Clarification on code flagged for safety review

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#434

I feel like the number is actually the number of major incidents, while many more minor ones could be hidden, even by the moderators who made those mistakes.
If Nicko’s example here is indeed true, and to be honest, there is no reason not to believe him, then we might be witnessing some sadly typical for this site occurences, like major devs and games being given much bigger leeway and possibilities of appealing. Meanwhile some minor devs have way smaller chance of winning a “battle” against a moderator’s action.

I really hope they will, but at the same time it seems like it’s not their highest priority, either that or they are trying to come up with something that will satisfy the public. Although looking at the account which was used to post this topic they knew how big of a mess this will be and/or decided that they aren’t going to change anything in this policy. This is basically their go to “uh oh, things will be bad” account.

On a more positive note it’s nice seeing dev forum community so united. Pretty much all of the replies give me more hope. Perhaps roblox will see us and do something.

2 Likes
#435

This clarification was long overdue, but it does not give me ease of mind. I am firmly in support of the code that scripters write being theirs. If some person is able to access it just whenever they want, that is very unsettling.

Now, I’m not saying Roblox is out of their right as it is their platform, but it is not very pleasing to hear that scripts will be held to a certain standard. Roblox’s moderation has had a few events in which it was questionable, and that is very concerning.

I think there is a solution to those worried about their code. Code obfuscation was a practice that previously was looked upon as a weak defence against exploiters stealing code (which it did not really do that job very well). However, if users are concerned with the privacy of their code, I suggest the user should only ever publish an obfuscated version of their code. This solves the problem as moderation really can’t moderate something they can’t read. The drawback of this is that the development process is interrupted with an extra step, everytime you want to publish a change you have to take an extra step to obfuscate their code.

I personally believe code should only be held to its external effects. If it is printing bad stuff in the console, or deleting scripts it shouldn’t (in the case of free models), or building inappropriate structures, then at that point it should be questioned.

1 Like
#436

Imagine getting terminated/banned if you write code “comments” in a “non-English” language and if a word looks inappropriate in English, but the word actually isn’t inappropriate in the language used. :eyes:

Does this mean that “comments” in code cannot be written in a developers primary-language if it is not English?

10 Likes
#437

This is ridiculous. Swearing in a game would just get you a warning, or a small ban. Swearing in a script in which not a single other human can lay their eyes on causes you to be terminated permanently? When you appeal, Roblox gives you no recourse on their actions and just declines your appeal? I hope they actually care about this issue as much as we do, because this is starting to anger me severely. If you get any updates on the status of your ban, please reply.

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#438

I too can confirm that when moderation on an account happens, going through the appeals system is absolute pain unless you’re well known. At least considering that when I have tried to appeal, they just deny the appeal saying it was “correct action”. Any further attempts and they just say that they have reviewed the case before and deny to even review it again. Now that I’m aware that this system exists, I have got concerns that this may be the reason for the termination of my two accounts which I used to save Roblox place files at the time.

3 Likes
#439

It was deleted on 1/15/2020 1:33:38 PM.
So Roblox had this game monitoring long ago and only now, two days ago, informed us that it’s happening.

I know it was the game that got me terminated because I’ve clicked ‘log out’ on the termination page, went back to the game page, and it says it’s ‘Under Review’.

6 Likes
Roblox's Moderation Needs To Be Fixed
#440

Which with this terminations coming out, I’ve had my last account terminated over something on another website, now terminated over words in a script… Do I just start making an alt for every new game I make so I can just keep my main account safely? Not have to risk having my account deleted and just have a ‘teleporting place hub’ on my main place?

Is this really what Roblox wants me to do?

6 Likes
#441

Are you filtering the input? And is it being broadcasted to people?

I would make a ban appeal. I’m not entirely sure. Sorry to hear you got banned!

#442

I’ve already attempted a ban appeal, declined and no future appeal attempts, and it’s not being broadcasted, it’s being displayed on a Surface Gui for users to drag around and sort. Only the person that clicked ‘load parts’ sees these parts on their own Workspace ‘local parts’ (put into their Camera so only they see their own parts)

The people that made these submissions are the one’s that’s used to be reading any kind of submissions.

It’s for Purple’s TWOW, Purple's TWOW Odyssey: All-Stars - Episode 16B - YouTube

I, at the time, didn’t yet put filtering into the submissions people had since I thought they were harmless until now.

I uploaded the game again with the submissions partially redacted, the submissions on a website for it to get the submissions instead of in text on a script, and text filtering now applied, but loosing my whole account over something that could of been given to me as a warning for me to fix right away would of been a way better solution.

If anyone wanting to know exactly what I’m talking about a vote tool for TWOW,
here’s the revised game that I’ve finished up as a working rough draft.

https://www.roblox.com/games/4604477685/Easy-TWOW-Vote-Tool

It let’s you spawn in submissions from other people in a contest, this just lets you use the drag tool to move the submissions to the top, ‘best’, to the bottom, ‘worst’ and have an easy export button for you to give to the vote master.

When there is a lot of submissions, some people don’t even vote for more than half of the sections, so I went ahead and made this for users to sort and export into a pastebin link for them to copy.

Sadly, I didn’t want to bother finishing it now because of my account being terminated over it and I can’t even appeal it.

