Boards›Boards Feedback

@Pendragon: Regarding your "content first" view

SlumlordThanatos·8/10/2014, 7:04:49 AM·4 votes·7,041 views

I figured a new thread would be a more likely way to get your attention, because in a different thread, you had this to say:

Generally we have a "content first" view on how we should handle identity and visual treatment on the boards here. That means that we always want someone's content to stand out more than the someone - then you should be easily able to look at the details of the person after.

You have this backwards.

You see, things like avatars and signatures are an excellent way to distinguish, at a glance, between the people who always have something interesting/useful to say and people who spam "AKALI IS OP PLZ NERF" or "WHY ARE BRONZIES BACKTALKING DIAMOND PLAYERS" threads/posts.

And since we lack the ability to blacklist such people over here, being able to quickly distinguish between known people who want to contribute to a discussion and people who don't is an important thing to have, yes?

You also have to keep in mind that there are a lot of people over here who use the chronological layout, so they don't have the benefit of seeing the crappy posts get buried.

It's kinda vexing to see you pointedly refuse to give us something that we're asking for and giving a lousy justification for it.

31 Comments

Pendragon8/12/2014, 6:35:26 PM3 votes

You see, things like avatars and signatures are an excellent way to distinguish, at a glance, between the people who always have something interesting/useful to say and people who spam "AKALI IS OP PLZ NERF" or "WHY ARE BRONZIES BACKTALKING DIAMOND PLAYERS" threads/posts.

This is really true on a small forum, but the larger a community the less it's true because it's less likely that you're going to run into the same person enough that you'll develop a broad enough base of recognizable people-patterns. http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0022656

You also have to keep in mind that there are a lot of people over here who use the chronological layout, so they don't have the benefit of seeing the crappy posts get buried.

Each view is going to have inherent strengths and weaknesses. In a world that's primarily using the discussion view - flat is going to have some drawbacks, if we have certain communities that prioritize flat then discussion view will have drawbacks. That's the downside of mixed environments. We believe strongly that the way we're going to build this platform is on the back of making a good use of players time by delivering relevant content - and that means that we're going to put the content before the poster.

It's kinda vexing to see you pointedly refuse to give us something that we're asking for and giving a lousy justification for it.

Every decision we make is going to be poorly received by some group of players, there is no universally correct answer here. Sometimes we have to make hard choices in the face of controversy either on principle or backed by data that's broadly unavailable.

We've been very flexible - introducing lots of features here that have been "asked" for but product direction is a partnership, and in this case we're going to bring some of our own perspective and expertise to the table.

In any case - we love that you care, appreciate the feedback and I'd rather provide the answer that you don't want than to leave you hangin'

Hyrum Graff8/10/2014, 1:56:00 PM2 votes

On one hand, I agree that it would be useful to distinguish the quality posters from the QQ spammers and R*****r's posts.

On the other hand, I feel like this incentives "Look at avatar, see it's a respected poster, upvote without reading their content" (and auto-downvoting), when, isn't the point of the forum, to figure out if they are saying anything worthwhile before voting on it?

So, I guess it's a case of practicality vs ideals; and I'm an idealist.

AkaiNeko48/10/2014, 7:23:40 AM1 votes

Here, here. I hate this layout enough as it is; being able to quickly spot people who usually have something good/worthless to say would make it more bearable.

Daen8/10/2014, 6:41:41 PM1 votes

From what I understand, the amount of uniqueness we have from each other on the Boards is identical to how it is on General Discussion. There's a fine line between anonymity and content-first creation, and I think it's being toed reasonably well.

That being said, I feel there is an incredible amount of value in allowing users to subscribe to each other to read their particular content. "Content first" is a great mentality, but realistically speaking people love to be able to interact with each other rather than just interacting with the content.

ploki1228/10/2014, 10:04:22 PM1 votes

One thing that I'm really intrigued is what you mean by "you can't blacklist someone over here". I haven't seen a single community where someone's post could be automatically hidden (but I never used FEK nor RES).

Otherwise, one thing I find awkward (and a bit ironic) aout your post is how you don't really argue with his comment. You're saying that he they have their priorities backward and that content first is a bad approach, but the only thing that "supports" that is that you don't like seeing content-empty posts (like nerfs/op ones).

The one thing I wonder is wouldn't it simply be better to add ways to auto-remove/hide posts like these that are void of content (or extremely downvoted)? Since the gripe is with having to cope with all the junk (which ties in quite awesomely with content first imo), isn't auto-moderation, and possibly personalized one, what you're needing instead of more "persona focus"?