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Response to "Let's Talk About the Boards", @Zwill, @ADillonMostDirty, @d’Artagnan

Sir ArmaMalum·6/5/2015, 10:20:41 PM·10 votes·3,666 views

http://www.ripoffreport.com/d/1af9cc35-b8a0-493f-abf0-da7c0689dc22/can_you_hear_me_now_lg.gif

In an effort not to crowd out the other comments within the aforementioned thread I have made a separate post as a response. As you can tell it's a beast of of a wall o' text, so I think it was a valid concern. If you'd like to skip straight to my main point skip to the end, but I would please request you to read everything. Anyway, onto the show...

The Boards feel fractured-there’re too many of them, they don’t fit together as well as they could, and too often they’re lacking clear identities.

Yes, and while that will, imho, always be the case to some degree the current list can be significantly better. There have been a few posts on this subject and possible ways to reorganize in Boards Feedback over the last year. Most run over the same points though, in that the most dissident identities are in Skin & Champion Concepts, Story & Art, Gameplay & Balance, Tips & Tricks and the confusion of Community Creations/League Videos/Concepts. These lists have effectively split long-running communities and generally confuse newcomers with things to contribute.

New Boards that have been specifically asked for have been:

  • New Player Board (Tips & Tricks is not intuitive enough of a title, too many requests to pin down)
  • Strategy and Analysis (post by Ariaflux)
  • Systems (i.e. social systems, Team Builder, etc etc, asked for by Hyrum Graff)
  • Balance as a solo Board
  • Champion Concepts as a solo Board

Keep in mind these are the ones I've come across and specifically remember, there are more. I support all of these personally.

The amount of “RITO PLZ” can sometimes smother other interesting conversations. Since these posts often tend to stick out, Rioters then frequently respond to them, and the behavior is reinforced and perpetuated.

A well-known catch-22 and very hard to address in a win-win situation, but I think the majority of this issue is in two areas:

  1. There is no painfully obvious way to differentiate Rioters on certain teams currently. Before we at least had the personal Rioter icons that can be quickly recognized, now however we don't even have that (FEK avatars notwithstanding) and thus the inevitable tidal wave of questions and complaints have no direction and are thrown at any Red that ventures near. Imho, we need a way to have an 'at-a-glance' way to differentiate Rioters to not only appropriately address issues but also take some heat off of the less critical positioned Reds (i.e. KateyKhaos will stop getting demands about game balance, Sweet will stop getting badgered about Skins). Allowing to bridge some broken relations on both ends of the equation, Reds being more of a community member, and community members feeling closer to reds.

  2. Lack of communication causes build-up and critical mass frustration. Realistically I do not expect you guys to get to anywhere near every post, but at the same time the perceived lack of communication AND a (understandable) inability to have lengthy conversations when you do talk leaves players incredibly frustrated and naturally leads to even more difficult dialogue later. Fast forward to now and that same cycle has caused any real dialogue to get drowned out by the persistent frustration. A lot of this stems from lack of community (not even dialogue, just simple community) engagement. I'll touch on this a bit later. **

Toxicity. We all know that, at times, the front page can appear to be dominated by angry posts (in other news, the Pope is Catholic, the sky is blue and I’m an overweight Asian man). In all seriousness, the ways in which we express our frustrations can have a profound impact on how we all interact with each other.

This, imho, will never stop being a thing unless we start changing the nature of the game itself, so I'll file under "shit happens". I think our best bet as a community will be aggressively reinforcing more positive behavior instead of trying to directly address the negativity. /**

The Boards’ current format doesn’t always make it the easiest place to actually engage in long-lived and fulfilling conversations; in a broader sense, the UX (user experience) of the Boards could use some improvement. Which contributes to…

  • The Boards don’t feel like a “sticky” experience. As it currently stands, there aren’t a lot of reasons for players to visit the boards multiple times per day.
  • There’s lots of room for improvement in how we surface Rioter interactions. For example, I personally like the way Blizzard surfaces blue posts on the front page of their individual game fora.

