You got a point.
However, and as a community-oriented guidesite, Mobafire users themselves must be the ones that punish bad usage or rewards good updates.
This site has the bad luck of having a community that doesn't vote much. A guide may have millions of views, but only a hundred votes. Since Visibility don't affect votes that much, "trick-creators" just edit their guides, change a couple of letters and post it as "updated", since nobody is going to vote it down for it.
As a deep creator myself this particulary hits my feelings, but there is nothing much admins can do. Maybe rewarding users for voting, but I'm sure they would abuse it.
However, and as a community-oriented guidesite, Mobafire users themselves must be the ones that punish bad usage or rewards good updates.
This site has the bad luck of having a community that doesn't vote much. A guide may have millions of views, but only a hundred votes. Since Visibility don't affect votes that much, "trick-creators" just edit their guides, change a couple of letters and post it as "updated", since nobody is going to vote it down for it.
As a deep creator myself this particulary hits my feelings, but there is nothing much admins can do. Maybe rewarding users for voting, but I'm sure they would abuse it.
I feel like admins could have someone have the job of patrolling the guides. Basically looking through each champion every once in awhile to make sure all the guides shown as "Season 7" guides are actually up to date and if they're not the guide should be moved to Season 6 guides or something.
Lasoor wrote:
I feel like admins could have someone have the job of patrolling the guides. Basically looking through each champion every once in awhile to make sure all the guides shown as "Season 7" guides are actually up to date and if they're not the guide should be moved to Season 6 guides or something.
Unless they're getting paid for it, I think this is the community's job. In theory, vets and scouts could do it but in practice it's an exhausting process.
Quoted:
Unless they're getting paid for it, I think this is the community's job. In theory, vets and scouts could do it but in practice it's an exhausting process.
Wouldn't be too difficult to find a volunteer specifically for this job, or multiple volunteers even. That plus community reporting guides that are outdated to bring attention to them could help solve the problem.
I think you underestimate how many guides there are on Mobafire which fit this criteria.
Even at a fairly conservative estimate of 3 per champion, that still leaves potentially 300+ guides to go through.
Even if you found 10 people who volunteered (and that's a lot), going through 30+ guides is quite a lot. Even going through guides of champion's who have been recently buffed every time there was a patch would be fairly hard to do.
I do think you make a valid point about this being a problem, however.
Even at a fairly conservative estimate of 3 per champion, that still leaves potentially 300+ guides to go through.
Even if you found 10 people who volunteered (and that's a lot), going through 30+ guides is quite a lot. Even going through guides of champion's who have been recently buffed every time there was a patch would be fairly hard to do.
I do think you make a valid point about this being a problem, however.
There's no ideal solution. I've been guilty of taking a long time to update my guides before, namely with my Talon guide where I think I took 4 months to update it to season 6. I only ended up doing it because it was forcibly archived eventually so that served as motivation to update it so I could get it back up.
Forcibly archiving out-dated guides generally isn't the greatest solution though since who knows how long it'll take the author to find the motivation to update his guide. In the case of my Talon guide for example I didn't find it too urgent to update my guide since pretty much all I had to do was update masteries to the new masteries, and update my build-path/item explanations; both these things were already done in my cheat-sheet anyway. I felt a disclaimer within my guide saying that my cheat-sheet was always more up to date than the text would suffice, even if it wasn't optimal.
When guides in cases like that get archived it means the top rated guide is now the previous #2. Sometimes that's fine, but sometimes it's much worse than just having an out-dated guide. There was a time for example where if I archived my Hecarim guide, it would by replaced by a guide recommending Stalker's Blade - Runic Echoes into Hextech Gunblade (which was the top rated guide before I wrote mine). Would you rather the #1 Hecarim guide be a guide whose text features season 6 masteries but otherwise has the correct information in the cheat-sheet (the most important part of a guide where most "readers" won't even look past), or would you rather it be an AP Hecarim guide?
There is no solution other than the community downvoting these guides, but when upvoting or downvoting it's always smart to consider what impact that would have over the rankings, and I'm personally not going to downvote an out-dated guide below a plain awful guide, and likewise if I had the power to archive out-dated guides, I wouldn't do it with no suitable replacement in place (and for the sake of not having double standards I wouldn't do it at all).
The situation is less than ideal but it's probably as good as it's gonna get until you find a way to force authors to take the time to update their guides. It's only worth admin action if it's really out-dated, like all pre-rework WW guides are irrelevant now and should be archived if they're not updated within a week for example. I think I recently reported the top Ryze guide too because it was a guide for the previous Ryze iteration, now the current one.
