The Problem
As a Roblox developer, it is currently too hard to find relevant posts when everything is drowned out by newbies asking how a LocalScript vs a Script works, or with them making plain spam posts (e.g. the 10 gazillion posts asking “How to not lose motivation” or “What is your development setup?”). The spam posts seem just like a bunch of Reddit/Quora posts and they get, quite frankly, very annoying. Almost every time I look at the #development-discussion, in the top 5-7 space (shown on the dashboard page), there are at least 1-2 of these posts, although it is not uncommon to see even more. This means a large percentage of posts are these beginner/trash posts.
For many experienced developers, they have to look through tons of simple programming questions just to find a scarce number of solutions. I have spent hours looking for solutions to my problems because of the sheer volume of the posts. And for beginner developers, they have the opposite problem: some of their feed is clogged with concepts they don’t understand.
Why Other Solutions Won’t Work As Efficiently
While some people have simply advocated for a stricter system on repeated/useless posts, this will only solve half of the problem, and it will require more work on the moderators’ side to filter every single useless post. With million of members, it will be impossible to have sufficient efficacy with this. The worst part: with the hypothetical solution of using a more stringent system, we are all still left with the aforementioned beginner-type posts, asking how certain types of scripts work or how to connect functions under certain circumstances. Additionally, for beginner developers, they will find posts that they barely comprehend because the functions/concepts used are too complex.
When I go on the DevForum, looking for solutions to my own developing problems, I always find these posts clogging my space and, every day, I find less and less of the results I actually want to find. I really want to be able to count on the DevForum, but it gets harder and harder day by day.
My Solution
My proposed solution is to add an Amateur, Beginner, Intermediate, Experienced, Advanced, etc. marker on people’s posts. This will appear similar to how categories and other tags are listed on the top part of a post. I know that we have optional tags, but trying to suddenly expect everyone to use these tags in the optional section is trying to expect millions of teenagers to all type these specific tags out of hundreds of suggested ones. A more viable solution would be to add a DEDICATED category of these, meaning there is a completely separate categories for people to select the associated skill type of their post’s content. People would KNOW what this section is for and would be able to select from a menu. Some possible ways to execute this would be to use numbers (e.g. mark a scripting question 4/10, meaning that the concepts and skill required to comprehend/answer the question would be lower intermediate or higher). Another way would be to use the verbiage I used before – Beginner, Intermediate and so on.
To clarify: This is not suggesting mass-usage of the already in-use optional tags. This is requesting an entirely new TYPE of tags that solely functions to mark the skill level associated with a post/its respective problem.
Benefits & Improvements
If Roblox is able to address this issue, it would greatly improve everyone’s experience using the DevForum because filtering through necessary content would become MUCH easier. You could simply type in a number and/or click on a word that will make things far more pertinent to your skill set and knowledge level. It would also ease the tensions currently going on between beginner developers and more experienced developers on the forum since they could each be part of community-type sectors of the forum.
When looking at problems, I won’t have to look through 30 of the same topics that all ask the same basic programming question, made by people who clearly have not used Studio for more than a couple weeks. When I post questions that are at the intermediate level, I can get more hearty and helpful responses instead of something like “Idk” or “Have you tried [method that is doomed to never work]?” I would also not have to dig for 30 minutes just to find one post that is relevant to my query, to have it end up being from 5 years ago and using deprecated functions and services.
TL;DR:
We should add a tag type where users can mark their posts as “Amateur”, “Intermediate”, and “Advanced” so that users can filter and find posts more pertinent to their skill sets.
