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Reformatting Skin & Champion Concepts

Angeluslight·10/6/2014, 10:12:37 PM·9 votes·2,109 views

Now that the Boards have officially taken the place of the original Forums, the only thing we can do right now is try to get this place feeling more like home.

Regarding the Skins & Champion concepts section, I find this style of forum vastly inappropriate for such a place of creativity. We had a pretty solid system going on in which the community was a rather solid place to nurture and exchange help in each others' works. Now it has been severely blighted by the current system in place. It even seems and feels rather hostile.

  • First off, the ability to up/downvote a thread without actually clicking into it really violates the whole "don't judge a book by its cover" ideal. With the original forums, one had to click into a post and would have to scroll all the way to the bottom of the post to vote. This necessarily got the reader to actually read through the thread. For the most part now, threads get downvoted hard with little to no feedback whatsoever. It's a very harsh thing for someone to spend time on a concept, hours even, and have it sink so fast without a chance to grow and improve due to people that don't even take so much as a minute to read it. This new style very clearly favors posts with pictures that are displayed on the front page of the entire thread list over those that lack them. This gives concepts an even more unfair advantage over others. Granted posts with pictures have always been more successful on the original forum, but it wasn't flaunted until one actually clicked, leaving the title to be the fair, even-leveled attention-grabber.

Riot, please change the voting system for Skin and Champion concepts to that similar to the original thread as well as getting rid of the pictures displayed out front. I'm sure the getting rid of the pictures idea may get some heat, but it's about fairness for those that cannot draw or find a fitting picture for their concept. No one can deny the bias that is so clear when looking at the list of concepts.

  • Helpfullness - Part of what made the original Skin and Champion Concepts a thriving community is that a handful of participants would create threads for the sole purpose of helping other players with their own projects. This ranged from reviewing champion concepts to help with their kits to creating lore for those who do not find narrative writing their strong suit. The new style of the forums does not accommodate such threads aimed to help others and sink just as fast as new concepts that do not take off with upvotes immediately. And with many concepts themselves not floating well because of my previous point, these helpful threads will most likely fizzle out and cease to exist. What would be the point of one if only a few concept succeed and are the only ones seen?
  • Separation - Skin concepts and champion concepts have always been kept together on the same page in the original forum. It wasn't a problem there, but it's a sizable problem here on the Boards. Skin concepts have always been faster at getting upvotes over champion concepts every single time. Reason being it's a short description and/or picture to explain the idea; ideas often self-explanatory in the title alone. Here in the Boards, they trample over most champion concepts in the "Best" section.

Needless to say, I think we should separate Skin Concepts and Champion Concepts in two different sections. It's a simple change and it doesn't really harm anything. It would allow champion concepts to thrive more, if anything. Not to mention that, if pictures are taken off the front page of the champion concepts, they, by all means, should remain on the skin concepts page.

  • Visibility - With everything explained and proposed above, I think there should be some changes to the sections in which readers filter through: "Best, Hot, New, Recent."

In the original forum, threads rotated quite evenly due to the ability for one to "bump" a post. In the Boards, bumping a post is only effective in the "Recent" subdivision on the Concepts Board. That's only one section out of 4, and the previous 3 sound far more appealing. This imbalance is further imposed as the "Best" and "Hot" threads receive the most attention, thus finding themselves in those sections as well as "Recent." That's a looot of attention. In the original forums, everyone had the same chances of being noticed and could bump their posts effectively to gradually pick up as attention is very hard to get for champion concepts.

That being said, the "New" section is the place where threads are determined to sink or swim right off the bat, for the very most part. You can navigate there now and see the list of concepts that have sank far down due to lack of views, replies, votes. Many doomed by a single downvote that encourages other downvotes without people even giving those threads a chance. Even if a post does get upvoted and find themselves included in the "Hot" section, things can quickly turn around on them, and those threads sink far with each downvote and lack of any comments. It's a constant struggle in which a concept can be made or broken any minute.