Edit: For people that still might not understand, this is how the tool looks to work, you drag what you think is a best response to

The year is 2100 and the world is a much better place. What’s one thing that’s changed for the better?

The script does the work of sorting from top being the best, bottom being the worst, and exports it into a way the vote master wants to receive votes, like

[RENG CFDAEJGBHI]
[RENI ABECDFGHIJ]
[RENJ CJDAEFBHGI]

This would help everyone in the TWOW easily and quickly to vote on every submission.

I didn’t even get to the part of putting the text onto the Screen Gui. I only saved the submissions into a table into a script, published, and started to work on getting the tool to work till Studio told me it couldn’t publish due to an error.

4 Likes
Roblox's Moderation Needs To Be Fixed
#443

Yeah, I find it absurd how roblox just decided to tell us.

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#444

As a lot of other people have said, I feel super uneasy with this announcement.

Correct, and I’m not sure that I like others reading it, even if they are ROBLOX administrators.

I get that you need to moderate, but this feels like a total invasion of my privacy.

If a game or asset is reported by multiple people, then yes, you should look inside the game and see what the issue is. However, if there are no reports, just don’t bother. An automation bot seems like a privacy invasion, plus, real people are going to review code, which I don’t like at all.

I don’t feel comfortable about this update, however, I do understand that you need to moderate the platform.

It almost makes me want to not develop on ROBLOX anymore, as this is an invasion of privacy.

6 Likes
#445

Speaking truthfully, this makes me feel scared to continue developing.

Roblox is slowly dwindling their own developers, and these “developers” literally make the platform who they are.

If you’re going to ban someone over something so trivial like dropping a couple bombs in their comment section, I’m honestly scared on whats to come. Roblox has completely lost my trust in developing in an instant. @NickoSCP was just one instance, there could be many,many more that don’t event get to fight for their account

This may be something trivial to be angry over, but as someone with over 17 million place visits and thousands of lines of code, ill say it one more time, my trust is gone for looking at my person coding/programming styles.

It just makes me sad to see roblox take these measures to make their platform “family friendly”

I do not support this update.

12 Likes
#446

Exactly.

They are so worried about being family-friendly (which I get, but this is just ridiculous), they don’t understand that they are losing developers. I almost want to just switch to Unity. I don’t like the idea of someone who was not given permission reading my code.

8 Likes
#447

The fact that they have made no response to our complaints is outstanding. Some have even threatened to switch platforms due to their inability to be truly transparent about how our code is actually being reviewed and in what specific instances. They have not elaborated on any factor in getting moderated that one might be confused about, and I doubt this is due to incompetence, and is due to intentionally avoiding the awkward situation about just giving some insight into this.

I am losing more and more trust in the management of the platform every hour they do not respond to our questions due to the lack of transparency on this update.

8 Likes
#448

Roblox often likes to assume they know what’s best or who’s wrong, even if they aren’t.

The problem with this is that there are probably many more incidents that Roblox does not count because according to them, the user was in violation.

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#449

I completely agree with you. My trust level in ROBLOX is plummeting every day.

I am considering switching to Unity because of this.

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#450

Or that it doesn’t get into the hand of their statistics because they can’t even get Roblox’s attention for help past the appeals since they got terminated.

Getting terminated on Roblox also makes it so if you weren’t logged into the DevForums, you can’t login. I was just lucky enough that I keep everything logged in while I keep trying to fight for my account reinstatement.

So they just boast this one statistic that it only occurred once because that particular person probably had enough popularity to get attention from Roblox on an off-site platform.

Edit: If I didn’t have my DevForum logged in the moment I got terminated, I couldn’t even be replying to people here about the exact situation that got me terminated in the first place.

Edit2: The main reason I’m trying to still fight for my account back to this day, is because this is my only account that has been signed up for the Roblox Beta for access to making 200 player servers. There are numerous people that want me to help set their games back to 200 players since they did an update to their game. One being an online roleplay school and another being an hangouts music place. Roblox already closed this beta access from the public now, so losing this account is a no go and I need to keep fighting.

17 Likes
#451

I’m a bit late to this but I think most of the concerning points have already been made above, so I won’t restate any.

I think Roblox needs to start being more professional how they go about these changes.

I think @Crazyman32 said it best:

15 Likes
#452

This feels unnecessary and heavily invasive. I get protecting players, but, bad comments? We already have a system in place for that, the report user feature. If a developer is so offended by my code, they can report it. If I’m developing a game by myself, than this is just an invasion of my privacy.

  • Is the report system lacking? If so, than this feature is just a patch to a much bigger problem.
  • If the motivation is to prevent personal information from being leaked, why not fix that problem at the root by introducing a key-store (like environment variables)?
  • No matter what, having anyone besides my team read the games code puts the project, and websites I have secrets for, at risk.

Does this only apply when the game is saved online or does this apply to all games? Not all of my games are for the public, I do occasionally make games for myself and would rather people not pry on them.

I normally trust my scripts not to be read by anyone else if they are in the ServerScriptService, whoever knowing this, I may need to start investing in encryption or leaving Roblox altogether (I take my privacy very seriously; and I found a pretty good alternative that works for me).

9 Likes
#453

Exactly. Unity is a great alternative that I can and will switch to soon. This is a huge invasion of my privacy. What’s the point of doing this? It’s driving away developers.

4 Likes