Is it? Keep in mind that as time goes on, even the smallest probability becomes guaranteed. As Roblox admitted. Humans make mistakes, and Roblox is run by humans. It’s only a matter of time until one of their moderators is a “mistake” of a higher-up employee.
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I think that demonizing moderation staff as “trying” to get you moderated is entirely unjustified and a bit silly.
This is not unfair to developers at all - if you upload an asset to the platform, it should abide to the Terms of Service, and many users have not been doing so when uploading code to the platform. They are notifying us that they have made this change in enforcement (not change to the terms of service), and the methods they detail are a perfectly reasonable way of enforcing that.
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It’s a pointless hypothetical, and there is no merit to discussing it here.
By the same logic, it would be a concern that the CEO could (in theory) ban every account. There are chains of accountability, risk and control over everything in a company, and it isn’t for developers on the platform to discuss or advise on those business factors.
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Change what though?
If you have an opinion on something, this is definitely the place to voice it - polling doesn’t help with providing solutions, and generally doesn’t always inform of any problem. This forum isn’t a poll, it’s a discussion ground - and Roblox are not going to respond to polls which don’t actually provide valuable input.
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What is clarification code I don’t really understand it can someone help me?
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This is not the place to discuss any specific and personal grievances you have with the moderation team. It is a place to discuss code flagging for safety reviews.
You should bring that up in the Lounge in a thread, or alternatively (and probably more fruitfully), Support
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Alright, well, let me just say this then.
Roblox’s track record of moderation has not exactly been great, even if we rule out the mods selling our scripts out to exploiters or competing devs. They’ve already admitted to making at least one mistake via this policy and have dismissed it as “humans screw up, big deal”.
Let’s assume, then, that the odds of a game getting sold out are statistically insignificant. The odds of getting hit by false moderation action that is then upheld is much higher.
In other words, it becomes a certainty much faster.
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I’m not so sure about that. Human moderation will always have a bias touch to it. Personally I feel for me that the moderation system is fair, but I can’t speak for others…
Think about it, if a moderator wants to warn someone for something in a script, they would have to go through a longer process than if they were to pass on the moderation. Other than some bias, I don’t see why they would try to get people moderated.
I also think that this is just sucking up needed man power.
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ROBLOX is publicizing a system that had been rolled out to their platform, which appeared to be under the radar for many months based off of other comments within this thread.
They named the thread “Clarification on code flagged for safety review” to basically say, “to clear up any questions you might have had about scripts inside of your game being moderated, here is some information that you need to know.” The issues that many of the users in this thread are discussing revolve around a combination of factors and what could be at risk from this.
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They admitted to a mistake, and they also rectified it quickly, if you read on further.
Humans make mistakes. This is a factor in all decisions made by company processes in every company. Every human has made a mistake, including myself, and you and everyone else in this thread at some point in their lives.
Processes which aren’t resistant to human error are the problem, not human error itself, so criticizing a moderator for making a mistake is not addressing the issue.
There isn’t a causation between “faster bans” and this new enforcement. You’re complaining that, now you’re held to account about what you write in your codebases, that it is no longer statistically improbable that you will be moderated for it, which further leads that it is now a non-zero chance that you will be falsely moderated because of it. This is not a useful hypothetical to have, because it is the equivalent of saying “Now that murder is investigated, I could falsely go to jail!” - it is not the problem.
Roblox have detailed safeguards about this process, that it goes to a higher level of review than normal text content, to moderators trained in the specific context, and that it has a robust appeals process. So, I’ll ask - what are you specifically complaining about?
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Please make sure to try and make one comment on a subject instead of making a bunch of separate comments. Also I’m not sure how role playing what a moderator does is relevant to the subject.
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My problem specifically is that I have over 300 places on my account with who knows how many scripts, and I really cannot remember how many comments or variables I might have named… inappropriately. I am not gonna go through all my scripts searching for these terms. I’ll just have them moderated, and hope no action is taken against my account! Also keep in mind no one is ever going to read these scripts besides me (and the roblox mods, now).
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i agree.
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I for one, am a “new member” to this forum. However, I have been using roblox as a hobby sandbox since 2012. Even after DevEx, I refuse to see it as a stable source of income for a number of reasons, primarily due to the simple fact I would have zero control on what “comes down from above”. I applied at the early days of the forum, but wasn’t accepted. Apparently six years of hobby work, grueling hours learning lua from nothing but the wiki, and my own suborn refusal to accept failure meant nothing compared to those who by sheer luck achieved the glory and fame that is the front page.
Every time I see policies such as this, and the outcry of developers about it, I can’t help but feel justified in my belief that roblox shall, and never will, achieve the stated dream of being the “imagination platform”. I understand running a tight ship with zero tolerance policies. A large number of parents overact to the smallest things to protect their younglings, and bad PR can be a disaster because of this.
But you are playing with fire. Not in the form of playing with dangerous forces, but you are playing with the fire that makes this entire platform spin 'round. The fire of development, if allowed to grow too big, will become impossible to moderate, but smothering it until it burns out under moderation policies that are too heavy handed will be your doom.
