This forum needs a sort option like Reddit for Controversial topics.
If you have 2000 upvotes and 2000 downvotes, you deserve to be top on a list somewhere. Not lost behind the threads with 4000 upvotes and 0 downvotes.
Even downvoting takes effort to do. If you have that many people on both sides of an argument taking the time to vote either way, it's a thread that should be looked at.
Pendragon13 votesThere are a few issues at play here and I think each warrants a different solution to some extent.
A high volume discussion doesn't earn a place on the home page if it's controversial
I think the right way to address this is actually to just factor more than just upvotes, downvotes and time into how we sort things. We want the default homepage view to be a list of relevant and interesting topics to whoever is viewing the page, (which could mean that the home page is different to some extent for every person. We definitely want to build a more sophisticated sorting model that could help with this.
If I don't post circlejerky nonsense then nobody will see my post
I think that right now this isn't a problem because there isn't a enough content for some to be "never seen". in the future I think the way this gets solved is varying contexts where in the right context any content can be relevant and highly viewed. If you use reddit as a comparison which a lot of people seem to be doing - you can't just look at /r/leagueoflegends but instead at reddit in its entirety. The #1 post on the LoL subreddit is about streamers crushing low elo players. In the context of LoL it's the most important topic, but on all of Reddit it doesn't break the top 200. I think our plan for this community platform is that there are eventually tons and tons of different communities each with their own cultures, rules, and moderation styles. If your content is not relevant one place, maybe it will be somewhere else.
Thoughts?
Hellioning4 votesThat would be fine, and I would be totally down with that. How would you do that, then? It's great to say 'we'd like more then just these few things to be important' but what else could you add to it? Number of times seen? Number of posts? That might solve that problem, but it opens up the additional problem of 'how do new threads get seen?'
That's fine, I guess, but if a community in, say, champion balance forms of support mains who hate 'glory hogging adcs' then people who post 'hey, maybe adcs are too weak' will get downvoted while a bunch of 'adcs are op, nerf' will get upvoted. And maybe one or the other is right, but it'd have nothing to do with how well the arguments are made, simply what arguments are made.
Pendragon9 votes
- That would be fine, and I would be totally down with that. How would you do that, then? It's great to say 'we'd like more then just these few things to be important' but what else could you add to it? Number of times seen? Number of posts? That might solve that problem, but it opens up the additional problem of 'how do new threads get seen?'
We're having the same folks work on this problem who work on lots of other complex data model problems at Riot, and over time I think we'll get better and better. I'd love to get to a place where you genuinely want to read every single thread on your front page, and hopefully the people who are smarter than me can work with you guys to figure out what that means.
- That's fine, I guess, but if a community in, say, champion balance forms of support mains who hate 'glory hogging adcs' then people who post 'hey, maybe adcs are too weak' will get downvoted while a bunch of 'adcs are op, nerf' will get upvoted. And maybe one or the other is right, but it'd have nothing to do with how well the arguments are made, simply what arguments are made.
One idea we're considering is that people can make their own communities and moderate them however they choose. That would mean that if you don't like the one that exists, you can just make your own with better rules.
Solari Brigadier1 votesOne idea we're considering is that people can make their own communities and moderate them however they choose. That would mean that if you don't like the one that exists, you can just make your own with better rules.
Would Community Subreddits (what I'm tentatively calling your proposed "make their own communities" because, let's be fair, they are) be able to affect voting though? I assume ComSubs work similarly to subreddits in the sense that you can set rules and moderate as heavily as you want by removing threads/posts on an individual basis, but subreddit moderators can't actually affect or counteract community voting.
That being said, the ability to change how topics show/stay on the front page of a ComSub would be much appreciated. Even giving moderators the ability to sticky multiple threads to make sure they can't get downvoted to oblivion, or the ability to choose how the ComSub's front page is sorted by default, would help greatly. Of course, the best would be giving individual ComSubs the ability to weight factors like time, votes and posts, but that would also introduce a level of inconsistency across the site that I don't think would work even on reddit.
Hellioning2 votesOne idea we're considering is that people can make their own communities and moderate them however they choose. That would mean that if you don't like the one that exists, you can just make your own with better rules.
That'll just make even more circle jerking. We'd have an adc forum, a bruiser forum, a support forum, all clamoring for buffs to their mains and nerfs to their counters. And how would a new community get started? Quality posts don't mean nearly as much as you people seem to think it does. If no one can see the quality posts, it doesn't matter how great they are. 'Why would I try out this new, untested community' someone asks 'when I could join this much larger community? Sure, I dislike some of it's rules, but there are people here!'
