Yeah well this will take a decent amount of planning to get right, I will try and keep you all updated where i get something new going on. I have talked with a number of people who are interested in it and collectively there are a lot of really skilled people on dotabuff so we should be able to do this as a community quite easily.
I'll volunteer. I'm decently familiar with Wordpress and BBForums. Adminned a small BBForum for a few months once. It was somewhat similar to what this seems to be trying to do (offshoot of a larger forum). I can help plan shit too.
Instead of rating based sub forums, you should just have peoples MMR being plastered to the side of their name. If you really want one, then just for 5k players.
Because:
1. people would sniff out each others MMR by looking through the MMR restricted sub forums anyway
2. everyone can contribute and people looking advice from specific MMRs can still identify them
Good idea, the moderation on this forum is so bad that action only is taken when the n word is said. I agree with humdinger on the above point, though.
I can do anything that's not related to web technologies.
"4. Heavily moderated forum, myself included I will be looking into initially instating people of noteworthy character who are going to, along with myself moderate and make sure that every topic, every vote, and every comment is being browsed over and there will be a clear, and actively upheld set of rules and guidelines that users will have to follow should they want to use the forum at all."
This may work at the start, but maintaining such an environment especially as your site grows is, IMO, a pipe dream. I don't think heavy moderation is the right solution to many of the problems that plague most online communities. In fact, creating a system that needs zero moderators would probably be the best solution. Bungie.net recently did a complete overhaul of their forums section and by giving huge control to the users on how they view/filter/censor content. They completely eliminated the need for any moderators, some of which have been moderating at Bungie.net for a decade or so.
I think your main idea about trying to get good content organized and accessible, creating an environment where people will want to come and soak in everything they can in relation to Dota is a great idea. I think there are simple, organic ways to do that, without the need to impose rules or moderation, which in my experience becomes corrupted most of the time(we are human after all). One example is being able to get a notification every time someone you want to follow makes a new post, and displaying those notifications in an easy to digest manner. I would love to read every post on this site from matrice/zenotha, but sadly its hard to even find a thread I recently posted in here on Dotabuff. There are also solutions to filtering out bad members. You could use your idea of a reputation system, and if a user gets below a certain threshold, all their posts are hidden to everyone by default. No need for moderators and the community as a whole decides what is acceptable or not. Simple and organic.
Basically, I think the way you will become most successful with your site is to design it in a way where you don't need to enforce moderation, and the users are given all the tools they need to access/filter the content they want. Good luck, hope it turns out as I would love to join.
Alright putting some thoughts together from some brain storming last night as well as talking to others there are ideas of how this could work. The purpose of this community is to have something that each user feels they've had a hand in creating and where input and good feedback is appreciated and recognized.
Here are some thoughts and stuff from my late night musings amidst losing a bunch of games yesterday.
> This site will be in no way stats related as Dotabuff already does that and does it well, though their may be some implemented DB linking system which may or may not be required.
> The reason for keeping MMR ranged groups is to keep those groups amongst themselves for an ego free environment. Will ego posts still happen? Most likely but these will hopefully be reduced and weeded out in time and I want people to be in topics where they feel they aren't going to be out-voiced by some mouthy 4K player who demands he's right because he's of a higher rating. This will also help in sharing knowledge that is relate-able and more easily implemented in that bracket, it helps to keep a realistic centre of knowledge at each tier.
> Each of the main topics will have an assigned moderator and not just one big overlord who doesn't bother to read into the big picture and just starts deleting/axing users and posts. What I would like to see happen is have people moderate topics that they create, these will be topics that they will have to request and will look something like.
