I know if I published a guide with next to no information, and expected upvotes, I wouldn't get any. Guides are meant to explain and cater to new players.
If you can't stand the heat get out of the kitchen, ie, if you can't cater to the masses, don't bother. It's not hard to write down what you know about a champion and put it in your guide.
Sure, sometimes I waffle in my guides, or repeat myself numerous times, but I get more comments thanking me for the depth of the guide than comments complaining about the score and the fact that it's wordy.
If you can't stand the heat get out of the kitchen, ie, if you can't cater to the masses, don't bother. It's not hard to write down what you know about a champion and put it in your guide.
Sure, sometimes I waffle in my guides, or repeat myself numerous times, but I get more comments thanking me for the depth of the guide than comments complaining about the score and the fact that it's wordy.
But what if sometimes, a player writes a guide for more advanced and skilled players?
Some champs have a higher learning curve than others, and some champs can be played differently instead of just one way (ie AD Sion, AP Sion, AD Offtank Sion).
New players cannot really simply adapt to a guide since he or she is too new, then decides to downvote because "it did not work".
Some champs have a higher learning curve than others, and some champs can be played differently instead of just one way (ie AD Sion, AP Sion, AD Offtank Sion).
New players cannot really simply adapt to a guide since he or she is too new, then decides to downvote because "it did not work".
(Discontinued)
jhoijhoi wrote:
I know if I published a guide with next to no information, and expected upvotes, I wouldn't get any. Guides are meant to explain and cater to new players.
Actually...
There used to be a


There is a lot of truth to the "Write a long *** guide and get free upvotes for it." thing.

http://www.mobafire.com/league-of-legends/build/duffs-336706
Come hang out when I'm streaming! http://www.twitch.tv/dufftime
DuffTime wrote:
There is a lot of truth to the "Write a long *** guide and get free upvotes for it." thing.
But the problem is that we have naive voters, not long-winded authors. Even if all guides had the bare minimum of text, you'd still have people upvoting guides that are ridiculously unviable for other stupid reasons, such as the score they got by trying it one time at level 15.
At least when you see a humongous guide, the author actually had to use their brain, whether they came to the right conclusions or not. More often than not, authors of long guides are more willing to adapt their builds and information to criticism, since they spent so much time and effort writing the guide. I have much less faith in the response of the writer of an obscenely short guide whose author just dishes out information and expects the community to eat it up without any support.
Long story short, I don't think that the problem with this site is "good guides aren't reaching the top." I think the majority of seriously high-quality guides do rise pretty quickly. The problem is we have voters that bring up a lot of low-quality guides as well.
If we had 15 incredibly good guides for every champion, I would expect to see 10 great guides in the top 10.

Thanks to Jovy for the sig!
Yes, everything you said is valid.
What I'm referring to are the "Bad eggs" in our top tens that have completely false information and bad builds that simply get there due to the exaggerated and simultaneously impractical guide that was written and drawn out.
What I'm referring to are the "Bad eggs" in our top tens that have completely false information and bad builds that simply get there due to the exaggerated and simultaneously impractical guide that was written and drawn out.