And I know it's not a zero sum game, and that you can be in more then one community at once. But why bother posting in a forum that's not gonna get you seen if you can post in a forum that has a bunch of traffic?
Solari Brigadier1 votesI don't think the problem would be circlejerking so much as fracturing already small communities. Look at r/leagueoflegendsmeta, which has less than 5% of r/leagueoflegends' subscriber count, and then fracture that between r/LoLSupportMeta and r/LoLadcMeta and r/LoLMidMeta, etc. Each community would be extremely small and disjointed from the whole.
the HadMatter152 votes"One idea we're considering is that people can make their own communitie's and moderate them however they choose. That would mean that if you don't like the one that exists, you can just make your own with better rules."
youll just wind up with porn communities and circle jerking communities that way.
Letler2 votesIf we use reddit as the model, than allowing users to create communities and moderate themselves would also bring the other side of reddit. Reddit has content that is serious and intellectual as well as circlejerky stuff. that's all well and good and a grand vision for lol community forums.
My question is why would lol compete with reddit which seems to have all the capabilities that riot wants for this site?
Snailed2 votesThis is what I was wondering too. Just create r/Riotleagueoflegends
Solari Brigadier2 votesBecause Riot wants to be able to build upon, expand and iterate on their own official forums - which reddit is not. They've made a point of saying multiple times in the past that the live forums are (in simple terms) as bad as their client (and probably worse). There's just no room there for them to create a better or more user-friendly experience.
Granted, there's a lot of room for improvement on these beta forums, but the purpose is to make these the new official forums which Riot's web devs have much better control over and ability to evolve and improve.
NoxiousIce4 votesI think that perhaps instead of just communities, perhaps add a tag system as well for easy cross-posting, and easy searching that way we have a way to not have a million "Poppy is crap!" threads, and I can just search for the Poppy tag and Balance tag, but at the same time you have the communities so that if I'm just browsing I don't have to worry about those tags.
A "featured" post where a new post gets featured randomly for discussion every few hours would be good too. It would mitigate this whole Tyranny of the Majority problem that everyone is worried about. Obviously there'd have to be some way of making sure that it wasn't a porn thread, or it was a thread that might actually merit discussing, but I'm sure there is a way to do that.
Sir ArmaMalum2 votesAs a question though, what would stop trolls and ragers to simply spam every tag possible? Maybe if you had to write each one out, or tags being a moderator accessible thing maybe.
I think it's a great idea, just wondering if you had an idea for this specific problem as well.
NoxiousIce4 votesI had a few thoughts on it. One possibility is that the tags are all pre-defined, and that the OP and the readers of the thread would be able to put different sets of tags on the post, there might be overlap but for instance the OP couldn't put "Insightful" on the post, but he could put "Annie" on it. Additionally the tags function may be locked until the account your commenting with is level 30.
Tags could be removable too by requiring a -2 (or less) vote on those tags, while their resistance would be built up by people confirming the tags. Sure a lot of people wouldn't worry about the system, but for those of us that do, it would improve everyone's experience. The hope I guess is that there are less trolls than honest people.
This is all just one interpretation of tags, and as long as it added to the functionality and usability of the site I'd be all for it.
Sir ArmaMalum1 votesI'm a fan of the voting to disable/buffer tags. Like you said many wouldn't worry about it but the fact that it can be moderated in some way is a great idea. Have you considered making your own post on Site Feedback about this? I could post the idea myself (your credit of course) if you do not want to OP on the Beta currently.
NoxiousIce1 votesDon't worry about credit, especially since while the first thing I posted was my idea, the second was heavily inspired by another post that I found fairly interesting. Post it if you like, I don't have much of an interest in doing so personally. If you do, be sure to link it to be so I can read, upvote, and participate in the thread.
Sir ArmaMalum1 votesNesting cap got me on the more recent comment, so I'll throw the link here: http://community.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/site-feedback/NkiNNxaG-idea-category-tags-to-help-searching-and-sorting
Hope you like the proposal and feel free to call me out on anything you don't like! I credited you anyway, hope you don't mind :)
burdluver903 votesWhat if instead of upvoting posts, you only upvote tags?
Some of them can just be content based (champions, items, etc) but other can be things like "Question", "Insightful" "Enhancement", "QoL Fix", etc. You could have sub communities for the various tags. I could look at the Insightful community to see all the highest rated insightful posts, or if I want to discuss Annie, I go to her subcommunity and see the most Annie-esque stuff.
Add some negative tags like "troll", "circle jerk", "no possible discussion" (if someone just posts "OMG Rito pls, fix X" without any explanation or context or suggestions, it's not really something you can start a discussion about), etc and if a post gets a high enough rating on those negative tags it's hidden or removed.
