I just want to emphasize the word “avoid”, there are surely cases where this is unavoidable. I’m only suggesting to avoid.
Recently, I’ve been seeing users make replies with a dump of developer hub links and no explanation whatsoever. Personally, these replies do not contribute anything meaningful unless the original post asks for purely references/resources.
I understand that it can be annoying that users post without searching thoroughly, but that’s not a reason to create replies that will implicitly indicate “this guy didn’t search” or “you could’ve searched this up” etc.
These replies are considered spam since “It is not useful or relevant to the current topic” is what’s listed in the flagging criteria for spam. At least provide a simple explanation on how to use the resources you linked, then message or include in the footer of your reply that the OP’s author should search before posting etc.
Edit:
I made it clear in the title “Purely Developer Hub Links”
It is both useful and relevant. If someone asks “how do I run code when a part is touched” and I link BasePart | Documentation - Roblox Creator Hub, how is that not relevant or useful?
Again, the developer hub explains it for you. I see no reason to explain something the devhub already does, and possibly better than me.
My point isn’t about explaining better than the developer hub, it’s about maintaining the quality of forum posts. I consider them unmeaningful because I visualize it like this:
I’m a student in school → A user in the the forum
I’m in science class - > An amateur programmer
The teacher gives us a book to read → Someone provides developer hub links
The teacher doesn’t explain anything → Purely developer hub links
There’s always going to be something lacking if the teacher doesn’t explain or help put the resources into perspective/a sense of application.
A reply that is just a link to the Developer Hub is not useful, however pointing people towards articles or documentation is, and isn’t spam. Deferring to the developer hub is more efficient, avoids contradicting Roblox’s stances on certain things and also is precisely what it is for.
If a developer hub completely describes the answer (for example: How do I use Remote Events?) then posting a link to the Developer Hub article is perfectly acceptable. If it’s a question about making cars and you just send them the link to the Seat class, then that’s spam.
I can say that I sometimes do that exposed myself, oh no, but it comes down to the point that this doesn’t happen occasionally. It’s like a few times an hour. I think what we as developers have to agree on is to teach others good habits on how to do certain things. I can’t say that I was perfect when I joined, I’m not perfect now, either.
As @sjr04 said, the developer hub explains it all, but thinking back to it, when I wasn’t as experienced as a developer, there were some terms that I didn’t understand, such as void, and sometimes the explanations were just bogus.
Ultimately, we do try our best to help as many people as possible, but sometimes we just don’t know that others might not understand what we might understand. But I have to agree, sometimes it isn’t helpful. Maybe we don’t have to stop this completely but refrain from doing it, depending on the person and their development history. If you know that the developer can understand the hub, maybe then you can do it.
In this analogy, you’d read the book?? Not sure what you’re getting at.
One should check the links before posting to make sure they have an explanation or not. If someone links an empty api reference then that is on them.
I personally feel kinda offended since I am one of these people. A lot of topics in #help-and-feedback are so basic that the developer hub as all of their answers. So I ask again - why should our time be wasted when the developer hub for the most part has all the answers? If not the developer hub, try Google! The world’s #1 search engine! Might not be on the developer forum or hub, but it’s there somewhere!
Would you like for other users to bloat their thread like so?
Hey, there is an AWESOME link that lets you listen for a part being touched. Make sure to click the link which is right here!!! Go on, click it!!! ----> BasePart | Documentation - Roblox Creator Hub
If people are asking about something and you just link purely developer hub links, you might as well add a little explanation or code example.
I understand that helping people on the forum is done out of volunteering and this is a matter of preference on how you wish to respond to someone, but if you’re going to help someone, you might as well give a little extra information.
If everyone based their knowledge from the developer hub, how will things work out of the box? How will they understand the hundreds and thousands of concepts that the developer hub doesn’t go into detail?
A simple small addition is not harmful and I’m only suggesting to avoid it.
If the developer hub can fully answer their question, then why would you need to explain it again yourself? No offense, but it sounds like a waste of time explaining something that’s already explained. You’ll basically be paraphrasing the developer hub, which is not needed since if the user doesn’t want to click the link and read the information on the developer hub, then that’s really their fault.
In some cases, the developer hub only answers part of their question, and that is when you should explain a little bit more with your own knowledge.
Yeah this is probably the point of the post right? Like linking someone to the developer hub just give function type signatures and small explicit examples. We all know this is an “out of the box” platform where people break API rules and have weird use cases all the time. Some pseudo-code or real code segments give helpful context in replies. @wevetments is right.
