With the recent change in how people can get into the devforums, developers have been posting on social media how the developer forums are becoming more and more like the old Roblox forums, as well as making a point where due to the fact that there are more people who now have access to the forum, the Roblox engineers will eventually stop listening to feedback and paying attention to the forums because of how many people are trying to get their attention.
This post is my own opinion on whats happening and me wanting to open a civil discussion about it.
Personally I like that developer relations has opened up a channel for everyone who is wanting to learn to make games, and how discourse works its perfect for veteran developers to look at posts made by anyone and try and help whoever is asking for it. After all this is why the Roblox developer community is unique, weâre all willing to help one another learn and get better.
However, I really donât like that the place that was strictly âsemi-professional developers onlyâ where they are in a constant connection with the Roblox team to help and improve the platform is now a free for all âask and get helpâ.
As a suggestion I think that there should be a way for veteran developers and those who know the platform from years of development to communicate with the Roblox team more directly without obstacles or hassle. As itâd benefit both the developers and Roblox itself.
I feel like Devforums opening to public was a good step for Roblox Developer Community, although I hope that the gap between New Member and Member is big enough gap for those who donât contribute and small enough for those who do, to ensure that that âsemi-professionalâ enviroment isnât lost.
In an ideal world every transition is flawless and instantaneous, with everyone knowing what to post where. This, however, is not the case here. From a rather elitist forum the aim has shifted to both a more restricted member section and a much more open forum to help others. While this transition is definitely bringing in some friction that reminds of the old forums, I think it is important to remember that this is not the end goal and, over time, the frictions should diminish.
Overall, the âanyone can get helpâ aspect applies to the people interested enough in the forum to be actively reading it. This can be seen as a replacement of the former scripting help roblox forum section, and is a valuable aspect for a community-led source of support.
The âveteran membersâ still have the ability to post their feedback in the more restricted areas. Roblox staff already did not take (most of) the public areas in consideration, and this change should not affect how much they do respond to the private sections. With new members able to post here by getting manually approved, this setup is ideal to allow anyone with a valid case to get staff responses.
Summarising I think that the private sections still have and will continue to have the direct feedback to staff-effect, while the public sections are providing the actually desired replacement for the Roblox forums. This large community of seasoned and newer developers provide support where itâs most needed and at a much larger scale than if this was up to staff alone.
It just feels really messy. We had a good thing at one point and now I no longer see any of the skilled and respected people I looked up to posting anymore. Itâs like we need a new environment to help encourage devs and discuss things now.
New Members just kind of âshowed upâ, and it feels like your average forum now and it feels disorganised because some individuals donât seem to care about reading the guidelines for how to post, etc.
The forum is in the name, itâs meant only for people who develop and contribute to Roblox. I fear that the forum will slowly be filled with people that have no knowledge on programming or building. This has already happened with one person who got accepted to the forums, who didnât have any prior knowledge on developing.
I wouldnât mind if there was another rank for those that joined based on activity rather than work, while allowing people to get in based on applying and by reading. Giving more access to development related threads to those that apply and more help related threads to those that didnât, possibly? I think that might help bridge the gap between the two.
I think the goal with the change is to remove applications as theyâre very difficult to keep up with. Iâm not opposed to a rank lower than new member, but getting moved to new member would need to be based on how they behave themselves in the categories they are limited to, which in my opinion if the rank existed should only be #development-support.
I feel like having to watch the new people interact in specific categories would be just about the same as dealing with applications in a sense. If theyre aiming to remove all human interaction with it, not sure how theyâd go about that though.
The new members are already being actively monitored by lead top contributors, and a new lead top contributor was even added to the team. Theyâre doing a good job so far keeping up with it, and if they ever need more people Iâm sure they have options available.
The application process involved background checks and reviewing the work the developer submits in it. Most people who join the dev forum seem to barely post, if at all. Watching the members interact is a lot easier and quicker than reviewing applications.
Yeah, I guess the main dilemma with a platform like this is: most Roblox players are kids. Itâs hard to deal with kids. Damn hard. We have a constant stream of new faces, most who know essentially nothing about following rules in forums and writing good posts and stuff like that. We (maybe) teach a new person how things work, but then successful or not, thereâs always more people to teach.
I donât really like the forums as much as I used to, but I still think they are good and ultimately there isnât much else I think Roblox could do. Thatâs how I feel, at least. Maybe dev rel has a master plan that we are unaware of!
I get what you guys are saying, though the staff wouldnât have made the change without knowing full well what may happen, They have plans for the forum and are carefully setting them to motion.
I may have sent the wrong idea by this thread though I meant to bring out the concerns of top developers on the change, and not fuss about how the change is degrading the forums.
This is something that needed to happen for better or for worse as its the best way to create an environment where anyone can come and learn, otherwise people are floating around attempting to do something and not being able to because they donât have a proper place to ask for help.
Iâd also like to point out that this place isnât strictly meant to be for developers / people who know how to build and/or script, as there are a lot of different types of people, for example there could be managers of famous youtubers that want to get in touch with developers for collaboration opportunities, or possibly a new company thats made games off roblox now is looking to make games on roblox so its having its managers look into the platform, ALL of these people would need access to this place to get to know the developer community better.
Though as @ScriptOn said, right now its really messy, where we have people of all levels put into one place with the same access permissions. That makes top developers who would usually come here for a specific thing not want to bother anymore.
We shouldnât prevent new people the ability to get help, though at the same time there should be a place for those more experienced to feel comfortable posting without having to worry about having the post derailed and/or turn to big mess.
After the removal of the forums, somewhere for small aspiring developers to converse and seek help is definitely required. However, these developers are currently getting much more than they did from the forums, and while that may seem great, it doesnât scale.
The direct contact with Roblox engineers, civil discussion and great grammar and etiquette can only exist when the entry requirements to access those features are high. Currently, new members can access all of those, I think thatâs silly. Roblox needs to restrict more categories, introduce new ones that cater directly towards new members, or directly towards full members, and they need to clearly draw a line between being a new member and a full member. The days of being safe from scamming and expecting quality from the devforums seem over, but all is not lost, you can still fix this, devrel.
Agreed, I feel like itâs turning into the old Roblox forums. The DevForums should be a place for professional conversation and with the new update I feel as if that has been taken away.
Itâs not like just any random joe can go post on forums irresponsibly. After all, we do have an application process to make sure that the people who can post are at the very least somewhat talented in developing (or composing and art). However, I do agree that the DevForum application should have higher credibility checks, since the only thing they check is the standard of your roblox games.
Iâm not sure if youâre aware, but there is no longer an application process for joining as a new member. It is entirely automated based on how often you view posts.