Recently, someone mentioned in the forums, “the Roblox Wiki seems really inactive,” which served as a reminder that as we start the New Year, there is no time like the present to provide the community with an update about the wiki, and our documentation.
First, let me introduce myself. My name is Byrne Reese, aka MisterNeutron. I started in November as the Head of Information Experience here at Roblox. Basically, my job is to help improve the developer experience surrounding all of our learning materials. That not only includes our wiki, tutorial content, and API reference manual, but also all of the educational programming that is emerging in camps, after-school programs, and schools around the world. It really is an exciting time, and I couldn’t be happier to join the team.
Earlier this year we turned off community contributions to the wiki to better safeguard our community. That in part has something to do with the perceived lack of activity. Another reason why the wiki seems less active is that the Information Experience team is working on a few longer-term projects that will have a more profound impact on how developers explore the possibilities on the Roblox platform through our documentation, and stay up to date with changes and enhancements made to the platform. Here are just a few of the changes made recently to help those newer to the platform get started and begin making contributions to the community.
New Getting Started Guide
We recently published a new Getting Started Guide which guides first-time developers through the process of creating their first game. This was a major improvement over our previous first-time user experience, by working to hold people’s hand a little bit, rather than just throwing them into the deep end of the pool.
In the future, we hope to expand upon this guide to create a suite of guides to introduce first-time developers to more aspects of the Roblox platform and the fundamentals of game design.
New “Learn Roblox” Landing Page
Just before the holidays, we published a new landing page for the “All Tutorials” page, which we renamed “Learn Roblox.” (Don’t worry, you can still use the old page if you prefer it.) In this change, we introduced a new organization to our tutorials to help developers more quickly find the guides they are looking for and to help newer developers better understand the breadth of the platform’s capabilities at a glance.
Looking Forward to an Exciting 2018
There is so much in store for developers in 2018 that I can’t possibly list everything here, but I can share with you what some of our largest priorities are. First, we want the API documentation on which we all depend to be considered best-in-class. To that end, we have several projects internally and with the community to dramatically improve this vital resource. Second, the wiki itself is long overdue for some upgrades and updates. In the first half of 2018 expect to see more changes like the above, and much more to improve the design, and search-ability of our documentation. Finally, we hope to revitalize one of the most important resources the community has given us: the Roblox Cookbook. We are in the process now of reviewing all of the articles listed there, updating older articles, and removing now obsolete ones. The infrastructure improvements that are coming in support of our plans will also create new opportunities for Roblox Studio to better support developers as well.
I am personally super excited for what is coming in this New Year. It is an honor to be considered a member of this great community!
Byrne Reese
Mister Neutron
Head of Information Experience, Roblox
Updated to fix a few typos, thank you konlon15!
I know I’m personally excited to see Roblox finally getting the documentation it deserves, and to help write tutorials to give back the knowledge I’ve picked up over the years. Godspeed to the team working on this!
Nice stuff - it really helps when the design of pages is updated to make it easier for users to process the information they’re given.
