I strongly support this.
I don’t like how so many of the API stuff is just explained in words without examples, it’s too hard to try and learn and there aren’t any tutorials around for a lot of it.
3 Likes
Here’s a quick poll to gauge some opinions. This is really biased, but it doesn’t take much effort to vote.
- I have found the new wiki slightly more useful, compared to the old one
- I have found the new wiki significantly more useful
- I have found the new wiki slightly less useful
- I have found the new wiki significantly less useful
- I have not experienced any difference in usefulness
0 voters
3 Likes
First, I’ll respond to the OP on a per-reason basis.
Reason 1: Some things aren’t well explained. (I’m broadening this to the general API docs not just libraries here) We know – that’s why we have this forum category: so the community is in control of the spotlight about what needs improvement. Being a department under developer relations, the IX team has direct access to other teams at Roblox which the community does not normally have access.
If something needs an example, yes, you can write one right now! Put it in a post here, and let us do the work of getting it on the Hub. Is there a description that’s too complicated? Tell us, we can make it simpler. That’s why we have this forum category! If you’ve got expertise on an advanced subject, we have public community tutorial topics ready for your pen.
Reason 2, which I’ll rewrite as “extending the reach of community written content”. I think it’s a good idea that we could feature the best of the best via links on the hub to the forum. I’ll see if that can be made possible. In this way, you can retain control and the credit over the content you write. Search engines index results plenty of results from the forum!
Reason 3, the minutia: we’ve got a mega-thread for this where these can be fixed in bulk (see the stickied post). Typos may be low on the totem pole, but we’ll get around to them. More serious stuff, like broken code samples, will be fixed when we find them. We make every effort to make sure working, tested examples get on the Hub; however, content migrations from the wiki still exist in many nooks and crannies, which you guys are great at finding.
Reason 4, internationalization. We’ve built systems to efficiently translate the hub’s content by humans. You can still post your self-authored content to the forums in the appropriate language topic!
Hope this properly addresses why hand picking community members generally won’t work for the hub (you can message me directly if you have further questions). In my experience with the IX team, Roblox is more keen on hiring such help rather than hand-picking community members to do it for free like in the ye olde days of the wiki. @Maximum_ADHD, who was a huge help with both the wiki and the hub is proof positive of this.
This topic doesn’t seem to be going anywhere productive and has devolved into a rant about “old wiki better”, so I’m locking it. Whenever you find an issue, whether it’s missing or incorrect content, I implore you to tell us about it here. As a reminder, please be specific when doing so. “More examples!” doesn’t help as much as “More examples on RopeConstraint!”
5 Likes
As a developer who is experienced with the Roblox API, the developer hub isn’t very useful to me. It’s often outdated, wrong, or unhelpful, and does not have any articles that benefit me. Even ones that should in theory benefit me (the article on the MicroProfiler comes to mind) aren’t specific enough to help me, often leaving me with questions I can’t answer from the DevHub. While information on the MicroProfiler is apparently coming Soon™, additional information on it was requested a year ago, and it is just now being dealt with.
While I try to make requests for pages I find lacking or that need improvements, a lot of things aren’t worth bothering with – documenting something like ValueBase is probably not a priority, and as a result will likely not be done for quite some time. It doesn’t feel worth my time to request it if there’s no guarantee it will go anywhere. If I had the ability to change the developer hub, I could just document it myself. Or heck, even if more people had access to it, using #platform-feedback:developer-hub would feel less futile because things would get done faster. As is though, it’s very defeating to be told “this isn’t a priority”.
The advantages listed by @Ozzypig to having a dedicated IX team have proven themselves to be non-existent in the last few months. Very few pages are internationalized (not even Workspace or All Tutorials have translations) and various updates haven’t made their way to the DevHub, even things like Removing Outlines which are the removal of a feature. In fact, the page on Lighting.Outlines explicitly says outlines are not deprecated in direct contrast to the large “Deprecated” banner that automatically appears.
The recourse we have as developers – the ability to request changes or additions – is not good enough. Things take too long to change, and the Roblox API is far too large for a small team of people to document and keep up to date on its own, let alone while translating pages, writing articles, and anything else that the IX team does.
Several large companies and organizations have ways to directly contribute to at least some documentation. Roblox should join them.
12 Likes