Forum suggestions to be ready for the influx of users
Laetitian
Member
1) Can the subforums be made more accessible? I feel like 90% of the viewerbase never see anything but the "General Discussion" section and the posts with mod announcements. If the home page would list number of new posts with new messages since I last opened each subforum, I might actually consider looking at the home page, and I'm sure I'm not the only one...
This could also make it more feasible to introduce a subforum with things like media discussion and off-topic that doesn't directly relate to Ashes. These might be better suited for Discord than the forum, but if they're gonna happen anyway and not be deleted by moderators, we might as well have a place for them to go, assuming that place isn't a cemetery.
2) I really think we need downvotes/dislikes. There's so much misinformation coming from people who haven't been here for more than a week and confidently asserting their assumptions into the world. Downvotes would help draw attention to flawed assumptions, instead of letting the majority opinion be decided by the first three people who happened to show up.
This could also make it more feasible to introduce a subforum with things like media discussion and off-topic that doesn't directly relate to Ashes. These might be better suited for Discord than the forum, but if they're gonna happen anyway and not be deleted by moderators, we might as well have a place for them to go, assuming that place isn't a cemetery.
2) I really think we need downvotes/dislikes. There's so much misinformation coming from people who haven't been here for more than a week and confidently asserting their assumptions into the world. Downvotes would help draw attention to flawed assumptions, instead of letting the majority opinion be decided by the first three people who happened to show up.
The only one who can validate you for all the posts you didn't write is you.
1
Comments
Reddit has this. Any post that goes against the current day's agenda gets downvoted to hell. Except there it's an anonymous thing, while here we'd see who disliked the post. And this would then create the same flamey discussions in the comments, while any newcomer would just see the dislikes on the post think "oh, this is something bad" and either ignore it or, even worse, think that the info might be wrong, even if the dislikes came from just disagreement with the post rather than as an indicator of its wrongness.
Chances are dislikes won't happen. Too much negativity. But the only better solution I could come up with would be threaded replies, and that would be too much work to implement...Perhaps subcomments that are fully distinct from the rest of the thread replies? I'm probably dreaming here, I just think we need something that keeps the loud disinformation in check.
one thing could be new users should have a new user questions area. Then to be able to post on the general forums your account must be x days old.
And all the people who might be able to correct stuff will most likely be testing A2 instead, so the things will definitely get worse
yep, its just an idea. Maybe someone can build off of it to something that works
The best tool for calling out misinformation will always be providing correct information.
and hopefully with sources.
That should be the job of moderators. But that is to old school i think
Absolutely, but I think something like a dislike or a direct response comment could be the difference in whether a reader bothers to scroll far enough to get to that correction, if the initial responses just casually confirm their gut feeling.
EDIT: I just found the perfect wording, too.
"Disagree."
So simple, so clear, so friendly, and even difficult to turn into a sarcastic euphemism, like overly positive wording regulation in some games tends to produce.
Unless you can verify it yourself, "correct" depends on how much you trust the source of information.
If i say that it rained in your town yesterday, and you say that it didn't, the 3rd person would have to trust either one of us. Or they would have to look up the weather report, from an agency, and have some faith that the agency could be right. They could still be wrong. Maybe the Moscow news says that it rained last night in your town and the local newspaper says it didn't.
Unless they can independently verify themselves the best they can do is see if the information is logically consistent with things they know or assume to be true, and how much they trust the source.
Maybe when they leave the house they see a bunch of puddles in all the potholes on the road, they may think that it is more likely that it did rain yesterday.
But they still can't tell which statement is "correct" or not, just by virtue of it being correct.
All this tells people is what the majority think is correct, not what is actually correct. The majority can be wrong, and indeed often are.
Then you have the fact that most posts intended to pass on information contain more than one fact. If a post is partially correct and partially incorrect, a simple single click response is in all ways inadequate. If someone is only interested in one of the facts in the post, as far as they are concerned all like or dislike responses are for that one fact. You could just say "well, that is what comments are for", but in this case you are saying to the person looking for information that they can use the like/dislike ratio, but at the same time are saying that they can't rely on it.
Thus, the only actual logical thing to do is to not provide it at all, since there is no way to put it to use in a way that actually works in the way people think it should, and if you have it in place in a way other than how people think it should work, they will just treat it as if it were supposed to work the way they think it should work.
Like/dislike in an MMORPG has no real place outside of in game fashion discussions, imo. They are actually harmful to mechanics and systems discussions.
This is true, but only sort of.
It is perfectly valid to also state what you know as correct information, and let others work out where they went wrong themselves. The kind of people I usually discuss game mechanics and systems with respond far better to this, as they don't want to just know the answer, they want to know how to get the answer themselves next time.
It's only really people that have no interest in knowledge outside of the specifics of that one discussion that really need that verification - as they don't care about how to tell its true, they just want the answer now.
In the context of video games, where someone can go to the wiki to verify the information, this may work. Assuming the person trusts the wiki.
You may think that it is obvious, but I once had a debate with someone about a legal matter and then referred to the law which was publicly available from the government website. The person literally turned to me and said "You trust the government website? LOL" and then proceeded to claim that they won the argument because I had stooped so low.
I imagine that they don't know how laws are made or where they come from. And they weren't interested in learning.
So even when you provide people with the direct source they may still choose not to examine it or trust it as "correct" information.
Once the game is live, if it is on the wiki, imo it is basic common knowledge and isn't worth a discussion.
However, your example situation in the above post is precisely why I generally only discuss MMO's with people that want to know (these forums are the only exception to that, honestly). When it comes to debates, people that are not interested in knowing tend to only be interested in winning - and will often go to great lengths (such as in your example) to achieve that goal.
