As a Roblox developer, it is currently too hard to learn new coding tricks and methods within the DevForum platform. Whenever I am facing an issue, mainly scripting-wise, the DevForum support categories aren’t an educational source for me anymore. Whenever I google my issue and click on a DevForum link, most of the time, I get redirected to solved topics that only contain the script itself, without any further context. This is bad in many aspects:
1. Lack of educational content
The point of the support categories are to gather extra educational material and get support on your problem. With spoonfeeding, many developers adopt the mindset of “oh look, it works!” and then move on entirely. The main question should be: “Why does it work?”. Additionally, the majority of them don’t even bother reading the changes in the final script and straight-up-paste in the new code inside their game.
2. Adaptation and future-proofing
If my problem is too specific and I want to make some adaptations to some code, it’s practically impossible to do so when I am unaware of what each line of code does and how it affects the final result. In addition, the Roblox API is bound to be updated every so often, leading to pieces of code being outdated from time to time. Getting context on what each script does would help out a lot in adapting the old code with the updated Roblox API.
3. Less clutter and spam
With users being able to access detailed responses, they wouldn’t bother creating a new issue under the script support category, as the original one would have solved their issue already.
If you are still unaware of why spoonfeeding is bad, I will quote a paragraph posted in this forum:
Spoon-feeding is NOT helping. It robs a person of the process of solving a problem by working through it, which is not only fun but is also a crucial skill to learn. Problem solving is much harder to learn than memorizing syntax. Even if a person looks through the syntax you provide, you’ve taken away the chance to practice problem solving, which will only make it harder for the person to solve the next problem. Spoon-feeding only makes you look like a newbie. If you actually want to help, a better way to do so is by helping people work through the problems (instead of simply posting the solution)- suggest breaking the problem up into smaller steps, or ask where they’re stuck.
What can be done to monitor the issue?
An issue I understand with this suggestion is that this would generate even more load into the moderation team. However, some solutions can be proposed:
- Spoonfeeding getting put in the same category with spam.
- Community edits. If someone thinks one’s response is not sufficient enough, they are able to submit an edit which can then be approved by the solution’s poster or any other trustworthy person.
- Downvoting system. In similar websites like StackOverflow, you are able to downvote posts that do not provide helpful resources if you meet certain criteria.
If Roblox is able to address this issue, it would improve my experience using the forum because I would be able to discover helpful resources for my issue and would not be tempted to straight up copy and paste a script into my game.