And I sincerely believe Erik would never wish for the latter. That will be the end of my personal opinions on these matters. After all, eight years of being here has taught me you never read feedback that isn’t asking for more studio features. You may provide a false window of opportunity but it is nothing but a punching bag.
For those of you who now fear for your source code and trade secrets, you should have known from the very beginning that a roblox admin could easily open your game and inspect it. You don’t own anything on this platform. You do not own the servers, you do not own the hard drives of which your game is stored. You do not even have the source code for studio itself, outside of the core scripts. No system admin would in their right mind allow an unknown person to be able to completely hide what they do said system. The only people who do this are websites on the Dark Web that actively support crime.
For those who fear for their accounts, let me detail my experiences:
You will, one day, get a seven day ban over a decal of a loaf of bread. It will pass. You will one day get a warning for an f bomb in chat. It will pass. Roblox moderation methods are harsh. You will be struck down quickly and without warning by the angry hand of the admins, and you will cry out in agony and despair, but it will pass. You will be expected to know your crime, and you will be dismissed with a vague reason as to your ban. If you wish to know the full details, email roblox and wait three days for their response. Be warned, if you hit the button and unlock your account they will not be able to tell you why. Why is this? No one knows. A proper system admin keeps detailed logs of their administration actions, but roblox does not.
Always assume roblox will cover up things for the sake of keeping their image towards parents as clean as possible.
The only times roblox will permanently delete your account is under cases involving NSFW content, things that could harm children, and hacking into the platform. Those who have builders club, now known as premium, did seem to have slightly more leeway as they actively paid the bills. Those who have flagship games, the few and the proud lucky enough to have climbed their way to the front page, will be given even more leeway in ban appeals.
Will roblox roll back this new policy? Unlikely. It was probably written by a liability lawyer fresh out of law school if we are lucky. Roblox has a strong habit of ignoring any request for change in their policies. The chat filter alone should indicate this, as it has grown progressively more and more restrictive over the years until I simply don’t ever bother using it unless I have to.
This merely reinforces the point that roblox is a volatile platform that should be used as nothing more than a hobby, and a side source of income. Those who build their lively hoods or college payments or anything else that is a necessity upon this volatile platform is a daft fool. If all you wish to do is play with game design without having to drop the money on servers or real professional tools, Roblox is awesome. It is for me. If I ever get a front page game, awesome. What will I do with the robux? Treat it like the free coffee you get at Starbucks on your birhday, nothing more. More than likely I’ll finally get a Dominus Empyreus, though most people wouldn’t recognize how much of an achievement that hat is anymore.
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Now that is a valid and genuine concern.
Perhaps Roblox could produce a tool or plugin that highlights potential issues in place files?
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Wait, whose parents are reading my scripts in my private, copy-locked places, not intended for anyone else to view?!?!
This literally happened to me, and it shouldn’t have.
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As far as I can tell swearing is fine, as long as you aren’t using a word that is derogatory towards a specifically group of ppl (blacks, jews, gays etc).
In the community rules it only prohibits swearing twice, they are here…
First
Harassment and cyberbullying. We do not tolerate this. Examples include comments or actions meant to:
- Stalk, bully, intimidate, hurt, attack, abuse or humiliate someone (or something that a person may care about). This includes using or encouraging the use of profanity (swearing);
Second
Creating positive game experiences. When designing your game, focus on providing positive game experiences for our community (e.g., working in a pizza restaurant, building a theme park, etc.). You should encourage the proper use of your game and never directly or indirectly encourage inappropriate behavior
Using or encouraging the use of profanity (swearing);
Basically, they say don’t swear in game, or let players experience swearing in your game. Swearing in your code isn’t covered by this.
This doesn’t particularly put me at ease, as for personal identifiable information is not explicitly forbidden. It is only forbidden in this context
“In all cases, you are not allowed to share personal information of others, including through any comment or message posted on Group walls, private or public chats, forums or personal posts”
However Roblox still say they will moderate these
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Now I can’t script anything without knowing that some “highly trained proffesional” will come for my code inspection and will end my whole career.
In the first place, who can even look at the code of my closed-source game with team create turned off? Nobody, except for exploiters that have decompiled some LocalScripts. Another case is a kid who randomly pressed F9 and then his parents punished him for playing such an inappropriate game or a team create game. Then all right, publicly visible content that breaks the rules, 100% legit.
And what about those who want to fix Roblox’s broken filter by implementing their own, just like in some cases high above? That is illegal. Ban hammer is waiting to smack your face for fixing a Roblox feature.
Honestly, with all said above it looks like Roblox is the almighty lord here, which will always try to break your privacy. The only way out is obfuscation. When obfuscated code will be considered illegal, god please help us.
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Sane response:
It is highly unlikely a parent will go that far into inspecting what their child does.
Roblox’s Response:
It’s highly likely for a parent to download studio and inspect what their child is doing, then put it on Facebook where it will go viral and ruin our image, sending us into bankruptcy.
Roblox always assumes the worst, and therefor, so must you. Otherwise, you’ll get hit by the angry blade of hammer of the admins.
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Yeah, but this is for open source or free models. Moderate open source scripts all you want, I really don’t care. It’s private scripts in games I probably will never make public again I care about.
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