(this is an example and don't get panties in a twist please, as final decision for moderators will be voted on by everyone)
* Off topic - Melody/ddsama (Anime, Music, Art, and everything else which will be organized into subtopics)
* Coaching - Chris/Zenoth (Offers of free, and paid for coaching from user who agree to the scheme *TBD)
* Dota2 Help - Havoc/Androgynous (theory crafting, replay analysis, and general Dota2 advice)
* Dota2 Blog - Concede/Hatsune (collection of posts from other sites that user will find helpful)
* General Chat (Bracket locked and moderated by two people so that users don't feel picked on)
* 5K's - Wave/Alison
* 4k's - Havoc/Dorkly
* 3k's - Violent Sky/Drank Vodka Won Dotka
* All Chat, all users can mingle here - Some really anal moderator as this will be a cesspool
These are some of the topics that would work but there are room for others, and I play look at playdota's topic style as that seems pretty well thought out. I feel that the idea is on the right track but give input after you've read this as I want to almost prebuild the topics and stuff on paper so when it comes time to do it we all have a clear idea of what's going on.
@Dacheat I will get in touch with you at some point, could you add me :)
@Disruptive Pilot Dank memes will be allowed to some extent as long as they are not derailing topics and they have to be super dank
@humdinger This won't be the help areas, just general chat areas where I do genuinely feel that users need to be bracket isolated. All other topics are open places but there will be locked MMR general chat areas which people are welcome to not use. Also I would use this as an excuse to promote people say for instance when someone manages to get 4k_5k etc they can then "join the club type things. Dunno, I will probably put more thought into this as I can see how it may be an issue but just run with me on this and we'll iron stuff out as we go.
....also I would add that under each main topic e.g "Dota2 Help" There would be like a "Get help from a 5K player" or something where i would like to see matrice and zenoth helping with, then another sections called "supporting" which would be for just that etc. A work in progress.....so bear with me.
Sampson will be getting a hammer of justice that will do absolutely nothing but it will make him feel powerful so I might as well...
Would you be able to read those forums if you are not within that bracket or would you be completely locked out?
I could definitely see some benefit for them being read only for everyone.
Yes the locked topics by bracket would be readable for sure as I did think about people wanting to at least be able to read. Also people are welcome to make edits but try not to mess up formatting, I will see who did it :P
This is an open document for topic creation and people can make suggestions and we can try and build a general layout to start with for topic creation.
^^ It's view only for now, it seems.
Anyway from looking at it i think the dota2 news section is missing the most important one - that is, information on dota 2 updates, possibly discussing them somewhere. And maybe a rule section too so that people don't say bad things and then complain Art section is probably unnecessary, unless maybe it's Dota 2 art, you could add a games section instead, they're more popular and fun
I could help with moderating as i have nothing better to do, but there's a possibility i might soon break into 4k mmr, and what would you do then? :P
You say you want to keep people in brackets but what are you going to do about people who keep jumping from one bracket to another? Will you have a daily update on people's mmr (if so manually or via bots ).
@Sadulfou most people aren't jumping 1000mmr up or down every day or even every week. I imagine if you are on a border you will either get to choose or get placed according to your average.
So members of that group could have MMRs slightly outside the ranges if they are on a particularly good or bad streak
>Locked 6000 – Xan/Vroksnak
isnt xan 5.7k and vrok is 6k+ because of abusing cd/cm so take away 1500 points from that
instead of brackets, just make a 5k+ for high quality discussions and if they cheat up their mmr with sandboxie and shit, they'll be unvouched a la ixdl style, also keep in mind it'll become nadota 2.0 because im pretty sure some of their 5.5k+ users will be there given the 5k+ high quality discussion board and nadota users is like me, sometimes more vocal and verbal.
my proposal is:
dota chat (no subsections, maybe a stream subsection for users to post their stream)
live tournament (for live matches on air)
offtopic chat (spam subsection only)
suggestion board
i didnt add a 5k+ board for high quality discussion because it'd bring in many elitists like me which is something you dont want but if you still want to, just add a 5k+ board and increase it to 6k+ next year because most 5ks will be 6ks after 2015 spring or something.
theres no need for a dota 2 news board because of the dota chat board and nobody wants to see reddit tier threads being spammed
Actually some very helpful advice from Wave there, did you have an epiphany :P I made the subsections on request from others users, and I am concerned about elitist and what not so if we can potentially get along without the locked brackets we will be good I think.