If you want to help tackle the problem, the best thing to do is write a better guide. But otherwise I would argue that straight up taking down every guide that hasn't updated to seasonal changes (with the exception of reworks and guides that require an update to jungle routes for example) would probably do more harm than good. The best case scenario would be for it to prompt the authors to update the guides, but not everyone would (even I took a month after the archival to decide to sit down and make the necessary updates >.>).
Talon guide where I think I took 4 months to update it to season 6. I only ended up doing it because it was forcibly archived eventually so that served as motivation to update it so I could get it back up.Forcibly archiving out-dated guides generally isn't the greatest solution though since who knows how long it'll take the author to find the motivation to update his guide. In the case of my
Talon guide for example I didn't find it too urgent to update my guide since pretty much all I had to do was update masteries to the new masteries, and update my build-path/item explanations; both these things were already done in my cheat-sheet anyway. I felt a disclaimer within my guide saying that my cheat-sheet was always more up to date than the text would suffice, even if it wasn't optimal.When guides in cases like that get archived it means the top rated guide is now the previous #2. Sometimes that's fine, but sometimes it's much worse than just having an out-dated guide. There was a time for example where if I archived my
Hecarim guide, it would by replaced by a guide recommending Stalker's Blade - Runic Echoes into Hextech Gunblade (which was the top rated guide before I wrote mine). Would you rather the #1 Hecarim guide be a guide whose text features season 6 masteries but otherwise has the correct information in the cheat-sheet (the most important part of a guide where most "readers" won't even look past), or would you rather it be an AP Hecarim guide?There is no solution other than the community downvoting these guides, but when upvoting or downvoting it's always smart to consider what impact that would have over the rankings, and I'm personally not going to downvote an out-dated guide below a plain awful guide, and likewise if I had the power to archive out-dated guides, I wouldn't do it with no suitable replacement in place (and for the sake of not having double standards I wouldn't do it at all).
The situation is less than ideal but it's probably as good as it's gonna get until you find a way to force authors to take the time to update their guides. It's only worth admin action if it's really out-dated, like all pre-rework WW guides are irrelevant now and should be archived if they're not updated within a week for example. I think I recently reported the top
Ryze guide too because it was a guide for the previous Ryze iteration, now the current one.If you want to help tackle the problem, the best thing to do is write a better guide. But otherwise I would argue that straight up taking down every guide that hasn't updated to seasonal changes (with the exception of reworks and guides that require an update to jungle routes for example) would probably do more harm than good. The best case scenario would be for it to prompt the authors to update the guides, but not everyone would (even I took a month after the archival to decide to sit down and make the necessary updates >.>).
Quoted:
There's no ideal solution. I've been guilty of taking a long time to update my guides before, namely with my Talon guide where I think I took 4 months to update it to season 6. I only ended up doing it because it was forcibly archived eventually so that served as motivation to update it so I could get it back up.
I don't think out of date guides is the issue. I think where they are displayed is. If it is displaying them as up to date when they aren't then there is an issue there.
Quoted:
When guides in cases like that get archived it means the top rated guide is now the previous #2. Sometimes that's fine, but sometimes it's much worse than just having an out-dated guide. There was a time for example where if I archived my Hecarim guide, it would by replaced by a guide recommending Stalker's Blade - Runic Echoes into Hextech Gunblade (which was the top rated guide before I wrote mine). Would you rather the #1 Hecarim guide be a guide whose text features season 6 masteries but otherwise has the correct information in the cheat-sheet (the most important part of a guide where most "readers" won't even look past), or would you rather it be an AP Hecarim guide?
Well from a personal stand point when I look up guides for champions I'm interested in I do it with enough sense to know what makes most sense build wise already. I'm not going to look up Ashe guides and see AP Ashe on top and then decide to play AP Ashe. I really don't think it is the job of guide makers or the job of administrators to decide which guides should be placed where. That is job of the community that uses those guides and if a guide doesn't work then it should be downvoted. A large issue with voting though is it requires an account, which is for obvious reasons. But that is also the reason few people vote on guides, most views are from people without accounts.
Quoted:
There is no solution other than the community downvoting these guides, but when upvoting or downvoting it's always smart to consider what impact that would have over the rankings
I really don't feel like rankings of guides should be controlled in any way. Guides that are good will naturally float to top, for example my guides were top rated of the 30 day period I made them which brought them attention. But take
Warwick for example. I had top guide for Season 7 guides on it and then some guy with a 2 million view guide updated nothing but his title to say "Enjoy Warwick Before Rework" and all his items and information were outdated. It got ahead of my guide. Now I'm going to be archiving my guide though until I remake it for Reworked Warwick, but I'm guessing that one will remain as a top Season 7 guide because of its views and votes. That's an example of what shouldn't be happening. It wastes people's time when they're trying to look up how to play a champion.