The problem with just upvoting or downvoting is that most things aren't that binary. I might post a really insightful, thought-provoking idea that someone disagrees with. They might then downvote it. It gets lost to the oblivion, no one discusses it. This is why people are worried about unpopular opinions getting lost, since you will get downvoted to oblivion. However, if the same posts were voted based on tags, even if they disagreed with the content, there isn't a generic "like/dislike" for them to downvote it.
NoxiousIce1 votesThis is a really cool idea. I think another thing that could be done is a behind the scenes algorithm for determining a posts "value", weighting votes for certain things more than others that way in the lists of threads, the things that are important to Riot at the moment can be seen and discussed more frequently. If Riot is concerned about the new patch's effects on Ahri for example, the Ahri tag would have its behind the scenes weight increased slightly so that people would naturally discuss her more because topics about her are more visible. As long as the weighting for certain things didn't change too much, you could also have fairly solid and static weights such as "Insightful" being worth inherently more than "Funny" so that the community can see more of what is important to the growth of the community, riot and the game.
Sir ArmaMalum2 votesI like this idea as well! I'm not completely sold on the negative tags, but I do agree this system of voting can be a lot more dynamic and forgiving than the vague "total" voting. I'm going to add this to my post here outlining a general proposal for this. I actually have a few not purely negative tag ideas but I think they may float your boat. Feel free to suggest better ways to explain, more tag ideas, anything! I pride myself on having an open mind, so maybe see if you can sell me on the idea for negative tags too! :)
Sir ArmaMalum2 votesI do agree with this, and as someone who has stuck by the Beta from the start I have seen some fairly good ideas that can either be an intermediary solution or a good seed for an idea. Most if not all of these are not my own.
---Remove downvoting, add time based vote decay
This will give a new post just as much of an immediate chance as other topics, but still allow popular topics to rise to the top. More of an intermediary solution imho.
---Give reports and Red posts ordering weight
While not solving the problem of immediate visibility, if a Red posts it could provide additional momentum to increase visibility. Most posts where I see Reds (this one for example) are well-thought out and presented well enough to intice a response. Along with reports being a tool to deny controversial/trolling posts the visibility they do not deserve.
---Moderation of some kind, be it volunteers or Reds.
Personally not a huge fan, but moderation that allows control over posts would allow for an easier time to "tweak" visibility of posts. Both would require a lot of personal attention, or a dangerous risk for empowering players. More of an intermediate imho.
---More sub-topics
~~I have been asking for this myself for a bit. More topics can allow for more constructive posts in appropriate areas and funnel funny/troll stuff to other topics that allow and even encourage that. A small addendum would be to disconnect topics like Memes & Games from the front page to allow more room for interesting and constructive topics. ~~ You literally said this exact thing and I cannot wait for it to be implemented :).
---Use the pinning tool more
A lot of forums I see have two staple pinned posts. A "frequent posts" thread, even for non-support topics, and a "dev favorite posts of the week/day/month" thread.
Also, I would absoultely love to see more done with the profile feature. Ideas about a reputation mechanic, upvote/post/comment trackers and private friend messaging have been but a few (imho) great ideas to enhance the already awesome update and general profile feed.
There are more, but I can't quite recall, sorry. There are poros and cons to all of these I realize, but your points of what needs to be addressed as well as bringing awareness to the big picture are completely valid imho, thank you.
Newbert Newman1 votesWOW forums for instance, while maybe as toxic as these forums, do feel more cohesive because of "Dev post of the day/week".
What about having more large scale community moderation on the forums @RIOT? People that you see contributing to the community in a positive fashion having a hand in guiding discussions and helping to organize "subgroups", much like the green posts on Blizz forums? I know that there are "Adjudicators" or something like that on Riot forums but I don't see posts from them like I would with Blizz.
Not that I'm saying "be like Blizz", just trying to add an idea :)
Sire Hippington3 votesA high volume discussion doesn't earn a place on the home page if it's controversial
I think this problem might be solved if the upvotes for the original post are no longer allso the upvotes for the thread itself
currently, If the op starts a great discussion but his opinion in that reflects the minority, he will get downvoted even if all think it's a good and construktive discussion, wich means the thread will not get to the fronpage even though it diseves it
If the thread it's self would have his own votes as well as the original post, people that like the discussion within the entire thread could upvote the thread, while still downvoting the original post if they disagree with his opinion, so the upvotes of a thread would depend on the entire thread instead of the original post.
sry for my english, i hope u understand the idea i have.
ratcharmer1 votesIf I don't post circlejerky nonsense then nobody will see my post I think that right now this isn't a problem because there isn't a enough content for some to be "never seen". in the future I think the way this gets solved is varying contexts where in the right context any content can be relevant and highly viewed.
