What are the community's thoughts on an "off-topic" Board?

Sir ArmaMalum·Jul 30, 2014·2 votes·191 views

If anyone's been to GD for about five seconds you'll probably notice a lot of non-league related things, and with the opportunity of the Boards being in beta I wonder. Is being off-topic (non-league related) on the League forums necessarily a bad thing?

Personally I think it is, because I come here for league related ideas, discussions and the like, and if I wanted to know how someone's dog is doing I could go to another site like Facebook.

but

I'm only one person, and as such that is just one opinion. So I'm curious on how the community feels off-topic subjects should be handled. Do you feel an outlet to connect with fellow League community members on non-league related subjects is needed? Should it be handled neutrally (laissez faire) within Miscellaneous or should it be separated?

6 Comments

Angry MonsterJul 31, 20141 votes

the funny thing is that the normal forums have a off topic board, GDers just think GD should be used for everything

That said a non league board should be considered.

Hyrum GraffJul 31, 20141 votes

I think an off-topic board is an important addition, because we're the league community. The fact that we come together via league, doesn't make us any less of a community, and a community should have a place to discuss random stuff.

That being said, I don't think posts in OT should be shown on the Boards top level page. But I can't imagine that having an area dedicated to shit posting will have a negative effect on the quality of posts in the other areas.

DaenJul 31, 20141 votes

This is definitely something that has to be really carefully thought out. Off-Topic comes dangerously close to General Discussion, and I'm not entirely sure how much value it would add to a League of Legends-specific forum.

MrBuffingtonJul 31, 20141 votes

I think between Memes & Games and Miscellaneous, there's plenty to accommodate mildly off-topic discussions. I often already see threads and posts that are a little too out of line, I'm worried an off topic board would get out of control pretty quickly.

I'm hesitant to suggest a PM system, perhaps only between friends on the client, but sometimes I just want to ask a specific person something or just chat with friends and don't want to open up client just to find out they're not online. It probably shouldn't be open to everyone since that'd be a lot of flame and trolling, I think.

DaenJul 31, 20141 votes

I think between Memes & Games and Miscellaneous, there's plenty to accommodate mildly off-topic discussions.

Agreed.

perhaps only between friends on the client

Couple of problems with this:

Limit of 200 people on friend list
Might have forum people you want to talk to but don't want to add in the client

It seems to me a more elegant solution might be to allow players to create connections within the Boards kind of like LinkedIn or Facebook. It avoids potential abuse while removing client restrictions.

MrBuffingtonJul 31, 20141 votes

That's good too, having sort of a separate friends list, or a white list on forums or something. I was just thinking it might be easier to have some more interplay between client and the site, since match history is on the site now.