DevForum Structural Changes

Updates Community & Events
#1

Hey developers,

We’ve been meeting with forum users and the Community Sages to discuss the structure of the Developer Forum. Through these meetings, we’ve gotten feedback indicating that the structure of the forum did not encourage discussion; instead, it seemed like an information dump with other categories scattered around.

We’ve taken the feedback and used it to make some structural changes to the DevForum. This includes an altered category structure and some name changes of categories and subcategories. We’re changing a few names to clarify their purposes a bit better and remove redundant naming.

Here’s a summary of the name changes:

  • Development Discussion → Discussion
  • Development Support → Help and Feedback
  • Development Resources → Resources
  • Public Collaboration → Collaboration
  • Private Collaboration → Private Recruitment
  • Surveys → Engineering Feedback (merge)

Here’s the new order of categories:

  1. Public
  2. Discussion
  3. Help and Feedback
    a. Cool Creations (formerly a subcategory of Discussion)
  4. Platform Feedback
    a. Forum Feedback (formerly an independent category)
    b. Moderation Review Requests (formerly an independent category)
  5. Resources
  6. Collaboration
    a. Private Recruitment (formerly an independent category called Collaboration, only accessible by full Members)
  7. Lounge

Categories in other languages will appear at the top, above Discussion, and are opt-in. Check out this announcement for more information on those: Changes to the International Category

These changes also include a complete audit of all of our previously-pinned topics. We’ve condensed all of that information into a single page with links to important topics: https://devforum.roblox.com/faq

We’re making the structure changes to better accommodate discussion on our forum and ensure that it’s as easy as possible to browse topics that interest you.

You may be wondering how our prioritization for these category changes worked - the answer is that we put the categories that developers are likely to browse towards the top and categories that you’re more likely to seek out when you need them (such as Collaboration) towards the bottom.

You may also be wondering why Moderation Review Requests is now a subcategory of Platform Feedback (or what Moderation Review Requests even is). The Moderation Review Requests category was implemented when the Developer Forum was much more selective and exclusive; it was designed as a place for top developers to get priority responses from representatives of the Moderation team at Roblox in order to get situations sorted out. As we scale, though, this doesn’t make a whole lot of sense and we’re beginning to transition this system into a more private process separate from the Developer Forum.

We look forward to seeing how these changes encourage discussion, and we’re always looking for more feedback. Our ultimate goal is to make it as simple as possible to find topics and conversations that interest you.

Let us know what you think of the changes in this thread!

Thanks,
Developer Relations

P.S. Special shout-outs to @Quenty, @EgoMoose and @slimjim541 for meeting with us as a focus group to talk through these changes and help make them happen. Your feedback was invaluable!

139 Likes
Further Changes to the Developer Forum
Slight rant — The problem with the Roblox devforum in 1 picture
Slight rant — The problem with the Roblox devforum in 1 picture
Unnecessary Reply’s
#4

The changes to structure in the DevForum are much appreciated. Clarification is definitely something that is welcome on the forums and these new names help better understand the purpose of categories.

About Private Collaboration: before, it used to be a mirror of Public Collaboration specifically accessible only to DevForum full members. With the category seemingly being consolidated down to Private Recruitment and moved to Collaboration, what will happen with private portfolios and the private marketplace? This was never clarified.

Discussion seems redundant of Lounge with the new naming and it further gives the impression of being an information dump. Development Discussion was more clear that the category was in relation to development but now the category sort of seems like a general discussion place. Any plans to clear that up in some way, maybe? I feel like the new name will invite clutter which is counterproductive to the new naming schema.

The rest of the changes are all good and I don’t have any real complaints against them. It’s just up to the community to keep the environment clean, productive and resourceful. :slightly_smiling_face:

6 Likes
#5

So glad that this was implemented! A few questions about posting (for New Members) under the new system:

(1) Will New Members now be able to post freely in Cool Creations?

(2) Will Forum Feedback still be accessible to New Members even though it is part of Platform Feedback?

(3) Will Discussion (previously Development Discussion) be open to everyone (for both replies and topics), or still just for Full Members?

EDIT: Do I see avatar flairs for all groups, or are these just new icons?

image

Never mind, just new icons.

4 Likes
#6

These subcategories were very rarely used and the posts there have been moved to the public versions. If you want your own post made unlisted, you’re free to flag it requesting such.

“Development Discussion on the Developer Forum” was redundant. By opening Discussion on a Developer Forum, you should be anticipating discussion about development. Hopefully this doesn’t become an issue, but we’ll be monitoring nonetheless.

5 Likes
Rename Discussion back to Development Discussion
#7

Cool Creations will still function the same way as it did under Discussion. The move is just to get it more in line with feedback collection rather than falling under the category of discussion, which seemed like a strange place for it.

Yes!

Posting in the Discussion category is still a perk of being a full Member. However, New Members should still be able to view the category.

7 Likes
#8

Any reason it wasn’t changed? Cool Creations probably has the most post approval requests created (which delays feedback cycles) as well as leads the building support category to be flooded with generic “feedback on X” builds. Could also probably clear it up better if it was named “Creation Feedback” because there is also a lot of post approval requests we redirect to “What are you working on currently” since they don’t ask for feedback.

6 Likes
#9

Like @TheNexusAvenger said, a large portion of the posts we get through Post Approval are aimed towards Cool Creation and I’d wager around 75% of those aren’t asking for feedback on their creation and are just posting pictures with one or two sentences. A name change to better indicate its purpose should probably happen at some point because it’s not clear that “Cool Creations” is for getting feedback without reading the About thread.

6 Likes
#10

Better for people like me who are very new, and also beneficial to those who know their way around!:wink:

2 Likes
#11

Will the Bulletin Board still exist?

2 Likes
#12

Bulletin board will most likely exist due to the face it’s the place where it’s heldfor pa’s.

1 Like
#13

Bulletin Board is unaffected by these changes.

1 Like
#14

This was very much needed, I found that the old structure had too many irreverent categories displayed on the main page and was cumbersome to navigate.

2 Likes
#15

They’re group icons, not avatar flairs.

1 Like
#16

We added these last week to make the group page easier to browse. :slight_smile: They are unrelated to this change.

1 Like