Community Beta vs. General Discussion and my analysis and predictions
Since the Community Beta release, I have been comparing and contrasting these two discussion platforms and I have done a small experiment to see player reactions of a thread in both areas. Below are both posts, I tailored the names and slight wording, but the content is the same. The name differences are because I felt GD wouldn't be as reactive to my thread and it would just drop.
Below are links to both for your own conclusions to be drawn:
http://forums.na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=3918566
I have found given a semi-serious, semi-silly thread, which allowed for open ended responses that ranged from serious to silly, GD gave a higher what I'm calling the SS ratio (silly over total posts) 2.0 (20 silly/ 30 total), where Community Beta ( CB ) gave a much lower, and even got a red post. (0.0 SS, 0 silly, 12 serious) obviously my definition of silly and serious is subjective, however looking over the raw data it is pretty obvious there is a trend.
As far as a legitimate experiment goes, this falls very flat, because the OPs are slightly different, and first posters usually dictate the direction of a thread (though my GD post actually turned around, which made me happy, and a little more hopeful that GD isn't just full of trolls, but has some seriousness mixed in.
My theory as to why GD and CB had very different responses is that GD, due to mass amount of people and lacking the ability to maintain a serious, sustained discussion, was only looking to make jokes about threads, and was less concerned with actually discussing ideas.
CB was much more receptive, and though they had a smaller amount of total responses, I believe it had a higher post to view ratio (riot could add in total views on CB, that'd be nice) and a much more genuine response as a whole. I think this is because of the "filtering" of the community that has happened due to CB's creation. People sick of GD were looking for a more serious platform, while trolls and BSers were content roaming GD and making smart ^%# responses. Thus a divide in te community.
I think this is a good thing. GD and CB are seperate worlds for seperate people, with seperate goals and reasons for posting. I feel if both remain, an equilibrium will be reached, and there will be a much happier community, with a much more organized platform for serious discussions, but only if GD remains active in tandem with CB.
