[DISCUSSION] Any ideas to prevent posts continuously being posted in wrong sections?

MXXIV·Mar 1, 2014·4 votes·488 views

It happens very often, that people pick totally wrong cathegory for their posts.

The Site feedback category is being raped several times a day. I think there should be some mechanism (eg. user voting?) to move the post in the right place. At least the OP should be able to do this.
There are somme internal issues to this I guess - one of them being the fact that you generate diferent set of ID's for every cathegory, so moving the post would probably almost mean re-creating it on server side. But that's a fault of concept and not interesting for users.

You guys, do you have some ideas about that?

24 Comments

ratcharmerMar 1, 20143 votes

Yeah, I've seen a lot of this already . . .

The best idea I can come up with off the top of my head is to have an option under "report" for "Report: in wrong section"

Then the community could flag threads that need moved, making the mods job easier.

MackleDogeMar 1, 20141 votes

The only solution to this would be either A) post review by moderators before the actual post is created (which is a terrible idea to me) or B) have actual moderators that are actually active and actually do their job (which I've yet to see anything even resembling appropriate and active moderation from Riot). So unless Riot actually fixes their issues with terrible and often abused moderation, I don't see this problem being fixed at any point.

MXXIVMar 1, 20141 votes

Yeah, I just already assumed the simply aren't capable of creating good moderation base.

MackleDogeMar 1, 20141 votes

With the population that the community has, they would either have to hire a lot more people to actually be dedicated moderators, which isn't a terrible idea. However, I think for the community to actually "self-moderate" as IronStylus is always eager to throw around as a buzz word and think it will just magically happen, then Riot needs to focus on an initiative to include community moderators. Let's face it, upvote/downvote and the report feature (which I haven't seen actually do anything) isn't enough to actually effectively community moderate. Those features don't solve wrong sub-communities, they don't solve spamming in threads, and they don't solve spamming and repeated creation of threads.

MXXIVMar 1, 20141 votes

If it was me to propose self-moderating solution, I'd just ask them to apply StackExchange system. There, moderators are elected. Everything is being voted about.

MackleDogeMar 1, 20142 votes

That's a really good point, my only thing with that is I'm not certain how that sort of system would work out with how obviously circle-jerking and, shall we say, less then reasonable, the league community seems to be.

MXXIVMar 1, 20141 votes

I often see circle-jerk term, but I'm not really sure what it exacly means - though I have some guesses from the context.

MackleDogeMar 1, 20142 votes

Since this is a term I definitely would not recommend googling (for obvious reasons) I'll attempt a brief definition. Essentially, one person uses some sort of meme, pun, obvious catering to the forum go-ers to make their post seem really good and then everyone piles on. It's sort of the forum version of mob mentality and a throwback to shit like people being sheep and bandwagoning. Everyone wants to be popular and get upvotes and be "right" so they all just agree with the OP whether the OP is right or not and anyone that tries to provide a counter-argument or point out issues with the OP just gets downvoted into oblivion.

The issue with that sort of thing and this community as far as electing forum moderators is that they won't select appropriate people, they'll select people that allow them to get away with breaking the rules and bad behavior. Everyone will bring out all their smurfs and spam vote for the wrong people, while those that actually want to appropriately moderate and keep the forums clean and productive will get flamed by those that just want to spam their hate, toxicity, garbage, and porn.

MXXIVMar 1, 20141 votes

Seems my guesses about that term was right, thanks. Now why do you think there is no porn on StackExchange? And why do you think in real-life democracy, similar things to what you've described do not owerwhelm the justice?
I thing that the problems you've described will happen, but not so much, because you assume that most of the people are not only stupid, but even evil.

So have no wories. In democracy, there will be populism and there will be ideas and opinions hidden deep because they failed to attract the mob. But it's better than total anarchy, which is happening now.

And one more thing - I's more likely for adult people to be active on the forums than the less sympathic people.
Being active here means reading long posts, writing replies and I believe spammers and other just drop their shit and leave. So their votes will not be cast so often.

