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The MOBAFire voting system is broken; A...

Creator: Vapora Dark August 27, 2017 3:42am
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Is the voting system broken?
The_Nameless_Bard
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jhoijhoi wrote:
Joev just said that only a fifth of votes with C2V which are never cast due to C2V are downvotes. That means 80% of lost votes are UPVOTES. What you're saying shouldn't even factor. Basically you're saying that it's worth keeping C2V just so the first 20 votes on a guide (because that's when C2V turns off) are upvotes, no matter what? How does that reflect the true nature of the guide? What C2V prevents in reality, is the reader's ability to honestly reflect on how they feel about the guide. It should be simple. Upvote = I like it. Downvote = I don't like it. It shouldn't mean anything more than that.
I never said anything about whether or not it should be kept. I said they need to worry about getting people to vote in the first place, because even when it's off no one is voting on most of the guides. If you look through the lists, newer guides that have it off tend to have just as few votes. Turning it off, on its own, won't fix it or those guides would have more votes to begin with. I would guess that the vast majority of guides have less than 50 votes, if not less than 20.

I was simply pointing out the obvious, if people are still getting upvotes and not getting downvotes with comment to vote on, then it doesn't matter that most of the votes technically being prevented are upvotes. The only thing being prevented from happening are downvotes, in practice. I wasn't using that as an argument for keeping it, just pointing out that it's disingenuous to say upvotes are what's being prevented when people are still actually getting those when comment to vote is on. I still think scores should be reset every season, because votes from the previous season should not have an effect on the guide (as changes are major between seasons and it is often irrelevant what someone thought last season). I'm fairly sure they're not gonna do that either even though it would force the scores to be more meaningful and prevent guides that hadn't received an update for the new season from sitting near the top anyway. Especially not with the ******** that happens already with people just downvoting any guide without comment to vote that gets in their way.
jhoijhoi
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Quoted:
I was simply pointing out the obvious, if people are still getting upvotes and not getting downvotes with comment to vote on, then it doesn't matter that most of the votes technically being prevented are upvotes. The only thing being prevented from happening are downvotes, in practice. I wasn't using that as an argument for keeping it, just pointing out that it's disingenuous to say upvotes are what's being prevented when people are still actually getting those when comment to vote is on.
If that was what you meant with your previous comment, you did not get that point across at all.

Anyway.

Yes, it would be good if the site moved towards allowing people to vote outside of being logged in. I understand that creating accounts is a good way of getting people to take ownership of their votes and come back and become a proper member over time.

Members who downvote guides to get their own guides higher-up are awful, but there's nothing really "wrong" with that in the sense that upvote = like, downvote = dislike. When you're voting on a political party, you go 1 to 10 with 1 being your top preference and 10 being the least preferable - you're not going to get a politician who would vote someone else over themselves, or rank themselves lower in the hierarchy. There aren't systems in place to prevent one cover of a song on YouTube being downvoted by another person who's covered the same song - it just doesn't make sense.

Obviously I don't know the solution, but if a guide author is really insecure enough/feels the need to downvote other guides, it shouldn't matter, as the better guide will end up on top anyway.

As for the resetting scores between seasons - I thought that only the latest 50 votes counted and you had to recast your vote every now and then anyway. What would resetting the scores every season do besides cause an upheaval of random guides being at the top, not representative of what the community thinks is the best guide? In the end, MobaFire wants to look good and having random guides at the top of the list is worse than having a slightly outdated guide there.
Vapora Dark
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jhoijhoi wrote:
If that was what you meant with your previous comment, you did not get that point across at all.

Anyway.

Yes, it would be good if the site moved towards allowing people to vote outside of being logged in. I understand that creating accounts is a good way of getting people to take ownership of their votes and come back and become a proper member over time.

Members who downvote guides to get their own guides higher-up are awful, but there's nothing really "wrong" with that in the sense that upvote = like, downvote = dislike. When you're voting on a political party, you go 1 to 10 with 1 being your top preference and 10 being the least preferable - you're not going to get a politician who would vote someone else over themselves, or rank themselves lower in the hierarchy. There aren't systems in place to prevent one cover of a song on YouTube being downvoted by another person who's covered the same song - it just doesn't make sense.

