As a disclaimer, I want to make it clear that I’m not trying to attack anyone who made the threads below – I specifically didn’t link to them and I’m not mentioning anyone by name since I want the message to be the spirit, not the specifics.
The Problem
This category is terrible. At the time of writing, here are the last several threads when sorted by latest activity:
3 are asking question that are literally in the rules
Is it possible to still become a regular?
Cannot post on certain categories/topics/forums on the website
Small sentences are counted as "spam"?
1 is asking a question that’s literally pointless
Why is top contributor an magnet for likes?
2 are perfectly fine for the category
The DevForum is Undergoing a Questionable Amount of Maintenance
Weird title layout in this thread
Only a few of these are actually useful threads despite (most) of them fitting the described purpose of #forum-feedback. Thus, it can be safely assumed that the category isn’t working as intended.
The Solution
Delete the category. No, I’m not joking. It’s not serving its purpose and is just acting as a place to complain and ask bad questions. It’s not necessary to the function of the forum (you can send a DM to @Community_Sage or the Developer Engagement Team if you have questions or comments about the forum).
If the Powers That Be aren’t okay with outright deleting the category, it should at least be seriously overhauled. It should be held to a higher standard, and posts should be deleted a lot more often than they are.
Wait aren’t you just making the problem worse with this thread?
No, but I’m sure that won’t stop people from replying saying that I am. I don’t have anything else to say about that.
I agree, I’ve seen many users complain on the DevForum due to the new users who have gotten access to it. Everyone has made there mistakes but they’ll learn from it. If you got a problem with a user or so, just DM them. I believe they should DM a staff member instead of making a entire post. Everyone starts new on the Forum.
I agree. I believe this category has turned into “solutions auto farm due to shitty research” for many people, or they just post for the sake of posting. Not to mention that there’s a group of people deliberately posting in Forum Feedback to bait those who have notifications set to this category into clicking their post (I report those people regularly and there’s nothing being done besides getting canned responses).
The DevForum has this feature where they suggest other posts to you, but in my opinion, it isn’t invasive enough, which prompts a million “how to change my username” or the recent “why I can’t post in #platform-feedback.”
I also suggested months ago that this plugin could be used to remind people of the category rules, but was ignored in the end. We have the API, but no one’s doing anything besides redoing community teams that don’t do much, to begin with, or treat everyone else a little rudely. This is just a part of the problem that is how the devforum functions in general. That is why I’m waiting patiently on the changes DET has for the forum and how it will address the problems here.
I agree, but I wouldn’t say that #forum-feedback is the only victim TBH. If you look closely, #development-discussion threads are quite pointless, too, making connections with whatever they can with development. I’m not going to name any topics, but here’s example made up by me: “What device do you develop on?” I guess members now understand what’s development related, and what’s not, but come on. @UnknownZeal’s posting-for-the-sake-of-posting observation can’t be any more correct. People are just like “why not start a discussion because something like this got a lot of likes last time.”
That brings me to another point: half of the posts’ motives are to jump in the wagon of the same discussion because another topic got a lot of attention. For example, there are SO MANY posts in #development-discussion asking if _____ is worth it, which the answer doesn’t change with the _____, so why bother asking—for the likes. A similar post by me got a lot of unexpected attention and people are trying to mimic that when 90% of the things have been covered in that thread already!
Renaming Discussion to #development-discussion is a great start by the “powers that be”, but we need more. Make everything stricter, eliminate the start of such trends (“is ____ worth it?”) beyond the original topic, and increase the perception of professionalism. When I joined, the Forum seemed like a high-level place to discuss, and it shocks me that the members flowing in are thinking otherwise. This shouldn’t be the case.
Excellent post, but the message applies on the entire Forum, unfortunately.
May I ask, is there any problem with complaining about new members? Isn’t it related to the forum feedback section? (Asking because I made one of the post you referred to)
Also, why would it be a problem if a solution has been provided in the thread itself?
It’s not productive in the slightest – new members are here to stay, and that discussion has been had to death.
It’s also kind of disheartening to see people blame new users for problems that have been around since the beginning of the forum. These kids aren’t worse, there’s just a bunch of them.
If you read my post, I never said anything about how new members should be rid off, I even mentioned that Roblox is evolving and cannot return to an application process. In fact, I propose a balanced 2-pronged approach, none of which advocating for an application process or the likes.
If I sounded condescending about new members then I apologise, that was never the intention of my post. For anyone who has not read the post, I would recommend reading it with the proposed solution of the post in mind, not the problem.
There must also be a differentiation between the aforementioned productivity and uselessness. Productivity provides resolutions to the problem so that change can be taken whereas uselessness does not provide one. What you are advocating for should be on ridding of useless posts that do not provide any meaningful solution other than to discuss the problem. That is then useless and unproductive.