There is no decision on mods, or topics, these are just people i know who voluntered so i plucked their names out of my minds eyes hat.
@Wave
dota chat - Simply removing brackets will leave the All chat there
live tournament (for live matches on air) - Maybe a media section? Vods, Streams, Replays, DotaCinema stuff
offtopic chat (spam subsection only) - This may be tacked onto the off topic section
suggestion board - Is going to be in the last section.
The plan is to have low level mods so basically just monitors of each topic, the actual decision to ban or delete topics will not be made by anyone person its more just having 1-2 for each of the parent topics so that we don't have 3 burnt out mods who aren't really interested in the subjects and will use sense checking rather than context. Make sense?
i think having too many subsections will be unattractive
imo it should only be 4-5 boards, and you should be the only moderator. i barely see any decent mod candidates here except for jussi , zenoth and andro.
just do something like this and see how much activity there will be after 1 month http://puu.sh/bVdGQ.png
Wave are you the guy that plays as wave after wave second life always on p1?
Havoc: I think you have way too many boards. You should start with less boards and expand rather than have 1 topic per board. You don't need 4 general discussion boards and 3 report boards. Keep it lean ;).
Alright lets keep this on topic here please, and yes I do agree that a shit ton of topics makes any actual forum unattractive so lets see if we can lessen it a bit.
I think creating rating based sub forums is great, but I don't know how you are going to place people. The API doesn't make mmr available.
Also, it ignores the fact that peoples MMR can change rather significantly. A lot of players for example hover between 4.8k and 5.2k or 3.8k and 4.2k...
Seems like mods will just give permission for others to post in there forums, which can then lead to mods just giving permissions or withholding permissions based on their own personal judgement.
The shame is that "very high" isn't high enough, but normal/high/very high are at least determined by the API
* Off topic - Melody/ddsama (Anime, Music, Art, and everything else which will be organized into subtopics)
* Coaching - Chris/Zenoth (Offers of free, and paid for coaching from user who agree to the scheme *TBD)
* Dota2 Help - Havoc/Androgynous (theory crafting, replay analysis, and general Dota2 advice)
* Dota2 Blog - Concede/Hatsune (collection of posts from other sites that user will find helpful)
* General Chat (Bracket locked and moderated by two people so that users don't feel picked on)
* 5K's - Wave/Alison
* 4k's - Havoc/Dorkly
* 3k's - Violent Sky/Drank Vodka Won Dotka
* All Chat, all users can mingle here - Some really anal moderator as this will be a cesspool
THis is too many sub forums i think. Coaching and help can be merged and blog / general chat can be merged.
I'm happy to help do stuff, but I suck at dota, so nothing related to content most likely
Yeah well this will take a decent amount of planning to get right, I will try and keep you all updated where i get something new going on. I have talked with a number of people who are interested in it and collectively there are a lot of really skilled people on dotabuff so we should be able to do this as a community quite easily.
I'll volunteer. I'm decently familiar with Wordpress and BBForums. Adminned a small BBForum for a few months once. It was somewhat similar to what this seems to be trying to do (offshoot of a larger forum). I can help plan shit too.
I would be interested.
so is anyone gonna do tldr of thread or not?
new forum with no shitposting, heavily moderated, rating based sub-forums and coaching/help from skilled players.
aha, riight. gl with that.
Can i upload dank memes to that forum, Havoc?
Instead of rating based sub forums, you should just have peoples MMR being plastered to the side of their name. If you really want one, then just for 5k players.
Because:
1. people would sniff out each others MMR by looking through the MMR restricted sub forums anyway
2. everyone can contribute and people looking advice from specific MMRs can still identify them
Good idea, the moderation on this forum is so bad that action only is taken when the n word is said. I agree with humdinger on the above point, though.
I can do anything that's not related to web technologies.
"4. Heavily moderated forum, myself included I will be looking into initially instating people of noteworthy character who are going to, along with myself moderate and make sure that every topic, every vote, and every comment is being browsed over and there will be a clear, and actively upheld set of rules and guidelines that users will have to follow should they want to use the forum at all."
