Absolutely, the promotion requirements either need to be nerfed or clarified somewhere on the site. People like you deserve to be promoted to regular because as you said “I consistently use the Dev Forums from the moment I was finally let in through the automated process because my applications never got a response.” The name change of the ranks just seems to be a band-aid solution to these problems that will only partially solve the issue.
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If only we had documentation on this
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I do like this update more and feel that these are better role names indeed. The one thing though is I don’t care what role I am or anything, the only thing that matters to me and this should to everyone else is that you are trusted and not judged by your role. The only thing that matters is what you give to the community, I plan to give the best I can to the community because of what it has done for me. I love how the devforum and the community keeps on improving too.
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I presume you are being sarcastic. If you are not, I apologize.
Documentation helps, but it is a bandaid, not a solution. What percentage of devs are going to read this post? What percentage of first time forum users (visitors and non members) are going to bother reading the rank guide? The entire purpose of this is to make it less confusing. At best, now its just as confusing with a slight improvement to demotion logic.
People who are not willing to put in the effort to (at least) skim an important information post will always stay ignorant of the meaning of the trust levels and there’s nothing that can be done about that. We require a minimum amount of reading effort for understanding the developer forum. If a user can’t do that then they don’t fit in here.
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Then they should at least make it easier to find, although it is described in How to level up on the Roblox Developer Forum which is a pinned post. The average Joe may think “Ehh, I don’t want to uprank. I just want to see what the roles mean.” So they may not click on it.
In that case the ranks are not relevant for them and they do not need to understand them. 
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That is not what I meant, I assumed you would know I mean. A player who has just got ranked “Member” may not be interested on up-ranking immediately. So if they decided against clicking on it (the post I linked above) then they wouldn’t find out what the ranks mean (assuming they don’t just learn it from the community) until they decide to rank up.
EDIT: To solve this the post could be renamed to something like “Ranks explained” for example
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Don’t disagree. Not a argument for sub optimal design.
If you make a game, do you expect the player to read a manual before playing it? As with the forum, if you understand the games mechanics, you can get more enjoyment out of it by understanding how things work. However designing the game such that you need a manual to play it is going to doom that game to failure.
The only benefit I can find to this new system vs the old is that demoting makes more sense, and we are no longer linking age of the account to the trust level (which is good because age really has nothing to do with account level). However this comes at the cost of royally confusing anyone who had prior knowledge of this forum and does not keep up to date on the news.
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I consistently use the Dev Forums from the moment I was finally let in through the automated process because my applications never got a response.
You seem to have missed the point of why I brought up how long I’d been part of the Roblox community and an active developer: because I have been a regular on these forums since the automated process was released. I post, I like posts, and I follow things very closely. I’m literally on the DevForum more than any other single site. People who got in during the manual process got in for things like having popular games that showcased their work, being a long-standing well known part of the community, etc. To claim the role has nothing to due with anything but DevForum participation completely undermines how the DevForum operated for a long time. Anyone who is a regular (the meaning, not the role) should know that because they have regularly interacted with the Forums and understand how it’s worked over time.
This is where I am saying using “Regular” for the role fails. People who got in may not actually frequent the forum after. People who got in during the application process may never have.
EDIT: for clarification, I have no issue with not having the role. I don’t post often enough to, so it’s fine that I don’t. Sure it’s annoying that half the time I want to interact with posts in the “Discussion” category it takes 2 days for my reply to be approved and the reply usually isn’t relevant anymore, and that’s a big part why I don’t post in those forums more. Catch-22.
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Yup, this is exactly what the change is meant to accomplish.
This is ultimately temporary, and any confusion will fade away shortly and not outweigh any benefits of the change. We can’t stop making changes just because they break the status quo.
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I feel like Regular > Member would work much better as oppose to Member > Regular but I am more than sure that this will be a lengthy change that will have adjustments.
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I agree I think instead of regular add something like member veteran and instead of changing the title for long time Devs such as my self maybe just give them their rank like I’ve qualified so many times from what I can tell.
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Again, agree.
My argument was that there was solutions that did not involve breaking the status quo. There is also the long term con of regular and member being meaningless to your average joe without documentation (and reading though the replies, its not just me thinking this).
Another example of a more descriptive approach.
Visitor
Contributor
Frequent Contributor
Top Contributor
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This is quite a large change to get used to quickly. To be honest, when I first heard “regular,” I thought you were talking about the previously-called new members (but actually it’s the other way around)!
“Regular” is a weaker label than the former “member” label and thus they actually sound like they are below the new members. I mean just think about it: if you’re talking about trust here, would you trust a person with a rank of “regular” or “member”? Most likely “member” even though, according to this system, it’s actually the other way around. These new labels are downright confusing.
My suggestion is to probably switch the two labels around (members = “members” and new members = “regulars”) or it’s best to change the names completely (but in a relevant way of course). Here are the label name I came up with:
This may one of the first times I disagree with a Roblox update but I hope you understand what flaws I see in this new change. Through the opinions of many and the Wisdom of the Crowd, everything can be shaped to what is desired.
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This links back to my point. I strongly agree with what you have said, I believe that this change will be a WIP in terms of future ideas etc.
They might change it slightly which I would recommend they did to save confusion.
Either way it is something that we can easily get used to.
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Personally I don’t like the terms because “Regular” is normally applied to people who interact with something regularly, and rank promotion is mostly based off making posts which some people who are regularly visit and keep up with all things Roblox development do not post often.
Personally I think something like “Member” → “Full Member” or “Member” → “Established Member” would fit the way things work better, and overall have less confusion. @buildthomas mentioned that it makes more sense for demoting, but does it make sense to be removed from being a “regular” if your still visiting and posting just as often but you have crossed lines on what’s appropriate to post? You’re still “a regular” of the forums, you’re just no longer a privileged user of them.
EDIT: Overall what I agree with you on is that either way people will get used to it. It boils down to a change that is to make things make more sense, which I feel it does make more sense then previous terms. I just think that if it’s important enough to change, the change should be as impactful as possible.
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The situation I envision is where an older member who does not frequently use the forum makes several bad posts in a row, then there would be a mechanism to put the user through post approval again until they are back at the required level of posting. They would not be a regular poster at that point and it would be beneficial for the forum to put them back to the Member rank.
Obviously this will be a very delicate process and we haven’t figured out how this will work so it’s not very constructive to speculate about how it will work and then extrapolate from that. This is all a work-in-progress.
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So when you say ‘mechanism’ are you pointing towards the use of automation with demotion too? Or are you on about maybe a possibly scheme for the Community Sage/Devrel?
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I agree/disagree with it, there is no point in you being in advanced category’s if you can’t utilise your post quality’s to the standards within them. Inactivity would just mean you have to re obtain the role.
This would allow the Community Sage to review that you’re inactivity has affected you’re knowledge on the ToS, basic category guidelines and you’re general use of the forums. Just like how it was a lengthy process for New Member > Member so that only Members who know clearly how to use category’s etc.
But I would prefer to not really log on after some inactivity and have to work for my rank back.