Why is there no GD Board?

Fisk·Jul 16, 2014·3 votes·1,173 views

Just curious edit- Just for clarification I mean no GD board on the community beta I know there is still the old GD.

12 Comments

MatthevvJul 16, 20143 votes

I believe there is, it is the Miscellaneous board.

TamatJul 17, 20142 votes

The Miscellaneous board is not an anything goes board though. To better explain how to use them, I've quoted some of the Miscellaneous Guidelines:

"Are you sure your post doesn’t go in one of them? It’s definitely possible. We just want to double-check. Well, anyway. If it doesn’t fit anywhere else, Miscellaneous is probably the board for you. Of course, that doesn’t mean anything goes. Stick to the Rules, and make sure you vote for the content that you want to see more of.

As we see new trends of similar content being posted here, we will evaluate the need for new boards."

FiskJul 18, 20141 votes

Ah did not read this when I posted a reply! But the point stands I'm sure there will be new boards

GavranJul 17, 20142 votes

I would assume it was a deliberate choice so that the GD crowd didn't have a direct "we go here now" migration and would instead filter to the appropriate sections.

Nine RavensJul 17, 20142 votes

I think the lack of a General Discussion board is a conscious choice. If you look at the old GD board, it is too broad of a category and players will post literally anything LoL related (and some things that aren't) instead of using the more specific boards because pretty much anything is still technically on-topic. As a result, most of the other boards are pretty dead.

With the new boards, it seems that Riot wants to encourage more thoughful posting patterns by having different boards for different topics. Ideally, because there is no 'everything goes' category, posters will have to put more thought in to where to post their threads to avoid deletion, and hopefully this will result in better thought-out posts overall. Adding a GD-type board would likely result in another low-effort dumping ground.

Hyrum GraffJul 16, 20141 votes

What Matthevv said. If I had to guess, they called it Miscellaneous specifically so people wouldn't think of it as GD :P

AnonTwoJul 17, 20141 votes

I would assume they want to disassociate from the atmosphere of GD, or basically not have a place where everyone commonly posts to.

Honestly, i think most of GD is just going to post either on the main board, or on board feedback due to their locations.

Sir FrosthavenJul 17, 20141 votes

My personal thoughts on why people use GD as an all inclusive boards are below:

It is the landing page
Other boards do not have the same awareness
People will choose the path of least resistance. When they want to post the want to post (and not go hunting for the right board)

If you click the create a discussion button when you are on the main page, you have to select which board you want your discussion to live in. All boards are given equal representation and saturation. To this end, I'd be interested in hearing your opinion on how creating new discussions actually works right now (and any thoughts you might have on making it better)

AnonTwoJul 17, 20141 votes

Creating new discussions works pretty fine for me at the moment. I just made a thread recently with the only headache being "add attachment" doesn't seem to want to load.

I feel though that if we really plan to separate the boards, there needs to be some way to have a feel for activity. Many times, people will ignore a board purely because they don't think anything is going on.

Something like adding the (new) button to the board list directory, based on some sort of requirement (such as previously entering that board as of recent, or a subscription). Just some way to know that if you go to that board, you 'might' find something relevant to your interests.

I just get the feeling that if you force people not to post on a general board, they might just stop coming to the forums altogether when they feel their posts aren't being noticed. Or they'll eventually gravitate to a single board when they start to find more activity going there than to the other boards.

Sir FrosthavenJul 17, 20141 votes

There are currently a couple of ways to get activity out there -

updates in your panel at the top right of the page
board landing page that shows results from all boards
"new" pill on conversations you've participated in

In lieu of this, do you still believe that activity isn't accurately portrayed? And again thanks for the great feedback

AnonTwoJul 17, 20141 votes

-Updates i think would be more useful if they were organized by board. Currently with just 2-3 posts it's not as bad, but later on it's going to be awful. It also doesn't solve the issue of finding new threads on the boards with activity

-Would definitely be useful...but (i've said this in some other threads) the boards need a "Recent by post" thread option. The current recent only sorts by threads, which can occasionally land you some threads that are new, but not really getting any activity. In many cases, the most recent posts are more valuable than the most recent threads...though if you looked for recent posts by post, it would be an utter nightmare! XP

Though, i guess technically you could be the activity for these new threads, but new threads would already be at the top of the page due to also having a recent post (Aka, the Opening post)

-One thing i wanted to point out is that the "new" pill i think shouldn't light up if you've never posted or voted in a thread. A few times i've looked into a thread only to have disinterest in it. Not a big deal though.

FiskJul 18, 20141 votes

Ah that makes sense. I still think they should broaden the amount of their boards. I can't think of anything off had (which is good) but I'm sure there will be situations where more boards will be needed. What do you guys think? What boards should they add?