Well I’m not so sure about that. It got taken down likely because people clicked on the link and more people flagged it. When enough people flag a topic, it gets taken down and gets more staff attention. But I agree the post did get taken down as soon as I posted it.
1 Like
The only people I know who have abused flags are Regulars, not that it doesn’t happen with Members, but that’s probably not the best way to check if a flag is valid.
1 Like
Can we also note that troll topics always have heavily off-topic replies too. Someone did a ten second flag challenge in #development-discussion and it was not related to development at all.
People also think it’s ok to post memes and spam in these topics too. In one particular troll topic, the same YouTube link was spammed five times throughout the topic and it was for an Among Us drip song.
Again, no offense to these users, I am just providing this particular example because several users do this.
And still, around 90% of it is all in #development-discussion, the category that has became a magnet for troll posts and off-topic posts, and if we close Development Discussion, the troll posts would likely be in #help-and-feedback:scripting-support or #help-and-feedback:cool-creations.
1 Like
Definitely agree with this. I’m seeing more and more troll topics on thr DevForum. Roblox needs to do something before the DevForum becomes a repeat of the old Roblox Forum.
However, there should be an exception made for posts that are off topic but have effort or was not made just to troll. These could be, for example, introductary posts that aren’t in the introduction megathread, or posts about how a specific game is bad. These are off topic, however the author would probably not mean to be disrubtive. I think in this scenario we should give one chance to the author and give them a warning. If they repeat their mistake again, they should be removed.
Also, I support punishing those who post off topic replies on off topic posts. The author of these posts are just adding fuel to the fire and should also be suspended.
1 Like
If you see a post that is off-topic, you can ask or DM (DM is preferred) the person who made the topic to move it if it’s off-topic, and they usually listen, but sometimes they don’t. When I asked the person who made the introduction troll thread (aka the “10 second flag”) to post it in the one in #forum-feedback, I got this response:
If you do ask the user to move the topic, I would flag the post and press the “send this user a message” option.
1 Like
Yeah, I have to agree with that. I think the fact that the desc. for #development-discussion (which reads “For any and all discussions related to Roblox Development”) has something to do with how it became a junk drawer.
Again like I said, it’s so unclear what ‘discussions related to Roblox Development’ implies that yeah it becomes the junk drawer in your kitchen. How it’s open to Member+ users makes it worse, since there is a growing amount of underage users on here and they don’t usually know how to use the forum (not just underage users, some can be new users who also don’t know how to use the forum). Some not knowing where to post stuff, others thinking that posting some meme they found on their discord underage hangout is funny (troll posts). At this point I just see either restricting DD to Regular+ or elaborating on what the category is used for, and enforcing its rules a lot more.
1 Like
Trolling is already against the forum rules. Not quite sure what the point of this thread was.
Please read the entire thread. 
The rules currently only give the offender a feedback message, not even punishment.
I agree with the idea of this. Of course, I have to bring up the old forum to really mention why I side with such aggression.
Now one thing to mention is that I was a member of the old Post Approval team. The reason we nuked it was because 99% of posts were people at least trying to be legit, maybe 40% were good to go right away and 60% needed a redirect to follow forum standards, a good chunk of those relatively minor. That time spent on the 60% is what made the thing nigh inoperable. Trolls were a minority group, and most troubles were from violations of standards such as the format for feature requests and bug reports. The consensus was that “Oh, so long as people are trying, we can let the community trim out the fat tied to poorly written threads”. Very little mind was paid to trolls due to their rarity. Perhaps this was because they knew there was an approval process and knew they were gonna get declined. I don’t know. But basically, my point here is to highlight that trolls are rare, stick out like a sore thumb, and should be treated like tumors on the forum rather than members if you had to ask me.
I won’t start a rant about how the old forum was better since that’s off topic to this thread, but the basic gist is that yes, if some knucklehead decides to come to these forums about game development and post “haha amogus sus (make amogus game)” in dev discussion, he oughta get clobbered for it, and moderation should hit hard. I have neither the time nor the patience to read shitposts because some fool thinks it’d be funny.
This whole jargon about the forum being professional is more time-oriented than anything. When the forums were private, it was a place for the top dogs of the platform. When it needed to be, it was professional no matter how you cut the cake, even with the occasional gag.
Personally, every post I write has a level of quality that is the highest I can muster because it’s the right thing to do in my eyes. If people are going to read my thread or reply, then it better damn well be something useful, insightful, or meaningful if I can manage it.
Now here’s the thing – I’m not saying people should be punished for low quality posts that they can’t help. If little Joey needs help scripting and doesn’t know how to write out what he needs clearly, so long as he put his effort into trying to make sure other people understand it, then I won’t object even if the writing quality is terrible, and I’m willing to cut slack if its a duplicate thread even. However, if little Joey looks at one of the serious subforums and decides it’d be funny to treat it like off-topic of the old public forums, then he oughta get pushed out of the place.