The issue with your reasoning here is that rate of content creation and number of viewers are roughly proportionate to one another.
Thus, if there aren't enough threads being created to bury your post, then odds are there also aren't many people online to look at your post. Fears of "no one will see my post" are not relieved by your statement. :(
Pendragon1 votesWell - that's why I include both a "current" and a "future" :P
It's currently not a problem (I think) and in the future when it becomes a problem (I hope) we have a solution in mind!
ratcharmer3 votesI'm actually fairly certain it IS currently a problem.
The most obvious way this shows up is that if the first person to read a thread downvotes it you can be pretty certain no one else will ever read/comment on that thread.
On the other hand, in the old GD I would see threads that started off with downvotes and then went on to get 100+ net upvotes.
Sir ArmaMalum1 votesThere has been some great ideas had by a few people not directly connected to your post. I was wondering if you could possibly provide input on an idea I have compiled based largely in ideas in this thread. Here is the post in question.
A tl;dr is incorporate category tags, and allow voting on those specific tags. So, for example, a post asking for a change to Teemo Shrooms would score high on the tags "Teemo", "Balance", and "Nerf" but not in other catagories. Provided the OP added those tags when he/she posted. This can also allow downvoting to 'disable' mis-labeled tags so trolls/ragers can't spam every catagory for undeserved attention.
If you've already browsed it I apologize, I'm not expecting a reply, merely wanting to make you and possibly other Reds aware of the idea. Thank you!
Pendragon2 votesDone :)
Sir ArmaMalum1 votes<3
Fear Not4 votesI'm more concerned with the ratio of upvotes, views, and downvotes:
Let's say there's a post with 100 views, and 100 upvotes. Every single person that saw it agreed with what it said, and enough to upvote, at that.
Should that post be lower than a post with 2000 views, 1000 upvotes, and 899 downvotes?
Under the current system, The latter post, disliked by about half the people that saw it, would show up higher than the outstandingly agreed-upon post that only got 100 views. I think that that is by far the biggest problem.
Sir ArmaMalum3 votesA popular idea has been to instead completely replace the sorting via upvoting and sort via "activity", so, using your example 2000+ and 2000- voted topics would hold just as much weight as 4000+ posts. Btoh ideas have merit and flaws, but I just wanted to throw that out there.
Knight Devout3 votesEven now, discussion with upvotes and downvotes get lost in the back while a discussion about Yasuo is holding the first page just because a lot of people are complaining. So saying " I don't think this will happen" it's nonsensical: it's already happening.
EDIT: Oh, and the 320 upvotes thread in this section it's also proof.
Pendragon3 votesDo you have an example of a discussion you think should be higher than it is?
Pryotra3 votesHere are a few I feel are out of order. Note the scroll bar for page placement.
The first two red outlined posts have no responses, and are reletively old compared to the two I highlighted. I had to scroll near the bottom of the page to find the Red commented post 38 minutes ago. Compare that to the first post, 6 hours old and 0 replies, but got some early upvotes so it remains high on the list.
I found these within five minutes of looking, though it took me a bit to drag out paint and highlight them for you.
btw, how is someone supposed to show you this WITHOUT going to a 3rd party? Yet another example of something that needs to be addressed. I have no idea how else to show you, so imgur became a last resort.
Pendragon2 votesYeah good thoughts. Let me ask this - assume what we want is relevant and fresh content on the home page every day, what factors do you think should go into determining if something is relevant and fresh?
btw, how is someone supposed to show you this WITHOUT going to a 3rd party? Yet another example of something that needs to be addressed. I have no idea how else to show you, so imgur became a last resort.
Definitely something we're aware of. I don't think we want to host images ourselves here, but we would/could probably white-label an easy way for you to throw them inline.
Pryotra2 votesSry for the long response time, I had to leave for class shortly after I posted that. Pretty interesting question. I think that the obvious would include general activity like comments, replies, and the vote system should be incorporated, but how.
DEFINITIONS
So, I'm going to define relevant as it relates to the topic stated, as otherwise I just don't see anything else you could really measure for relevance with the current system. There is no tag system, and the current community system already has problems staying true to the community (just check Site Feedback, filled with Server Status complaints, balance things from pbe still occasionally happen, and also some things that better fit Help & Support) Also, considering that what may be relevant for you might not matter to me, I'm going to restrict "relevant" to meaning "relevant to the topic, AKA staying on topic".
I'm also going to define "fresh" as new activity. This means that the more recent the actions taken are, the more weight that particular factor is in deciding the ordering on the front page.
