When I offer pointers I tend to focus on guide writing. I might not be able to offer informed criticism on a Riven build and ability usage, for example, but I can suggest the need for more or more detailed matchups, greater depth on laning, the need for a currently missing team-fight section or advice on BBCoding.
Now, you can often give more than a few pointers on even very good guides. I don't feel I am capable of such in-depth analysis of good guides. Usually, if I feel I can offer tonnes of criticism then it's becase it isn't a good guide; I can sum it up by suggesting they read any of the numerous guides on making a guide, or learning their champion better before they make another attempt.
I suppose it really depends on what you want and how helpful you want to be. I want optimal guides at the top and I don't really care about weak guides. As such I feel promising guides should be nurtured and I'm not fussed about people just flat out stating bad guides are bad and leaving it at that. It is good to be helpful and if someone wants to take the time to really help out the authors of weak guides then kudos to them. I don't bother doing so because I think that the resources to make a good guide are already out there. I do see people make an honest attempt at making a guide but fail miserably and perhaps I should do more than just ignore them, however it irks me because resources are all out there. Don't write a champion guide if you do not know the champion in-depth (thus why I have not made a guide, otherwise I would love to), and read up on all the great resources floating around mobafire to make sure that when you do make a guide it actually is a guide.
By now I'm really just reiterating on my first post. The key points are that I want good guides to be developed upon and don't feel that anyone needs to bother giving more than cursory attention to bad guides. I have neglected to mention the middle-ground. I'm really not sure what I think about the middle-ground. If it's a well written guide but contains bad information then the writer just needs to try again when they really know their champ. If they know their champ but lack guide writing skills then they need to take example from the great guides.
Comments about my own voting and criticism habits are a minor points, in so far as I focus on them. But I'm happy to discuss it. I was annoyed at xCO2 because I felt that he had ignored the important part of my post, fixated on the minor and then misinterpreted it. Which happens a lot to me. Not so much here, but on the internet in general. Perhaps I need to work on how I express myself.
[edit] PS, thanks for the compliment on the sigs <3 I've added a bit to the meat of my post too.
[edit edit] I've not explicitly addressed what I now think was the main part of you post (almost hypocritical of me). I briefly touched on it, but to put it clearly, if there's a terrible guide but the author honestly does want to learn I'll gladly help them. However that help is not likely to extend beyond "read these guides, read these guides on making guides" or "try again when you know your champion better". Because that's as good as me giving them a really long essay but takes only a fraction of the time.
I'd love to be more involved with the guide community. I think about it a lot but I don't really put those into practice. It's something I may come to do.
Now, you can often give more than a few pointers on even very good guides. I don't feel I am capable of such in-depth analysis of good guides. Usually, if I feel I can offer tonnes of criticism then it's becase it isn't a good guide; I can sum it up by suggesting they read any of the numerous guides on making a guide, or learning their champion better before they make another attempt.
I suppose it really depends on what you want and how helpful you want to be. I want optimal guides at the top and I don't really care about weak guides. As such I feel promising guides should be nurtured and I'm not fussed about people just flat out stating bad guides are bad and leaving it at that. It is good to be helpful and if someone wants to take the time to really help out the authors of weak guides then kudos to them. I don't bother doing so because I think that the resources to make a good guide are already out there. I do see people make an honest attempt at making a guide but fail miserably and perhaps I should do more than just ignore them, however it irks me because resources are all out there. Don't write a champion guide if you do not know the champion in-depth (thus why I have not made a guide, otherwise I would love to), and read up on all the great resources floating around mobafire to make sure that when you do make a guide it actually is a guide.
By now I'm really just reiterating on my first post. The key points are that I want good guides to be developed upon and don't feel that anyone needs to bother giving more than cursory attention to bad guides. I have neglected to mention the middle-ground. I'm really not sure what I think about the middle-ground. If it's a well written guide but contains bad information then the writer just needs to try again when they really know their champ. If they know their champ but lack guide writing skills then they need to take example from the great guides.
Comments about my own voting and criticism habits are a minor points, in so far as I focus on them. But I'm happy to discuss it. I was annoyed at xCO2 because I felt that he had ignored the important part of my post, fixated on the minor and then misinterpreted it. Which happens a lot to me. Not so much here, but on the internet in general. Perhaps I need to work on how I express myself.
[edit] PS, thanks for the compliment on the sigs <3 I've added a bit to the meat of my post too.
[edit edit] I've not explicitly addressed what I now think was the main part of you post (almost hypocritical of me). I briefly touched on it, but to put it clearly, if there's a terrible guide but the author honestly does want to learn I'll gladly help them. However that help is not likely to extend beyond "read these guides, read these guides on making guides" or "try again when you know your champion better". Because that's as good as me giving them a really long essay but takes only a fraction of the time.
I'd love to be more involved with the guide community. I think about it a lot but I don't really put those into practice. It's something I may come to do.
Rydeeer
<Member>
<Member>
Totally agree to the first post of NewMeta, but now the discussion is only on guides and imho it's not the most important thing on the wallpost.
I'm new here and I'm curious to know how do you (community with much more experience then me) see this threat division.
I'm new here and I'm curious to know how do you (community with much more experience then me) see this threat division.
NewMeta
<Member>
<Member>
Vapora Dark wrote:
Voters are there to tell you if it's good or bad, not write the guide for you.
Yes but people who comment should probably still try to tell someone WHY their guide is good or bad. They're not writing the guide for someone, just telling someone whether they did good or not and WHY.
NewMeta
<Member>
<Member>
Rydeeer wrote:
Totally agree to the first post of NewMeta, but now the discussion is only on guides and imho it's not the most important thing on the wallpost.
