This is feedback I would normally pass internally but I figure it also serve as a bit of a PSA as well, highlighting a bad posting habit and effectively making a call to stop doing this.
As a Community Editor, determining when to recategorise or flag threads in ambiguous situations is difficult even when applying best judgement and common sense to the situation. I usually take the best course of action based off of accumulated feedback, though sometimes the choices I make are not positively received. This also results in inconsistencies with how I deal with threads.
A prominent issue with the Discussion category right now is it is currently being spammed with threads asking if specific topics are against the Terms of Service. There are several problems regarding these threads being posted.
I have currently been moving these to Lounge, but this is causing Lounge to get spammed with mindless moderation rants and such. As per the previously linked feedback thread, although I can’t guarantee that other threads won’t continue to be moved over, I have started flagging or doing nothing to any ToS-based questions instead of moving them.
These are not development discussions. Some of these can be moved over to Game Design Support or shouldn’t be on the forum outright. The appropriate staff for these questions do not reside here on the forum, so the only answers that can be given here are based on existing information, anecdotes or common sense - no authoritative answers can be given on if things are allowed or not. These concerns should be forwarded to support and support should be forwarding this to moderation teams to answer properly.
These threads constantly get littered with misinformation, low quality responses and the tu quoque fallacy which could very well lead other users to break the rules unintentionally by taking this advice at face value and trusting that by others not getting moderated, something is okay. This is especially dangerous when some of the stakes are account loss - referring to questions regarding gambling.
Threads like this incite arguments because different people hold different stances and interpretations about something, even if it’s explicitly written or not. It just invites posting for the sake of posting and non-contribution, both of which are discouraged on the Developer Forum.
It drowns out real, valuable discussion that is applicable to all developers instead of a single team’s circumstances. The Discussion category is meant for open-ended talk about developing on Roblox. It is not intended to be a quick Q&A section (Q&A is or should be fine given that it invokes thought-provoking discussion as well).
I think that information sharing on the Developer Forum is part of its charm so I am not completely against threads asking about the Terms of Service, but it’s good when they’re broader and the case is more unclear. Instead, every little thing has an “against the ToS?” question ten times over in different words. Sometimes this is an exaggeration, other times it’s not.
To better maintain the integrity of discussion, keep clutter off the category and help me determine as a Community Editor how to proceed with these threads, I’d like to request for an added rule via the DevForum Rules or the category guidelines that makes these questions identifiable as spam, for clarification as to where these threads belong or to how I should proceed in flagging them.
I totally agree with this I find it annoying when people make somewhat “clickbait” titles. I also think they should maybe make a section specifically asking if your game is compliant with the TOS maybe like a legal category. Would we possibly see that in the future?
For the case of clickbaity titles, if it hasn’t been changed in a while, you can forward it to a Community Editor or flag it to receive a proper title. I do agree that clickbaity titles are annoying but that’s less of a concern to me than the content of the threads themselves, which is the basis of my request.
I can’t really comment on anything about a category like that, I’m just an editor. We have raised the prospect of a general support category a couple of times because of similar such issues (e.g. Studio questions that don’t fit in current Help and Feedback categories), but those haven’t quite had any conclusions as of right now.
“Legal category” definitely not, we’re just going to get less knowledgeable people giving other less knowledgeable people “legal advice” which may or may not be correct, you should never take legal advice from strangers. Get a lawyer.
But #help-and-feedback:game-design-support is used for this, although, if you have to ask if something is against the rules, it probably is, since there wouldn’t be a reason to ask if it weren’t.
I think it may be a good idea if it had rules for responding to questions like citing TOS or referring to legal websites or even referring to someone who they should email. Many people ask questions about if they should post their game or if it could be considered against the TOS. Most of the time a few slight changes would make it compliant. Most people can’t afford lawyers or have access to lawyers so sometimes if they have a question about using city names or licensing it would be a good idea to have a specific category for legal questions that may be a good idea. This could also prevent flooding questions about legal/TOS on game design. However, you do make a good point about how credible some people could be that would be the main problem with this idea but it could be easily solvable.
It doesn’t matter, the source might not even be reputable, considering majority of users here are <18 and probably won’t have legal experience anyway, so it’s best to prevent any misinformation or just straight up bad advice that might have repercussions if followed.
I would also like to add that terms of service is not the same as community guidelines, for some reason people use them interchangeably (mostly referring to the latter as the former, but usually not vice-versa), so breaking a community guideline won’t get the fbi knocking on your door, the most that will happen is a punishment like a warning on your account.
For now, I’ve made a decision: I’ll leave this to Developer Engagement and flag these posts as non-development discussions. If they’re sufficient enough, then I can move them over to Game Design Support. I’m going to stop moving them to Roblox Discussion. Spamming another category is more trouble than flagging off topic threads.
I would just hope that DevEngagement in kind sees these aren’t development topics and that Development Discussion isn’t the proper venue to be discussing moderation in.