Here's a top-tier list of specific pain points I've personally come across:

  • Comments get crowded really fast. Giving a character limit until a 'show more' option for each individual comment, minimizing children comments by default and bookmarking certain comment threads are all things that can address this as I'm sure you're aware. This is a big one though because after the first few replies people are very intimidated to give their own response and denies visibility to later comments.
  • Red posts get buried without pinning, and the announcements sub-board simply isn't doing it's job imho. Giving a separate widget to red posts and/or a way to pin relevant announcements separately can allow for easier 'casual tracking' of announcements and prevents redundant issue from popping up again and again. In other words, we need to work towards making relevant red posts available to those who do not actively search for them. **
  • We need to prioritize discussions and not posts in order to reinforce dialogue over 'fire and forget' posting that crowd out everything else. While somewhat unavoidable, switching visibility weight and social system rewards (upvotes, 'front-page' mechanics, etc etc.) to stem from the discussions posts create instead of the posts themselves will help in that area. And, please, we need to do something other than the 'recently replied' strategy, as that just promotes incite and hot topic conversations more than anything else. There are other metrics to sue such as word count, time spent in post per viewer, votes per view and many others to add into the mix.
  • There is currently no way/reason to jump back to a topic once it's buried short of a direct response, and that really hurts those that prefer chrono view. We need a way to bookmark/subscribe/earmark posts to come back to later. Ideally with a function that allows for an edit or 'new comment' alert. I also believe that will help a lot on the Riot side for keeping an eye on cool discussions they've come across.
  • For the love of all that is Draven, the 'Best' sorting is currently unusable. I understand it can be useful for newer viewers, but we really need to be able to sort that by time. 'Best Overall', 'Best by year', 'Best by month', and 'Best this week' are all valid sub-types for this category and imho horrendously needed.

The Boards’ current format doesn’t always make it the easiest place to actually engage in long-lived and fulfilling conversations; in a broader sense, the UX (user experience) of the Boards could use some improvement. Which contributes to…

  • The boards need to be optimized for mobile. End of story. You should be able to read the boards while attending to important business…in the bathroom.

Yes, 'nuff said.

The Boards’ current format doesn’t always make it the easiest place to actually engage in long-lived and fulfilling conversations; in a broader sense, the UX (user experience) of the Boards could use some improvement. Which contributes to…

  • Players should be able to feel a sense of community ownership over the Boards.

This is almost exclusively because it is way too hard to build a reputation here. As such, there is no way to discern one person from another in the cacophony of Rito Plz. As per my previous point it's even hard to recognize Rioters when they visit. We need tools to promote individuals, leaders and role models within the Boards Community if you want to have any impact to community ownership. Otherwise you just have random chaotic trends and no real way to communicate. In other words we are all just a massive group of individuals with no actual representation**, and that results in:

  • unrealistic expectations towards individual player views.
  • constantly fighting for and against trends internally, resulting is huge and confusing divides of public opinion.
  • a community that demands instead of questions, immediately being combative before anything is said. Because we have to fight tooth and nail to be heard in any form.

tl;dr, While maybe a bit of a hyperbolic statement. There is no community to own yet.

The Boards’ current format doesn’t always make it the easiest place to actually engage in long-lived and fulfilling conversations; in a broader sense, the UX (user experience) of the Boards could use some improvement. Which contributes to…

  • We’re lacking in social features.

Yes we are. Attaching names to posts (i.e. @Sir ArmaMalum in a post would direct me to the post), bookmarking/following, chat room inter-connectivity, community event support, casual tournament support, poro-themed emoticons, running forums gags (i.e. 'ok' thread), and initiatives like Meanwhile in Top Lane are all in a HUGE list of possible improvements that can happen.

The Boards’ current format doesn’t always make it the easiest place to actually engage in long-lived and fulfilling conversations; in a broader sense, the UX (user experience) of the Boards could use some improvement. Which contributes to…

  • Moderation can be leveled up.

One word: Understatement. The biggest thing you've already pointed out, and that's visibility. I will save my comments on that for your later discussion, but I will say once visibility is in place a lot of other points will be much easier to smooth out at that point.

Personally aside from my main point (at the end) I would really appreciate a re-kindling of the Boards team public dialogue. The communityplatform chat is dead (and chatrooms are awful for these things anyway) and we have little to no way to have an active dialogue with the people that are in charge of the Board's look and functionality. I and people like Daen, Hyrum Graff, everyone in the FEK team, and many others are very invested in helping out and are (to varying degrees) willing to have civil conversations about what can be improved. (Okay, ICK is at least partially civil :P) We got a taste of that at the beginning of the Boards (then community platform) beta but now there is too much going on to lock down people for discussion. From team changes to overwhelming amounts of hate over various mistakes/bugs/etc it's incredibly hard to move forward on both ends. The biggest portion of that is we haven't seen any changes in the Boards when most agree they need changes that have been suggested more than a year ago.

Now, being an engineering student it pains me anytime I just give an opinion with no thoughts towards a solution. So here are my thoughts:

#We. Need. Community. Leaders.

Whether they are community volunteers (sign me the HELL UP!), from Riot or another area we need to step away from the Riot policy of 'killing the community moderator'. My reasoning is as such: Riot is too damn big! That policy worked beautifully when you guys were small and manageable. You are now a global company in charge of the largest video game in the world. The fear of stifling direct dialogue is happening anyway because it is not humanly possible for the Rioters who have the answers to our question to do their job and appease the curious/angry masses. Both are full time jobs. We have a huge community that have no representation and devs that cannot hope to address the different concerns or have all the answers.

