Out of the people who have made 5 or more posts in the past month, only 4 of all 218 (1.8%) were members that joined this year, and of those four members, all of them have made less than 25 total posts individually. The regulars on the forum are traditionally veterans of one or two years, with only a couple people who have joined within the last year participating an equal amount. No matter how many new members we get, I’m still seeing the same faces I did last year whenever I open up the devforums.
Why are new members not participating in the forums? Are we too unfriendly of a community, or do you imagine it’s another reason?
I personally joined last November which is less than a year ago, so Id say Im relatively new, and I don’t think the community is at fault. It’s more about what people want to accomplish by being here. If your goal is to communicate in the forum, you do. Nobody here has harmed each other enough to scare people away.
So do you think since the staff generally only accept “expert” developers, they really don’t have any questions to ask and they don’t end up participating because of that?
What about the read time / entered threads amount / read posts amount for these users? Are they reading the forum and not really participating, or are they just not reading posts either?
I can’t imagine anyone to be such an expert on ROBLOX stuff that they never feel like they have a question some other member here could answer for them or discuss about.
I looked through the list of people and marked those I wasn’t positively sure joined > 1 year ago. It might be difficult to eyeball that if you’re not super active on the forums and see every post and the people posting those though.
Sure there is, but I think the small bit of hostility that is there is usually due to a small portion of members clashing with one another. Would be a shame if that is what is demotivating people from posting. I personally don’t think that’s the general mood of the forum at all, at least.
I do. I know I can be defensive about things and I know other people can be straight up offensive about things.
It creates a hostile environment. You may see it differently but it’s just how I perceive it. I notice some people will ‘Like’ any posts that put down other people just to try and kick people while they’re already down.
Personality types; real-life commitments, style of development (i.e. do you build, script, combine the two or do something completely different like graphic design or music) - I’d just say it’s most likely a combination of all of these that stops some people posting as much as the average.
E.g. I almost never post on scripting-related threads as I don’t know code too much; I’d be more use in a building related thread.
It’d be nice if there was a way to actively engage the newer members in some form to try promote ineraction with the more veteran members and so hopefully “break the ice”, rather than just amalgamating them immediately. Just a thought.
I guess it is kind of intimidating if a post that criticises your post gets a lot of likes, as if they enjoy that you got told off or something, even if the poster may not have entirely meant it that way at first. I can imagine some examples of what you’re talking about I suppose.
I’ve created 8 posts in the past month, I joined this year and I have created 22 posts; so I’m a part of the 1.8% I assume.
I think its somewhat of a false stat going on created posts, because I reply a lot and I think reply’s count for more - 334 created posts since I joined on January 17th.
I think new users are less likely to create new posts around here because of ‘imposter syndrome’ or whatever. For the first month or so I felt my opinion carried less weight here and so didn’t reply much and certainly didn’t start a thread. The first topic I created was in April.
Also some of the bigger threads that hand around in “Unread” and “Latest” are what a lot of new users read, and a result they are exposed to some spats between developers who don’t agree and can’t express their disagreement in a calm way.
By posts I was counting replies+topics created. You weren’t part of the 1.8% because I thought you joined longer ago since you’re reasonably active. Mistake on my part, but in general new users don’t participate.
