Community Beta Followup Feedback

You may recognize me, or not, as you choose. When this first went live I posted a thread stating my dislike with the community beta and the reddit style you have chosen, found here: http://community.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/site-feedback/OI8QmnuW-if-this-reddit-style-goes-live-im-done

It has been around 8 months now... and I've spent some time trying to appreciate this site(mostly just reading it, since it's still hard to participate in conversations here for me due to the commitment a thread takes), to see if I could come to use it and if not, if I could better pinpoint exactly what it is that I dislike so much for the sake of offering you guys feedback to hopefully improve it. Some of this feedback is similar to that which I posted in the old thread, but as it has not been fixed or improved on... it still applies. Or at least, as far as I've seen it has not been fixed. If it has, feel free to enlighten me as to how, because if there's an option I'd missed I'd love to be enlightened

With that, I'll start off with the few good things I've seen here.

The red tracker being built into the sidebar is fantastic. Probably my favourite feature you've added to this service.

The ability to search for a post history by clicking on someone's username is something that was an absolute necessity - the old forum way of finding all of your own posts was kind of absurd.

Nested comments make holding a single discussion easier.

That's what I like about this site... now I'd like to move on to my criticisms, the things that keep me from being able to use it much.

Nested Comments

While it's true they make it easier to hold a single conversation, they make it far more difficult to be a part of multiple conversations within a thread. Having to make individual posts for each thing I wish to say is incredibly annoying if there are multiple conversations happening.

Additionally, the nesting limit you guys have, and the way nesting happens, makes posts difficult to read and conversations difficult to have over long periods of time. Most important is how far it narrows posts over time, which makes posts later in a conversation feel like walls of text simply due to how narrow the borders become. Thirdly, nested comments only make sense on threads that ARE direct conversations. When dealing with threads that are more linear than that, nesting can actually defeat the entire purpose of the thread.

Finally, and this is my biggest problem, nested comments make it impossible to follow a thread. Nesting comments means that new posts appear at the beginning, middle, and end of a thread all the time which means you do, quite literally, need to reread the entire thread to find new posts.(The 'new' sorting only sorts by how recently the discussion was started, so it doesn't actually resolve anything on this front)

Endless Page

The community beta does not feature any logical breakpoints. In a typical forum, these would be 'pages'. This poses a problem for a few reasons... some of which are personal things, others are more general issues.

I have trouble keeping track of time, I always have. An 'endless page' style of format leaves me with no logical point to check the clock which has resulted in me not eating lunch two days this week before work due to me losing track of time before getting ready. I know, completely a personal issue, but that's the beauty of feedback - it IS personal so I can get these out. ;)

There is no logical place to stop reading a thread, which means there is no logical place to return to when you get BACK to that thread. I can't stop reading at page 6 and come back and be like 'okay, page 7 here I come!' to start reading again. This is related to the last point of my previous section, but applies here as well. Finally, on this topic, there is no consideration for older computers or browsers with this design. At my work computer, after about two 'read mores' the browser starts chugging. On my laptop, it takes about 4 for the slowdown to begin. On my main computer, which is a powerhouse that I had put together just last year, it still begins to lag before I reach the end of a long thread.

Popularity Contest

From the perspective of a developer seeking feedback, the popularity-driven style makes sense. You guys need to see what people are thinking, and upvotes are an indication of agreement. But from the perspective of a person who is trying to read a forum... I don't CARE what other people think is good, I care about reading what people have to say. Sometimes the least popular posts can make the best points, but are downvoted because they contain an insult to Justin Bieber and every 14 year old girl in the world ganged up to downvote it. There's no way for me to just SEE CONTENT. I either have to see what everyone else liked, or what is newest. There's no alternative. Forums, for me, are that alternative. They give me a somewhat random sampling of content based off when I load that I can see if I like.

Secondly, once you get INTO the thread, the popular-or-new sorting leads to the thread reorganizing itself constantly, which plays into my previous points about the difficulty of following a thread and actually finding conversations within it that are interesting. I may want to discuss something that is on topic but isn't a popular topic for discussion... and unless I happen to enter the thread right when that comment is made and select new, I'll never see it. And even if I DID see it, unless I'm actually a PART of the conversation in stead of just reading it, there's no way for me to find it again once it's no longer new.

Additionally, the 'popular-or-new' approach leads to people replying to people who have a popular post just for the sake of making their post more likely to be seen. There are too many ways to game a system like this.

Well, I think that's about it for now. Hope this helps you guys figure out why I, and perhaps some others, find this format so unusable.

Edit: Sorry about the wall of text - it should be fixed now