thread viewing is acceptable for smaller threads, but it very rapidly breaks down when there is a high volume of content in a single discussion. As I mentioned in the introduction, a user has to navigate through an extremely high amount of information that he or she either doesn't care about or has already read. To this end, I propose a set of three completely new view options:

• All - All comments are maximized by default, there is no Show More anywhere.
• First - All comments are minimized by default except the original post in each string.
• Smart - All comments are maximized by default until encountering key posts. If there are no more in a string, all subsequent content is minimized.

All

This one doesn't require much explanation. All content is shown by default in all its glory, but can be minimized at any time using the currently existing functionality thereof.

First

This setting is the one used in all of the mock-ups and screenshots I've linked on this thread. The first post in each string is limited to 200 characters and can be clicked to maximize just like all posts in the Red Tracker. All direct replies to that post are minimized, and all sub-replies are inside of those minimized replies as children.

Upon maximizing the first post, all direct replies are opened to a limit of 200 characters and sub-replies are opened to be minimized with their own children (if applicable). This likely sounds confusing, but hopefully the attached screenshots and clickable mock-up help clear it up a bit.

Smart

This setting is almost identical to the current live implementation. Strings with key posts (Red posts, highly upvoted responses, new content, etc.) will have all content fully visible up to and including the important information. Everything past that point will be minimized, until encountering a new string with a key post. The preceding posts are left visible because they offer context, the information that follows is not necessary to provide that context.