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Will the Community Beta actually "solve" Negativity?

Vsin·10/17/2013, 6:28:26 PM·10 votes·4,382 views

By now, a fairly large chunk of the community is aware of IronStylus' statements about negativity on the regular forums.

http://forums.na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?p=42279839#42279839 - Among others

My question is...will transplanting the General D community into this format actually solve the issue of filtering out negativity? I agree that it will probably drown out the random "rito sux" comments that permeate the megathreads, but what about these?

http://forums.na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=3954148

It's a clear statement against what someone perceives as Riot's wrongdoing to its community, and it has a TON of upvotes. The tone of the post is clearly inflammatory, and subsequent statements by the OP and other posters are equally provocative and equally upvoted. In other words, it's a clear source of negativity.

Then roll over to the Rework threads. Pick one, any one. Try to find the post with the highest number of upvotes - I'd bet heavily that in the top 10 of posts that are non-Rioter (up/down vote habits there are weird) at least 8 of them are going to be raw, unmitigated negativity, with the other two probably being more level-headed statements that still exude a strong dislike for the rework. The belief is that negativity will be filtered out via community curation, but I'm more inclined to believe that negativity will be EXAGGERATED by the community.

What has Riot done to deal with this potential issue, barring just banning out everybody with enough upvotes to get noticed? Because that solution is just going to incite even more hatred.

37 Comments

Pendragon10/17/2013, 8:42:43 PM11 votes

We don't necessarily want to stop negativity here. What we want to do is accurately represent reality. If reality is that a lot of people are upset about something then we want that to be reflected in how a conversation here reads because if it's not - we can't learn from it and respond.

The software features are part of this new system but actually how we manage the community is going to be just as impactful. We're going to have to reinvent how we moderate and curate our communities if we want this to be a safe and healthy environment. I'll be the first to admit that we don't really know how we're going to have to change that stuff yet, but I'm hoping we'll be able to figure it out.

We certainly want to have healthy debates, constructive discussions, beneficial criticisms etc. If the overwhelming sentiment of a community is negative then I'd rather focus on trying to fix what was wrong than preventing it from surfacing in discussions.

I do think it's going to be a LOT harder for a single inflammatory comment to broadly disrupt a conversation here than it is over there though.

RiotIronStylus10/18/2013, 3:59:27 AM7 votes

Negative feedback is different than critical feedback.

At the office, If I'm working on a concept, and there's issues with it, I'll get feedback. If I'm not doing something right, I'll get critical feedback, in that it's not a good color choice, not a good design decision, whatever. But no one is ever going to give me negative feedback, i.e. "Hey, that sucks.".

That's the key difference.

Example:

Critical feedback: "Hey IronStylus, I noticed that, despite Leona being all about the sun, she's clearly also about a sun-worshiping society. I don't see any iconography or motifs that suggest any sort of theme other than SUN SUN-SUN SUN-SUN! I really think you could have pushed the idea that she's the exemplar of an entire religion by adding icons, motifs, and other such hints to make that part of her theme really stand out. Right now she just sort of looks like another paladin, but gold. Maybe adding iconography to her particles would help here."

Negative feedback: "Dude, Leona sucks. She doesn't even look like she's part of some sun-cult. She just looks gold and dumb. Ever consider doing your job for once?"

First batch of feedback, totally acceptable. Would I disagree? Possibly, but that doesn't matter. I look at it objectively, and either agree or disagree, and whichever I do, I'll send back my response in the same tone either saying why I did what I did, or why I agree that something different should have been done.

My hope is that if a question of the first variety comes up, it'll get upvoted and gain visibility. As such, if it's upvoted, and the tone is polite and non-inflammatory, I will respond in kind. My other hope is that the community will come to recognize that threads toned in that manner will attract responses more often. Therefore reinforcing that critical feedback can, will and should absolutely rise to the top when it's well composed, polite, and actionable.

Pendragon has is right when he talks about conversations being productive. That's extremely important. That can only happen if both sides feel respected and heard.

Verandure10/17/2013, 6:44:25 PM3 votes

Hopefully, we can somehow maintain a meme of "proper interaction" wherein we down vote patently negative comments while not also disposing of dissenting opinions. I, too, feel that this format will most likely exacerbate negativity issues; unfortunately, anything Riot tries to do to "fix" this would end up repressing a very large part of their community and a valid means by which Riot, themselves, can improve their game -- negative feedback.

From what I have seen, thus far, they [Riot] are going to attempt to segregate differing opinions into different sub-communities, thus making only some negative or having a very specific sub-community for negative feedback.