I'm new here and I'm curious to know how do you (community with much more experience then me) see this threat division.
Thank you for your point. The discussion has gone off topic a bit. My original post was more about the community as a whole, not just guides. Guides are a big part of our community but not the only part. Thanks for bringing us back to topic. My original post was all about just making our community, in general, better by decreasing the amount of negative comments throughout and hopefully this would influence new players to League of Legends to not be so toxic as a lot of current players are.
NewMeta wrote:
Yes but people who comment should probably still try to tell someone WHY their guide is good or bad. They're not writing the guide for someone, just telling someone whether they did good or not and WHY.
When you force people to comment you can't expect everyone who wants to vote on your guide to have time to give a good criticism. :( I think a lot of people you mentioned would have just not said anything if they weren't forced to comment in order to vote.
I did read your post though and obviously helping eachother out is a good thing. I just see the main problem with these "useless votes" is that you're forcing people to comment who don't have time to critique, just don't feel like it, or don't know how.
Thanks to GrandMasterD for my sig!
NewMeta
<Member>
<Member>
Mowen wrote:
When you force people to comment you can't expect everyone who wants to vote on your guide to have time to give a good criticism. :( I think a lot of people you mentioned would have just not said anything if they weren't forced to comment in order to vote.
I did read your post though and obviously helping eachother out is a good thing. I just see the main problem with these "useless votes" is that you're forcing people to comment who don't have time to critique, just don't feel like it, or don't know how.
I suppose you're right but I still don't really like how people will donwvote and then just sort of say something that wouldn't help the author. C2V already ensures that people will have to comment if they want to vote but those comments are usually just a short sentence either saying that it's a bad guide or a good guide. I suppose that's what it come down to though, whether a guide is truly good or not. I just wish we had better ways to improve our community here at MOBAfire other than just focusing on the guide aspect; but guides are sort of what makes MOBAfire really nice. The main thing I want is for those new players to come here and see some positive stuff and bring that positive stuff into the game, not vice-versa, you know? I think the other problem that is going on is that not a lot of people who are not top commenters on the site have looked at the post yet (at least I don't think so...haven't checked views in a bit). I may take this to reddit but I doubt that would change much just because there are probably lots of this kind of stuff on reddit.
The other thing that my post was about was the whole bronze, silver, gold, etc. thing. It's just sometimes not fun to play the game when you're told that you're bad a lot lol. Oh well, hopefully this thread continues to grow. Thanks for the comment, I agree that a lot of people would just vote and not comment if they were not forced to comment, and then now I'm expecting them to put something constructive in the comment....it'd just be nicer. I do respect that those who don't really want to put in a good comment in don't have to. :)
NewMeta wrote:
Yes but people who comment should probably still try to tell someone WHY their guide is good or bad. They're not writing the guide for someone, just telling someone whether they did good or not and WHY.
If I tell them why their guide is bad, they're not simply going to accept "Oh okay, my guide is trash" and leave it at that. If they think I'm right that it's bad, they'll change the info. Which ENTIRELY defeats the point of each person being able to write their own guide, if we're just going to fix every guide so that they're all perfect.
There's MANY MANY guides in which I could simply go "change your items to what the top guide on this champ has". The whole point of this system is that it's THEIR guide, and they do whatever they want. It's mine and every other voters' job to sort it into the rating we believe it deserves, not fix every single mobafire guide until every single guide on the site is absolutely perfect, removing the necessity for having more than 1 guide if they're all going to have the same ( and correct ) information.
The whole point of the system is that whoever wants to can make their own guide, and the community will vote it up or down depending on whether it's good or not. I usually give a brief explanation of what was wrong, such as "Items are wrong, masteries don't make any sense", but I'm not going to go into depth so they can change it to whatever I told them was right.
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No. I'm sorry, but no. For starters, I said I do not have the knowledge to make detailed criticism. I can and do leave criticisms where I feel I can offer something that is both helpful and worthwhile. My refusal to make extensive, almost review like analysis is a recognition of my limited champion knowledge. As a consumer with a great deal of interest in guides I know just what I am looking for and can comfortably determine whether a guide demonstrates qualities justifying a down-vote, up-vote or judgement reserved until improvements are made.
Furthermore, even where I lack sufficient champion knowledge to be able offer criticism on a good guide, I am perfectly capable of identifying a hopeless guide. There are numerous tells which indicate that someone needs a lot more than a few pointers.
However, that's really all moot. I was not explaining my own guide critiquing and voting, because I'm not heavily involved with that, I was explaining my opinion on guide critiquing in general because I pay a lot of attention to what the various members have to say about guides. Reading guide critiques is very valuable, as much as a guide itself.
But are you willing to give more than a few pointers? I mean, I've seen a lot of incomplete guides out there, that's one of the main things that people get downvoted for. If an unifinished guide's author asked you for your opinion, would you see that you couldn't give it based on the guide being unfinished? Or would you still give a critique? Personally, I would tell the author to finish just because during the process of making a guide, an author will usually correct most mistakes that he/she made and add on anything they didn't think of. You also said that it's obvious when a guide needs only a few pointers or a lot more than that, which it is. But I think there's a middle area where an author is honestly looking for some help; it's when the author is lost in their guide but it has turned out good so far.
What I most often say in a comment is:
1. Please finish/ I can't really give much feedback without it being finished.
2. Add ____ section and a _____ section.
3. Good work, nice guide, great coding.
And that's just basic stuff. On occasion I will go into depth as to what I think an author needs in their guide and they usually either listen to me or never check back on their guide. So what would your most common few pointers be because I agree that there is a difference between a few pointers and a lot more than that; but I also think that there is a sort of grey area around there as well.