I agree, but there are other categories that can apply to this, #development-discussion has lots of “reposted” (Threads that were already made, but another thread is created with a similar topic), and some of them are really easy to find by using the search bar,
And sometimes things like what happened yesterday or before yesterday happens (There were lots of discussions about different things about the free models, its ok to ask questions but there were so many about free models in the same day).
#help-and-feedback also got questions that can be easily answered by using the search tool, or simply “spoon-feeding asking” topics.
Well, I wouldn’t go to the deletion but I would go to a revamp.
There are a ton of topics about platform feedback, whether it’s about it getting removed or can’t post in it. This is seriously dumb as people don’t use the search bar when asking simple questions, like “How do I code?”
For every duplicate I see, I will tally on my whiteboard. Once the PA replacement is here, I will stop tallying.
I thought forum feedback was a “better discussion” kinda lol. Since a lot of people post more highly thought discussion topics there, but I guess it’s not.
Reason I think this is every since I got more active on the forum, a lot of the topics in this category were kinda discussion topics.
Nearly every community has a place for meta discussion, removing FF would be catastrophic and is a very extreme idea. It can be considered to split FF into dedicated sub categories for bugs and questions, keeping the main FF category for discussing the forum in general.
The observable issues with FF are also not exclusive to it, Discussion and H&F also experience the issue (arguably, worse). FF is reflective of the DevForum, so forum issues will likely appear in FF.
Then something really does need to be done about the category to make it useful.
Personal experience: I’m a Community Editor and use this venue for receiving and posting feedback - or did. Hard to find topics relevant to me (e.g. request for moderation rants not to be sent to Lounge). Often, this category (or recently anyway, it’s always been quite a mess) is filled of two things.
Things that people can just search for, or look around for.
Rants about the Discussion category and members.
Forum Feedback should speak to me that you’re looking to provide some kind of input on the forum and have a good discussion about it. I don’t want to see your hot takes about the choices being made to make the forum more accessible to the developer community.
You not meaning you, Automationeer, but I’ll be damned if I had to count the number of hot takes worth of replies and threads.
I would push for a revamp first over straight up deletion.
For me, from now and before, I attach improving the forum’s meta and discussion on such improvements with that.
As a forum, we should be able to suggest improvement. If this category should continue to be that hope can and should be a place of discussion as we are here now. It could be that all such feedback are privately directed to DET (ignoring that dupes could come common) or an alternate medium to host such feedback.
But straight up deletion feels counterproductive and could be better dealt with. Harsh concentration to what this category is used for among reworking several poorly handled sections could make a major change.
I would love to see someone from DET respond and give what they’re planning and doing around this.
I kinda got a bit heated but no hate to anyone just want to defend my thoughts and anyone who opposes me or agrees with me has the right to defend their thoughts too. So please don’t attack them rather using constrictive criticism if anything.
My post:
So using my post calming I’m “complaining about Members or new users”. I’m simply doing this so I can get a larger community feedback rather than blowing up Sage’s DMs. Keep in mind a lot of people share this same issue which would result in more and more DMs to Sage until something is done.
Why it’s important:
I believe this category serves a great porpoise. In many Governments such as the US Government people have the right to have constructive criticism. But closing that off leaves people without authority or power in the hands of those with power and or control and they can’t do anything.
Technically:
Now you can have your own thoughts and opinions but… The fact is just because we’re talking about one somewhat chaotic role (member) and trying to limit their abilities until they learn and so they can progress through it. Instead of having a bunch of people who just joined have no idea what they’re doing with free range like they’re starting to have now. I fail to see how our “complaining” is different than yours, it’s just another conversation topic and that’s why we need the #forum-feedback; so we can discuss these sorts of things.
Next time:
I feel like some of the ones you mentioned you didn’t even read. If you look more closely at them, you can see a lot of us use constructive criticism to make the DevForum better for everyone and allow everyone to pitch in rather than a closed DM.
Summary:
There’s not too much else to it other than we need constructive criticism to grow and without that it’d be harder to find what’s best for the community.
Yes but these new users, should READ THE RULES. It does not matter if they make a mistake or not, everyone has to follow the exact same rules.
All of the posts there are perfectly valid and are 100% feedback. DevForum moderation should be cracking down harder on things like 30 character bypassing etc.
Nobody wants this place to turn into another Roblox Forums.
Now that people can’t post in #platform-feedback, they decide to come here.
My solution to the problem in this category? How about we keep it, but not let Members create topics (sorry guys, you just don’t understand) in it, but at least let them reply to topics. Kinda like Discussion before it was opened to Members.
You are meant to post only log files and stuff to that group so you can link to the DM in your public bug report for staff members in that group since there could be sensitive information in the logs. It is not an alternative to #platform-feedback.
Also post approval is removed so there is no reason to mention them anymore.