Bubble Butt Lulu10/17/2013, 6:37:18 PM3 votes

I think they're hoping negative comments will just get downvoted, but once GD comes over that won't be the case. Right now there aren't many people using the Beta so everyone is being nice. Not enough people to have a mob mentality yet.

Kira Onime10/17/2013, 6:38:21 PM3 votes

You cannot stop negativity.

LiftsLikeGaston10/17/2013, 11:52:34 PM2 votes

Negativity is needed at times, especially when there's a large portion of your playerbase that is unhappy with stuff that's happening.

Math Test10/18/2013, 3:39:17 AM2 votes

I think that this will, while not cutting down negativity dramatically, also make topics more visible based on their popularity. There are some who simply see threads and skip them unless there is a Red-post, or a lot of replies. In this format, while it will take some time to get used to (I know it will for me), we will have the benefit of having those who are giving good/useful criticism or feedback have their comments bumped in popularity/approval, sending the actual discussion (hopefully) to the top, while weeding out a lot of the negative nancy posts which add absolutely nothing to the conversation.

Overall, this format seems pretty interesting, but for someone who has never used Reddit and has a lot of experience running forums, it will take getting used to, but I think that for now we can enjoy some lack of negativity, and time will tell how effective the system is at weeding it out, or at least making it less visible.

ploki12210/17/2013, 6:54:38 PM2 votes

I believe one thing that will help is the fact that they empowered non-GD communities. By reducing the amount of different "forums", they make the content in each of them better, since more player goes there since more player goes there (yes, it's a loop).

Otherwise, the comments being showed based on votes will mean that the opinions shown should be the more relevant. I believe that in a positive thread, positive opinions will rise, and in a Riot-Bashing thread, Riot-bashing will rise to the top.

The question is hwo will it actually go.

Captain Swag HD10/17/2013, 9:22:35 PM1 votes

I agree that there seems to be a big disconnect between Riot and the community, but I do not think that this is really due to a lack of posts or information from Riot.

I think what seems to be happening is many people have similar questions they want answered and each one makes their own thread about it. When Riot answers one thread they tend to not answer more. So what ends up happening is there are 1,000 posts asking why skin prices have increased or why limited edition skins are being re-released and while there are 1 or 2 with real discussions with Riot posts in them they get drowned out by the majority asking questions that are not getting answered.

The real issue that needs to be solved is not removing negativity, but keeping the focus on one issue contained within one thread. That way Riot will be able to respond to the criticism in full view of everyone who has the same thoughts. It is just impossible to keep up with the volume of the forums in the current format which I believe is what Riot is trying to solve with the new format.

Riot seems to be trying to simply find the views of the community, respond to questions and concerns, and make their response easily accessible. The last part is where Riot is currently failing which gives the impression that they are being less than transparent.

FrozenXylaphone10/17/2013, 8:12:00 PM1 votes

The problem is negativity is actually really good feedback. Even in some of the most raging comments, there is some wisdom to be gained. For you see, it is more likely that person is that way as a causation from a policy rather than because they were just born a negative nancy.

Problem is when a company decides they just want to read comments on how good they are. That is when they stop innovating and begin to get stuck in what is called GROUP THINK. Sociology 101.

Sometimes growth only comes from reading something that makes you feel bad. Sometimes, the most productive comment is one that essentially reduces you to your knees.

So the answer to me is that the negativity will still exist. Question is will Riot choose to ignore it and become groupthink company one billion (companies like EA who pat themselves on the back and win worst company of the year award because they don't listen to the tons of negativity that is REALLY valid) or will they continue to listen and post on highly negative feedback like a company that cares about its image would.

SlumlordThanatos10/17/2013, 6:41:43 PM1 votes

My question is...will transplanting the General D community into this format actually solve the issue of filtering out negativity? I agree that it will probably drown out the random "rito sux" comments that permeate the megathreads, but what about these?

No.

Until we can figure out some way to hold people accountable for their behavior on the Internet, there will be trolls and assholes no matter where you go.

The only differences are in the quality of moderation, and I feel like better and more consistent moderation, as well as a "Report User/Post" button, would work wonders with the community.

The layout won't do anything to change that.

Posle Ekho10/17/2013, 11:38:51 PM1 votes

What if we Riot just added a new "community" section to the forums that was only available to people who contributed 50 or more posts/responses during the beta phase? This would let the people that care about discussing reality and the game in a separate (and less negative) place than GD. It would also reward people who truly care about the community get filtered out from trolls and posts like "THis IS Wy I qUIt LEahGU Of LEGaNDs!!!1!!!!!1!!!!!!!!one!!!!!!". More users could be added of course if they truly bettered the community in some way (through the forums)