This may work at the start, but maintaining such an environment especially as your site grows is, IMO, a pipe dream. I don't think heavy moderation is the right solution to many of the problems that plague most online communities. In fact, creating a system that needs zero moderators would probably be the best solution. Bungie.net recently did a complete overhaul of their forums section and by giving huge control to the users on how they view/filter/censor content. They completely eliminated the need for any moderators, some of which have been moderating at Bungie.net for a decade or so.
I think your main idea about trying to get good content organized and accessible, creating an environment where people will want to come and soak in everything they can in relation to Dota is a great idea. I think there are simple, organic ways to do that, without the need to impose rules or moderation, which in my experience becomes corrupted most of the time(we are human after all). One example is being able to get a notification every time someone you want to follow makes a new post, and displaying those notifications in an easy to digest manner. I would love to read every post on this site from matrice/zenotha, but sadly its hard to even find a thread I recently posted in here on Dotabuff. There are also solutions to filtering out bad members. You could use your idea of a reputation system, and if a user gets below a certain threshold, all their posts are hidden to everyone by default. No need for moderators and the community as a whole decides what is acceptable or not. Simple and organic.
Basically, I think the way you will become most successful with your site is to design it in a way where you don't need to enforce moderation, and the users are given all the tools they need to access/filter the content they want. Good luck, hope it turns out as I would love to join.
Alright putting some thoughts together from some brain storming last night as well as talking to others there are ideas of how this could work. The purpose of this community is to have something that each user feels they've had a hand in creating and where input and good feedback is appreciated and recognized.
Here are some thoughts and stuff from my late night musings amidst losing a bunch of games yesterday.
> This site will be in no way stats related as Dotabuff already does that and does it well, though their may be some implemented DB linking system which may or may not be required.
> The reason for keeping MMR ranged groups is to keep those groups amongst themselves for an ego free environment. Will ego posts still happen? Most likely but these will hopefully be reduced and weeded out in time and I want people to be in topics where they feel they aren't going to be out-voiced by some mouthy 4K player who demands he's right because he's of a higher rating. This will also help in sharing knowledge that is relate-able and more easily implemented in that bracket, it helps to keep a realistic centre of knowledge at each tier.
> Each of the main topics will have an assigned moderator and not just one big overlord who doesn't bother to read into the big picture and just starts deleting/axing users and posts. What I would like to see happen is have people moderate topics that they create, these will be topics that they will have to request and will look something like.
(this is an example and don't get panties in a twist please, as final decision for moderators will be voted on by everyone)
* Off topic - Melody/ddsama (Anime, Music, Art, and everything else which will be organized into subtopics)
* Coaching - Chris/Zenoth (Offers of free, and paid for coaching from user who agree to the scheme *TBD)
* Dota2 Help - Havoc/Androgynous (theory crafting, replay analysis, and general Dota2 advice)
* Dota2 Blog - Concede/Hatsune (collection of posts from other sites that user will find helpful)
* General Chat (Bracket locked and moderated by two people so that users don't feel picked on)
* 5K's - Wave/Alison
* 4k's - Havoc/Dorkly
* 3k's - Violent Sky/Drank Vodka Won Dotka
* All Chat, all users can mingle here - Some really anal moderator as this will be a cesspool
These are some of the topics that would work but there are room for others, and I play look at playdota's topic style as that seems pretty well thought out. I feel that the idea is on the right track but give input after you've read this as I want to almost prebuild the topics and stuff on paper so when it comes time to do it we all have a clear idea of what's going on.
@Dacheat I will get in touch with you at some point, could you add me :)
@Disruptive Pilot Dank memes will be allowed to some extent as long as they are not derailing topics and they have to be super dank
@humdinger This won't be the help areas, just general chat areas where I do genuinely feel that users need to be bracket isolated. All other topics are open places but there will be locked MMR general chat areas which people are welcome to not use. Also I would use this as an excuse to promote people say for instance when someone manages to get 4k_5k etc they can then "join the club type things. Dunno, I will probably put more thought into this as I can see how it may be an issue but just run with me on this and we'll iron stuff out as we go.
