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[Suggestion] Guide Discussion Revamp

Creator: jhoijhoi November 23, 2014 5:18pm
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Do you think the proposed idea is a good idea?
jhoijhoi
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Permalink | Quote | PM | +Rep November 23, 2014 5:18pm | Report
The current discussion/comment system for guides is this: http://www.mobafire.com/league-of-legends/build/aatrox-blade-of-blood-friday-free-1380rp-pizza-night-332516/discussion

It's okay but actually useless beyond a place for people to talk at a brick wall. There are several things wrong with it:
1) It's in chronological order, meaning people seeking to "join" the discussion are first greeted with comments made months-years ago.
2) You can't vote from it. You need to vote from the guide itself/scroll back all the way to the top of the page to vote.
3) There's no directed reply function, meaning that several different discussions are discouraged, as people will need to quote relevant posts to keep a discussion active.
4) Comments take up too much space, especially when they only say things like, "Good!"
5) Important posts have no way of being highlighted (guide being updated, high elo person suggesting some changes, etc etc)

Now take a look at our Q&A system: http://www.mobafire.com/league-of-legends/question/how-to-preseason-5-jungle-865

What's great about it?
1) The author gets their own space where they can update their commentary. Would be a great place for guide updates and notes to the reader.
2) It's compact. There's no space wasted on frivolous things like signatures (though there is room for things like badges or banners across one's avatar to indicate elo).
3) It has a voting system, so important, useful or interesting comments will gain publicity and useless or even bad comments will be pushed down the end of the page.
4) It has an active and useful reply function, allowing several different conversations to take place with ease and clarity. Allows a reader to ask a question and have a response directly below his question, meaning that conversations between readers and authors are more likely to occur.

What can be improved?
1) There's unnecessary wasted space under a person's avatar when they reply.
2) There's a LOT of wasted space with the up/down voting column, which could just be in a bar with the person's avatar and post details.
3) There's no way to hide useless comments in a useful thread (that's something I can't see changing though)

So what's my proposal?

That the current guide comment/discussion tab is replaced with a Q&A tab that looks like the following (done in Photoshop with not much care of prettiness, so):
http://fc02.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2014/327/d/2/aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa_by_seeminglymeaningless-d87gbpe.png



Thoughts?
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Joxuu
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Permalink | Quote | PM | +Rep November 23, 2014 5:29pm | Report
I like it. I was expecting Reddit type of system being suggested but that's actually
pretty neat imo.

"A person giving you advice isn't perfect and has their own shortcomings but they may give you the piece that you're missing."
Electro522
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Permalink | Quote | PM | +Rep November 23, 2014 5:58pm | Report
Joxuu wrote:
I like it. I was expecting Reddit type of system being suggested but that's actually
pretty neat imo.


I second this.
The_Nameless_Bard made this sig!
sirell
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Permalink | Quote | PM | +Rep November 23, 2014 9:46pm | Report
Seems kinda similar to the one TSM used to have for their guides at first glance. Might be confusing at first, but it should be quickly adjustable.
utopus
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Permalink | Quote | PM | +Rep November 23, 2014 10:48pm | Report
Good!
If I helped you out, be sure to throw me a +Rep!
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My Soraka Guide | My Review Service


Thanks for the sig, MissMaw!
jhoijhoi
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Permalink | Quote | PM | +Rep November 23, 2014 11:00pm | Report
It also gives more incentive for people to review guides, as their feedback would be voted up to an important slot ^^ Perhaps an upvoted comment could even contribute to +rep in some way, like 0.2 of a +rep or something.
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Permalink | Quote | PM | +Rep November 23, 2014 11:55pm | Report
I wonder if it could have like, "review comments" for the review shops. I mean, we'd have to add a new rank for the reviewers, but it might work really well.


Thank you to jhoijhoi for the sig, and all the dividers in the guide.

jhoijhoi
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Permalink | Quote | PM | +Rep November 24, 2014 2:10am | Report
Maybe there could be an additional drop down menu that allows you to select from: comment/review/scout or whatever.

I think this sort of system would at least allow reviews/scout comments to rise in popularity/importance.
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Permalink | Quote | PM | +Rep November 25, 2014 7:13am | Report
Good thread Jai, I like that you take the time to organize your proposals and usually you have a little mock-up image to complement it. :)

My favorite feature would have to be the direct replies though. I'd like to be able to discuss or respond to a comment (or multiple) without having to quote a bunch of people and sometimes have two discussions in the same comment stream.

I like the ideas about reversing chronological order or replacing it with a vote system. The former sounds easier (and perhaps safer) but I wouldn't say no to a vote system.

Removing signatures and other ways of compacting the comments sounds like a pretty good idea too.

The stickied author post sounds pretty useful too. Some people already do this by commenting on their own guide right when they publish it, but if the chronological order was reversed or otherwise altered this wouldn't work anymore.

jhoijhoi wrote:
Perhaps an upvoted comment could even contribute to +rep in some way, like 0.2 of a +rep or something.

This sounds like trouble to me, to be honest. We have restrictions on Rep that wouldn't apply to votes. Also people have a tendency to upvote whatever has a lot of votes already. Nice in theory but poor in practice is what I expect.



I would like all of these ideas to be looked at, but I have a suspicion that the ones that require more heavy lifting by the devs might not see the light of day for a long time. :( I hope that's not the case though, or at least that there would be a good reason not to implement some of these things that I haven't thought of.
Thanks to Jovy for the sig!
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Permalink | Quote | PM | +Rep November 25, 2014 10:04am | Report
Nice idea!
Though I think there's a chance that, just like with the old guide system, new comments might have a hard time getting noticed if the chronological order is gone. Simply reversing the chronological order with a forced first comment by the author like PsiGuard mentioned would seem a great shorthand improvement to me on the other hand.

PsiGuard wrote:
This sounds like trouble to me, to be honest. We have restrictions on Rep that wouldn't apply to votes. Also people have a tendency to upvote whatever has a lot of votes already. Nice in theory but poor in practice is what I expect.
The cap could still be calculated in (some votes just wouldn't effect rep) and I would more easily +rep someone with a high rep score than that I would +rep someone with a low rep score, so it wouldn't change much to the system I think.

Though I also think they shouldn't be linked to each other because I think comment votes represent how relevant a comment is to a discussion, while rep indicates how highly a member is valued by the community.

Anyway, awesome post! A lot of things in there look like a direct loss-less improvement to me.
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