DOTAFire Update - 10/24/2012

Just wanted to bring attention to you all of the latest DOTAFire update that may or may not affect your guides.

We've just implemented a character limit of sorts on guides, which is 5000 characters. If your guide does not meet this character limit, by default it will not be able to viewed by any other users unless they go to the "Guide Type" tab and select "Builds Only" as the option. Any guides under 5000 characters will not be seen on the front page.

This was implemented to encourage more detailed guides, as opposed to alt+tab guides. Again, you are still allowed to make a guide as long or as short as you like, however it will receive less publicity if it does not meet the character limit. (Sorry Numeta)

I really like this change,keep up the good work lads!

The idea is fine, but it needs better implementation. My general use of this site goes something like this: random in Dota, look up hero from dotafire.com/dota-2/heroes , briefly compare the top rated guides from the character's page, and go with the one that seems to best fit my playstyle. Tried this with Treant last night. One guide was viewable from his profile page (http://www.dotafire.com/dota-2/hero/treant-protector-80): a guide with 4 ratings that averaged 2/5. Only once I read about this site update did I realize the convoluted way in which I could view the multiple guides (the majority of which had higher ratings, more ratings, views, and comments; and were better updated and vetted by the community...no disrespect intended to the sole guide that was visible earlier). I understand this issue might not apply to every (or even most) heroes, but it's still frustrating to have to select a hero from the dropdown, and then select the "Build Only" from another dropdown, etc. I'm in a time crunch when I random; I don't have time to go through a bunch of steps just to see all the available guides. Also, and perhaps more importantly, number of words does not equal overall quality or helpfulness of any given guide. Maybe I'm a unique case, but this change doesn't work for me. Perhaps an option could be added to our settings page where we can choose a default of either full guide or build only?

I think it's great that you're trying to discourage alt+tab guides. I much prefer a more in depth guide for heroes -- in fact, the sole reason I created an account on this site to begin with was to comment on a Sniper guide that I found particularly useful in terms of detailed analysis and explanation (which, for the record, did meet the 5000 character limit and is viewable by default). At the same time, this change can severely cripple the helpfulness of this site with respect to certain heroes whose most helpful, most updated, and top rated guides do not meet this arbitrary character limit, and are therefore hidden by default.

@Miles OSmiles Our goal in implementing this system is to encourage users to put detail in their guides. The problem you bring up should go away given enough time. Given that the system was just implemented, yes, some of the higher rated alt+tabs will be hidden and as a result you have low-quality guides visible, this should fix itself though, at least, that is our intention here.

I think maybe there should be an option stating whether or not the guide is an ALT-TAB or not,

OR

Have two sections in the guide area (not from drop down bar): Full Guides and Alt-tabs (instead of having a penalty)

OR

Have to have a certain guide rating/rank/etc to be able to make a guide with <5000 words.

just some ideas, but if nothing is changed, it's pretty good the way it is now. :)