Obviously I don't know the solution, but if a guide author is really insecure enough/feels the need to downvote other guides, it shouldn't matter, as the better guide will end up on top anyway.

I thought that only the latest 50 votes counted and you had to recast your vote every now and then anyway

Last 20 votes afaik, but yeah that's how the system works. No need to reset scores after every season, if a guide remains out of date it'll be downvoted away from the top spot.
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I mean, for example, until I wrote a Kayle guide, the second highest rated guide was a season 6 support Kayle guide. It took me doing that before that guide moved down at all. I've honestly seen that happen multiple times in the past, which is why I brought it up. The season it was last updated in doesn't take priority over the score, which is sort of an issue.
PsiGuard
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I mean, for example, until I wrote a Kayle guide, the second highest rated guide was a season 6 support Kayle guide. It took me doing that before that guide moved down at all. I've honestly seen that happen multiple times in the past, which is why I brought it up. The season it was last updated in doesn't take priority over the score, which is sort of an issue.

To be clear about season-to-season stuff, the way we did it in the past was to deprecate all guides from before the preseason patch (so this'd be before 6.22 for last season) and mark the start of the preseason as the "new season." Guides that aren't updated for the new season (which usually includes changes like new masteries) are flagged as outdated and are pushed down in the listings.

The reason you'll still see guides from November 2016 in the listings is because they're technically considered part of the season 7 guides. I'm personally not super happy about that but that's the reason.

On the plus side, we do have the patch indicators on the guides in the listings now, so guides that are that old will have a yellow "6.22" tag that indicates they're pretty dated.
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Personally, I don't think allowing guests to vote alongside members will solve anything. Like mentioned before, this will most likely result in a split representation of upvotes. The votes from members would obviously be of higher value than those of guests, resulting in people still creating acounts to get those votes. You don't solve the problem, you move it.

Okay, so in hindsight this next part is extremely negative (not towards anyone, just the situation). Do know that this is an expression of my frustrations rather than a lecture which points a finger at someone.

Considering the nature of voting, I have to agree with Jhoijhoi's, and state that the voting-system is clunky, not in the way of voting but rather the reason to vote. As of now, the voting system is a representation of the overall picture provided by a member. This in essence isn't bad, not in the slightest. It is, however, in the context of this community. People get to upvote or downvote guides and posts at will, a few guides are presented on the main page (those with the most views and those which are featured) and you get a reputation based on whether people like you. It is all a big contest amongst eachother. Even the origin of this discussion, people getting more upvotes than you in an unjust way, supports this. Who has the highest rated guide, the most posts, the most reputation, all disguised as an allegedly accurate representation of one's input. However, when upvoting a guide, post or anything related you choose to upvote not the actual words written, but rather the person who wrote it.

In my honest opinion, this discussion shows that a decision considering the future of the community needs to be made. Mobafire provides a social platform, guides and information related to the game League Of Legends. There are, however, other sites which focus on a single aspect and have more effective results. Reddit is a much wider known, more easily accessible and more elaborate social platform at which people can discuss the current state of LOL. Guides are being taken over by Youtubers and replaying programs, leaving you with the people who understand guides better when written down (and in this day and age, this group is small). Finally, the general information can be found on the site of LOL itself as well as it's wiki, which both provide more elaborate and detailed information. This has, to a certain extent, resulted in a community mostly aimed at it's own members, rather than those who are not member yet, effectively contributing to the problem mentioned above and starving itself.

I don't have any detailed solutions. For that I don't know the site and it's community well enough. Objectively speaking, however, I would suggest doing a complete overhaul and either start focussing on something which other sites don't substantionally elaborate upon (e.g. actual strategies, such as lane-swapping, triple ADC comps, etc.), or improve the aspects used currently (social platform, guides, info) to such an extent that it surpasses the other sites around. And, aditionally, the revamp of the voting system.