....also I would add that under each main topic e.g "Dota2 Help" There would be like a "Get help from a 5K player" or something where i would like to see matrice and zenoth helping with, then another sections called "supporting" which would be for just that etc. A work in progress.....so bear with me.
Sampson will be getting a hammer of justice that will do absolutely nothing but it will make him feel powerful so I might as well...
6k xan :D and add me to 5k i can be nice too...
Regarding the idea of rating bracketed forums.
Would you be able to read those forums if you are not within that bracket or would you be completely locked out?
I could definitely see some benefit for them being read only for everyone.
Yes the locked topics by bracket would be readable for sure as I did think about people wanting to at least be able to read. Also people are welcome to make edits but try not to mess up formatting, I will see who did it :P
This is an open document for topic creation and people can make suggestions and we can try and build a general layout to start with for topic creation.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1f0-meL1qT6twMPuLBmAagKUoMssDZN3mBYdoqpe8LYY/edit?usp=sharing
Hero threads
i like that idea, will you link the mmr with this dota2 tracking thingy?
pls teach me how to edit...
welp, well see how havocs site go... goodluck :3
^^ It's view only for now, it seems.
Anyway from looking at it i think the dota2 news section is missing the most important one - that is, information on dota 2 updates, possibly discussing them somewhere. And maybe a rule section too so that people don't say bad things and then complain Art section is probably unnecessary, unless maybe it's Dota 2 art, you could add a games section instead, they're more popular and fun
I could help with moderating as i have nothing better to do, but there's a possibility i might soon break into 4k mmr, and what would you do then? :P
You say you want to keep people in brackets but what are you going to do about people who keep jumping from one bracket to another? Will you have a daily update on people's mmr (if so manually or via bots ).
Vroksnak mod ??? this won't end well
@Sadulfou most people aren't jumping 1000mmr up or down every day or even every week. I imagine if you are on a border you will either get to choose or get placed according to your average.
So members of that group could have MMRs slightly outside the ranges if they are on a particularly good or bad streak
4.2-
3.8 - 5.2
4.8 - 6.2
5.8+
>Locked 6000 – Xan/Vroksnak
isnt xan 5.7k and vrok is 6k+ because of abusing cd/cm so take away 1500 points from that
instead of brackets, just make a 5k+ for high quality discussions and if they cheat up their mmr with sandboxie and shit, they'll be unvouched a la ixdl style, also keep in mind it'll become nadota 2.0 because im pretty sure some of their 5.5k+ users will be there given the 5k+ high quality discussion board and nadota users is like me, sometimes more vocal and verbal.
my proposal is:
dota chat (no subsections, maybe a stream subsection for users to post their stream)
live tournament (for live matches on air)
offtopic chat (spam subsection only)
suggestion board
i didnt add a 5k+ board for high quality discussion because it'd bring in many elitists like me which is something you dont want but if you still want to, just add a 5k+ board and increase it to 6k+ next year because most 5ks will be 6ks after 2015 spring or something.
theres no need for a dota 2 news board because of the dota chat board and nobody wants to see reddit tier threads being spammed
thats my opinion, take it however u want lolz
< i am wave btw, im banned for the n word
well you know better :p
also you only need like 1 or 2 mods, having a heavily moderated forum will turn it into playdota trust me
Actually some very helpful advice from Wave there, did you have an epiphany :P I made the subsections on request from others users, and I am concerned about elitist and what not so if we can potentially get along without the locked brackets we will be good I think.
..oh shit made it editable, please make your changes.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1f0-meL1qT6twMPuLBmAagKUoMssDZN3mBYdoqpe8LYY/edit?usp=sharing
There is no decision on mods, or topics, these are just people i know who voluntered so i plucked their names out of my minds eyes hat.