I will admit that sometimes on these forums I do enjoy seeing how far someone that is clearly wrong will go in order to try and seem right (Mag is the worst at this that I think I have ever seen), but when that is happening I no longer consider that MMO discussion, it's just pure entertainment at that point.
That confidence itself doesn't have to prove or falsify anything, it's good enough if it sometimes encourages sufficient doubt to encourage the user to keep reading instead of being satisfied after one or two people said something that agreed with the user's initial assumption.
Also, once you've scrolled down a few interesting posts, you'll get an idea of the usual suspects whose downvotes just mean "I was in a bad mood that day," while their upvotes just mean "I like that commenter/that commenter plays the same games as me;" so other people's downvotes will retain their impact.
Useless to productively generative discussion? Perhaps. Whether there's a downvote won't change whether or not the follow-up inputs will be useful analyses or creative suggestions. I wouldn't say the voting is harmful to that though, and it does help to highlight some of the more insightful ideas.
But forums don't just serve to provide discussion and creative input, they also serve to educate. And that's where a downvote might help in restricting misinformation, because it's a warning sign to people who are about to click away because their biases have been conveniently confirmed.
However, that confidence is misplaced - it may well be that no one that is inclined to like/dislike has even read the post at that point in time. If a post has no likes or dislikes, you won't know why without reading further. If a post has a high ratio of likes to dislikes, you won't know why without reading further. If a post has a high ratio of dislikes to likes, you won't know why without reading further.
As such, you don't know anything without reading further. Thus having likes and dislikes does nothing, other than provide people (particularly young people) a false sense of being informed. Even if there are likes or dislikes, you don't ever know if these are based on the information, the poster themself, the way that information is presented, if people liked or didn't like a joke contained in the post - then you have people that go around liking/disliking posts for reasons of etymology, punctuation, composition and such, and people that purposefully go around upvoting bad posts and downvoting good posts.
This is the point I am trying to get across to you; the likes or dislikes a post has mean literally nothing - and attributing anything to them is incorrect and will lead to people being confidently misinformed.
No, useless to anyone coming along looking for information.
Any time you have attempted to gain an insight in to something just by looking at a like/dislike ratio, you have put yourself in to a position where you have some information, but you don't know if you are correctly informed or not.
I've pointed out a problem, and offered a solution for reducing the impact of the problem, and your counter is "But that won't fix the problem for every user, and every user is responsible for themselves, so let's do nothing."
The purpose of the suggestion is to make users with a superficial knowledge of the game more willing to question their assumptions. Currently, every thread where the first 2-4 responses come from a hivemind of users with an equally superficial understanding of the game threatens strongly for every similiarly minded users to disregard the thread from there and feel more confident in their opinion. As more new users join the forum, this issue will only increase.
My suggestion aims to slightly balance the impact of whoever happens to respond to a new thread first. If you dislike my suggestion, what's your alternative for improving that risk?
To be clear about the parts of my suggestion you're responding to, are you also against toggleable direct-comment-response comments, or only against the downvote?
Again, ratio is irrelevant. If there is a dislike, the comment will be perceived with more caution than if there wasn't one.
Additionally, same issue with this argument as the one in the previous paragraph: We can't improve individuals' behaviour, but we can set up the environment to guide them in the right direction where possible, so why not do that, instead of blaming their irresponsibility and shrugging our shoulders? (Political undertones inevitable, but I'm really just focused on talking about the forum.)
In which case there also won't be any contradicting comments to read, so it won't make much of a difference whether the user clicks away before scrolling to the bottom, or keeps reading. This is another case we cannot do anything about with the design of the platform.
Certified new guy here reporting for duty.
Try to remember that many of you have been living in this world for YEARS and the stuff that you take for granted is new and exciting to those of us just coming onboard now.
Also understand that new people coming in and challenging the conventional wisdom is actually a good thing, especially at this point in the development cycle. It is very easy to get locked into a way of thinking without realizing that the parameters of the problem have changed. Sometimes a ridiculous newbie coming in and completely misunderstanding the game can reveal flaws in your own thinking, or critical oversights in the implementation of a feature or system.
Happens all the time around here, and has been happening a lot more recently. Has nothing to do with me not appreciating newbies.
@Rippley
As for fresh input, it has its purpose, but you also have to take into account that the longer development has gone on, the less useful it is to suggest 180° changes. not even just as inspiration. You have to understand the game's target audience and the intended idea behind the system a little more than that, if you want your feedback to be Alpha-2-appropriate.
Yuk
We should add community notes under such posts, so people with some knowledge about the game could add context.
I'm joking, but it might not be a bad idea.
I never said or suggested any of this. My point is not that it won't fix things for every user and so shouldn't be done. My point is that it will make things worse for every user that attempts to glean any information from likes and dislikes.
It is worse for every poster other than those that literally ignore it, and so why add it? Have you ever seen a forum with 1000+ users and a dislike button?
Every post that has more than 50 people read it has someone dislike it.
Keep in mind, there is nothing at all stopping people from pressing dislike on posts they actually like, or from pressing it on posts they haven't actually even read. This isn't just something people can do, it is in fact something people actively do. Best estimate from YouTube back when they had likes/dislikes is that for every 100 likes, there would be three false dislikes - but that was from a website that was so large as to cancel out people just trolling - something an MMORPG forum can't do (meaning; that ratio will be higher on Ashes forum).
As you can see by simply looking at these forums, there are more people posting than liking/disliking. Assuming a post with no likes or dislikes will also have no replies is simply not a valid argument. However, pointing out that looking at likes or dislikes is not a valid means for determining the value of a post due to the fact that there may be no likes or dislikes is absolutely valid. Statistically, there will be 20 people look at a post before there is a single like or dislike - so 20 people will be in the situation I talked about above for every single post (on average).