MackleDogeMar 1, 20141 votes

Unfortunately, I think that your example of real world democracy doesn't hold true here on the internet. People have anonymity here and they will use it, there are countless examples. You say that people have to take more time to read the long threads here and that's true, but that doesn't matter if someone is just voting for the moderator that will let them do whatever or just spam downvoting a thread by someone they don't like or flaming someone. You don't have to read the post to downvote a thread, just open the thread. You don't have to read the entire thread to flame someone about it, because you're just flaming, not engaging in reasonable and valid discussion.

In my opinion, the League community has demonstrated repeatedly that they can not be trusted to behave like mature adults and as such can not be given the respect and responsibilities that a mature adult community could be given. It's nice to have faith in people, but it is irresponsible to continuously hold onto that faith when there are numerous examples of that faith being misplaced. I suppose only time will tell, but I think the League community overall has a lot more maturing to do before they are capable of true and just self-moderation.

MXXIVMar 1, 20141 votes

I fear you might have missed what was I trying to say. The point is, that the mature members will probably be more active - downvoting spams, posting replies and also voting or anything that will be votable.
The destructive members, on the other side, will not be active. They'll dispose their chaos here and there - but from their side, there is no attempt to destroy the community, just lack of manners.

Don't forget that the report system seems to work. So does the tribunal.

But yes, there will be higher force needed before the self-moderating base is strong enough.

And the anonymity has no power here. You have the anonymity of being treated equal at the beginning - but your reputation will stick to you.

MackleDogeMar 1, 20141 votes

I've actually never seen the report system on these forums work. Extremely offensive posts still exist and those users can still post. So I've yet to see anything in that regard. I guess I sort of get what you're saying, the only thing is, if that was the case, why does GD still have all the issues with spam, porn, and toxicity that it does? Wouldn't they dump there chaos a bit and then move on from there as well? Or do you believe this format in particular hinders that sort of behavior that GD is infamous for?

Edit: For making threads or commenting, the reputation sticks. But people can upvote or downvote entirely anonymous, so there is no drawback or stigma of reputation in that regard, which is the issue since I think upvote/downvote is the worst and most problematic portion of this format.

MXXIVMar 1, 20142 votes

I mean the ingame report system.

IMHO GD does not motivate people to follow any rules. It's bad forum with lack of functions, moderators and guidelines.

Lol, reply limit was hit.

MackleDogeMar 1, 20142 votes

Yea this reply limit is terrible, definitely something they should put a priority on fixing. Ah okay, then yes we agree on that, my apologies for misunderstanding.

MXXIVMar 1, 20141 votes

At least they should make it possible for more replies making sense somehow (eg. proper order).

JackAquaMar 1, 20141 votes

When I rework stuff I rather post in Live Balance than Fan Creations, because Live Balance gives more love. I am not proud.

MackleDogeMar 1, 20141 votes

If people always post Fan Creations in Live Balance, how is Fan Creation's sub-community every supposed to grow? Just some food for thought, nothing personal, but don't you think that having the community post threads in appropriate areas is more important than whether or not your concept gets upvotes?

MXXIVMar 1, 20141 votes

Much confession. Very sad.

ZalkreaiMar 2, 20141 votes

Maybe a tag/blurb attached to each section about what the section is about/what you can post in it?

Example: Site Feedback-this is where you can make posts regarding the community beta area of the League of Legends website

MackleDogeMar 2, 20142 votes

If you actually go into the sub-community areas they already have a description. The issue arises when people just go to the front page and make a thread without actually going into the appropriate sub-community first.

ZalkreaiMar 2, 20141 votes

Oh I completely did not notice that... don't know why, probably because it's off to the side... I wonder if that's the problem, it's just not very visible, especially if you're just looking at the top of the page and don't scroll down a bit. If they would put that at the top then that may help with the problem

Also I meant a little hover thing, like when you hover your mouse over the category, just a quick description maybe?

MackleDogeMar 2, 20141 votes

Yea it definitely isn't in a good spot. They could probably use some visibility testing for the actual layout and format of the community beta. Actually that's a really good idea, something I think would be a good feature. Maybe even when you create a thread it has a brief description of each sub-community before you select which one to create the thread in.

ZalkreaiMar 2, 20141 votes

That would be nice, just a quick little reminder of what category you're posting in, lord knows I misclick and don't realize I just posted in the wrong section sometimes