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Dear Mods and Rioters who moderate the boards, a heartfelt and teary eyed message

Shenron·7/15/2014, 12:37:46 AM·56 votes·3,387 views

Please, do no delete threads. Please move them to whatever category you think they fit into even if they don't. I had a gameplay discussion thread in the "Live Gameplay Balance" section that used Lee Sin as a point to speak about how Riot balances and a moderator thought it was more suited to "Champions and Skins" because it had Lee Sin in the title. Please read a thread's OP before deciding it doesn't belong.

The thread had 30+ upvotes and decent comments upon deletion and I thought, "Okay, I'll just be able to repost it and re-link it to everyone and it'll be okay". When I was in the middle of reposting it however, I got an update from my deleted thread containing an essay response from Riot Pwyff to it. http://puu.sh/abFxc/aac1e511c2.png http://puu.sh/abGba/8772a95646.png

I can't just ask them to repost that. It's just not the same when rewritten. Clearly Pwyff thought it was in the right section and replied on topic. Why can't the moderators read and understand the OP of a thread before deciding to move it? Why can't you guys just move it instead of deleting it? Why is it so hard to actually get a good mod team who knows what they are doing?

Please, just read the OPs and move threads. Only delete it when it breaks forum rules. No more heartbreak and stress over this. The boards are supposed to be a new beginning, let's make it a good beginning okay?

Edit: Thankyou for giving me back my thread! It really means a lot!

20 Comments

Tamat7/15/2014, 3:22:26 AM10 votes

Hey Shenron,

Thank you for this post, and for using the boards! I want to spend some time explaining our position, and why deleting verses moving is extremely important. Before I do that though, I want to reassure you, that we're doing as much as we can to be sensitive to you guys during this transitional time when many of you are learning how to best use this platform. The moderators found your post in Live Gameplay Balance several hours ago. They deemed it to be in the wrong board (which it was) but decided to leave it because it was well written, constructive, and already had a lot of visibility.

Anyway, there are a few reasons why we've decided to delete threads instead of move them. I've posted about this before. But I want to share a more personal philosophy.

"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime."

We believe it's vital for the success of the Boards to have a thoughtfully designed & well organized structure containing content specifically relevant to each board. We're going to be doing everything we can to teach everyone the proper culture & etiquette for each of these boards, but so much of that ultimately relies on each of you to think: "is this the right board for this discussion" before you post. If we went around moving everything that was posted incorrectly, the mods wouldn't have time to do anything else, and it would create a situation where we have lopsided participation with a majority of the traffic on one or two boards. Get onboard! :p

I'd definitely encourage you to get familiar with the Guidelines in each board, because while we're going to have a lot of leniency during these first couple of weeks, we're going to be deleting most of the content that is posted in the wrong boards. That said, when we do, I promise you two things:

We will always send you a private message with **WHAT **we removed, **WHY **we did, and **WHAT **(if any) your punishment is.
We will remain unbiased, and make sure that the content indeed violates the Universal Rules before action. Regardless of how many times it's been reported.

Thanks for reading, and please let us know if you have any suggestions for things we can do to help make this approach less painful. We're here to serve you, and we take no pleasure in deleting content that was posted incorrectly.

Linna Excel7/15/2014, 1:18:25 AM5 votes

If you are too lazy/cynical/resentful to move a thread where it belongs and delete it instead, you probably aren't the best person to be a mod.

Hyrum Graff7/15/2014, 1:04:07 AM4 votes

I'm going to cast my vote here: I am strongly in favor of moving threads rather than deleting them.

A while back, I posted a thread on this topic. In it, 12tales and myself did a bunch of analysis, and the tl;dr conclusion we came to is that it would NOT be that much extra effort on the mods' side to move posts rather than delete them.

IMPORTANT: "Not that much extra effort" is RELATIVE. That is, we're assuming there is a dedicated mod team. If it's Rioters who are doing the mod duties in their spare time, the extra effort is considerable.

If that's the case, or if Riot actually feels that the extra effort is too much, my suggestion is that we create "community mods" who are community members and volunteers, cleared by riot, whose sole duty is to move threads to the correct boards. Riot Mods would stop touching threads in the wrong forums, and only delete threads that violate the forum rules.

Mr Kryp7/15/2014, 1:05:59 AM3 votes

Hmm maybe you are a little to upset about it. The mods actually do have a hard job moderating the thousands, ten thousands, i don't know how much, but they have to moderate everyone on the forums or boards to make it a nice place so everyone can enjoy it. Also the lee sin thread I think was an unnecessary thread. He's not broken. It takes someone with a great amount of skill to play lee sin at a "Broken" level, but you could say that about pretty much any champion. The workers of RIOT work very hard to try to keep the game as balanced as possible and when a thread like that is made just saying all the work they've done is wrong, that would tick me off. Yes I agree that the discussion should be moved, but their is no reason to make a discussion about a "broken" champion when there isn't any hard evidence of him being broken. I've seen plenty 0/8/0 lee sins. It's all about the user. It's gonna be Ahri -ight mate. Cheers

LastProtagonist7/15/2014, 1:44:50 AM1 votes

I agree. I did exactly pretty much the same thing (minus getting the red reply) yet the same thing happened to me.

Furthermore, when going to the Champions & Skins Board, it doesn't mention anything about ahem BALANCE discussion in the little blurb about the purpose of the board in the bottom left.

To me, there's a big difference when talking about the balance of a champion vs. champion skins and concepts.

Aquaman7111/9/2015, 1:41:26 AM1 votes

I wholeheartedly agree with everything the OP has said, and everything said by other commenters afterwords. It seems so easy to just move threads to sections where the Board mods think they belong. Why is it, though, that they have to delete them?

Or, at the very least, why don't the mods give the OPs of 'incorrectly' placed boards a few hours of warning before deleateing their posts, and actually try to explain why the post is being moved. It can't be that challenging, can it?