OPINION
How I would achieve this would weigh total vote count minimally, and direct replies to the OP much higher, with subsequent response levels weigh a little lower with each layer. If a post is simply being upvoted, while it will still help, if there is no discussion going on, then why is it on page 1? Likewise, if all the posts are a response to the top comment, then chances are a derailment is going on. That said, if there is alot of traffic in that first comment, and the other factors are weighing well, the discussion could still hit the first page.
Also, I would take a total upvote/downvote ratio of the thread, and the closer to a range around 1 - 1.5 ratio (this number can be played with) means that the thread has more "relevant" material, not just circlejerking/counter-circlejerking. In other words, if the thread is mostly upvotes, or mostly downvotes, the less likely it is to be seen. The idea is that if all that is happening is everyone agreeing and upvoting, then chances are that there isn't a whole lot to discuss, while on the flip side if everyone is downvoted hard, then chances are the thread isn't really being productive.
Lastly, the Rate at which actions are happening in the thread would be a large factor. Frankly, if alot of discussion is happening, that is worthy of recognition.
To prevent Bumping, or any anomilies: these factors will ignore the auto self vote that happens when you post, and actions that happen sequentially by the same person (like upvoting then responding will only count as 1 action, just like five posts replying to yourself will essentially be 1 action).
This weight will degrade over time if it isn't updated. In otherwords, A mega thread can stay near the top for a while, but if the discussion dies down, it will eventually drift downwards.
I hope that was readable, and it made sense. Feel free to ask me to clarify on any points you didn't quite understand. As a footnote, I would like to know if you have any plans to help out lengthier posts like this one. Thanks for making it through!
Knight Devout1 votesI agree with Pryotra.
About Direct Comments and Replies
For Direct comment I mean a comment posted right under the OP, and reply any comment in reply to another comment.
While chain-replies might be something valuable to hear/read, they often means the discussions is going off topic. Direct replies should weight more than re:re:re:re:replies. Considering that this beta also has "updates", such as a discussion could even be just 2 people replying to each other without others joining the discussion.
About Upvote/dowvote
For personal experience,when a post get downvoted once, it slips immediately in the back to be forgotten: this means it's impossible to discuss something not approved by the community in this beta. A champion loved by the community has some negative aspects? one downvote, you are out, no matter what logic and arguments you brought, you get pushed back and no one reads that topic again. So I'd suggest to put a delay in downvotes to be effectively pushing topics behind, unless it also reached a significant amount of views: A topic with 1000 views, 2 downvotes, and zero comments might be something that doesn't deserve the first page . A topic with 1 view, and 1 downvote, shouldn't get pushed back 2 hour after it has been opened.
Also, as Pryotra suggested, a topic with high controversy and a even upvote/downvote ratio should be more relevant than "cake is good" with 1000 upvotes and people posting pictures of cute kittens eating a cake.
ratcharmer1 votesWell . . . this thread has had both upvotes & downvotes, extensive (and generally productive-ish) discussion and is at net 9 upvotes, yet I have to dig to find it again.
http://community.na.leagueoflegends.com/c/balance/ULxz3K6d-s4-and-the-current-state-of-supports
It's 3 days old, so it isn't brand-new, but it isn't exactly ancient either. Yet threads just a little bit newer with only 2 upvotes are far above it.
Schtauffenz1 votesHave the top 5 (change as necessary) be based on upvotes/rating/etc. After that the rest are simply sorted by latest post (by timestamp). Your sort algorithm uses the last timestamp in a parents children as its timestamp.
Pendragon1 votesThe challenge that I have with this is that there's nothing about "recently updated" that indicates that something is relevant or interesting. On GD right now once something is bumped it only stays on the front page for a couple of minutes before it falls off.
I think we'd rather the top 30 discussions or so be more interesting/relevant, and if you want to dig deeper for the other stuff you still can.
Schtauffenz2 votesSounds like it works perfectly as intended... if someone wants to bump something up and it falls off after a couple minutes it isn't interesting enough to be continually updated and won't stay there. :P I agree that maybe 5 popular posts isn't enough, but what about two sections, stacked side by side or on top of each other, both with "load more" buttons. I'm just saying you might wanna find a compromise between the two modes.
daft inquisitor2 votesThe only issue with that, is how will people find NEW topics to be relevant/interesting, if the first 30 posts (and the ones people are most likely to look at) are ONLY ones that have already been upvoted/downvoted/posted on to an incredible extent? If the majority of what people see are only what others have already upvoted, how many people are REALLY going to dig down to find the relatively untouched topics that deserve upvotes to be brought into "relevant" content range?