http://www.mobafire.com/league-of-legends/build/duffs-336706
Come hang out when I'm streaming! http://www.twitch.tv/dufftime
Yeah. Most high rated guides on this site are terrible, in all honesty.
Guides that are top, stay there. It's a problem when they're terrible, too. About 85-90% of the top rated guides on this site are actually terrible, and the good guides are buried below. People tend to think things/do things because of the top rated guide. E.G. if the top rated guide for Viktor has a Morello's Evil Tome as a first item, there's a good chance that if you make a good Viktor guide, though it condemns Morello's as a bad choice for casters, that it will be downvoted (by but a small amount of people, though Bayesian averages mean they make all the difference), even though the information you stated is true.
There's still guides that start with Doran's items, take Ionian Boots of Lucidity as casters that aren't Vladimir, build glass cannon melee, building Tear on casters that aren't Karthus/Kass (Kass still only uses it in very obscure cases), and take Clarity, as a few examples.
I think a good build is more important than a "good" guide. As a rule of thumb - if the build's bad then the guide's likely a bunch of garbage as well since people have no idea what they're talking about and will be wrote in rhetoric, saying what people WANT to hear rather than what's best. That or they have no clue themselves.
This comment will receive a lot of negative opinions against it - but it's what I feel. I don't care how my guides fare for the most part, nor do I ever look at guides on this site for how to play a champion, though it pains me to see bad guides rise higher than good ones. I saw a wonderful Udyr guide not too far back, it was at 38%, even though it had Jatt's runes (arguably the best Udyr player in the world), a really good build (started with Wit's End, etc), and had an extensive explanation, which included a video and valuable information. It pained me to see it downvoted (edit: can't find it now or I'd link it, may have been archived).
I think there should be some way for good players (or people with high confirmed elo) to have more heavily weighted votes. I haven't played ranked in S2 myself - so I can assure you it isn't from some sort of self-absorbed intent, though I'd still love to see it happen.
Guides that are top, stay there. It's a problem when they're terrible, too. About 85-90% of the top rated guides on this site are actually terrible, and the good guides are buried below. People tend to think things/do things because of the top rated guide. E.G. if the top rated guide for Viktor has a Morello's Evil Tome as a first item, there's a good chance that if you make a good Viktor guide, though it condemns Morello's as a bad choice for casters, that it will be downvoted (by but a small amount of people, though Bayesian averages mean they make all the difference), even though the information you stated is true.
There's still guides that start with Doran's items, take Ionian Boots of Lucidity as casters that aren't Vladimir, build glass cannon melee, building Tear on casters that aren't Karthus/Kass (Kass still only uses it in very obscure cases), and take Clarity, as a few examples.
I think a good build is more important than a "good" guide. As a rule of thumb - if the build's bad then the guide's likely a bunch of garbage as well since people have no idea what they're talking about and will be wrote in rhetoric, saying what people WANT to hear rather than what's best. That or they have no clue themselves.
This comment will receive a lot of negative opinions against it - but it's what I feel. I don't care how my guides fare for the most part, nor do I ever look at guides on this site for how to play a champion, though it pains me to see bad guides rise higher than good ones. I saw a wonderful Udyr guide not too far back, it was at 38%, even though it had Jatt's runes (arguably the best Udyr player in the world), a really good build (started with Wit's End, etc), and had an extensive explanation, which included a video and valuable information. It pained me to see it downvoted (edit: can't find it now or I'd link it, may have been archived).
I think there should be some way for good players (or people with high confirmed elo) to have more heavily weighted votes. I haven't played ranked in S2 myself - so I can assure you it isn't from some sort of self-absorbed intent, though I'd still love to see it happen.

*Single tear, slow clap...
B... Bravo... Bravo...
B... Bravo... Bravo...

http://www.mobafire.com/league-of-legends/build/duffs-336706
Come hang out when I'm streaming! http://www.twitch.tv/dufftime
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And most of the time the guide with the most amount of text and icons reach the top. Even if they suck and are completely unviable, people think: "Oh, huge guide +1"
Just write A LOT of text and it will become #1.
Have you taken the time to actually read any of these supposedly long-winded guides? I can't think of a single guide that's extremely long that's just full of useless text. Having a long guide generally means it's in-depth.
You don't have to have a long guide to get a good score, or to get across the information that's required. You can take a look at Searz' Kassadin guide for evidence of this. He's very concise, but his info is solid and well organized, so he gets his deserved score.
I know for a fact that there are people who will upvote any guide that the author "put a lot of effort into it." That's one of the facts of the internet and the voter's right. There are also voters who will upvote a guide based solely on the cheatsheet without looking at the guide at all. There are also voters who will only upvote the top-rated guide, or only upvote their "favorite" guide and downvote all the others. There are authors who will downvote every other guide made for that champion in an effort to get theirs to the top.
The voting system may have its faults, marisi, but don't think that it's only the long guides that get sheep-votes.