However, there is a contrarian argument to be made that if someone asks a really simple question like “How do I resize a UI?” Then they clearly need to read the developer hub articles about UDim2’s, Scale, Offset, and TweenService. However, a link still isn’t answering their question. You could simply say:
Hi, here is a helpful link that will teach you how to resize a UI:
link1 - description of service
link2 - description of property
etc.
ALSO, most younger developers need someone to give them more practical examples and less wordy/verbose description of API like that in the developer hub. I know it’s mostly kid-friendly content, but sometimes a person on the devforum can convey a principle or concept more easily to a younger audience since we are also typically younger than a 30-40 year old software engineer and can relate the material more directly.
There’s a common phrase a lot of teachers say, “read the directions before you ask questions”.
So the user should read the developer hub, and if they still have any more questions, then that’s when they can ask.
Most teachers at my school just give you the book to read, give you 30 minutes to read it, then they ask if anybody has any questions after everybody has finished reading.
I’m sorry you feel this way. I don’t understand why you’re taking this so personally. My post’s intention is only suggesting to avoid dumping purely developer hub links.
@cwd30
How is this wasting your time? Adding a simple explanation can save your time if it can answer future questions of the person you are helping.
This is a bad example for what you’re trying to get at.
I experienced this a lot. Even tho I said, I searched the whole Developer Hub and reread everything thousand times, people still reply with just the link to the same article in the developer hub. I wouldn’t make a Scripting Support request if its not necessary and I don’t know what to do anymore and it’s more helpful that someone explain it to you, that already used that kind of request instead of not making any progress anymore because it will happen sometimes, that you get stuck and even the Developer Hub can’t help you anymore and if everything is so good at Developer Hub, we wouldn’t need any Scripting Support anymore, since it should be explained there (sarcasm off).
My point is, it’s not helpful in any way to just send a link. Some people just need more explanation than just a article that is writing in “general language”.
If a question can be answered with a simple link to the Developer Hub, then that actually says something about the thread and not the quality of the response and it’s that the OP didn’t bother to do their own research before posting the thread.
Questions that can be answered with a 5 second search aren’t quality material for the support categories. You can flag these threads as low quality or failing to follow the category guidelines and let Developer Engagement decide what happens to the thread. There’s three things that may happen:
Untouched: Thread is not deemed a problem and will be left up.
Locked: Thread has useful replies but thread itself is a problem. Locked to prevent new replies but kept up so other users can see helpful answers.
Locked and hidden: Thread doesn’t have any useful replies and the thread itself is a problem. Locked to prevent new replies and hidden because it’s not useful to continue seeing.
Please also inform OPs that they should perform their own research before posting threads. It’s better to link people to threads that already exist and answer the question. Support topics aren’t for asking others to do the research and work for them, it’s for getting help after trying it out or at least having some fundamental knowledge on the direction they need to go to make an attempt. I say that last one because some support threads are conceptual questions rather than practical issues.
There have been times where I found the developer hub absolutely useless. I am much like @sjr04 in that I prefer to figure out the solution on my own (really, I blame the C++ forums for being so difficult to follow when I first learned programming). But at the same time, I know from my own experience how difficult it is to understand something given a single source.
Even if the developer hub makes sense to you, it surely is not a one-size-fits-all source of information. There are a lot of common areas that are difficult to comprehend - metatables, datastores, CFrames, etc… But aren’t there are even simple things that each of us have struggled with? A link and a turn of the head isn’t helpful for those who just can’t wrap their head around something.
Some people need something explained differently than what already exists. If the developer hub was worthy of being linked with our eyes closed, we wouldn’t have a development support section as prevalent as it is now. I think we often forget how it feels to be at the bottom once we’ve reached the summit. Take a quantum mechanics class and you’ll understand what I mean.
In general I agree, and yes I do notice you said avoid / don’t do this isn’t a Critisisim
I only remember doing this once - and I did attack about 10 words of text to it, I think it was a post about printing output on a part.
I was busy so just linked the guy some api I believed was relevant and he seemed to Mark it as the solution. In this use case of someone just neeeding to know Api I feel it’s appropriate.
I agree, but I disagree at the same time. You know what I mean?
a lot of people say practicing is the way to perfect your skills as whatever you are trying to achieve might not have a tutorial. If it is a situation like that, sending developer hub links aren’t useful at all. However for situations where the problem’s solution is already there in the devhub I say a developer hub link is necessary.