I think the image of these forums being a privelege should be preserved. That’s what matters. The only difference from old to new is that getting into the forums is now a given rather than something you earned through hard work. If you can’t use the forums properly and show a deliberate lack of care for its purpose, then you lose that privelege. Simple as that.
14 Likes
Having more enforced rules in order to keep things professional is something I fully support.
We’ve had this off-topic posting problem since Summer 2020, so the fact that almost nothing has improved since this is shocking to say the least.
But a Zero-Tolerance policy is a bit much, getting banned from the DevForum completely because of one off-topic post would only cause more problems, especially since flagging is sometimes abused by people.
Newer posters who were just introduced to the forum and decided to make posts like “I agree with this!” or “How do you reinstall Roblox Studio?” would get punished because of how strict the policy would be.
A Zero-Tolerance policy would also influence trollers to post more adult content on the forums than ever before, troll posts on the forum are usually kept to a PG level of content and are usually meant for gags.
But with a policy like this, there wouldn’t be any point in making troll posts that are PG if you’re gonna be instantly banned regardless.
So as a result, people who came to the DevForum strictly to troll would crank up it up a notch and behave in a worse manner than ever before, with adult content and racial slurs possibly being thrown around more even.
Because of how understaffed the moderation team is, these kinds of posts wouldn’t get taken down immediately and minors would be exposed to more vulgar posts as a result.
I worked as a game moderator before, so I know exactly how these types of people would react when a platform enforces more extreme punishments.
They’ll see the Zero-Tolerance policy as a challenge, which invites more conflict.
Making troll posts under strict conditions is fun to them, so it becomes like an activity or a hobby.
That alone is how the original forum failed.
During the Quackity raids, Roblox moderators tried putting more heavy restrictions to the old forum to stop the amount of troll posts being created.
But that only infuriated the posters and they saw it as a challenge, it motivated them to act worse as a result. The Roblox Forums died shortly after.
If the DevForum had a bigger moderation team and advanced filters were used to prevent troll/vulgar posts from being published onto the Forum…then yes…this idea would work.
But we don’t have anything like that right now.
So at the moment…no, a Zero-Tolerance policy would not work on a platform like this.
6 Likes
Well I think we need a Zero-Tolerance policy, and one of the reasons why is exactly what is happening right now with someone currently spamming NSFW and other off-topic things in #development-discussion
2 Likes
I have to wish this feature would happen on Developer Forum. It’s WAY unnecessary to see those people posting off-topic on Developer Forum, example what they posted something that is off-topic and not related to the current on-topic in #development-discussion category. Seriously, this feature need to happen, so no more troll posts on Developer Forum. It’ll be easier to find a good development sources.
We definitely need more moderators to effectively enforce a zero tolerance policy. This may also allow for faster moderation.
Roblox needs to act fast. There are more and more off topic posts.
1 Like
I do think that a Zero-Tolerance policy can work, the only problem is that DevForum currently doesn’t have the resources to support a policy like that.
If the platform did add an instant banning system like this, some things would have to happen first.
-
The flagging system would have to be under constant watch because of how abused it is, which takes more manpower.
-
There’d have to be some sort of appeal system for newer posters who get banned for making low quality posts, also takes manpower.
-
A system that uses filters to check posts for anything rule-breaking before it gets published would have to be added to decrease workload.
-
The announcement of a new policy like this would convince trolls to challenge the system more often and they’d likely post the worse things they could think of as a result, so the moderation team would need more resources to be fully prepared.
-
The new policy would convince many developers to be more active again and we’d likely see an increase in people joining DevForum, which would also be a reason why the moderation team would have to grow.
To be honest, I sorta doubt a system like this will ever happen anytime soon because of how Roblox wants DevForum to be more open for newer players.
But maybe in a few years they’ll consider something like this.
2 Likes
What if Roblox trains a neural network to moderate the Forums?
With the immense amount of topics being posted everyday, Roblox can use these topics both flagged and not flagged to help train the neural network as well as create topics that are designed for the network. The only downside I can think of right now is privacy concerns, but Roblox can ask authors for permission to use topics.
2 Likes
It would be cool to make an AI to detect off-topic posts, but it would take a lot of topics and a lot of time to do this.
1 Like
There are already a lot of topics posted everyday (1.6k topics posted in Help and Feedback every week), so I think it is sufficient. However, I dont know how long it will take to train the AI. If Roblox does train a neural network it would be benificial in the long term.
But if it was up to me, I would do it, because there’s no such thing as too much time when you are stopping trolls.
1 Like
I can happily say that this seems to have been quietly enacted (perhaps). The person who made the “Roblox sucks Core great” argument (admitting to being a troll) was permanently suspended.
3 Likes
That post was so stupid, I’m glad they got suspended.
1 Like