As a Roblox group owner, it is currently too hard to develop professional documents like handbooks, chef recipe book, etc, as Roblox does not allow links to any platforms that are meant for this kind of documents. I just recently gained ownership of a group called Le Tigre Bleu Théâtre, and I want to work on a handbook. However, there is no way to link to a handbook without going through twitter or a different platform, which is obviously against the Terms of Service. Putting it in the group description will look too messy and has a limit which will not meet my requirements.
What if it’s abused?
Any of the present links can be abused. Twitter can link to inappropriate content, while twitch can do inappropriate streams, etc. This shouldn’t be a problem, but if it is the other off-site links should be looked at.
Why not use the Bulletin Board category?
Don’t get me wrong, the Bulletin Board category is a great place to post documents, considering we’re allowed to post any document for our group that follows the rules of the devforum and the specific category in general. However, it’s limited. The devforum in general doesn’t have features like automated scrolling to specific sections, headers, footers, etc. Although images can be used as headers, it often doesn’t look as well as it could on Google Drive. Users cannot change text color on the developer forum, which prevents me from using color coding on my documents. Users also cannot change the font size of text on the devforum. Additionally, users cannot style their document to match the style of the group. Lastly, since group owners have to actually be on the devforum, most group owners who aren’t on it won’t be able to post their handbooks and other documents. Some group owners have no contact with devforum users who are willing to post for them, and as such are locked out.
If Roblox is able to address your issue, how would it improve your game and/or your development experience? Please be as specific as possible.
It wouldn’t change group development. However, it would change how staff members of my group act in our games. It’s really hard to relay to staff members how they’re supposed to act as they do not have a link to our handbook, which contains all of our rules for staff behavior and jobs in the game.
The reason why these are allowed is because these platforms have their own moderation teams. Google Docs could be anything and there is no supervision. The issue is not that there could be links to inappropriate content, but that those links or content cannot be taken down.
Discourse (the software the forum runs on) supports a lot of mark-up and HTML tags; There are more than enough options to format your bulletin board posts in a neatly presentable way. You should do a quick Google search to find out all the possibilities Discourse offers. If anything is missing that you really need, you could make another post requesting specific plugins for the forum.
I think for this specifically you should just make a help UI in-game. Having a handbook split from the game itself is not a great user experience, especially for those users who play on a mobile device or console.
All in all I think the solution to your issue can be solved with alternatives and Google documents do not have to be supported to fullfil your use case.
Discourse supports a good amount of HTML, many groups are using the Bulletin section and have no issues with it. I see no need in allowing Google Docs.
I see where you’re coming from, however, allowing Google Docs links is a lot riskier than Twitter links and such. Using the argument of “well if we have this and we can post possible inappropriate stuff there then why can’t we post Google Docs links” won’t work as the primary argument for several reasons:
Google Docs links are normally very long and stretched out which often takes up quite a lot of character space and also leaves room for false Google Docs links to be created for users to follow and quite inevitably have their accounts compromised.
Google Docs links have limitless potential in-terms of posting content inside of a document versus a tweet. However, twitter links are a lot easier to decipher whether or not it is a legitimate or fabricated link. Not only that but they have a limited character limit versus Google Docs.
ROBLOX actively uses Twitter, Twitch, YouTube, and arguably Discord. However, they do not source/cite Google Docs towards any of their stuff. ROBLOX supports links which they themselves use actively for their platform as long as it works well with their Terms of Service. Discord is permitted only because 13+ users can view Discord links that are attached to games. This is because of Discord’s Terms of Service versus ROBLOX’s Terms of Service.
Although you can make the argument that Tweets can feature inappropriate messages and such, however, ROBLOX actively tries to take down such links whenever they can. It’s inevitable that we’ll face a tweet or twitch stream every now and then that features ToS breaking content. Google Docs, however, allows for pretty much anything to be posted because it can be made into a personal document or publicly viewed in nearly seconds. ROBLOX is against this simply because it could expose young players to content that is made public quite easily that can ruin their experience on ROBLOX and upset quite a lot of parents.
Pretty much every developer uses Twitter as a way to connect with their communities including ROBLOX itself. Discord has been an issue for quite some time that ROBLOX has been trying to figure out as to whether or not it’ll work with its platform. But they found a way to make both platforms’ ToS cooperate with one another by making Discord links 13+. But the reason WHY Discord was such a controversial deal with ROBLOX is because of the constant outcry of developers and communities. Eventually, ROBLOX found a way to make everybody happy including themselves. But for Google Docs links? No one is really saying much about this. I haven’t seen anyone even mention this in ages until now. It’s not really a necessity especially with what ROBLOX has in-store for us as developers and community managers in the near future. Like a possible forums 2.0.
I have to agree that the Bulletin Board is a pretty 50/50 feature in-terms of who gets to post there. Ever since the removal of the forums a lot of group leaders and community managers were left with no where to post their long CODEX’s and applications. The Bulletin Board is meant for people who are approved DevForum membership and can post their documents all over as much as they’d like as long as it follows the ToS. I have used the Bulletin Board to post tons of documents regarding my group and it’s quite unfortunate that a lot of other leaders don’t get the same luxury as DevForumers. So you make a compelling point here. However, Google Doc links is not the solution here if that’s what you’re trying to say.
That’s not all of the points I had to say, however, it’s more than enough to see that Google Doc links won’t help with ROBLOX’ platform because of how easily they can be misused. But besides that there should definitely be some sort of public bulletin board like the forums that’s well moderated (more so than it was when the forums were originally a thing).