Quoted:
I think you underestimate how many guides there are on Mobafire which fit this criteria.
Even at a fairly conservative estimate of 3 per champion, that still leaves potentially 300+ guides to go through.
Even if you found 10 people who volunteered (and that's a lot), going through 30+ guides is quite a lot. Even going through guides of champion's who have been recently buffed every time there was a patch would be fairly hard to do.
I do think you make a valid point about this being a problem, however.
Even at a fairly conservative estimate of 3 per champion, that still leaves potentially 300+ guides to go through.
Even if you found 10 people who volunteered (and that's a lot), going through 30+ guides is quite a lot. Even going through guides of champion's who have been recently buffed every time there was a patch would be fairly hard to do.
I do think you make a valid point about this being a problem, however.
I don't underestimate it, but each champion will have around 20 guides shown as Season 7 guides and builds to look through. Honestly, it can be done pretty quickly especially if the priority was the cheat sheet information. I've done moderation work for many websites so I know what it takes to sort through vast amounts of content and I feel like it would be doable for the guides on this website to make sure they aren't being shown as up to date unless they actually are.
lol, looking at the top guides my fingers itch to update my own Warwick guide 8D
You can report guides that are outdated or may be cheating the system. It's a button right beside the "fav" button underneath the guide title. These reports are recieved by the mods and admins, who will read your report, check out the guide and make a decision whether or not to warn the author or if the guide is truly gamin the system, force archive it.
Force archiving doesn't happen easily. It's funny, but I was arguing the same things as you were about a Warwick guide written years ago. It stayed at the top forever, despite the author never updating it. Admin and mods were reluctant to take it down. And I'm talking items that were removed from the game, outdated. It was outdated for more than a year, with members commenting with stuff like, "hey, I don't level up when you say I would" and "your jungle route doesn't work" and "I can't kill dragon by myself like you say I can".
This happened when guides actually got a comment per day. So it was especially bad.
Outdated guides contribute a lot to the idea that MobaFire is a bad place for guides. I've been guilty myself, of not updating my Ashe guide in a timely manner. There's no incentive for guide writers to update their guides. Guides don't get votes or comments much anymore, so it's easy to forget about a guide and justify your actions as reasonable.
I've got no solutions for it. Policing it wastes time. There are probably only 30 or so guides on MobaFire that are up to date AND completely optimal. The game changes all the time. Expecting authors to be on it when a new meta is exposed, or an item reworked, or a camp added to the jungle - author's don't have an obligation to update their guides.
You can report guides that are outdated or may be cheating the system. It's a button right beside the "fav" button underneath the guide title. These reports are recieved by the mods and admins, who will read your report, check out the guide and make a decision whether or not to warn the author or if the guide is truly gamin the system, force archive it.
Force archiving doesn't happen easily. It's funny, but I was arguing the same things as you were about a Warwick guide written years ago. It stayed at the top forever, despite the author never updating it. Admin and mods were reluctant to take it down. And I'm talking items that were removed from the game, outdated. It was outdated for more than a year, with members commenting with stuff like, "hey, I don't level up when you say I would" and "your jungle route doesn't work" and "I can't kill dragon by myself like you say I can".
This happened when guides actually got a comment per day. So it was especially bad.
Outdated guides contribute a lot to the idea that MobaFire is a bad place for guides. I've been guilty myself, of not updating my Ashe guide in a timely manner. There's no incentive for guide writers to update their guides. Guides don't get votes or comments much anymore, so it's easy to forget about a guide and justify your actions as reasonable.
I've got no solutions for it. Policing it wastes time. There are probably only 30 or so guides on MobaFire that are up to date AND completely optimal. The game changes all the time. Expecting authors to be on it when a new meta is exposed, or an item reworked, or a camp added to the jungle - author's don't have an obligation to update their guides.
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Also I think guides that still have old items or masteries in them shouldn't be seen as Season 7 guides just because they were recently updated. The guide maker should have to update it to the current items and masteries. I've seen some guides that show how to play a champion back in Season 5 or Season 6 that were just updated to be bumped up to Season 7 guides section.
I see some guides shown as "Season 7 Guides" or "Season 7 Builds" that even have "S6" in their title or a Season 6 patch number in the title.
What are your thoughts/opinions on this?
PS: If this is in the wrong forum section please move it for me. Placed it in Build & Guides section because it relates to Builds & Guides