2 More Useful Features to Add to the DevForum

Forum Help
, ,
#1

Greetings everyone!

Ever since my last forum feature thread, I have slowly learned what is in control of Roblox, and what is in control of Discourse. Knowing that I have two additional features that I believe can significantly improve the forum.

1. Gender Display

We all know that Roblox has a catalog avatar shop filled with thousands of items to wear and in some cases, it can be hard to determine someone’s gender based on their avatar in the forums. Say that there’s an avatar

image

This is an avatar that lies in the gray area in terms of gender. You may think that this is a female avatar, but in fact, it’s mine, and I’m male! Imagine you’re in a really good discussion about, I don’t know, game security. And you said, “I like Blah’s idea, hers works the best.” And blah replies in the next response, “I’m not a her. I’m a him.” Oh my goodness, it can get very awkward sometimes like that.

So, avoid any confusion or awkwardness on the forum, a user’s card should have their gender displayed from their Roblox profile (and it should be togglable if people do not feel comfortable). Here is my mockup:

GenderDevForumMockup
GenderDevForumMockup868×467 124 KB

This is in control of Roblox, not in Discourse since they have the information to our gender in our Roblox settings. And the fact that they can add the Roblox profile link in every user card, they can definitely show an icon for gender.

2. Display Previous Username

It’s a common fact that you can change your username on Roblox and many people actually frequently do so. And DevForum users are of no exception. If I change my avatar and my username, as long as no one visits my profiles or views my card, no one can recognize me. Although the DevForums have swelled in size, there is a community in which individual people are remembered by others. The only way to do so is via their username and/or avatar.

By having a display of the previous username (just one before the current one), the community can immediately recognize the seemingly new user as someone they already know, just with a different username. They wouldn’t have to visit our Roblox profile (in most cases they wouldn’t know that it’s the same person). This avoids the community to think that a user has disappeared and a new one’s in town when those two users are the same person. The ties from user to user that form the community would be preserved.

Also, I don’t think there needs to be a toggle option for this since I don’t see any reason as to why you’d want to hide your previous username when you can see in your Roblox profile.

Here’s my mockup:

PreviousUsername_Mockup
PreviousUsername_Mockup965×176 74.2 KB

This is definitely something that Roblox can do without the need of Discourse since they set our forum name to be our Roblox usernames, so they can absolutely stick our previous username (if we have one) right after.

TL, DR

There should be two features added to the forum:

  • Displaying everyone’s gender (whoever wants to keep it displayed, that is).
  • Displaying everyone’s previous username (if they have one).

Thank you for reading,
and have an awesome day!

6 Likes
#2

And how will this work for non-binary folks?

This is not an issue. And if someone changes their name 50 times they’ll have lost their identity already. Generally you shouldn’t fragment your identity so frequently to the point where you’re no longer identifiable, lol. If someone decides to change their name very frequently, that is their problem. I see no reason for the devforums to need to save your identity

7 Likes
#3

I would love to see al of these changes, but maybe have an option on the gender thing, as not to be insensitive, if that’s possible.

1 Like
#4

I don’t agree with the Gender Display because some users want to have their gender not “open” to everyone as a respect to their privacy but if it was an option to enable/disable, it could be there.

The previous username I like but maybe only have it shown their very last username instead of the full list as some reach to 60+.

1 Like
#5

For gender stuff, just use “they” if you’re not sure of one’s gender.
For the username thing, I say it’s a bad idea. If you need this cus you’re constantly changing your username, then you got some identity issues you gotta solve :thinking:

6 Likes
#6

I do agree with this, however what if somebody classifies themselves as a non-binary person? Meaning that they are neither male nor female. Will there be a option where it will show that your both genders or would there be a option where people won’t have to choose a gender? But overally, I do agree with this as it can confuse a lot of people and possibly lead to drama over a little thing like this as people can get offended being called a gender that they are not.

I also agree with this also, however lets say:

If someone had updated their usernames so many times, then there would be a long list of past usernames so it’s good to avoid that and add the recent username the person had.

But what if we did that too? People probably won’t know the recent username someone had before, they might know the oldest and first username they had.

1 Like
#8

Its not really a common thing that someone changes their names 60 times but lets say some people do it 10 times, that would still fill the list.

1 Like
#9

I mean you can always just put in your bio your past usernames and “he”/“she” or if you identify as something else, you can put that.

It takes the same amount of effort to edit your bio to include these details that you want, versus using a built-in feature. What can’t your bio fulfill, that this proposed solution can?

3 Likes
#10

I have never seen this, but maybe have an option so if you have more than one old username, you can pick which one is shown next to your name, and then the rest may be displayed on your profile.

2 Likes
#11

I don’t agree with 'Display Previous Username" because a lot of people in this community change their names 10 or more times and they change it to change their identity in this platform. And the Gender Display is good change.

1 Like
#12

First one sounds like a request for Discourse itself: https://meta.discourse.org/

As for previous usernames, there’s already a fair bit of clutter that can be next to a username, and all you have to do to see previous usernames is to click the name, “Roblox Profile,” and then check the previous usernames. For something that’s rarely done, the level of difficulty is acceptable.

3 Likes
#13

Knowing a user’s gender is meaningless to using the forum. You do not need this information. You should be using They on the internet anyway unless you already know the person you’re talking to.

Showing previous usernames somewhere sounds useful but I don’t think there’s a clean way to do it, nor is it really worth the engineering effort. You can probably do it yourself with a browser extension.

10 Likes
#14

I mostly agree but…

Sometimes it is difficult to remember this for some people. I would hate to offend someone by assuming they are a dude (he/him). Perhaps another way of wording it would be to have someones preferred pronouns displayed. This would also solve the issue of gendering for people who don’t identify as male or female. They could just put “they” as the pronouns.

1 Like
#16

I don’t see how just defaulting to “They” is difficult to remember. Start changing your habits if you’re afraid of using the wrong pronoun, don’t be lazy. Doing literally anything about this is just needless over-complication for no practical purpose.

4 Likes
#17

Gender is private information and it’s hard to define. If people want to use a specific pronoun they can put it in their blurb.

Previous username is 2-3 clicks away (click user picture, click “Roblox Profile”, hover over previous username widget). Not sure if worth the engineering effort to make this easier. I don’t think previous usernames are that important.

6 Likes
#18

I most definitely agree with the Previous Username display, but It not sure about the gender idea, previous username seems more useful and relevant to the forum other than gender.

1 Like
#19

When they change their username, you could display it for the first 3-4 days.

1 Like
#20

As a non-conforming individual, I believe gender is irrelevant to developer exchange, and keeping the current system is actually more beneficial to users rather. Enforcing gender might promote sexism and may actually cause more problems within the forum than when they’re not in place.

People should just stick to using gender-neutral words as they are a more progressive style of speech. Using gender pronouns are just inappropriate in places full of diversity, such as the internet.

3 Likes
#21

I personally do not agree with the displaying gender idea. This has no use and is only asking for problems later on in the future. I know a lot of people who don’t want people knowing what gender they are. (Just because it’s none of anyone’s business.)

Regarding the previous name change display, I see no use in this either. I agree with @buildthomas, it doesn’t take that much work to find a previous username. I personally change my username frequently. It’s not to be “secretive” or “hide my past”, I simply do it just because I like to change up things every once in a while. It doesn’t change who I am or what I do at the end of the day. If someone wanted to find my by my old name, they would take the effort to do it.

1 Like
#22

Basically with forum features like these, we look at these from the -100 points perspective:

Obviously there is a small benefit to briefly displaying someone’s previous username, but the impact and frequency is not large enough to get the feature out of the hole.

1 Like