I want the best for this community. I have seen a lot of people come and go. Some people who made detailed guides but got disheartened after a few months after getting next to no recognition. Other players simply came to ask a question, find an answer or answer a question, but were not interested enough to stick around. And I fear that if we are not able to turn that tide around, this could very well mean the end of Mobafire. And that all starts with this discussion.

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PsiGuard
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Hey @ Penita13, thanks for your comment. I just wanted to clear up a few things about your post.

First of all, guest voting (at least this is our plan so far) will be separate from member voting and will result in a separate score. The guide score shown to prospective readers will be the higher of the two scores, so member votes will not be inherently more valuable. Of course we could always change how this works in the future if there's a better implementation, but the problem you mention wouldn't happen as it stands now.

I understand your concerns with the voting system. To be honest, this is partly just the nature of democratic voting. People are biased, and will vote for people they like more, or people they recognize. People vote based on rank rather than the merit of the guide, based on aesthetic with no concern for information, all kinds of biases. There's not really much we can do about that without directly tampering with guide scores or removing the voting system altogether and hand-picking which guides get the most traffic. This would of course go against the spirit of MOBAFire, which is a community grounded in equality.

Other sites (like reddit) which have democratic voting systems can mitigate some of the problems normally associated with that system by having a big enough voting pool, which is what guest voting is trying to do here. If dozens or hundreds of people vote on a guide instead of just a handful, you should end up with a more accurate assessment of what the community thinks of the guide (even if the community is wrong).

Also not every person bases their vote on the author rather than the content of a guide. Plenty of people just take a look at the guide and vote, having no clue who the author is. If you're wondering why authors like Vapora Dark are popular, it's not just because they're well known, they also produce quality guides. You'd be more likely to buy a book from an author you know and love rather than from someone you've never heard of. I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

Not going to go into too much detail about your other comments about the future of the site. To be honest it seems like a lot of your perspective is based on conjecture. There are still plenty of new people who join the community and stick around, for example, and I don't think I would say that the site is declining. We also have a number of sister sites and the devs have some new projects, so it's not like LoL guides is the only thing the network has going for it. I agree that experienced players are less likely to look up a written guide, but that isn't true for a lot of newer players.

We're happy to take in feedback from the community and make this site the best tool it can be for users. We're still working on improvements to existing tools as well as new features and your feedback helps us prioritize goals and make sure we're working in the right direction. I wouldn't be too worried about the future of the site yet though.
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PsiGuard wrote:
On the plus side, we do have the patch indicators on the guides in the listings now, so guides that are that old will have a yellow "6.22" tag that indicates they're pretty dated.
It looks really bad that those are there and can sit in the top spot by dumb luck because the votes don't decay fast enough (I've watched this happen in the past). If a guide hasn't been updated in close to a year, it really shouldn't take priority over guides that are up to date. It should, at the very least, be forced to the bottom of the first page, if not archived automatically, after a set period of time with no updates.

PsiGuard wrote:
hand-picking which guides get the most traffic.
I know this isn't something anyone probably wants to hear, but I want to throw out there that you do already do this, though not to the extent being spoken of. You feature only three guides on the front page every week, despite the number of free champions during the week being nearly five times that number. There's not a whole lot of variation in whose guides are being featured either, which does mean that certain people get far more free traffic than everyone else.
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Guide scores affect long term traffic much more than just a week-long feature. I agree that it's pretty common for guides to be featured multiple times, but I would rather ensure that the featured guides are of high quality than sacrifice that for the sake of variety.

Also it might seem that there's not much variation because people like Vapora have a slew of high quality guides. I could probably feature Vapora's guides for a number of weeks without any repeats.

I'm always open to criticism about which guides get featured, but ultimately I have to rely on my own judgment. I do sometimes poll players I trust to do a quick review of some featured candidates before I make a decision.

Also keep in mind I will not feature a guide that has blatantly outdated content or misinformation. Sometimes this happens where a good guide (like the top Ori guide I think) is just too outdated to feature at the time.
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