Bumping threads isn't nearly as efficient anymore and there are too many types of bias in these elements for threads to have a true chance to develop and grow. I propose, along with all the other suggestions mentioned in this post, that you please format the Concepts Board to either a single page like the original format to give everyone a fair chance to get noticed, or change it to a dual page with the original format and a "hot" section. This would enable bumps to have the same value as before, and threads that are popular will still be noticed as before, both with efforts of those threads' supporters and the original posters' own bumps. This idea, of course, would be split between Skin and Champion concepts as I suggested before, so each the Skin and the Champion sections have their own "original" and "hot" sections.

Edit: I'd also like to tack on a request for larger character limits. Preferably, I'd like there to be no limit to them, but at the very least they should be extended by a generous amount.

Rioters and fellow community, please give your opinions, support, and/or suggestions.

26 Comments

Raptamei10/7/2014, 11:08:04 AM3 votes

This is actually a problem with the forum as a whole. It is so easy for people to downvote random (or all) new threads for the lulz. Remember those downvote bots? Now you can do it yourself in 10 seconds.

I made a thread about this on day one and got, of course, downvoted into the abyss.

Elphrihaim10/7/2014, 3:46:33 AM2 votes

Ideal champion concept forum:

The old one, but separated for Champion and Skin concepts.

Rockman10/6/2014, 10:21:31 PM2 votes

[deleted]

Flintfall10/7/2014, 1:45:42 AM2 votes

I agree with most of your points, though if I may be nitpicky:

While pictures help immensely, I've seen concepts with no pictures get a solid amount of upvotes (albeit not enough to reach the best page). If you remove pictures Skin & Champion Concepts becomes a huge wall of text/lines, which (to me) would be annoying.

I'd go to say right now Skin & Champion Concepts is very healthy in terms of people helping each other out. It isn't nearly to the extent I'd like but imo I've gotten amazing feedback on my concepts.

I totally agree that Skin concepts can drown out Champion concepts, it's really sad to look at the best page and find around 5~ champion concepts :(

On the concept of the 'killer downvote', I've definitely seen concepts go from 0 to 9 (this was during less traffic, that may change now, but I think quality posts will get their recognition). Of course, I've also seen concepts go 0 then drop into oblivion, I wouldn't go so far as to say that concepts are doomed the second they go 0.

Also, I'm sure you remember a few people on the old forums who would spam worthless concepts and repeatedly bump them. The new voting system helps a lot in that regard, and the option to still view bumping wise is available.

For me, I think Skins & Champion concepts is alright as it is, if we were to change things (let's not jump the gun), we should think things through.

Dunno, that's ol' putsy me though :P

Elphrihaim10/10/2014, 6:24:17 PM1 votes

No

The concept wasn't deleted

I was formatting the concept, and saw a huge, glaring flaw with the formatting

So I made a thread about the fact that "Formatting breaks really easily"

It got deleted 12 hours after I had posted it. TWELVE HOURS.

Either a) mods are slacking or b) somebody reported the post long after it existed or c) both.

What the hell is the point of a "Boards Feedback" section if you make a single thread for it anyway? You might as well delete the section and sticky the thread in every subforum instead. ._.'

Rockman10/6/2014, 10:30:23 PM1 votes

[deleted]

Raptamei10/9/2014, 10:59:50 PM1 votes

One, bumps don't do anything on leddit.

Two, I already quit the champion design contests because there's no point in designing a champion when there is literally no way short of a direct search to find it again after a week. You lose the entire "library" feeling.

The MCCC is dead, the MTG contest disappeared before a single new post was made, the CCC exists but is pointless because it's ten pages down. Sorry, not wasting my time, I'm out. summoner 12

Bourmegar10/6/2014, 10:20:14 PM1 votes

soon EU will also join and then the mess is Complete, so I fully agree here. everything just gets blowns away of the stream of Threads.