@Wave
dota chat - Simply removing brackets will leave the All chat there
live tournament (for live matches on air) - Maybe a media section? Vods, Streams, Replays, DotaCinema stuff
offtopic chat (spam subsection only) - This may be tacked onto the off topic section
suggestion board - Is going to be in the last section.
The plan is to have low level mods so basically just monitors of each topic, the actual decision to ban or delete topics will not be made by anyone person its more just having 1-2 for each of the parent topics so that we don't have 3 burnt out mods who aren't really interested in the subjects and will use sense checking rather than context. Make sense?
as long as you make me mod :) we're all good
You can also probably get some insignificant that will make you feel good but will do nothing, like sampsons ban hammer :)
Its official.. Those are just example, i get to lurk at forums.
i think having too many subsections will be unattractive
imo it should only be 4-5 boards, and you should be the only moderator. i barely see any decent mod candidates here except for jussi , zenoth and andro.
just do something like this and see how much activity there will be after 1 month http://puu.sh/bVdGQ.png
Wow, great plan man. Since dotarootv2 is ghost town I would honestly like this to succeed! Will join with friends when its on.. Good luck
Btw, add the 2k bracket topic with potential admin candidate Zenithar :)))
How soon till this becomes reality?
also dont advertise it on reddit, that site is cancer (look at concede or melody)
i can change my username to the sites name since im always on page 1 whenever i play
Wave are you the guy that plays as wave after wave second life always on p1?
Havoc: I think you have way too many boards. You should start with less boards and expand rather than have 1 topic per board. You don't need 4 general discussion boards and 3 report boards. Keep it lean ;).
My 2 cents.
no, that guy is an impersonator
hes a russian who thinks hes somewhat good at game but all he does is pick phoenix and gets carried
at the game*
the names i play with is "4k trash dont go mid/carry" "[ Slytherin ]", "wave" or "wavebave"
why arent u using this account anymore
Alright lets keep this on topic here please, and yes I do agree that a shit ton of topics makes any actual forum unattractive so lets see if we can lessen it a bit.
I think creating rating based sub forums is great, but I don't know how you are going to place people. The API doesn't make mmr available.
Also, it ignores the fact that peoples MMR can change rather significantly. A lot of players for example hover between 4.8k and 5.2k or 3.8k and 4.2k...
Seems like mods will just give permission for others to post in there forums, which can then lead to mods just giving permissions or withholding permissions based on their own personal judgement.
The shame is that "very high" isn't high enough, but normal/high/very high are at least determined by the API
* Off topic - Melody/ddsama (Anime, Music, Art, and everything else which will be organized into subtopics)
* Coaching - Chris/Zenoth (Offers of free, and paid for coaching from user who agree to the scheme *TBD)
* Dota2 Help - Havoc/Androgynous (theory crafting, replay analysis, and general Dota2 advice)
* Dota2 Blog - Concede/Hatsune (collection of posts from other sites that user will find helpful)
* General Chat (Bracket locked and moderated by two people so that users don't feel picked on)
* 5K's - Wave/Alison
* 4k's - Havoc/Dorkly
* 3k's - Violent Sky/Drank Vodka Won Dotka
* All Chat, all users can mingle here - Some really anal moderator as this will be a cesspool
THis is too many sub forums i think. Coaching and help can be merged and blog / general chat can be merged.
Also Dorkly 3k obviously cheating the system ;p.
i gave this one to my friend when it was 4.9k or something and he brought it down to 4.6k, no way im gonna grind from 4.6k lol
http://www.dotabuff.com/players/185302367
this is my second acc, a third one coming when my second one is 6k
road to 3 6k accs
Does this appeal more to people
Dota2 Topic:
Chat
Media & News
Coaching & Advice
Off Topic:
Chat
Media & Social
Admin Topic:
Bugs and Issue
Improvements & Suggestions
Reporting Users
just make a template and we'll tell you what to change... programming shouldnt be that hard and then its just decoration
the reason a lot of us like dotabuff is because it is a single forum.
chat and media and probably be combined as well. Its all just general