This category would be descended from the broader Development Discussion category, and it would be specifically focused on discussion surrounding anything technical about Roblox, such as topics on Lua, engine behavior and quirks, people showcasing cool new technical achievements (i.e: someone wants to show off their advanced terrain generation algorithm), discussion about performance diagnostics, networking diagnostics, et cetera. Perhaps even discussions surrounding engine bugs / high level topics aiding in sniffing out the root of an obscure problem.
The hope with this proposed category would be that moderation would be lax, as long as the topics are high quality and technical in nature (so rule bending by posting cool technical creations or asking about technical problems are OK).
In the current state of the devforum, all of the topics I mentioned (except for the showcasing part, that goes under cool creations rn) would be put under Development Discussion. But, since Development Discussion has such high volume of posts and is frequented by mostly non-technical users, any such attempt at mature discussion gets diluted and buried very very quickly.
In the days of the Roblox forums, we had Scripters and Scripting Helpers. I’m basically asking if we could have a category that follows in the footsteps of Scripters, but brought up to modern Roblox. Amateur technical discussion can still take place in Scripting Support.
Developer discussion, scripting support, engine feedback, platform feedback are some of the examples of things that explains what you are saying. There are already categories for these things meaning a Technical discussion would be useless.
I’m asking for a centralized hub for all kinds of technical discussions. Right now, the remaining population of technical users who may still frequent the public sections of the devforums are fragmented between many categories. It is simply not practical to split up these users if we want to have a haven of high quality technical discussion.
This seems like a great category to add to the devforums. I totally agree with you, and Roblox should add a category like this. This even may help top developers in a way.
What prevents non-technical discussion from happening? The non-technical users that actively use #development-discussion will likely flood the proposed category ;\
Well, currently there exists no purpose-fit home for the kinds of posts I am talking about. It is much more difficult for moderators to manage the forums when technically no rules were broken. If a non-technical user is posting low quality non-technical posts in my proposed category, it is a clear violation of the category rule and thus the post can be moved or deleted with no questions asked.
But here is the problem: it is still going to get flooded and we will have the same issues again. It might even be treated as #development-discussion 2.
In the current situation, moderators have their hands tied as to what they can do to limit low quality posters tainting high quality discussion. Someone can start a highly technical discussion in Development Discussion and someone who has not spent a day in studio can make some stupid reply, and that reply would not be in violation of the Development Discussion category because the category is so broad. If we have a subcategory (or an entirely separate category) with specific guidelines on what can be posted, then the stupid non-technical reply would be breaking rules and can be handled accordingly.
You didn’t understand, perhaps I should have clarified. I would also like to see more high-quality and technical discussions, so I would support something like this, but the issue is that it will still bring in even non-technical posts.
Maybe this can be solved by requiring moderator approval on this new category? It could perhaps be a subcategory of #development-discussion, to decentralize things a bit. Maybe this can work after all.
I think we are hitting some miscommunication. I am trying to say that in the current situation with Developer Discussion, mods can’t properly filter out low quality posts and replies because the rules don’t say anything specific against them. Sure, global rules do ask for you to make sure your posts are meaningful, but a little kid may be pumping out crappy posts and from their perspective, they think all of their posts are meaningful and high quality. Since Dev Discussion is such a broad and open category, mods feel compelled to allow these little kids to post.
If we can have a category that is explicitly for high quality technical posts, the mods would be granted the authority and go-ahead to delete any post that doesn’t hit the standard. There would be no tolerance for the crowd that is festering in Dev Discussion right now.
Another thing that could definitely help would be moving this hypothetical category down to the bottom of the website, instead of listing it up high where a lot of newcomers will click. It sounds silly, but from my time on various discussion boards the placement of a category has a big impact on the amount of attention the category receives from new visitors (who are most prone to making bad posts).