As per my one-sided conversations above, community leaders can solve many problems (specifically any I mentioned with a '**'). Ranging from reinforcing positive behaviors, surfacing/linking pertinent red posts, creating community interactions, answering questions, spurring discussions, and overall giving us something for our community to build around. Moderation privileges not needed at all, they just need support from Riot. Think about Blizzard's MVP program.

There are people currently doing these things already as best they can, and as one of those people it leaves a bad taste in my mouth to be the one to push for this (makes it seem an incredibly selfish grab for recognition when it truly isn't). But I am adamant that this is a change we needed years ago. I am 100% for discussion on this topic AT ANY TIME and have had many, many discussions on this topic a far as how it should be handled and how it can be perfected to make for a better community. I will not detail those discussions atm because that will keep us here for a while, but if any of you would like to friend me and talk about it privately by all means go for it.

Zwill, as the player relations head I implore you to explore this idea with purpose. Or, at the very least, actively search for opportunities for the community to help you and help themselves. There are many people who are diamonds in the rough and will do all they can to help, they just need the opportunity. I understand that the Boards community is nowhere near your only concern but I will be the first to say it is not in a good spot right now for a slew of different reasons. But I am of the same mind that I would rather look towards solutions than towards blame and the past. I can talk about this subject for days on end and write a book if that's what is needed. Hell, I even applied for a summer internship with you guys with this subject at the core of my reasons for doing so.

#So let's talk about the Boards guys, I have the time, I have the dedication and I have the willingness to work towards a better experince here. I will help in any way I can if you let me. I am here.

15 Comments

RiotZwill6/11/2015, 11:34:27 PM3 votes

New Boards that have been specifically asked for have been:

Probably as soon as next week, ADIllonMostDirty is going to be introducing a conversation around Boards organization. We've got some fairly radical ideas around this, so I ask that you all prepare yourselves for a discussion that requires an open mind.

Here's a top-tier list of specific pain points I've personally come across:

We agree that there are several functionality issues with the Boards and their usability right now. I'm not the subject matter expert to talk about it, but you should know that these concerns are raised and are not falling on deaf ears.

Imho, we need a way to have an 'at-a-glance' way to differentiate Rioters to not only appropriately address issues but also take some heat off of the less critical positioned Reds (i.e. KateyKhaos will stop getting demands about game balance, Sweet will stop getting badgered about Skins).

It's a good point and one that I'm sure has been brought up to the Boards dev team. That being said, during our next regular check in, I'll be sure to bring this up and get their thoughts. I'm not a UX designer myself, but I imagine there's something we could do.

We. Need. Community. Leaders.

Agreed.

So you understand my background, I've worked on games that had clearly defined community leaders (WAR, DAoC) and had programs surrounding them. There's a lot of landmines around programs like this (personalities, perspective and perception). The thing is, I'm not sure if these landmines are inherent to the programs themselves or more attributable to the size of the communities involved. Other communities I've worked with (CoH, Dawngate) have not had a clearly defined group of community leaders and have still thrived as a result of the level of interaction with the development team. Again, I'm not 100% sure if this is indicative of the size of the community itself, the game that surrounded the community, or a combination of the two.

The number 1 thing we want to make sure we're avoiding is creating a situation of "haves" vs. "have-nots" where the unfortunate side effects of human nature take their due course. It's an intriguing and interesting challenge that we're struggling with internally.

I embrace your thought that community leaders will inherently lead by example and be altruistic by design. Experience has taught me that's not always the case, but that doesn't mean that the risks outweigh the rewards.

Svddenly6/7/2015, 11:26:40 AM2 votes

This needs a bump.

medium katarina6/8/2015, 1:06:23 AM1 votes

K i was finally able to sit down and read this (✿◡‿◡) great points and solid feedback hopefully a red does see some of this

Daen6/10/2015, 7:11:00 PM1 votes

This is almost exclusively because it is way too hard to build a reputation here. As such, there is no way to discern one person from another in the cacophony of Rito Plz. As per my previous point it's even hard to recognize Rioters when they visit.

I disagree with this, it's actually really easy to build a reputation here.

What is the easiest way to become instantly famous in modern society, albeit for a short period of time and assuming no morality? Being a serial killer or mass shooter. Seriously, think about it. I'm not trying to offend anyone, it rings true in some respects.

At a basic level, we determine recognition as a function of things being distinctly outside the norm. In normal society, people that are generally neutral or slightly positive are essentially unnoticed, whereas those that are distinctly negative are vilified and those that are distinctly positive are lauded.

If we make a direct comparison to the boards, those that are distinctly negative are still vilified but those that are distinctly positive remain essentially unnoticed. The Boards does not have anything to reward those that are distinctly positive. At all. On the Boards, the easiest way to develop a reputation is to be a troll. Feel free to disagree with me, but someone that makes 5 blatant troll threads is going to be more memorable than someone that makes 5 insightful posts.

We generally focus more on the person when it's negative and the content when it's positive, which seems completely wrong to me. I remember the exact player names of most of the trolls that I've seen here, but other than people I speak with regularly outside of the platform I couldn't name a single person whose contributions I recognize as consistently positive.

A particularly developed society would, ideally, reverse this convention; if a negative action happens the _action _ is addressed, whereas if someone does something great the person is rewarded. You should rehabilitate the negative person for their action and you should praise the positive person for their characteristics and contributions.

medium katarina6/7/2015, 10:50:02 PM1 votes

I will commit to reading this after i eat. until then the only thing i will say is http://puu.sh/igkNi/b61e724cd6.jpg D'art is op af anf R-0 needs buffs (✿◡‿◡)

TheGrandAlliance6/12/2015, 5:59:53 AM1 votes

On point of order here about your otherwise reasonable thread (and job application; no offensive inferred) regarding RIOT:

[{quoted}](name=Sir ArmaMalum,realm=NA,application-id=bzRrPGQO,discussion-id=tuZHNMUc,comment-id=,timestamp=2015-06-05T22:20:41.771+0000) http://www.ripoffreport.com/d/1af9cc35-b8a0-493f-abf0-da7c0689dc22/can_you_hear_me_now_lg.gif

NO I CANNOT BECAUSE HE GOT FIRED AGES AGO AND NOW VERIZON SUCKS! Moving on...

A well-known catch-22 and very hard to address in a win-win situation, but I think the majority of this issue is in two areas:

  • We need to prioritize discussions and not posts in order to reinforce dialogue over 'fire and forget' posting that crowd out everything else. While somewhat unavoidable, switching visibility weight and social system rewards (upvotes, 'front-page' mechanics, etc etc.) to stem from the discussions posts create instead of the posts themselves will help in that area. And, please, we need to do something other than the 'recently replied' strategy, as that just promotes incite and hot topic conversations more than anything else. There are other metrics to sue such as word count, time spent in post per viewer, votes per view and many others to add into the mix.

#So let's talk about the Boards guys, I have the time, I have the dedication and I have the willingness to work towards a better experince here. I will help in any way I can if you let me. I am here.

Your proposal here is/are effectively almost impossible. Not only is voting evil and never should have been invented (too many negative downvote bias; upvotes are rare because not everyone wants to login/spam button for every post they read) but "how much time" someone reads something isn't obtainable nor possible. Nothing actually in that paragraph even mechanically makes sense. The best discussion are the ones that are naturally formed (in chorological linked order) and are based upon what the reader decides is important and not some computer algorithm. I know threads can be long and boring but it doesn't take much effort to read through a thread and find interesting stuff. The "Reddit" model only leads to censorship, either intentionally or indirectly, of otherwise good content.

In other words: If you are worried that "threads get too long and this is bad" then indeed it is true at times threads simply get too long. There is a such thing as "too big" sometimes and therefore the solution is that threads simply need to be ended. Trying to find a way to fit 1000s of posts into a single thread is simply wasted effort and makes it even harder to use a BBS forum system.

BTW 1 last point you may have overlooked:

We. Need. Community. Leaders.

Whether they are community volunteers (sign me the HELL UP!), from Riot or another area we need to step away from the Riot policy of 'killing >the community moderator'.

You forget RIOT is a Chinese-owned company... as such they are very tightly run as effectively all Asian companies are. They will not allow anyone to "speak or assist them" without being an effective employee and signing over their life through NDA or otherwise contracts. Furthermore being Chinese they have their own "secret agenda" that is always non-public and hard to observe.

Indeed the cost of freedom that Tryndamere made when he sold his soul to the Shadow Isles (China) in order to get funding for a new MOBA but alas...

Indeed it is so...

TheHobbits6/12/2015, 9:49:02 PM1 votes

I didn't have time to read it all in my break, but is there a part that says about how OCE and EUW get ignored and buried every time? It's a real shame that only NA threads thrive 90% of the time.

MajorPain96/17/2015, 7:32:15 PM1 votes

Lost me at community leaders. Those have failed each time I have seen them implemented, with the honored player becoming way to self entitled and egotistical. This generally causes the community to turn on them. Happened for wow. Happened for Diablo.